LIV's Major Complaints and How the PGA Tour Monitors Slow Play

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a bright egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, frid egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump.

00:00:35
Speaker 2: Brendan. Which player has done the most damage to his reputation since Live started? A Phil Nicholson, B Lee Westwood, C James han Or D Taylor Gooch?

00:00:51
Speaker 3: H that's good. When are we saying Live started? Would we would we say like the Live like.

00:00:57
Speaker 2: The whole the Live story, like maybe it started when Greg Norman was announced as the CEO of the organization and we got a clearer picture of what this was.

00:01:09
Speaker 3: I think there are some options you give me some ample out of, like a menu here, one of those when you go to dinner and you don't know what to decide because it all looks so good or bad. In this instance, I think it's Phil Nicholson because he had the most too, I mean the farthest to fall, if that makes sense, or he had the most prominent position for better or worse in the game, and he certainly has come out of the sort of chasened era and is now on Twitter, you know, trying to paint the corners, and.

00:01:41
Speaker 2: He's back in there. He can't help it. He just loves it.

00:01:44
Speaker 4: He loves the fight, and it's just bizarre to see who he's conversing with nowadays we know that's probably a separate podcast, Like just what the level in the mud in which he is right now is weird and it just seems unnecessary, but that's what he maybe is enjoying.

00:02:02
Speaker 3: I think it's Phil. I think it's Phil going back to the all the way to the Ship Nott quotes. I think it's Phil having to be skipped defending a PGA championship skip a Master's clearly reputationally he is not rehabbed or recovered and maybe never will be. He was an outcast at the Masters this year. I think that will continue. Time will make some memories fade right of that moment of twenty twenty two, but not entirely, and and he's forever tarnished I think by just those quotes to Alan and some of the other ways in which it handled, and I think like you probably got out of it, all things considered, not too bad based on yeah, you know, the way people would talk about based.

00:02:49
Speaker 2: On some of the rumors out there about what was going to come out, you know.

00:02:52
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, the AMMO that's left in the chamber and probably still is out there should something else happen again down the line.

00:02:59
Speaker 5: So yeah, I do think it's filled. Oh West, he.

00:03:01
Speaker 3: Has certainly not covered himself in glory in the last twelve months.

00:03:07
Speaker 2: I think this question would be different if I had asked which player has fallen the most in your own estimation? But all of them have done interesting things, and including Taylor Gooch, who are going to talk about more today.

00:03:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, Taylor Gooch is certainly not for all the right reasons become a prominent figure, right, I mean not prominent maybe too strong a word, but his profile has certainly popped in a way that would not have existed were he not one of these defectors that increased the microscope and attention on him. And obviously his game has also been a part of that too. He's not been a wallflower on the course either.

00:03:45
Speaker 2: All right, you're listening to the Frida Egg podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, that's Brendan Porath, and today we're going to talk with Shane Ryan of Golf Digest about slow play on the PGA Tour and Shane's reporting on how the tour actually monitors pace of play. But first, Brendan and I are going to dig into Taylor Gooch's beef with the USGA. A lot of live players are angry that they may not get to play in golf's biggest events, and Gooch has somehow become their poster child, their representative. So Brendan, this is a strange story. Maybe it's not a strange story. It's sort of expected now that this is the way that we discuss golf and live versus the PGA Tour. But it would be strange if we were looking at this from twenty twenty one and you know, kind of seeing what the names are that are involved in the organizations, and it just all seems so weird. So this thing really blew up last week and you ended up writing about it for the FRIDAYGG newsletter. Taylor Gooch versus the USGA. Could you just take me through the basics of what happened here?

00:04:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I was on vacation and I got to be honest, I came back and and he made a comment about it on a podcast, and I saw there was some sort of rumbling about it, So it's like I really got to actually catch up on it. Is this really a big is all the hollering? Is this there some substance to this story? Is it interesting? Even if it doesn't have substance? But I think it has a little bit of both. So I jumped into it last Thursday, tried to catch myself up. It did seem like a recent phenomenon. Last ten days or so, the USGA changed their exemption category. The language of their exemption category for the top thirty who make it the East Lake, and they changed it from those who make it to the East Lake those who qualified, I'm sorry, are for East Lake Tour Championship to those who qualified and were eligible. Now, Taylor Gooch, by the dint of his good play, his great play before he jumped to live and that was whatever winning I think RSM and the preceding fall and playing well in Q one twenty twenty two, had enough FedEx Cup points to qualify Majors. I guess he wouldn't have gotten points for some of those, but majors had qualified to be a top thirty East Lake Qualifier. He was, of course on Live by August of last year. He left in June, one of the first announced players Live London, so he was the only one it appeared whether they intended to or not. And it's kind of hard to disavow intent here if you're the USGA. In my opinion, it was a deliberate and targeted change to remove an exemption for Taylor Gooch into this twenty twenty three Los Angeles Country Club US Open, and it felt sort of unnecessary. I mean, it feels unnecessary. It's one of one fifty six. It just doesn't feel like a material change other than to eliminate Taylor Gooch.

00:06:55
Speaker 2: I just don't feel like it's like we're not we're not talking about Folson here. He's a really good player, but he's not a really well known player.

00:07:07
Speaker 3: And if there's some exemption that's changed for and there's a at least the appearance of cover that you could state right, and it took out Joaquin demon Mito, Perreira, Lay Westwood, Ian Poulter. It's like four five six guys and maybe some tour guys. Something like it feels a little more plausible there there's some appearance. Some explanation you could offer, but I just don't think the USJA has anything they could offer that doesn't say this was intended to remove one live player or the exemption for one live player. He could still get in via other pathways.

00:07:41
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:07:41
Speaker 3: And it just felt unnecessary in an own goal. It's just a one of one fifty six and it just gives live guys who are always looking to be aggrieved as they lay on stacks of cash that they willingly took, and it was it just was an easy one one for them.

00:08:00
Speaker 5: It's an easy.

00:08:01
Speaker 3: One that that that that that the USJA really just doesn't have a great out or explanation for.

00:08:08
Speaker 2: It is kind of odd. And we can dig a little bit deeper here, just for comparison and context. Augusta National made a very similar change to their exemption criteria for the for the Tour Championship. The language is very very similar, uh, qualified and eligible. But the Masters is going to bring this into effect next year, right did not do it for this year. And so if the USGA had decided to do the same, then Taylor Gooch would not have been affected this year. It would have been future players. And so there is a reason to change this criteria. There must be otherwise we wouldn't be seeing the USGA and Augusta National both make this change. So what do you think the reason is? Like putting aside the theory that this was targeted at Taylor Gooch to punish him, which seems to me like an unlikely thing that USGA leaders would sit down to do. That was the effect, as you say, But I can't imagine that Mike One was sitting down and saying I really want to get Taylor Gooch because who cares, right, he wouldn't have That's not what he's thinking. So why did they change this criteria? Why did Augusta National change it for next year? What's the deal here?

00:09:30
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think it makes sense. The gouch one is a very unique circumstance, right because he got in and then they changed it, and it had the instant effect of removing that exemption for a person who had it already in hand. I guess it makes sense, or you could. It's still sort of given live something to shout about. Should someone like Taylor Gooch play well in the first whatever so many events of the PGA Tour enough to get into the top thirty then decide in June I have whatever fifty million dollars on the table from Live or whatever it may be. But it looks like I'm going to have at least four major exemptions next year via this top thirty. They now know in advance that's no longer available to you if you decide to jump to Live or if you're I guess not if you're ineligible. To be precise, more precise with the language, if you're ineligible, now that could mean you whatever, committed some crime and were suspended.

00:10:26
Speaker 5: That doesn't it's not purely a live thing, I guess.

00:10:29
Speaker 3: But where the larger issue with Deutsch is that it was kind of taken away after the fact, and now he allegedly could have decided had he known that in advance, like someone will going down the line with the Masters or the US Open. But that seems to be sort of the clear rationale for this subtle change in language. Now, if you're coming at it from a lift perspective, you could say, this is sort of, you know, evidence of further cooperation between these major championships in the PGA tour.

00:11:00
Speaker 5: L right.

00:11:00
Speaker 3: I guess my response to that would be it's an exemption based on PGA PGA Tour play. Yeah right, It's an exemption based on PGA Tour play. It's not an exemption to sort of get at live or an exemption to cooperate.

00:11:12
Speaker 5: With the PG.

00:11:12
Speaker 3: It's exemption based on PGA Tour season play. And if you're not a PGA Tour member, like this exemption doesn't concern you or shouldn't you know, allow you into our major championship. Now they can create an exemption similarly for a live player, like if you are so and so in the live standings or you're the top you know, ripper, you get an exemption. And but if you decide to leave the rippers, that exemption isn't available to you if you're a PGA Tour play right I mean that.

00:11:43
Speaker 2: Or even if you joined smash GC like you know, because it's that's true, Okay. So the conspiratorial reading of this, which by the way, is not outrageous by any means, is that the USGA changed the criterion to protect the PGA Tour because they are in cooperation with the PGA Tour against Live. So that's one reading of it. The other reading of it is that the USGA and Augusta National. When they came up with this criterion for the Tour Championship, simply did not imagine that there might be a player who would qualify for the Tour Championship and then not be eligible for it. And because this possibility became real when Live came about, they decided they needed to change and clarify that criterion in order to make it the exemption that they wanted to be, which is a PGA Tour specific exemption. Okay, that latter reading, you know, just knowing how these decisions get made, I buy that, but obviously it doesn't look good and the effect is protecting the PGA too or doing what the PGA Tour wants. So was this just a massive own goal by the USGA, not only changing the criterion but also doing it in this way, doing it for this year and excluding Taylor Gooch alone? So you know, two possibilities that I want you to sort out, and you know which one would be better. Option one would be doing the exemption, changing the exemption for next year instead of doing it for this year. Would that have been a better way to do it? Or should they just have not changed the criteria at all? I just.

00:13:39
Speaker 5: I don't think it needs to be changed.

00:13:41
Speaker 2: How many players are going to be affected by this in the future, right, if this is a future play, if this is future proofing, how many players are going to be in the Tailor Gooch position. I just I don't think it's going to be that many, Brandon.

00:13:51
Speaker 3: I mean, there's that hypothetical I just through out about a guy who plays well in the fall or plays well in the you know, a handful of designate events and gets all of a sudden live picks off with a sixty million dollars. I just that's a hypothetical though. That seems far fetched, and I just just keep the language as it is. Everything you know, these live live players and they're you know, various supporters, boosters, endorsers, and bots are can be pains in the asses, right, And if you are, like why future proof against like the most sort of narrow, pretty far fetched hypothetical, And I just I think you're sort of giving people something to shout about, giving people something to poke into. Turn rocks over have a podcast about now on Taylor Gooch, And that's an effect what they've done for a very very kind of narrow scope possibility. Maybe maybe maybe there's a maybe there was potential for it to become less narrow, but it just doesn't feel like it right now.

00:15:00
Speaker 2: Speaking of shouting about it, Phil Nicholson had some theories about the usba's motivations and managed to link together two big issues in what I have to say is a pretty delightful way. I mean, I don't mean delightful in the sense that I believe it or you know, I just think that it was hilarious. So were what was his theory? What was his conspiracy theory about this?

00:15:24
Speaker 3: Well, he's suggesting that this Taylor Gooch, Taylor Gooch is the lynch pin and one exemption for Taylor Gooch into one major is the lynchpin for the USJA to engender support from the PGA Tour for the rollback.

00:15:47
Speaker 2: I love this. I love this so much.

00:15:48
Speaker 3: It's just just think like, these dots are all probably up on the same bulletin board in various corners. But the way that he is skipping over about one hundred others to connec is ridiculous. It's it's far fetched. I understand there's a very complicated web of issues and professional golf right now, but connecting these it suggesting well, like, hey, is this gonna be effective? Is all of a sudden panavid a the next pack meeting? Well, you know what they gave us that they get, They got Taylor Gooch's pathway into the LA out. Let's all, let's droll it back thirty yards now that they've done that instead of fifteen.

00:16:28
Speaker 5: Let's no, no, let's go harder.

00:16:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. J Monahan is going to arrive in the in the meeting. It's like, I know all of you guys are against the rollback, but I'm here to tell you that you should support it. And I'm Jay Monahan. You listen to me. Is that is that going to be what's gonna happen here? That Jay Monahan is going to use his his iron fist and his his unbreakable influence over the BJA door players to convince them to go with the rollback. No, that the tail doesn't wag the dog that way, whatever the metaphor is, that that's not that's not how it works.

00:17:00
Speaker 3: Yes, does the USJA probably need some some cooperation or support or not, you know, just at least not open constant hostility and pushback from the tour for the rollback. Probably a little bit that probably needs to happen, is Taylor Gooch exemption the issue there or the kind of the lynch bit. No, of course not. And like this gets to our original point of it just being an own goal to people for people to make bad faith arguments that are looking to make bad faith arguments. And you've got Phil doing this, You've got Taylor Gooch refusing to qualify, playing some of the best golf of his life, and should he have to qualify? No, was he done? Probably improper? Sure, but like it's also he doesn't. He leaves even further less room for sympathy when he says, oh, it's clear they don't want me, so I'm not even going to try to qualify.

00:17:51
Speaker 2: Like he's yeah, he's taking going home.

00:17:55
Speaker 3: Right, go to whatever the Dallas area qualifier or whatever it is and shoot your sixty six sixty six and go or.

00:18:04
Speaker 2: Tick it to him. Yeah, right, he could qualify. He is an incredible golfer and he's massively informed. Right now, he could qualify.

00:18:13
Speaker 5: Right, he should.

00:18:14
Speaker 1: He have to know.

00:18:15
Speaker 3: I'm not suggesting like I understand that, but it could be mutually exclusive that he's also being kind of whiny about this and saying I'm not even gonna try.

00:18:23
Speaker 5: He can get in.

00:18:23
Speaker 3: I guess if he plays really well at the PGA too via whatever.

00:18:29
Speaker 2: Is it the top five, top ten? Yea, yeah, I wonder that about. Actually Phil's finish at Augusta National. I haven't looked into how many. I mean, he's exempt for a lot, obviously because he's won a bunch of majors. But yeah, it's uh, I got to rely. We did a list a little while ago. Will Knights came up with a list of all the exemptions and put him on a spreadsheet, and we should refer to that at some point. And the reason that Taylor Gooch is in this situation, by the way, and that Cameron Smith isn't, is that Taylor Gooch has not won of made and didn't get the exemptions otherwise, he was reliant on this tour championship exemption to be eligible for these majors automatically without qualifying for them, and so he's in the most precarious position. And by the way, it's relevant to mention that he apparently didn't know that he would be kicked off the PGA Tour when he went to play live London. His plan was to just cash in at this one event and then go back to the PGA Tour. I think that his decision making process would have been different if he had known that all of these consequences would come from playing and live London, being banned from the PGA Tour and then losing his you know, potentially losing his future exemptions. In this way, I'm sure that his calculus would have been different. And it goes aways to explaining why more players have not jumped since then.

00:19:53
Speaker 3: I mean that just gets the due diligence on his decision making and whether he had poor or good or whatever it may be. It seems like he was on the poorer side. But these guys have made a decision, there's consequences. Some of them are great for their bank accounts. And you're with the USGA, I think in part has done you know, you you know, these kind of wolves are out there and as soon as you give them something, they're gonna take it. And that's what's happened here with this exemption. And I don't know, and separately to a larger issue more you know, undercurrent here is like I think Taylor Gooch is playing some of the best golf in the world. I'm not totally sure. He's definitely probably should be in the US Open based on how he's playing, But he's winning Lives, Singapore, Live, Adelaide. What does that mean? Would we still talk about just like sort of the lack of context we have for what like great what performance on live? Good performance on live means for the larger context they played well at the Masters, But I don't know, like, does that mean you would have won wells Fargo?

00:20:51
Speaker 5: What do you have?

00:20:52
Speaker 3: You know, one heritage? It's just harder to say. And but he see, he seems his form seems deserving him exemption and taking it away just gives like a lot of a lot of room for bad faith pollowers.

00:21:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, run, And.

00:21:05
Speaker 2: I think that putting live players who are playing well on the live tour to the test at majors is for me as a fan appealing because we saw Brooks Koepka do extraordinarily well the Masters, unexpectedly, so he was in very very good competitive form, and a few other live players did very well also, Phil Ncholson obviously another big surprise. And as these comparisons happened between performance on live and performance in the Majors, then I think that'll build up some of this context for what it means to win on the live tour, But it's hard to say right now.

00:21:49
Speaker 5: One more thing.

00:21:50
Speaker 3: I know you want to we should move on, But for you, do you feel like Mike Wand's comments did anything to sort of help or I feel like I haven't heard a great explanation for the change and Mike Wand didn't really do that.

00:22:06
Speaker 2: We haven't heard the why for why this criteria was changed. We haven't heard a real explanation for why they felt they needed to change the criterion this way. And also I don't think we heard it from Fred Ridley either why they're changing the criterion this way for next year. But we have put in a question to USGA officials and we'll let people know if we hear back. But the initial statement that the USGA made was as follows. When this story broke in late April, basically, and the way it broke is very interesting too. But the USGA their initial response was this, the USGA annually reviews its exemption criteria for all championships, and we did for the twenty twenty three US Open. Importantly, we provided more clarity to a specific exemption category to reflect the players must be both qualified and eligible for the tour championship beginning with the twenty twenty three US Open. The change was not made retroactively, but rather as a part of our annual review process and included with several other changes made to the criteria for the upcoming twenty twenty three Championship. So pretty vague. That's not an explanation as to why they made the change, but it indicates that they view it as a clarification that they didn't see that this was a possibility the players would be qualified but not eligible, and so now they've introduced that extra language. That's what it suggests, but it begs further questions. Then, As you said, Mike Wan made additional comments apparently at the media days that Andy Cameron and I attended to a couple of reporters, to Rex Hoggart of Golf Channel and also I believe to Alex Masseli of SI Golf, where he, I mean one, as far as I could see, didn't really say anything new or additionally clarifying. But I found his comments a little bit confusing, to be honest, I wasn't quite sure what the point was he was reiterating some of the stuff from the initial USGA statement, but he said also said things to the effect of, I hope Taylor Goose qualifies, but we're not going to change our exemption criteria for one person. And I don't know there were some other things like that that I felt sort of muddied the waters and gave people like Phil Mickelson an opening to renew the complaint, the grievance to focus on something new in this conflict. And I believe it had the effect of continuing the story for another week. And so that was my impression of it. I don't know what did you make of it.

00:24:53
Speaker 3: I thought it was pretty imprecise, sloppy, probably too harsh a word, but you know, you have to be buttoned up when these guys are ready to holler about it. And he said, you know, we're not going to change our criteria at this point, and it's like you just did you you yeah, this, You've changed criteria.

00:25:14
Speaker 5: It's teeing it up again.

00:25:15
Speaker 2: I'm sure that's not what he meant. I kind of know what he means, like that, we're you know, we have our principles about this exemption category and we're not going to change it just for one person. Yeah, but it does the way that it's phrased teed up that response, Well, didn't you just change the criteria? And and so it continues.

00:25:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, he might, We're not going to change it, you know, five weeks out or whatever, you know, to let him back in. But yes, yeah, gave him more to holler about.

00:25:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, just the entire way that this story has come about and the way that it's become a two week story is a case study in itself, you know. I mean Taylor Gooch made his initial comments about this on a podcast called The seventy third Hole, which I'm sure they do a great job on the seventy third Hole. I had not heard of the podcast. It's associated with Gulf Oklahoma, which is a media outlet that I am familiar with, knew of starting with the Southern Hills PGA Championship. They do a nice job and they have a good magazine. The seventy third Hole podcast seems to have carved out a little bit of a niche in this new pro live media ecosystem, and they apparently have a connection with Taylor Gooch because Taylor Gooch is from Oklahoma. Went to Oklahoma State. Probably that's the connection there. But this is not like a super widely distributed podcast. And yet this story has made its way all the way to Mike Wan and to major media outlets and has become a big story. And the way that that happened I think is really instructive. You know. Essentially, there was a pretty popular pro live Twitter account that tweeted about the podcast. And I don't oh if this Twitter account listens to the Golf Oklahoma podcast. This Twitter account looks to me like it's from the UK, So maybe there was some communication and some coordination and in this sort of popular pro live account tweeting about it. But once that account put it out there that Taylor Gooch had said this, it got picked up by Bunkered online by which is you know, overseen by Michael McEwen, who is a real reporter who has broken quite a bit of news about the Live conflict, and and so he ran with this story. I think that he saw it from this popular live account if he if he found about it otherwise, I would be surprised because again I don't think that he's listening to the Golf Oklahoma podcast. But once he published something about it. It was out there, It was being reported on by Bob Harrig of SI Golf, It was in on golf dot com, and then the USGA addressed it and that created another round of these stories, and then it came up again at the USGA Media Day, and then when Rex Hoggard came out with his story with Mike Wand's quotes, Phil Nicholson started tweeting about it, and that kind of sent it into the stratosphere. And so I just think it's important to note that this started with Taylor Gooch appearing on a podcast from his home state. This is not foreplay, this is not no laying up that he appeared on. And this story has become what it is through this kind of ecosystem of live focused Twitter accounts and maybe some more legacy media adjacent media outlets who report on live and sometimes do so positively. It emerged through that pathway, and what it tells me is that Live no longer really needs to fight its fights itself. Greg Norman doesn't need to be out there saying crazy things. There's an apparatus in place that can kind of make things like this a story because you know what we knew that Taylor Gooch would be affected by this change in exemption criteria in February. People were writing about it back then, but it wasn't a big story. It just became a big story now because this is when Twitter and that this media ecosystem that I've been describing decided to make it a story.

00:29:29
Speaker 3: And we'll still talk about it at Los Angeles, like you know, it's going to come up. That's right too, and it'll it'll have a longer tail. So I mean, just everybody has an ecosystem. The tour certainly gets messaging out there. Oh yeah, many many. It has its own right partners and all that. So not to both sides it at all, but but yes, there are ways to get it. Maybe it lives mature and if it has its own now so yeah.

00:29:51
Speaker 2: All right, We're going to take a quick break and then I'll be back with Shane Ryan of Golf Digest to talk about pace of play enforcement on the PGA Tour. This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast is brought to you by Fat Cork. Fat Cork works exclusively with small, family run grower champagne houses to bring you a taste of the highest quality couvets from France. These are the kinds of champagne families that have passed their crafts and traditions down from generation to generation. All of the champagnes are picked up directly from caves in France and shipped in temperature controlled packaging to Fat Cork's cave in Seattle. Fat Cork is owned and operated by a small, close knit team that includes the founders, Brian and Abbey Melitas. We actually got to meet Brian and Abbey at our recent event at Seoul Park. They were pouring champagne for everybody after the competition and it was just great fun and the champagne was absolutely delicious. The heart of Fatcork's business is the Champagne Club, where customers have the finest champagne shipped directly to their doors. You can also purchase bottles, tasting kits, and gift sets from the online retail shop at fatcork dot com. Now something that Fatcork is doing right now that you should be aware of is offering a bunch of Mother's Day gift sets. These range from one bottle of champagne along with some extra goodies two sets with three bottles of Champagne with the same goodies, which include a hand drawn and written Mother's Day card, which I think is a really nice touch. And by the way, if you're doing this at the very last minute, with Mother's Day on the horizon, Fatcork is happy to provide you with a print out that declares that the gift set is on its way. They can give you a PDF that can be put into email form and so you will at least signal your intention to follow up with a Mother's Day gift. So if you go to dot com slash Mother's Day, you can find all of their Mother's Day offerings, and if you use the code golf that's just golf, you can get free shipping with your order, and shipping when it comes to champagne is pretty expensive, so free shipping with this code golf is a really good deal. Mother's Day is definitely not a fake ass holiday. That is in the ad copy, by the way, so they're aware of Brendan Porat's war on so called fake holidays, and they've included that note for us to say Mother's Day is an important day for the people in your life, so get them some Fat Cork. I think it makes a really nice gift, and you're also supporting a great company in Fat Cork. Check it out. So, Shane, you were on site at the Wells Fargo Championship this past week, and I'm sure you didn't expect this, but you ended up writing a deep dive on the PGA Tour's pace of play enforcement procedures. So how did how did this article come about? Yeah, I have Joel Beial to think you. I don't know how well you know Joel, but he's a young punk. He is a real spitfire.

00:33:19
Speaker 1: He no not afraid to speak truth to power, kind of a real Andre Agassy rebel type, his long hair and his baggy shorts. And he he sent a tweet out basically I forget what it said exactly, but basically it's like I turned on an NBA game and it was over and by the time I turned back to the golf, they weren't even at the turn or something. Somehow that led to the PGA Tour inviting me to go to go ride with Gary Young, who's like the you know, the head rules official, the pace of play guy at the tour, and basically the idea is, okay, you know, why don't we show you how it works, and you can write an article and see what you think and you know, you know, no, write whatever you want, but get there, up close and personal, ride with us for the morning. I was with him for like three hours, I think. And the reason it was me was just because I happened to be the one covering the tournament. You know, it would have been. They didn't ban Joel. They weren't like it can be anyone but Joel bial the young well, or.

00:34:15
Speaker 2: Did they want Joel bial just to specifically demonstrate to him, actually, we are not the bad guys here, and yeah you were.

00:34:21
Speaker 1: I think they would have loved Joel. It was just happened to be me settling in. I was just there. It was funny. On the cart he also mentioned Dan Rappaport. He was like, I'd like Dan to get out here because Dan's always so yeah. But anyway, I was the lucky one and it was actually it was fun. It was and Gary Young's a really nice guy, so yeah, it was good.

00:34:39
Speaker 2: So this was basically like a ride along you were, except instead of riding along in a police car, you were you were with Gary Young, the what what is his title? The vice president Senior vice president of Rules and Competitions. But basically, he's the pace of plays are on the PGA Tour. Yeah, yeah, he is. Yeah, it was just like that.

00:34:57
Speaker 1: I mean I watched him run out and ta like slow golfers handcuff them. He kept pulling everyone sir in a really aggressive tone, just like a police officer. Yeah, it was a ride along. Yeah it was.

00:35:10
Speaker 2: It was exactly like that. So let's get into some of the things that you learned. You wrote an article basically outlining sort of ten points about pace of play that maybe people don't often acknowledge or that are important to know when it comes to understanding how the PGA Tour enforces pace of play standards. So there are ten points there, But why don't we start with talking about this concept of time par that seems to be very important. So what is time par? How do they come up with the numbers for time par? What's its importance to the overall you know, slow play debate time par?

00:35:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's it's such a funny name because it's on one hand, it's perfect, like it just describes exactly what it is. On the other hand, it sounds like a sci fi concept in some way to me, like we've invented time par how golf is played in the future. So no, all time par is. It's very simple. It's basically them deciding this is how long a hole should take. And they do it for threesomes and they do it for twosomes. And so for example, I think the yeah, the rough guide, I'm looking at it here. For a par three, they've determined it should be usually between twelve and fourteen minutes. Par four is between fourteen and sixteen, par five is between seventeen and nineteen. And the variance comes from how difficult the hole is. Basically, so they go scout everything beforehand. You know, some venues like the like Kuel Hollow, BJ tours there all the time, so they have data and they say, you know, okay, this is a hard par three, so it should be fourteen minutes. This is an easy par four, it should also be fourteen minutes. And they kind of take that and they go hole by hole and that determines how long for them the entire round should take. And so they when they talk about okay, here's the first group off on Thursday on one. Here's the first group off on ten they are tracking these guys constantly throughout the day, especially first groups, because they're the most important of the pace centers, and they're saying like how slow or how fast are they compared to time par? So if we want them to finish in this case for threesomes, we want them to finish in four hours and forty five minutes, here's where they have to be at the end of each hole. And if they're not there, you know, then you take the next steps warnings and all that kind of stuff.

00:37:18
Speaker 2: And so what does time par add up to in terms of the overall length of the round and how much does it vary from like course to course, Because it sounds like this is a flexible standard.

00:37:30
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's sort of flexible. So it's it looks like four hours and forty five minutes for threesomes at the Wells Fargo, which is a harder course on tour, right, and four hours even for twosomes, which I think I think they nailed that one on the weekend. Much easier for them on weekends to stick to pace of play. I think when I was there watching the what's interesting about it is like, okay, so you have your pacesetters going off one in ten, but once they get to like once they make the turn, they're potentially running into the other groups teeing off, and so that's when things become really slow, because what happens is you have in a field of one hundred and fifty six, you end up with twenty six groups threesomes on the course at the same time there's only eighteen holes, and so that gets tougher. So when I left Gary after nine holes, the groups we were following, I think were on the front nine they were head by like three minutes. On the back nine they were behind, but only by one minute. But they ended up finishing twelve minutes slow, I think. So I think their time was like four hours fifty seven minutes, And so shows you how in the back nine you can do everything you want their pace. The play rules are very effective when they don't before the course gets saturated, but once it does, it gets harder. So yeah, for them, it was almost five hour round that it took. What was he like, get out of here, it's about to get ugly. I don't want you to see what's about to happen. It may be I think it was like probably a combination of like we want to do it in the morning, because yeah, probably does get busier for them. I don't think they were just like like you know, doing North Korean propaganda where they only show you certain sites and then tell you to go write your story. They don't show you the work camps. No. I No, he was very open with me about you know, it does get slower on the back nine because when you're when the course is full, and yeah, and the other thing he said basically is that you know, you're always juggling this thing between you know, do you want to have one hundred and fifty six man fields, which is about as much as you can do, but you know that gives more opportunity obviously, so it's good. But on the other hand, you're absolutely filling the course up and it becomes really really difficult to stay on pace, even with the constant monitoring that they do. So that's or do you do one forty four and it makes it a little bit easier for them, but twelve people get left out, you know what I mean. So it's kind of there's and it's the same thing with like course difficulty, right the everybody says the best way to save time would be to make the course super easy, have the pins and easy locations, have the greens be slower. But it's like then you sacrifice a lot, right, I mean, even with a tough course like Wyndam, Clark almost shot twenty under, right, if you make it really easy, you have gaudy scores and you're probably not doing the best you can to identify the real champion or whatever.

00:40:12
Speaker 2: It's sort of like traffic in a way where the causes of a really slow day are sort of mysterious, but just these little incidents kind of add up and add up until you get to a point where maybe the field doesn't finish around on a particular day. I guess, like yeah, so you know, are have they done? Have they looked into like the the precise causes of a really slow day? Are they interested in that kind of research question? Almost like how does a very slow day happen? Just like you know, how does traffic happen? Yeah, one hundred percent.

00:40:46
Speaker 1: And like you said, it's like there's some obvious causes, like people playing like slow players, right, can make a slow Yeah, that's yeah, obviously, But there's those weird things where it's like someone playing too fast can mess things up in a weird way, just like in a traffic situation where someone who like, I think I've heard that in a traffic jam, if everybody would go forty miles per hour, that would be the optimum and you would keep it going. But it doesn't work like that. So people going really slow and people going really fast hold it up. But yeah, what they do is they have very precise times that they keep for each player about how long it takes them to hit a shot. And the way that works is that they have their you know, army of volunteers push a button when it like when they actually take a shot, and so that goes into shot lengths. So at the end of each round they can see literally every single shot how long it was after the previous shot in their group. So then they have all this data and they take it on like a ten tournament rolling thing. So they're you're talking about like three thousand shots, right, So they toss out the ten percent slowest times because they say that might be a volunteer who forgot to push a button or something like that. They throw out those, and then anytime someone goes first in a group, that's different, right, because let's say you're the first to hit your approach, you're going to be longer because you have to walk from the tee after the last player shoots, right, So they throw out those They throw out if you're like, if you have a penalty, they throw that out because that's a different situation. Still leaves them with a ton of data from that. They get a list of the slowest players in order which they don't publicize, which they thought of publicize, and maybe we'll talk about that, but they have this list of slow players. They meet with them, they say, we need to turn you into, you know, not a fast player, but we need to make you into an average player. And it just kind of like they they there's a lot that they try to do and they keep very thorough data and what we'll probably get into. And I think what a lot of people responding to the article were kind of saying, is we at some point, don't you have to punish them more? Don't you have to don't you have to change time par don't you have to make time par less? And things like that, and and these are all like really good questions. My goal in the piece was to learn the methodology because I knew nothing about it going in, and in fact, I don't really care about slow play. That that kind of made me like, I don't know if it made me the ideal person to write the article or the worst person or what. But like, to me, it's like, you know, I like watching from home. I'm like, I really don't care, but a lot of people do, and I know it's like a big thing. And so yeah, I'm actually having a follow up conversation with him tomorrow to ask some of those questions that maybe if I knew a little more I would have asked then. But I think my goal was, like I want to learn specifically the methodology what you do, and then we'll go from there. Right, let's get the bedrock of the knowledge first.

00:43:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, and your piece did a good job of that. This is such a complex question that there are a million follow up questions that you could have. But I want to come back to the idea of not caring about slow play because I actually kind of understand that position when it comes to being a television viewer of a PGA Tour tournament. But first, let's, you know, let's get into this question of the penalties and the warnings that they give right and how severe those are and how severe they could be. What is the system that they currently have in place for warning and penalizing players. You mentioned that they just have conversations with certain slow players to try to get them to be faster, but they also find them right, Yeah, they do.

00:44:01
Speaker 1: So you know, what they found is that the average time for an individual shot is about thirty eight seconds from the previous shot. And again this is under the circumstance that you're not taking the first shot in a group. Right, so your guy you're in the fairway, the guy you know who's a little behind you hits this approach, the average time for you to hit your shot is thirty eight seconds right now, So that they kind of I don't know if they use that standard, but the standard they have is that you have fifty seconds for a first shot and forty seconds or less for subsequent shots if you have what's called a bad time. So first of all, if your group is slow, you can get a warning, right and then if your group stays slow, you can get put on the clock. If you have a bad time, meaning you know, in time over that forty to fifty second standard while your group is on the clock. Yeah, then you get I think you have one freebie for the entire year, and then after that you get fined first fifty thousand dollars and then like twenty thousand for each subsequent one. There's also something where somebody can say, look, this guy is taking forever on the green group doesn't have to be on the clock. If they time you, and I think in that case it's over a minute, then you it's the same deal. You get fined fifty thousand the first time, twenty thousand after and yeah, these kept going. And then there's other things where it's like if a group you're in is put on the clock, even if you don't get a bad time after that, if that happens twelve times in a year, you get fined fifty thousand dollars because then they say this keeps happening to your group, And yeah, you pick it up eventually to make sure you don't get fined, but you keep doing it, and you keep doing it, and you keep doing it, so you're not really improving, right, and yeah, so there's there's a series of things like that, and then we talk about stroke penalties, which is incredibly rare. They are very very loath to do that, and that's a lot of the things people on Twitter are like, they need to you know, you need to give them a stroke penalty. They'll improve right away. The reason, part of the reason they don't like to do it is because it's not an equitable penalty. So if you're going to miss the cut by a million, it doesn't matter if you get a stroke penalty, right like, it's it's totally irrelevant. If you're in the you know, the top three, and you get a stroke penalty and you finish fourth, it could be of thousands of dollars that penalty costs you. So they don't they don't like that philosophically, which I do get. Yeah, but the way it works with a slow with a penalty is that so I think the way Gary Young put it is you'd have to be brain dead to get that. So you have to be you have to be warned in your group, then you have to be put on the clock. Then you have to get two bad times in the same tournament before you would get a stroke penalty.

00:46:27
Speaker 2: Well, okay, then then let's talk about some realistic ways that play could be sped up. So they don't like stroke penalties. They don't like the more draconian punishments. I don't know if increasing the fines would have any effect because these guys are making so much money now that that maybe that wouldn't really make a dent in the in the issue. So what are some kind of fool proof ways that play could be sped up, whether they're appealing to us or not.

00:46:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'll give you the two practical ones. The quickest route to do it would be fewer players in the field and easier courses, which fewer players will happen at the elevated events next year, so they are kind of making I don't think they're doing it because of the slow play, but that will have the effect of doing it. Easier courses probably not going to happen, and I don't think people would want it to happen from the psychological angle. The one thing I asked him, and I thought he was going to give me a straight no, but I you know, I said to him, like, have you ever considered publishing the slow playlist? Publishing the list of slow players so everybody knows, And he's like, no, it's not a definite no. It's like we've thought about it before a lot I think ultimately where they come down though, it was it's you know, a member run organization. As he kept telling me, it would have to be the players who decided to do it. So in other words, you would have to be a vote of the players. The faster ones would have to say, we're sick of this. We need to do anything we can to to sort of legislate these slow players, and so we're gonna you know, a lot and a lot of the people do come up to him and say, like, there's nothing like a little peer pressure or a little shame or whatever. So yeah, they could do that there, Yeah, and then yeah, I mean there are people who think, and I don't know that they're wrong that. You know, if we did, if we had a lower standard for stroke penalties for slow play, it would speed things up, you know immediately. I suppose you could artificially lower time par, which is what a lot of people said, like, sure there's time par, but time par is arbitrary. My counter argument to that, as I understood it, is like they do some pretty like you know, pinpoint sort of calculations of how long these holes should take. Now you could say, yeah, okay, Instead of forty seconds, you have thirty seconds or something like that. You do have to balance that with this idea that you know, these people are playing for a lot of money, you know, like this is like their job. They have to concentrate, so there is always that balance. And then I don't think you can ignore I didn't talk with him about this, but I don't think you can ignore that the PGA Tour is currently in a dispute with Live Golf and trying desperately not to hemorrhage players to them, and this may not be the time to be like, Okay, our pace of play laws are about to get really draconian, right, Like Patrick can't Ley might the next day go I'm with Live Golf now, so you know what I mean. Like, I think that's like probably a legit concern too, is like this isn't the time and history when we want to all of a sudden get heavy handed with our guys.

00:49:12
Speaker 2: Can you imagine Live Golf coming out and saying, you know, come here where slow play is okay? You know they could come up with a slogan, yeah, yeah, they could rebrand themselves as the as the place where you can play as slow as you want, you can wear shorts and you can just take as long as you want overshots. Yeah, I mean that is the kind of undercurrent in all of these discussions about improving the product against certain players' wishes. Now, there are definitely players who would want play to speed up. As you mentioned, there are some players out there who might want that a slow play list to be published and want to you know, introducing some introduce some public shaming into the procedure. But then there are also plenty of play who would be on that list and obviously wouldn't want their names out there in that way. So it's very complicated and the idea of reducing field sizes that also to me as a fan, is a sort of an appealing way to go about addressing this problem. But again you run into the member run organization problem there, because the reason that field sizes are big is that the PGA Tour is incentivized to provide as many playing opportunities as they can, and that's what players really want, as many playing opportunities as they can. So field size is of one hundred and fifty six. No, that's not a good number for a tournament, right, Yeah, right, you're gonna have slow play, you're gonna have traffic jams in that case if you put that many players on a course on Thursday and Friday. But if you want to reduce field sizes, then you're gonna have some problems, right.

00:50:50
Speaker 1: No, it's true. And it's like is it the magic of it that you can have, Like there is magic in it, right that a Wyndam Clark can win and there's these cool, like weird results and then but yeah, then there's other times where like every single week I want to see Ram and Xander competing or whatever, like yeah, so you know your mileage may vary there, but yeah, so you you you gain something and you lose something with all of these And I think that was sort of like the broader realization is that there is no speeding up without sacrifice and sacrifice, real sacrifice, not superficial like oh, we might hurt somebody's feelings type stuff, but real like you're gonna, you know, lose quality of golf or you know, the golf courses will be less interesting in their setup, or you lose players from the field or whatever. So yeah, it's like many things not an easy solution. There's not there's not a glib explanation here, despite what you may here on Twitter from from many people.

00:51:41
Speaker 2: That's that's really the source of a lot of this discussion is what people say on Twitter and why it's too too simplistic. But there are some relatively simple potential solutions, like reducing field sizes, like maybe a little bit of peer pressure, like reducing time par but all those things come with complications, whether it's because of the nature of the way the PGA Tour is run or because, as you're mentioning, time par is is a tricky concept, and I would just like to know kind of what the what the rudiments of the time par calculations are, like how what assumptions they're making about how long a shot should take, and how they get to four to forty five for a threesome. I mean, four forty five is okay, but you know, looking at what they've done in baseball recently, pitchers have just radically altered the way that they do their pre pitch routines, and so I wonder if something like that is is possible with PGA Tour players, where they just kind of change the way they approach preparing for a golf shot, especially after the first person in their group has played.

00:52:51
Speaker 1: And maybe this will take us into the viewer experience. But my yeah, I'm sure Tennis you saw the same thing. Like rath Nadal was someone who if you gave him five minutes to his serve, would take every bit of it. Now they're like, you have twenty five seconds, and he does it in twenty five seconds. It's still the same with Djokovic. But the baseball comparison is different for me because if I'm watching a baseball game, I am forced to sit there and watch the pitcher screw around, right, the only thing going on. It's the only thing happening, right.

00:53:19
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:53:19
Speaker 1: In golf, I don't have to. I mean, like, you know, unless there's a very bad producer that week. I don't have to watch Patrick Cantley for two minutes. And granted sometimes you do. Sometimes they're like, Okay, we're going to Patrick Cantley's part and he takes forever or whatever, but it's it's not that common. It's a game where the shot that you're going around, you're not sitting with these guys for five hours. That's sort of what I don't understand about the complaints. Now, if they were taking six hours and like, and the television experience was horrible, Yes, but really the time played hasn't changed, right, I mean then they gave me a little bit of data on that it's not so thorough. I don't know what it was in the eighties or nineties or something, but I can't imagine it's that different. They consistently finished weekend rounds in four hours, right, I mean, like the leader's tee off around two were just before, and they're usually almost always done by six or a few minutes before. I don't from my perspective watching golf other than weird isolated situations like this year's Masters, where sometimes it was like good God, like move on with it, but that was only on the weekend and it was only because of some strange things happening at the course and weather. Other than that, I'm like, when I watch it, I don't have a problem, Like, I really like watching golf, and I thought the broadcast issue have been as good as ever, and if I didn't see it on Twitter, slow play complaint would have never occurred to me.

00:54:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's an interesting part of it to me too, because what we might have is more of a telecast problem than a slow play problem knowing when to cut to a player, but that can be hard with a guy like Patrick Cantley. You don't know when you might miss his shot right because he might just decide to play a little bit faster. But if you cut to him toward the beginning of his preshot routine, you're gonna be sitting there for a while. But I think camp gets a lot of heat partly because he's a very good player and he's often featured on telecasts on the weekend, and also because he spends a lot of his time over the ball, whereas other guys might be spending time before setting up to the ball. So those are two I don't I'm not here to defend Patrick Cantley, but I think that those are two factors and why he has become a focal point in this debate. One thing I would say to that, though, is that if players could reliably execute their shots in a certain timeframe, then the telecast would have the ability to cut to them at the beginning of their preshot routine and know that they're going to hit their shot within an acceptable time. And something that I'd love to see from telecasts is more accounting for the entire shot process, because when they're just cutting to guys hitting golf shots, I sort of lose interest because it's just like golf shot, golf shot, golf shot decontextualized. You don't get a story about the shot. And part of the reason that we don't get a story about the shot is that often telecasts are afraid to go to players toward the beginning of their shot routine because they think, you know, this might take a minute and a half and it might just kill the pace of our broadcast.

00:56:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:56:16
Speaker 2: You know, if we could rely on players hitting their shot going through that routine fairly quickly, then we might get a little bit more storytelling around the shot itself, which I think is the most compelling part of a golf broadcast. But that's just speculative. That would require the broadcast to actually embrace that kind of storytelling.

00:56:36
Speaker 1: No, you're you're totally right, Like Speth and Greller talking for thirty seconds before he hits is the best, right, Yeah, Patrick Cantley talking for twenty seconds of his caddy is great, and then when he stands for thirty seconds over the ball, it stops being good. Right, It's like that's the part of the routine. You don't want to see when somebody can't pull the trigger or they choose not to pull the trigger for a long time. So you're right, it's and that would that would what you're sort of I think subtly advocating would be almost drilling down deeper into it and saying, once you address your ball, now you have a certain amount of time to hit it, because you're right, it would free the broadcast up to show the good stuff, like we're gonna go to Cantley here. He's got a little bit of a tough thing going here on the you know, on the right side of the fairway or whatever. You can hear him discuss it with the caddy, which I think everybody agrees with you, I certainly do, is the best. Like it's so cool to hear that, just like we like the walk and talks, right, we'd like to hear the tactics and the strategy. But then it would save them from like, oh, now we're stuck here for a minute, like the broadcast right now, we're stuck with this guy a minute because we put in the time and invested in his conversation now we have to wait from to hit the ball, and he takes forever to hit the ball. And that's when viewers become irritated, when you're like, crap, we could have shown four shots in this time. So yeah, it is I don't hate that at all. It would significantly make the job harder for Gary Young. It's like, now you have the time. Now you also have to time them over the ball. But no, you're You're not wrong. I mean, and just as with a serve or with a pitcher, if you tell them they have to do it, there gonna do it right. They're gonna they're gonna find a way. They're not gonna quit golf like they will. They will do it.

00:58:06
Speaker 2: They like their job. Yeah, and I hope Gary Young likes his job. I started to feel more sympathy for him in the course of your piece, and you're talking about him as I'm sure you do as well. But you know, in talking to Gary Young, did you get a sense that the PGA Tour believes that it has a pace of play problem? And did you get a sense of why it might think that pace of play is important? Why is it even going to these lengths? You know? So you know, do they think they have a problem, and what do they believe the nature of that of that problem is?

00:58:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think what Gary Young said to me at one point was we don't have a pace of pay problem. We have a you know, we're a member run organization, or basically trying to make the problem that there's more people on the course. But I think, and I don't want to put words in his mouth or thoughts in his head, but I think, like tacitly, what he's saying is actually an acknowledgment that yeah, there there is like a problem right there. It's always it's always an issue, and they take it so seriously and they do everything they can within the confines that they are given right to make this, make it go fast, and make it be in a compelling and they know it's an entertainment product, right, So the point at which the point at which it hurts the entertainment value of golf is the point at which they're gonna like really change things.

00:59:14
Speaker 5: And so.

00:59:16
Speaker 1: The problem it's so interesting to say, do they think there's a problem well with TV ratings going up, they might, you know, deep down in the chambers of the PGA tour they might go, there's no problem, no matter, no matter what the lunatics on Twitter say, we don't care. Right, even though even though lunatics on Twitter might have some really good points and be right. However, what I can say, whatever they believe about that, they're doing everything they can, again within those confines, right to speed it up. So they're not lightly sitting back and going, you know, thumbing their nose and saying, we don't have a problem, We're just gonna do it. They're on there like there's nine people, they're in constant radio contact. They time how long their rulings take, right, so if someone calls for a ruling, they're timing that, and if it takes them longer than like a minute to see this situation and to be done with it, that's like a failure in their eyes.

00:59:59
Speaker 5: Right.

00:59:59
Speaker 1: So they're they're trying to go in and out all these little things that delay the round. They're trying so hard to mitigate, to eliminate and all this stuff. So what I would say is whatever they believe about whether there's a problem or what the source of it is, they take it seriously and they're not like, you know, they're not resting on their laurels. It's what you may argue with is how they do it and their methods and what they're willing and not willing to do. But the effort is there. I can tell you that the effort is there.

01:00:24
Speaker 2: All right. Well, I suppose this is sort of reassuring, but I would love to see maybe some more radical thinking out of the PGA two or on this and and I don't know if wishing for radicalism from the PGA tour is going to be a fruitful desire in the end, but I would I would like to see them address such things as what is time par really? And in fact, you know, just saying time par is fun. So more we can the more we can say it, the more we can say it, the more fun I'm going to have. All Right, Yeah, all right, why don't we wrap up there, Shane. I want to give a quick plug for your book, The Cup They Could Lose, which is about the twenty twenty one writer Cup and about the writer Cup in general. We talked to you about this book before you wrote it, and we haven't had you on the podcast since it's come out, but I just wanted to alert people to that book. I think It's excellent and also is going to be I think relevant again as we lead up to the twenty twenty three Writer Cup, and that that's going to be an interesting event in itself given all the live stuff going on. Do you have any projects planned right now or are you working on anything else coming up here?

01:01:35
Speaker 1: Nothing like in book form or anything like that. Yeah. Now I'm doing like podcasts for Golf Died just now, which has been so much fun. So I'm your competitor now.

01:01:45
Speaker 2: No Local Knowledge is the podcast You've been doing some narrative podcasts for Local I did some narrative podcasts for the Friday and I can tell people how difficult they are to pull off. So very glad that you've taken up that, taken up that albatross for me.

01:02:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it's been a lot of fun. And yeah, other than that, just working for Digest and just doing my normal stuff here. So yeah, no big book products, but yeah, appreciate the plug and thank you, thank you for having me.

01:02:14
Speaker 2: All right, coming up after this break, Brendan and I are going to come back and talk about the storylines that we're tracking this week. All right, I want to take a moment here to talk a little bit about Club TFE. This is the Frida Eggs membership and you can find out more about it at the Frida egg dot com slash membership. So a couple of the things that we have going on in Club TFE this week. The blog is humming and we've got some new writing going up on the site as we speak. So on Monday we published some notes from Andy Johnson about the US Open and US Women's Open media Days. He said a lot of interesting things about our experiences at La North and Pebble Beach and also made some comments about his experience caddying for me and Cameron heard us at Pebble Beach. I think it was far more of a challenge to caddy for me. He was carrying two bags, but one of the bags weighed a little bit heavier on his shoulders metaphorically, and so he had some fun things to say about that as well. Coming up this week, we have a course profile from Andy on Weikopa Golf Course or Golf Club, which is in Arizona. That's an area that we haven't covered much, but Andy and Cameron managed to get out there and photograph Wecopa recently and we're coming up with a great extensive course profile on that golf course. So that is exclusive to Club TFE. There are all sorts of other offerings coming through Club tf We have virtual hangouts, we have deals in the pro shop, we have early entry into events and stuff like that as well. So it's not just content, but content is a big part of it. So again, go to the Frida egg dot com slash membership and consider joining Club TFE. All right, Brendan, we are back for storylines. So what is the storyline that you're tracking this week?

01:04:22
Speaker 3: I think you know talk plenty about Taylor Goose and Live, but I do think this is one of the weeks where Live in the PGA Tour have approximate products. And that's even in region in time zone. You're Tulsa and you have the Dallas area, which are obviously quite close. We're not in Adelaide or Singapore going up against whatever Heritage or Zurich or things like that on the other side of the world. Not kind of punting away at sort of a weaker event. I just think I'm curious to see, and this is all subjective, what looks like the larger event.

01:05:02
Speaker 5: I think TPC Craig Ranch is creating.

01:05:05
Speaker 3: Their own party hole, right this old stadium hole that you've seen at Scottsdale and you saw it live Adelaide, And.

01:05:10
Speaker 2: Are they a party hole?

01:05:12
Speaker 5: By no, that's what Adelaide called it. And it's just they.

01:05:16
Speaker 2: Called it a watering hole at Adelaide, I think, which is a little more a little more palatable to me than party hole, which which.

01:05:24
Speaker 3: People were definitely calling it that I didn't pull that out of the ether. Live was absolutely using that terminology and every time it sort of made me might be cringe. But yes, the stadium hole to uh at seventeen at TPC Craig Ranch, I assume it will be you know, Bracus. The Metroplex is a big area. The event is underwhelming, wanting, but you'll have Scottie Scheffler, I think Jordan Speets, you know plays, You'll have some some notable players. And so I'm curious just to see live Tulsa's playing from Bunkie Perkins reports like the fourth best option in Tulsa. The course that would take them. I've heard, you know, they're not welcome to practice or play at Southern Hills, so it's not exactly a high profile venue in the Tulsa area.

01:06:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, but they'll.

01:06:11
Speaker 3: Probably you know, they're picking off a marketing efficiency. They'll be some fan base there, they'll be interested to see it. Taylor Gooch, Oklahoma State Oklahoma players and others, and so I'm just curious to see, like if these products are competitive at all, an environment and interest in in from both on the ground and on television. So I think that's kind of a notable thing that I don't think we've really had to this point with Live's existence.

01:06:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a direct competition. It's been kind of apples and oranges so far. There have been some weeks when Live seemed to have the stronger event, like an Adelaide, which was up against I believe the Zurich and so you know, that seemed to be a win win for them. But those tournaments were so far apart geographically and just everything about them. They weren't even the same format. Neither of them was a traditional seventy two whole stroke play. And so this is more of an apples to apples comparison, and we'll see how it turns out. I don't think that TPC Craig ranch is really what the PGA Tour wants going up against any live venue. This is one of the weakest courses as far as I'm concerned on the PGA Tour, and so yeah, it's a strategically speaking, this was a good week for Live to show up in Oklahoma and we'll see how it goes. So yeah, that's a good storyline the one that I am looking at. And this is one of those storylines that is not just this week. This is months long, this is years long. But I'm keeping an eye on the run up to the Ryder Cup. The extra flavor this year is going to be the layering in of the live conflict and who gets to participate in the Ryder Cup, because I think that that's going to be the biggest battleground of all for live player grievances. I think that that's what Lee Westwood is so mad about, right the reason why he has been tweeting and tweeting and tweeting. I don't think he cares about the US Open or you know, the PGA Championship being eligible for those. I think he cares deeply about his involvement in the Ryder Cup, as he should. Right this is you know, he has been a big part of Team Europe for years and years, and it looks like he's not going to be able to be involved this year or potentially going forward. And so I think that that discussion, that debate, that argument, that fight is going to be a huge factor in all of our lives as media, as fans in the next few months and in the run up to the Ryder Cup event in Italy. And the reason I'm thinking about it this week is that just last week, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, and Lee Westwood finally resigned their DP World Tour memberships, and Lee Westwood had some kind of bitter things to say about it too, I believe James Corrigan of The Telegraph, And so it's beginning right that the split is sort of official and there's going to be some mudslinging between the sides. Certainly those guys want to be involved in the Ryder Cup. For Poulter, for Garcia, even for Westwood, who is maybe most famous in the Ryder Cup for missing like five inch putts. Poulter and Garcia are legendary for having played well in Ryder Cups. All of those players a big part of their identities, a big part of their legacies is the Ryder Cup and they're going to fight for their place in it.

01:09:39
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, they're also the Ryder Cups. Part of its identity and legacy, right involves those guys, and so yeah, it's the start of I mean, yeah.

01:09:49
Speaker 2: Are you exhausted by it? You seem exhausted by it.

01:09:51
Speaker 3: No, it's always pretty exertive for them to be involved in non playing capacities, right to be captain that that's a lucrative position when you become a captain.

01:09:59
Speaker 5: I don't know.

01:09:59
Speaker 3: Conversely, I'm interested, honestly on the on the American side to see you know, he's got six captains picks. Zac Johnson. Can't of lived player play so well that he gets a captain's.

01:10:08
Speaker 5: Pick, Yeah?

01:10:09
Speaker 2: Or is it DJ, who is you know, obviously perennially one of the best players in the world and also probably a pretty good personality fit for the US Ryder Cup team. I mean, I think there's a lot of players who would really like to see DJ on their.

01:10:26
Speaker 3: Team, right, And I think on the European side, it's mostly settled. It's it's guys who were no longer going to be on the team, but they could have been involved in a capacity. We're just moving on and the Ryder Cup's not you know, they're a big part of it, but they're not the They're not bigger than the Ryder Cups. But as we started this podcast, it's certainly something for people to shout and tweet about that. You know, I don't even know who this is. Assistant captain is for Europe. I've never heard of them. It wouldn't have been great if lee west of his here. Like it's just another thing in the exhausting sort of shouting around this. I don't know, divide civil wars probably too strong a term, but divide in golf, and so that will happen again throughout the Ryder Cup process.

01:11:07
Speaker 2: So golf fans, that is something to look forward to for you all. All right, Brendan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Talk to you again soon.

01:11:16
Speaker 4: Thanks er.

01:11:27
Speaker 2: This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was produced and edited by Matt Rusius. Thank you, Matt. One big thing that you can do for us right now is to rate and review the Frida Egg Podcast wherever you happen to be listening to us. These ratings and reviews help us build our audience and connect with new people, and I think it's fairly easy to do, at least in iTunes. That is, so go there, give us a rating and review. We would really appreciate it. We'll talk to you again soon. No