With Rahm Gone to LIV, What's Next for the PGA Tour?

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 Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday, Frida Friday Bride.

00:00:11
Speaker 3: Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today I am joined by Shane Bacon and Joseph Lamanna. We are here to break down kind of the latest news in golf. So it was a crazy, crazy week last week, and obviously there was a ton of reaction during everything going on. So the big news of the week, I don't know what was bigger news honestly, John Rahm, you know, went took a contract offer and joined the Live Tour, and the USGA and RNA announced a golf ball rollback plan. So with that, I wanted a little bit of time to kind of marinate on on those two news topics and then you know, break down everything with Shane and Joseph. So in the time that we had recorded this, we recorded this on Sunday morning, the PGA Tour Policy Board made a big move, and they selected an outside investment group UH to further negotiate UH with their you know, kind of new structure, their potential new company as well as with PIFF. So they advanced discussions with SSG Strategic Sports Group. In that group is the Fenway Sports Group as well as other individuals such as Arthur Brent Blank con Private Ventures. There are a number you know, Mark Lazar, John Henry, a number of big time investors in that group. So that group will be looking along with the PIFF to negotiate a kind of a new company. That framework agreement that was announced in June, so that was big news for the PGA Tour. So it seems like the John Rahm signing really kind of motivated the PGA Tour to get on the horn and get this thing done from from all in tons of purposes.

00:02:40
Speaker 4: It seems like that.

00:02:41
Speaker 3: That rom move that Live made that the PIFF made was potentially a leverage play to get this deal moving again, as it seems like things had really grinded to a hall So that is is big news. Before we get to the conversation, I'd like to take a quick minute to talk about our sponsor of the show, Fat Cork. They provide awesome an awesome champagne service. So you know, I think a lot of people that listen to this pod like unique golf courses, and what we like about them is that they stand out from the rest. And I think with Fat Cork, one of the things that really drew me to them when we started to talk about potential partnership was their relationship with the champagne growers. So you know, all champagne has grown in Champagne, France, right, you know, they're all it's grown in the small little region and everybody that sells champagne buys from these growers. The growers keep about twenty percent of their crop. Their most unique aspects of their crop they keep for their own stock. These bottles that you're getting from Fat Cork is that stock. So they have really unique flavors and in different you know, intricacies they are like you're you know, getting wine straight from the vineyard where you get that, like you know, those a little bit different notes. It's not mass produced. This wine or this champagne has a lot of unique flavors in different like every bottle is different.

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00:06:23
Speaker 2: It's it's been chaotic. I think this was an all time week for golf Twitter and maybe there's been some entertainment, but yeah, I don't know. There's a lot in disarray, doesn't feel organized, feels like there's a complete leadership vacuum, and I'm excited to see what you guys thought. I have some thoughts, interested to hear what you say. It was bringing out all the takes this week.

00:06:44
Speaker 1: Andy. If you're going to quote Lebron in the decision, I would at least like someone to donate some money to the Boys and Girls Club of like Akron or whatever Lebron did, at least wear the awkward button up shirt. But yeah, it's just we keep talking about non golf, Andy, and it's dominated the headlines. I was actually I wanted to ask this question that both you guys just off the top, to get your feeling. What is the last normal golf tournament you feel like you've experienced. When I say normal, I mean no drama, No is this player going to play here or move on? Is this like twenty ninth? Is this pre pandemic twenty twenty like riv Is that basically the last time that golf was like felt relatively normal?

00:07:28
Speaker 3: Would I would say that this year, in the middle of major season, it felt really normal, like US Open, because there weren't there weren't you know, like liv didn't sign anybody of real note this last offseason, right, it seemed that the momentum had really shifted to the PGA Tour and the live guys were there, but at that point we were five majors, four majors into seeing them there, so that like shock and awe had kind of left. That's, you know, my two cents. But then we I mean that being said, like we've now I think back, like we still had the drama John Brahm, you know, playing with live guys in practice rounds and people being like, what's that mean? You know, I walked with John Rahm for nine holes that he was playing with Sergio Garcia. You know, it's it's funny now that you think back to lacc that what would you say, Joseph?

00:08:24
Speaker 2: I guess similar. I don't know that I agree with you. The US opened the PGA felt like normal golf tournaments to me. The Masters, since it was Brooks and John Rahm, didn't feel there was a little bit of chaos there. But I agree with you, Shane, like we're talking a lot about stuff that isn't golf, and it's been a while since there's been a golf tournament that just stood on its own that that didn't feel like I mean, I don't know, maybe a Salheim Cup, right like something on the women's side, but men's side, it's it's hard to think of a of one that at least lived wasn't in the background.

00:08:56
Speaker 3: Let's let's chat a little bit about out kind of the ROM news first, and we can kind of obviously with the FEMA and Hatton rumors out there, I think it just kind of like adds to the discourse about the situation. I'll let you guys pick. You know, I've kind of thought we could come at this in three different ways between the tour, Live and RAM. Where do you guys want to start in, Shane? Why don't you start us with one of those? What does this mean for one of those three?

00:09:27
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean I think for Rom, you know, I thought you pointed out a lot of this stuff in your newsletter piece Andy. If people didn't read it, it's on the website as well, so you check that out on the Fried Egg. But I mean you you pointed out a lot of this stuff. I mean, I think Dj Paiowski brought this up on the No Laying Up Reaction pod as well. It seems like because Rom made this decision, which is obviously the biggest decision yet in the in the history of Live versus the PGA Tour, whatever you want to call the battle. I don't know. Are they in agreements, are they partners, are they considering partnership. Who knows. But I think what this does is all this does is put more pressure on the PGA Tour to figure out a way to make these worlds coexist, because, as you said, Andy, golf isn't a big enough sport to have two entities where you have to follow both. I mean, I was at dinner last night with some friends of mine that are casual golf fans, and if they had to pick between the two to watch, they're picking neither, is what they basically told me at dinner. If it's watch live, watch PGA Tour, or just watch something else. They both were saying they're just gonna watch something else. So I think what this has done is just it's gonna push whatever negotiations need to happen. It's gonna push this, you know, further along than it would have been two weeks ago. And it feels like, as you pointed out in the piece, Andy, I mean, Ram has five years now to play major championships. It sure feels like something's gonna be figured out before the five years is up, and I feel like midway through twenty twenty four is kind of the date I have circled for whatever the agreement is going to be, because you just can't have these entities playing in separate golf off events and expect people that don't really watch golf to begin with to pay a lot of attention to two things.

00:11:06
Speaker 2: I agree with you the ROM. I'm sure people disagree with this, but I don't think people are much more likely. I don't think the ROM signing is going to have a meaningful impact on viewership of Live, but I do think it will have a meaningful It will detract from PGA Tour viewership. Maybe not that significantly, right, like how many What are the ratings like at MX.

00:11:26
Speaker 3: Three hundred, four hundred, five hundred million worth?

00:11:31
Speaker 2: Probably not, but obviously the talent can only flow in one direction, right. There's nobody going from Live back to the PGA Tour. They're only going from the PGA Tour to Live, and as soon as they've made that agreement in June, the PGA Tour has no leg to stand on. It's really hard to take issue with John Rahm signing with Live. If more guys got like the PGA Tour is in a really bad spot here. So I agree with the sentiment of we need there needs to be some kind of deal. Splitting the viewership is bad. It's not a zero sum here. It just feels like a negative sum when Rom leaves. But I haven't heard anybody propose terms of a deal that really makes sense. And that's something that people keep saying there should be a deal, there should be a deal, But I haven't heard anything that would make sense from the PJ Tour and LIBS perspective. So that's something that I wanted to flesh out a little bit on this podcast.

00:12:25
Speaker 1: You haven't you haven't talked to Cantley yet. You got to text Cantley and ask him what do you thinks should happen? And then then we can figure out what the next steps are.

00:12:32
Speaker 2: What do you think should happen? What do you think are terms that actually make sense for the PGA Tour to agree to and Live that Live would be happy with.

00:12:39
Speaker 3: I don't I think they had a deal. They just you know, I think that Michael Rosenberg for s I had a piece that I think had pretty good reporting in it around what the deal might have looked like before this rom news it was a three billion dollar off or from the from the Saudi Public Investment Fund and included a billion dollars to be split amongst the PGA Tour players that stayed. It was like a pool of cash for the for the players that were loyal, and from the sense of it from the reporting, it sounded like there was an argument division about how that money should be split, with Patrick Cantley, who's been you know, reportedly extremely pro elite player, kind of saying that, you know and really taking control of the of the player Advisory Council and policy board, you know, and saying that the top players deserve more and more money. So it sounds like, you know, from from that reporting, the Saudi offer was in the three billion neighborhood for for small stake in the PGA Tour and uh with a billion to be spread across the PGA Tour. But this has, you know, been the problem with the PGA Tour from the start of this is that it's impossible to get a membership on board, you know, with with the wide range of players, you know, the bottom end players think they deserve more money, the top end players think they deserve more money. And what happens is it just gets everything's clogged up and nothing no decisions can be made. And the problem with that is none of the labor, you know, none of the players are contracted, so it just you know, they're stuck in the mud, unable to make a decision.

00:14:35
Speaker 4: And Live goes out and.

00:14:37
Speaker 3: Signs, you know, one of your three or four most marketable players, and they're signing more while you can't decide on how to break up and distribute a billion dollars. You know, this is this is just a quintessential situation of of the PGA Tour's structural failure that's led to the Live Tour even being able to come into existence, right, you know, they had this monopoly with with no contracts, so you know, the players were completely available to be bought and paid, and then you had this antiquated system you know that was you know, kind of a member like the league wasn't set up for what's valued in sports today. So I think that this is just you know, what we're building towards here. It's just the the higher the pressure and the leverage of this, like the deadline for this deal are coming up, you know, as they're talking to more private equity companies, what's really bubbling to the surface is the PGA Tour's flaws in a structure and with its membership. Really they can't they can't make any decision because they can't agree to any decision.

00:15:52
Speaker 1: Joseph, I wanted to touch on something you mentioned when you were talking a little bit about Ram and the PGA Tour and kind of the flow, because I thought it was a great point. You know, we all love sports, we all follow sports that aren't just golf, and you know sports are sports are run by superstars and superstar matchups, right, I mean, I know we're recording this on Sunday, the Bills and the Chiefs play. You know, every pregame show in the world's talking about the last time they played in the playoffs, right, I mean, that was a great matchup, and that's the matchup that we thought would kind of carry the AFC, you know, through the next five to ten years. And when I think about golf, like if I was going to list out what matchups do I want to see on Sunday? Right, I'm a casual sports fan. I'm a casual golf fan. Who do I want to see play. I mean, we always talk about this in the majors. Wouldn't it be great if we got Rory versus Speed? But when you start to kind of list out, who do you need involved on Sunday to bring people that aren't already going to commit time to watching golf to play, right, Rom's probably going to be involved in six of the ten matchups in previous years when you were thinking about the best possible scenarios, right Scotti, Scheffler versus Rom, Rory versus Rom, all that's great for the PGA tool. Right now you lose John Rohm, which again is maybe six of ten of your best case situations for Sunday of a golf tournament that's out a major championship. You also now have got to lean on some players that previously were in that list that have fallen off that. I mean, I know Andy loves bagging a bit on Jordan's speed, but when you kind of look at twenty twenty four and the PGA Tour, now the onus falls on guys like Jordan Speith and Justin Thomas to start playing good golf again, because if they're not playing good golf and you start to list out, who do we need to play well in these events to bring new eyeballs or to bring eyeballs that are otherwise gonna watch college basketball, are gonna, you know, do something on the weekend and aren't gonna watch golf. Now, it's Rory, Jordan, Justin Max in that group, and you obviously lose Rom and so for Jordan Speith or Justin Thomas, like the PGA Tour needs those guys to have a great year. I mean that's a big ask for these players that haven't won a lot over the last four or five years, and it's so important to their product. I mean, you're basically leaning your entire business play in on the shoulders of these like twenty eight and twenty nine year old guys that have combined to win twice in the last three years. Right.

00:18:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say one other thing on top of that, and I completely agree for the PGA Tour, Jordan Speith and Justin Thomas are becoming more and more important with every defection. Right, those guys need to play elite, superstar level golf that they have shown they've been able to play at some point in their careers. The other aspect of this is Live's format. They have forty eight players. What you just talked about what you want to see as a golf fan, are these superstar showdowns you want to see? I mean, like the lead up into that final day of the Masters with Ram and Koepka was unbelievable because it was like, Wow, We're going to see two of the biggest names douking it out on Sunday. One of the things when you have a league that has forty eight players and three rounds of golf, it is way more can do too getting your top players duking it out with each other because there just aren't as many of them, right. So the other aspect of this is that Lives format, you know, lives forty eight players in the more and more of these top names they get, say they get Feena and Hatten. It just you know, I don't think those are going to make a meaningful impact on whether somebody turns on, you know, on a week to week basis, but they can make a meaningful impact when you're looking at the leaderboard on a Sunday and it's like, wow, look at that, it's it's rom you know, Keepka, Bryson and fenw are for the top six guys in the event, like I might turn that on.

00:19:43
Speaker 4: Like that's where it starts to make a difference.

00:19:46
Speaker 3: Is like, I feel like that happens a lot with with golf, right, especially the regular week to week PGA Tour events. It is like I open the PGA Tour app and it's like, oh, look at this, there's like three guys within a few shots. It's you know, if you think about go back to the Heritage last year, it's Jordan Spied and Mett Fitzpatrick are kind of duking it out down the stretch.

00:20:09
Speaker 4: I'm gonna turn it on.

00:20:10
Speaker 1: Right.

00:20:11
Speaker 3: That is the way you check the score of a basketball game. It's like, oh, you know what, look at that that it's tight in the third quarter. I've ever turned that on or a football game. That's the way it works. And live is a little bit more set up to have those showdowns.

00:20:28
Speaker 4: Would you agree with that, Joseph?

00:20:31
Speaker 2: I agree with that. I agree with everything you said, but both of you. The one thing, though, that I feel like is kind of missing from the conversation at least a little bit, is the randomness of golf in general. And I am not about to discredit Johon rom he's been maybe the best player in the world for the last five years. Like, there's nobody in the world better than John Ram. You can make your arguments for Scheffler, Victor Hovelin, but like John Ram is right there. Totally agree. But if three years now John Rahm's not one of the best names in the sport, it's not gonna shock anyone. Right, that's the entire history of golf. I think he'll be good in three years, right, he'll still be thirty two. But I think what the PGA Tour has on its side, and everything's been kind of doomsday for the PGA Tour this these last couple of weeks, Like, I think they need to take control of the narrative a little bit, advertise the wealth of talent that they have and the depth, and that there's gonna be two years from now. There's stars that we don't even know about yet that are gonna pop up and they need to market them. So tying up a couple hundred million dollars in John Rahm, like obviously that's a huge, huge get, not discrediting him, but you've seen it in other sports too, where you pay somebody Shohotani seven hundred million dollars, like five years from now, we might not be talking about Otani. So I do think I don't think that should be lost from the narrative that John Ram isn't like instant fireworks three years from now, that that just evaporated from the PGA Tour. You have to the hopeful side for the PGA Tour is building that depth of talent and trying to build some of those new stars. Loud big O Bear if they poach him, like, that's a really big deal. You got to protect guys like that.

00:22:09
Speaker 3: How do you How do you protect those guys though? That's I think that's the question now, is like how do you protect them? I think like the one thing they have they still have, which I don't know how much longer they can hold on to, is the major championships. That's the only thing that is protecting a mass like a youth talent exodus is like, if you want to play majors, the only way you're going to get into these fields from being, you know, a young guy with no status anywhere. The only way you're going to get your way into major championships, the only pathways through the PGA Tour and dp World.

00:22:46
Speaker 1: Tour, right, Andy, Andy, It's it's interesting you say that too, because if you're the PGA Tour right now, to your point on that, you're almost rooting against guys like lud bigdo win a major, because the moment they win that major championship and all of a sudden they get five years across the board to play all these majors, you're almost rooting against something like that to happen because when they get that level of you know, safety net whe right, all right, well I got five years of majors to play. Who the heck knows what the landscape's gonna look like in twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty nine, twenty thirty. It's like, you almost don't want Ludwig do want a major if you're the PGA Tour, because again, then you can lean on what you're talking about. You can lean on something like, well, if you want to play in these things, you got to finish in the top whatever of the money list or the FedEx Cup or world ranking points, and this is the only place you can get those Ludig wins. The Masters. All that changes right.

00:23:37
Speaker 2: While we're there, Can I suggest something kind of run maybe a stupid idea by you for how this could all fall into place.

00:23:44
Speaker 1: Sure, I love stupid ideas.

00:23:46
Speaker 2: Tell me if I want, I want to hear if it's stupid. Though, So, I have fully believed for a while that the official World Golf rankings are anti competitive, Like I do genuinely believe that that, just like you're saying, Shane, that is what's keeping people from going to other tours, Like the PGA Tour is kind of the way you get into the majors because you need it.

00:24:04
Speaker 1: Might be the tour's best partnership right now, Joseph is owgr right, it's like literally like the best thing they have going for him.

00:24:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. And So I actually do think that what's been holding golf back in a lot of ways is straight up anti competition. What if I think we should get rid of the official World Golf rankings, Like I do genuinely believe that, what if spots in majors, as others have suggested, are allocated based on orders of merit, and live gets a certain number of spots into the majors. Let's say the Masters sets aside fifty spots. Let's say thirty of them are PGA Tour, twenty of them are Live, and how you do in that major determines for the next major if you're going to get more spots allocated to your tour or fewer spots allocated to your tour. And what that would also do is put pressure on each tour individually to create a strong order of merit so that they are submitting their best players into that major. So for the fifty four pull shotgun start format isn't bringing the talent to the top. There's actually a pressure on Live to reform their format so that they're getting players that are better to the top of the order of merit. And that's the way this plays out. I understand that that's keeping the tours separate, but it would also enable you to allow players to jump back and forth between tours at the end of the year, let's say, between September and December, sign with whichever tour you want. But here's the number of spots that are going to be up for grabs at each major. Like I actually do think that would be better for the golf world overall if you went that direction.

00:25:32
Speaker 1: Well, and it gives Live something to play for Andy, I mean, you know, like, that's again kind of going back to Live's biggest issue is its product. I mean, you wrote a lot about this in your piece. I keep almost wanting to push Live now because you're bringing in more big names and bigger players, Like are you going to have live telecast on American networks all the time now in twenty twenty four and beyond? So if we want to watch Jon Ron play golf, we can't actually watch Jen Ron play golf.

00:25:57
Speaker 3: But you just have to download the CW apption.

00:26:00
Speaker 1: I know, I know. But to Joseph's point, now, let's say the last cutoff event is Singapore or wherever the case may be, and you've got to shuffle your way into the top twenty to get the Masters. Now, all of a sudden, you're playing for something on Live that's not just money. And as a golf fan, if Cameron Smith's floating around the number and I want to make sure he gets in the Masters, I might actually tune in and watch because all of a sudden, there's something that I care about outside of just that weeks event that they're playing for. I think it's a good idea, Joseph.

00:26:29
Speaker 3: I think the other thing here that we're kind of discussing is like, and I think one of the things that it means for Live with with Rom, the ROM signing potentially fee now and Hatton going the money being spent. I don't think if the merger happens with the two of them, you know, with them, I don't think Live's going anywhere, right. I don't think that they're going to spend all this money and then they're gonna be like, okay, well, like the league's coming wrapping in. I think like that's been one of the big negotiating points is what happens with Live? Does it become like a fall serious thing? Does it become you know, how does it work?

00:27:07
Speaker 4: I don't.

00:27:08
Speaker 3: I think there's a possibility that Live just continues to operate as Live if the merger happens, because like the idea of the merger is taking the DP World Tour, the PGA Tour and Live, putting them together and forming this new company, And that's the valuation is all based off of all those properties, right what what the what Lives doing right now is like I imagine is like you know, they're at the negotiation table when you sign ROM. The PGA Tour's value goes down and lives value goes up, right if you're negotiating, Like what they're doing now right now is devaluing the PGA Tour and increasing their own value. I don't know if the value is worth what they're paying ram or what they're going to pay female like if they're if it's a one to one thing, but they certainly and I think like that's something that I'm starting to feel like, is like live's not going to be a just just shut heered down if the merger happens and it's all the PGA tour, right, I think that's the you know, and and for from what you guys are saying, that's got to be the direction of the owg R or the the way the major qualification occurs is that you know, you heard it in Rom's uh when he was on Fox News. He talked about how he was hoping that he would be playing on the PGA Tour and the European Tour right Like he seems to think that this merger is gonna happen, He's going to be able to play in those things. Rory's talking about rewriting the the European Tour requirements for Ryder Cup because of because of Rob.

00:28:47
Speaker 4: So it is.

00:28:49
Speaker 1: Man's tweeting a lot right now, Andy, a lot of Rory tweets right now. Don't just give that password back. Let's let's let's change the fastword again. Oh you want it? You want more Rory?

00:29:02
Speaker 2: Well, I truly yes, And I think more players should be tweeting from their own account, honestly a sincere point. The lack of communication from anybody on the PGA Tour side right now is astounding, and that there's no voice, notably j Monahan right. I know he doesn't have a Twitter account, but.

00:29:22
Speaker 4: Talking, Yeah, no one's talking.

00:29:24
Speaker 2: Players have mentioned that they've been getting their news from Twitter before they hear anything from internal communications or anything. Go where the people are, Like, there actually does need to be somebody championing the PGA Tour cause and advocating, Hey, sponsors, stay in your seats, Like, here's what we're about to do. It's gonna be really cool. I know some people are leaving, but here's what we're gonna do. There's no one doing that. So if somebody wants to step up and start letting it rip, they should.

00:29:50
Speaker 3: I don't think it's gonna be Rory. I think Rory is more disengaged from from the leadership of the PGA Tour than he's been in five years. I think that, you know, the direction that they've gone, you know, is completely opposite the way that he wanted this to work out. I think he was, you know, he was one that kind of wanted everybody to bury the hatchet and saw that the division wasn't good for golf, and you know, and it's gone in a little bit different direction. I think what's what's fascinating to me is that he's gone from this person that was, you know, was effectively holding the PGA Tour together, being the spokesperson. And if I look at this, you know, just like you look at this without any you know, if you could take it, just take the social issues all that out. And I don't think he would ever do this, but like he's now in a position where he could absolutely end the PGA Tour. Is if Rory McElroy decided, Hey, I'm going to live, which I doubt he's going to. All his comments on the record have always been I I will I will just play the majors if it comes down to live.

00:31:06
Speaker 4: I believe he said at one point.

00:31:08
Speaker 3: You know, but if Rory took an offer, or if he got an offer from Live, he could do two things with it. He could go to Live and end the PGA tour if he's that done with it, or b he could go back to the PGA Tour and say, I'm going unless you don't go do this and I think that like it it. The tour can't get out of its own way.

00:31:30
Speaker 4: They are not.

00:31:31
Speaker 3: There's not going to be a clear decision made from these guys.

00:31:34
Speaker 4: They can't.

00:31:35
Speaker 3: They're just not set up to make a decision.

00:31:38
Speaker 1: It is.

00:31:38
Speaker 3: There's no way that they're going to get an agreement across the board because there's just too many competing interests, too many people that are only thinking about themselves and not the overall you know, uh power. Like at this point, it almost seems like the only way that the that this resolves itself in a in a a quick clean way without continuing to just destroy the fan base, destroy the popularity of the sport is if someone like Rory or a Rom or a speif you know, like if Rom hadn't just gone, if he had gone back and kind of is to go back to the tour and say we need to do this this way or else I'm out and you're done, you know, And it feels like that's where we go.

00:32:28
Speaker 1: Spee Andy. Does Speith have that power? Because I feel like it's only Rory or I guess Tiger, but I mean, yeah, but it feels like that's just Rory. It doesn't really feel like even if Jordan did it, even if Scotty did it, I'm not sure they carry the same gamulonimbus clouds that Rory does. You know. It's like, I mean, he's the thunder He's the thunderstorm that could completely throw this off its kilter. I feel like, just like to your point what you're.

00:32:55
Speaker 3: Saying, I think like Speith is probably the next closest to Rory just in terms of like ratings and general fan interest, right those are the like I don't because this is the thing. I think that ROM brings a lot to Live, but I think people like Live might think that people are going to turn on the TV for ROM. I don't think it is. I don't think that. I think the biggest thing that ROM actually brings to the league is that there's a level of competitiveness and seriousness that they are sorely lacking, like they need someone who's not there. Like it's almost like when you talk about like the NBA teams and the culture of losing that happens when they're like trying to tank, you know. Is like all these guys that signed up initially, they're like, this isn't a real golf league, Like I just got paid, Like that's their mentality. Like they need they need an adult that's like, hey, I'm here to win, you know, like the joke about the four Races being this dominant fresh nomin it's like, you know, like we need they need it for there, for the for the product of the league. The league needs some seriousness. And I think that's actually like John Rom's like greatest trait for the league is that I don't think he's going to like slack off like we've seen Cameron Smith like has looked flat out bad. Like it's like time off and and and lack of competitive tour is not good for Cameron Smith right.

00:34:30
Speaker 1: Anywhere to play in Florida, was supposed to do well.

00:34:35
Speaker 3: Anywhere, clearly not putting the time into his body. Who was putting into it?

00:34:39
Speaker 1: You know.

00:34:39
Speaker 3: It's like so so anyways, like Rom to me is a is a player that, whether he got paid four hundred million dollars or nothing, is going to bring some sort of level of professionalism to a league that desperately needs it.

00:34:55
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean like Bill Belichick going, yeah, go ahead, Joseph.

00:34:58
Speaker 2: Well, I was just gonna say, this guy doesn't have the fan base that spief has, doesn't have the commercial appeal. I think Victor Hovland kind of has that domino effect though, of if he were to sign with liv what that would signal about a really young player at his prime who's arguably the best player in the world right now, like that would international player. That would be a really big one. I know he doesn't have the he doesn't even have the commercial appeal of like a Ricky Fowler probably, But what that would indicate about the seriousness of the league. I totally agree with you Andy that ROM brings that competitive fire. And if they bring some guys over who say things like not I want to play less golf for I want to spend time with my dog, but actually I'm here to win, and this league feels as competitive as anywhere else in the world, that would be a problem for the PGA Tour.

00:35:45
Speaker 1: Joseph, I know you're always kind of looking at this stuff from a slightly different perspective, and I feel like you're always kind of trying to push it forward since it doesn't feel like right now, on January tenth or February fifteenth, we're going to have a merger tour? Is there an option here to have Live Belive the PGA Tour be the PGA Tour and then two or three times a year they play a Ryder Cup style event against each other for massive amounts of money that gets people into whatever they may want to get into. I mean, I feel like all of these types of team events were in their infancy, started because there was an opportunity in a rivalry out there, right Maybe it was country, maybe it was region, whatever the case may be. I mean, outside of the Tavistock Cup, but you know, I knew those clubs obviously got really fired up at each other as well. But I mean, most of these team events start because somebody wants to beat somebody else, or there's issues, you know, in the sport. And to me, right now, if you wanted to bring people's eyeballs and interest to a golf event, putting live versus the PGA Tour at least in theory makes sense, right, Can the PGA Tour superstars beat the live superstars? I mean, I can write the commercial right now. And while the blood doesn't seem nearly as bad as it was two years ago, still got Bryson, who's obviously a lightning rod. You still got Brooks who can do Brooks things. And then on the PGA Tour side, you've at least got Rory. You got Read, you know, but you've got Rory there, who's been so anti lived this whole time. I mean, you throw Norman in there, and you get all those types of characters, and it feels like something that could for me, you know who I'm thinking about. Am I gonna watch golf this weekend? Or am I gonna watch football this weekend? I would pick golf if that was an option.

00:37:24
Speaker 2: I've never loved the idea only because I feel like it is, in a sense celebrating like the division in the game in a way and pitting It's not pitting against country lines, it's not pitting it's pitting against liv versus the PGA Tour, And kind of why I like the solution of the getting rid of the official golf rankings and building entries into majors based on how those respective tours do in the major championships. Is that it actually does foster that competition between the tours and you get to see head to head at the majors, like who finishes It could be based on who makes the cut and then who finishes in the top ten, how they allocate spots for the next one without I've just always had a little bit of a version to the team competition. It would do huge ratings, but I don't know, it feels a little toxic to me to put to pit the live guys against the PGA Tour guys right now after actively suing one another, Like maybe long term, but it feels a little bit toxic right now. Do Andy, do you agree with that? How do you feel about that?

00:38:26
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:38:26
Speaker 3: I think that there needs to be like a period of time like there need. What golf needs more than anything at this point is a resolution. It is this continued strain, this continued division is just like whether it's divided, they're just in need. The fighting has to stop because what's happening. And I think, like I've thought about this a lot this weekend, is like, this could be the greatest thing ever for the for just golf. I think professional golf in general, you know, it provides an entry point for people to get into golf. But at the same time, I think professional golf often overshadows how great just golf is and why people actually play golf. Like two many too too often are microphones in front of professional golfers making you know, comments and decisions for the overall sport of golf, right and we saw that this week with the rollback and just how the whole rollback has gone because of the professional golfers, you know, interests and different things. How it became a universal rollback versus just a you know, wood bat, metal bat thing like it is in baseball. But anyways, you know, I think, like I've thought about this a lot, is like this could be the greatest thing that ever happens for golf. Is that, oh guess what nobody cares about professional golf anymore, because golf is an amazing recreational activity that like, my bearing of how I feel when I go play golf has nothing to do with John Rahm. It has nothing to do with Tony Finow getting eighty million dollars when I'm out on a golf course I have there's no there's no connection there, There's none whatsoever. So I can believe that pro golf provides an entry point into the game, but maybe, just maybe they aren't the best example setters for the game as they've been put into this place. But overarching, if professional golf wants to have any existence in twenty years of relevance, this has to stop. It cannot be what's going on right now. It has to be some sort of unified like the game is not big enough for there's not one hundred million people that watch golf that we're splitting up and it's like okay, like you take seventy I'll take thirty million. This is we're talking about a million people and there's gonna be nothing that can support the amounts of money. You know, this greed has overwhelmed the professional game and they aren't looking at like what they're doing is effectively taking money from the future of the game and putting in their pockets now and is a short sighted thing we are seeing, Like I mean, I just think about, like, look at the direction of professional golf right now. Look where it is compared to what a unified league like the NBA just did with their N Season tournament, where they rolled out something new that added value, that that is going to create more interest they're gonna sell. They tried out in a new format. It kicked ass in year one. Lebron took it really seriously. Their top player saw the value in dedicating towards this. He talked about how important this N Season tournament was from day one of it, and cause he knows deep down if this thing secks seeds, it's going to sell a huge sponsorship to it, and that money's going to come back to me. Like these golfers don't understand Rom what rom. Rom's decision was the most selfish of all of them. He went, he skirted all the all the negativity that all the guys that went early got because like the PGA Tour normalized it, he's just stealing money effectively from other players because he's he's making the overall sport weaker. And when the overall speed sport is weaker, then there's less money to be had.

00:42:37
Speaker 1: And not at all. But I think to the I think there's a point there to be had too about golf and I'll go back to this past year. You talk about Lebron and him buying into the n season tournament, right, the way he talked about it, the way he complimented their commissioner about the idea and the creativity, he called him a genius and a press conference, right, I mean, this is your star, the probably the most recognizable athlete in the world, is praising the guy in charge of this new idea that played out and went well and the Lakers win. I mean it was you couldn't have drawn up a better situation for this in season tournament than you got this year. Right, By the way, I love the courts. I know people backed on him a lot, big fan of the courts. I think they're great. And when you turned the game on, you knew it was a tournament game versus another game. I mean that's the whole point of it. But think about this past year, Listen. I love Rory McElroy as much as anybody else in media. I'm a big fan. But how many months into signature events did Rory pull out a one? Four months, three months? I mean, you've got to buy in to all you're trying to do for your sport. If you're the quote unquote face of it. And this goes across the board. Lebron bought in. He played great basketball. He exceeded his minute count by I think six or seven minutes per game during this run up to Vegas, right playing a ton of basketball and playing elite level basketball. And last year the PGA Tour did what it had to do. Let's get everybody together in these events. They're all playing at the same time. That's the best chance to get the most eyeballs on the sport. And three or four months into it, Rory pulls out of an event after the Masters that was a signature event, Like, you've got to buy into this if you're a player and you're one of the faces of the tour. And I feel like not everybody's totally bought into everything that's going on in golf because they don't they understand that A maybe it's not sustainable or b they know it's just a band aid on what it's going to look like in two or three years from now.

00:44:26
Speaker 2: On only thing I'd even this isn't even pushback, but I think distilling it all down, the product needs to be competitive. Golf competition has to be at the forefront. And I would argue that the reason the Ncason Tournament worked in the NBA the colored courts. All that was cool, but fundamentally it brought more competition into the NBA. There were Tuesday night, Friday night games that had an elevated level of meaning competitive basketball was the product. And Adam Silver has said that that this seas and was gonna be the return to basketball, like it's time to get back to competitive basketball. And so with sure, I agree with you, Shane that it'd be great if all the superstars bought into the new model, but the model needs to be geared towards competition, and having signature events that don't have cuts in them is not a step towards competition. Like I think the tour that's gonna win is going to be the tour that elevates competition to the max, because competitive golf is very compelling and that product.

00:45:29
Speaker 1: But you gotta be but you gotta be there to be competitive, Joseph, And like, if you're not even I would I would compare the Heritage to the December portion of the NBA season. Right, It's it's after a big event, it's kind of sleepy, it's pretty chill, it's relatively relaxed, but you gotta be there to be competitive. And if you're not going to show up to the event, if Lebron just says I'm gonna I'm gonna sit out the quarterfinal games, then the entire D season tournament falls apart. I mean, I get what you're saying.

00:45:54
Speaker 3: To be fair, to be fair, you know this, this is more about.

00:46:00
Speaker 4: Showing up.

00:46:01
Speaker 3: I think that there was like a legitimate reason why he wasn't that.

00:46:04
Speaker 1: Heritage, Sure, I understand that.

00:46:07
Speaker 3: At the same at the same at the same time, maybe you don't skip, you know, Kapalua, Like maybe you leave like where you have an open like you're gonna restructure this, you're gonna have I'm just gonna keep this in my back pocket in case something in my life comes up. And I know I need a week off, right, And I know that the everybody plans, but like I do think, like what what Joseph is saying, there needs to be a A and I don't know. I I watched I watched the interviews for the live promotions event. Honestly, it's cool, like like those guys just change the life. They know they could be the worst player on that tour and they're gonna make two million dollars, right like that actually like felt like it actually meant something to the to those those guys much like like I mean, just think about like when you get those moments, you get real moments like Monday qualifier. I can't think of anything that's more competitive than a Monday qualifier. When people qualify in for a Monday, like to an event on a Monday, it's like, oh, I just beat ninety other guys for four spots. Super competitive Q school delivers this. You know what's super competitive Q school you know what delivers player golfers and tiers, the Ryder Cup. It has nothing to do with money. It is all competitive. It's like this is the thing with the instant, the thing that was the secret.

00:47:31
Speaker 4: You know.

00:47:31
Speaker 3: There's obviously five hundred thousand dollars, which for like a rookie, a guy on a second who is a second round pick, who's a rookie, you know, or a second year player, Like five hundred thousand dollars is a really big deal. Like that's a huge deal for a guy making a million dollars a year. And but like the other aspect of this is like the nature. And this is the same thing is true about the very best golfers in the world. They are insanely competitive. Nobody likes to lose. If you're one of the world, the best in the world at anything, I believe that you are insanely competitive. Also, those traits go hand in hand. Competitive and excelling at one skill go like you you just can't be a top twenty player in the world unless you're competitive, Like you just won't work hard enough, right, So the idea of competition, like the best, very best, the majors, it's all competition. It's not about the money, Like you could take the money away and it would still be So golf thrives when there's competition.

00:48:37
Speaker 4: It doesn't.

00:48:37
Speaker 3: And what's what's been the problem with Live the last two years? It just doesn't feel competitive. What's so, what's the problem with with what was the problem with the WGCs, the no cut WGCs, They were sleepy, there was just they just did not feel competitive. What's the problem with the having a signature event back to the Heritage the week after the Major? It just it doesn't feel like anything, you know, It's like, what are we doing that That's.

00:49:06
Speaker 2: The only area I'd quibble with you, Shane on getting Rory to bay in Lebron doesn't skip games because he wants to play in the N Season Tournament, and if he doesn't participate, they may not end up playing in the N Season Tournament quarterfinals finals. The PJ Tour hasn't given Rory a reason to feel like he can't skip a signature event, legitimate reason or not. Like he feels like he can accomplish all of his goals within the sport, which at this point are probably just winning major championships success in Ryder Cups, he can do all that with skipping signature events. The PJ Tour hasn't given him a It's not competitive. So again, not to sound like a broken record, I mean, I think the solution here is really obvious. I think it's a tour championship that's like four to eight guys, maybe twelve, and if you're only giving points out at the signature events, if you skip one, you're probably not going to qualify for the tour Championships. Like they need to actually lay an infrastructure that facilitates competition. You can't rely on players saying, hey, will you buy into this because if you don't show up, it doesn't feel competitive. You need to create a natural incentive for them to feel competition.

00:50:11
Speaker 1: Does that exist though in golf? Like does that exist in golf outside of the majors? That's the thing I keep going back to.

00:50:17
Speaker 2: They need to build it.

00:50:18
Speaker 3: And this is where like, at this point, this is where the PGA Tour has to go because they are going to raise a influx of cash, whether it comes from the public investment fund, whether it comes from the private equity side of things. But that cash it can't go to reinforcing the current model. The cash has to go to all right, we have this opportunity to completely blow this up and build something way better, and we have the money to do it because we can say, hey, you know what, sponsors, We're going to go in a different direction. We've loved your support, but this this is the direction we're going. Do you want to be on board with this direction? And it's okay if you say, hey, we don't want to be a part of this right now, but we are, like, we want to see how it goes and then we're gonna jump on. Like that's the convert that's how it needs to shift with this money and and the the thing that's alarming to me is hearing Tiger. Honestly, like I think Tiger, I don't know if he's been like a very positive asset to the to the policy board. And I know it's like sacrilegious to criticize anything Tiger, but you listen to him at the Hero and you listen to him talking about like, hey, like we're just trying to like maintain like we're trying to keep the feel of the PGA tour. We're trying to you know, like embrace the history and keep like the legacy of the tour intact with this deal, like we're looking for partner. It's like, no, that that that's not what should be going on. I don't think like what should be going on is we should be looking at partners that we can turn this this tour that is a you know, it's a nice sport, it's a nice, niche sport, but like, how do we find partners in a format that make it bigger than it is now? And I and that's what my worry is with can't Ley and Tiger and in the direction of the tour is it seems like they are attempting to get money that allows them to stay the same and that is the wrong the wrong direction, and Live has shown that it's the wrong direction by their ability to come in and just tear the sport into.

00:52:38
Speaker 2: And I guess the only thing on that, Andy that I'd add is I think the reason the status quo doesn't work, it all comes back to the same thing, is because it's not the most competitive version of the sport.

00:52:48
Speaker 1: Right.

00:52:48
Speaker 2: The players at the PGA Tour, it's a member around organization. They've been incentivized to create as many playing opportunities as possible and to stay on the tour as long as possible. They have not been incentivized to create the most competitive version of the sports, so it all reinforces itself. Shane, what are your thoughts on all that?

00:53:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think, I mean, who's the hungriest people in the world, right, I mean the people haven't been fed. I mean, these guys are getting fed all the time. I mean they're getting fed all sorts of different ways. They're getting fed with pip things that are incredibly I mean, it's ridiculous to put out that much money to people for no other reason. Than you're popular, right, But I mean, you've got to make these guys hungry. And outside of I think the FedEx Cup and it's, you know, infancy made guys hungry. There was real financial opportunity with the FedEx Cup that if you got into the Tour Championship at the end and had a chance to win there, it was literally life changing money. And outside of the major championships, money was something that incentivized guys. I'm not sure that this structure incentivizes anybody financially, because if you're popular, you're getting paid either way, right, So I mean, I think to your point, Joseph, it's if you're gonna throw the model out the window and restart, don't pay people a ton of money unless they actually did something throughout the season. That's how you can get people to be fired up and buy in to the plan. Did you see what Lebron said after they won? He goes guys are coming up to me asking when we were getting the money in our accounts, like they're asking Lebron that ten minutes after they won the championship. These pro golfers, these top ten, top twenty guys in the world right now, are getting so much money in all different areas that think that trying to incentivize him at the back end with money that's not three hundred million dollars gen raw money is just silly, Like they're not gonna care. It's like what you said about Rory and the heritage. I mean, you've got to make it make sense for something in their lives or something in their legacy, and right now it's not either one of those things.

00:54:42
Speaker 2: And you can't stipulate it either can't mandate participation.

00:54:47
Speaker 1: Yep, you want to. If you're not gonna play, that's fine, but you're not gonna You've got no chance.

00:54:50
Speaker 2: At this at the end of the year, exactly.

00:54:53
Speaker 3: You know, it definitely feels like whether or not this is you know, true, but like it definitely feels like this overall sport, you know of men's professional golf took a big kind of jab whether whether whether no matter who you're a fan of the overall sport loss values.

00:55:12
Speaker 4: This week with the John Romnews, all.

00:55:23
Speaker 3: Right, let's take a quick break to talk about our partner Club Champion. So, Club Champion has an awesome holiday promotion. If you use the promo code Frida Egg, you will be entitled to a one hundred dollars full bag fitting that's about seventy five percent off, or a fifty dollars fitting of any other you know type of club, whether it's a hybrid, Wedges, irons driver with the purchase of a club. So if you purchase a club, you get a great deal on your fitting. This is, you know, just for those that aren't aware, Club Champion is the best, the premiere fitter across the country. You go to a Club Champion location, you're getting a PGA tour level fitting. You're getting of fitting that a tour pro would go through. You get to try all different types of shafts. Actually probably better than most tour pros who have an equipment deal because you get to try different heads, different shafts, figure out exactly what the best setup is for you. So this offer is gonna run until Christmas Eve, and the one caveat with this is that you need to get the fitting done by January thirty first of twenty twenty four. So booked by Christmas Eve, fitting done by January thirty first of twenty twenty four. This is where I've gone forever to get my fittings done. They do an awesome job, so you can get a one hundred dollars full bag fitting. This is the best offer they've ever done with the purchase of a club or a fifty dollars fitting of any other type. So go get dialed in. It's really helped me shoot a lot lower scores. I've been super consistent since I got my clubs from them, and I highly recommend this if you're looking for some game improvement, getting fit is probably the best way to get your clubs. Get new clubs, get it, get it right, get the right chafts, get the right setup, get the right heads. Don't don't purchase them because you think they look cool, get the get the clubs that fit you best. Thanks the Club Champion, and we will now go back to Joseph and Shane. Let's uh, let's move gears here and I want to talk about roll back while we're here. Thoughts on roll back and we could relate it back to the professional game. You know, it was the other big news somehow, like the only way that this gets I don't know, I don't know what story was one A, what story was one B.

00:57:54
Speaker 4: But any other week of any other.

00:57:56
Speaker 3: Year, these are these are stories of the year, and they seem to be you know, just kind of you know, do get it out for story of December here.

00:58:08
Speaker 1: Well, I wrote about it on the newsletter. I mean, we yell about stuff a lot, and this is just not something I'm gonna yell about right now, just because it's so far in the future that there's so many more important things right now in terms of the state of golf to care about. I guarantee Andy, you know this better than anybody. This is going to go through fifty rations before we get to what is it, twenty thirty or whatever the year is that it would be you know, instated. I mean, I just feel like right now this we knew this was coming, it finally came, it finally was announced, and we are, however, many years away from it actually being a thing.

00:58:42
Speaker 3: The thing that I think is like under reported that I need. I need this like I need air. It is like the they've been talking that's getting buried is a third of the golf balls on the market right now are conforming?

00:58:57
Speaker 4: How is that?

00:58:58
Speaker 3: Can I get a list of the third to the golf balls that are conforming? And it's like, so that's telling me if the golf ball like I'm not gonna I'm sure there's certain golf balls, but roughly a third of the population is already playing the ball. I'm sure it's not in apples to apples like exact comparison, but twenty to forty percent of the golfing populations already doing this, and we're yell and people are today they're gonna quit the game.

00:59:26
Speaker 2: The people saying that they're they're gonna quit the game. I think there's a level of immaturity that is. I don't want to talk down to some of those people, but it just it feels disingenuous. I guess I don't. I've written a lot about it. I don't have a whole lot to add. I think it promotes a more competitive version of the sport at the professional level, and that's what we should aspire to. And the I think it's another example of self interested professional golfers and equipment manufacturers holding the sport hostage and keeping sensible solutions from being implemented, convincing people they should be mad about something that's actually for the benefit of the sport. So uh, that's about all I have to say on.

01:00:03
Speaker 1: That, Joseph, if you went to Let's let's say I got five thousand golfers across the board, handicap, wise, skill set, passion for the sport, interest, private club, public golf, or whatever, and you gave him a rollback ball tomorrow. Of those five thousand people, how many do you think would notice? Five ten people?

01:00:24
Speaker 2: See?

01:00:25
Speaker 1: I think people didn't know. You didn't tell them.

01:00:27
Speaker 2: I think people would notice a little bit on some yardages they're hitting the ball, but they didn't nobody anyway.

01:00:34
Speaker 1: I mean I've caddied, they got no clue off.

01:00:37
Speaker 4: I think we all caddied.

01:00:38
Speaker 3: I would agree that's I would always. I started when I was a caddy, Like if I was caddying for a fifteen or twenty handicap. Honestly, I would add ten yards to yardly all the time.

01:00:50
Speaker 1: I would lie all the time. I rarely gave an actual number to anybody.

01:00:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, because people don't know how far they hit it.

01:00:58
Speaker 2: This this, you guys are really indicting yourselves.

01:01:01
Speaker 3: But the that's good caddying that it's not indicting yourself.

01:01:06
Speaker 1: That is just joke. They're flying. If they're flying every green, I'm gonna adjust they were not flying every green. I can talks that that's the thing.

01:01:14
Speaker 3: They might fly one in eighteen and they'd be like what happened there, and not me being like, oh my god, they just flushed.

01:01:20
Speaker 2: It didn't realize you guys were participants in the overclub Challenge.

01:01:24
Speaker 3: But oh yeah, it's not the overclub Challenge. It's just I don't want to rake twenty five bunkers today. I'm gonna get this guy to hit this guy or or a gal to hit more greens. It wasn't that, it was just like, I actually know I have a better idea of how far this ball's going off the club face of the guy that is playing.

01:01:44
Speaker 2: Fair enough v out sidebar. But back to your question, Shane, maybe people would notice at the same time. Ninety five percent of people I've ever been with, if I find the ball in the woods and ask them if they want it, they play it. And if they think those golf balls are flying eying the absolute maximum distance, they've never said, well does it if a robot hit this ball at one hundred and twenty five miles an hour, how far would it fly? Because I'm trying to figure out how much fun the rest of the round is gonna be. That has never been the reaction. So I think it's been a massive overreaction from people that have a lot of them have agendas, and it's not gonna the sky's not falling.

01:02:25
Speaker 3: The thing that I have brought this up by the shotgun start that I think is like another good point is like if you know, if Shane or you lived in Denver, right, yeah, and I said, hey, you want to come, come visit me. We're gonna play the Olympic Club, which the Olympic Club is at sea level and it's it's cold and misty, you lose, Like I I hit a seven iron ten yards shorter at the Olympic Club that I hit in where I live, where there's less fog and less like it's warmer, Right, I hit the ball shorter there. So if I said to you, you're in Denver, You're you're playing golf at a mile high like imagine if you said, no, I'm not coming. The ball doesn't go far enough there, I'm not gonna have fun.

01:03:11
Speaker 2: Like what The other part that say that, the other part that's ridiculous is that there's existing regulation now, so why don't why don't you have a problem with the regulation that exists now they could make balls that have little TNT in them that explode and goes another eighty yards closer to the hole and makes it easier, Like we could have ridiculous equipment where it goes five hundred yards and you could have cart paths instead of fair ways. Like, why are you not upset with the regulation?

01:03:36
Speaker 1: Now?

01:03:36
Speaker 2: Why is it this new one? It doesn't make any sense to me.

01:03:40
Speaker 3: The most interesting thing in that whole the whole announcement, was the potential for them looking at forgiving forgiveness.

01:03:48
Speaker 4: Of driver heads.

01:03:50
Speaker 3: And this is where the model local rule kind of bummed me out, not not getting really like the I think like a lot of a lot of the USGA's goals for this is just getting golf the golf world used to We are going to change the way the game's governed throughout time for the best interest of the game, right like that? That just general philosophy. And to me, the driver head thing is, you know, less forgiving driver heads. It's effectively they're they want to look into this and see, you know, can we have less forgiving driver heads? And to me, if you had an MLR ball, if you had like the what was originally planned a bifurcated ball. It would make so much sense to immediately enact like, hey, you're a tour pro, you're playing at the highest levels of the game. You use a two hundred and fifty cc driver head, right, like the max head is that? Because guess what, guys miss and all the big misses come with three woods now, and none of the misses made you. It's like almost impossible for an elite player to it hit a really bad shot with a driver because the head's so big and it's so forgiving.

01:05:04
Speaker 1: At this point, Andy, I live through the groove thing and people freaked out. We live through the anchored potter thing, and people freaked out. And you know what, man, everybody's good. They're using the wedges with the appropriate grooves and they're not anchoring with their putters, and they're still playing golf. I go back to like COVID golfers. You know, everybody always likes to point to COVID in the pandemic boom and golf. Imagine if you're a golfer that took the sport up in twenty twenty and you got into the professional game, and this is all the stuff you're having to consume all the time? Are you sticking around?

01:05:40
Speaker 4: You know?

01:05:40
Speaker 1: I mean, are you really going to like continue to put your time and effort into the sport that seems like it's pounding you with all this news that doesn't necessarily feel positive or interesting or exciting. It just feels like all this stuff is running downhill for these people that are just new to the sport. I mean, we're in, like, we're invested, we're stuck. You know, we got the bug decades ago. But if you're a new golf person and like every news breaking, he's just everybody yelling from two sides of the rope, It just seems like it'd be a lot of heavy stuff for somebody new to the game, Like do I want to just go watch I'll just go watch basketball?

01:06:16
Speaker 2: Mann, Can I play this Devil's advocate for a second? I mean I agree, of course, but just to play the other side. I think a lot of people who golf don't see any of this news, okay, And I think there's probably a really large I was talking to somebody who's a casual golfer recently and he was buying some pro v ones and I was like, yeah, you better get them while they're hot now like five years from now, they're gonna be rolled back. And he had no clue what I was talking about. Didn't know John Rahm was gonna be signing with Live, Like, is there an argument that we are so entrenched in this and people who are on golf Twitter aren't as important to the game overall as we might think, or at least don't represent it. Those Yes, and so maybe there's all these news cycles that people are wrapped up in. It's it's actually not pertinent to that large a percentage of the golfing population. I mean, is there an argument to be made on that? I?

01:07:09
Speaker 3: Well, I would agree. I have a I have a college buddy's group text. They're very casual golfers, very casual, you know, and they're like, what's what's going on? What's going on with this ball thing? I'm like, you guys, you might lose three yards off the teat and they're all like okay, Like none of them we're in all up session.

01:07:32
Speaker 1: You might you references group chat a lot, and you mentioned that it's not golf people. What is the main topic on this group chat? Is it it's golf?

01:07:40
Speaker 3: So no, it's it's college college friends. That that have a casual interest in golf. So like the main the main point of the chat is like do you want to play Saturday? This is like a lot of everybody at one point was in Chicago. It was like, do you want to play on Saturday morning? I'm it's like this happens once a month, right, you know? Or what's they talk about? The majors? You know they you know, I'm just I enjoy it because it's like my lens into like it's my like I have golf Twitter discourse here and then I see what.

01:08:15
Speaker 4: They're talking about over here.

01:08:17
Speaker 1: You know.

01:08:17
Speaker 3: They sent out the rom Live thing like you know somebody they were talking about that, you know, but they were like still not gonna watch live. You know, it was their their general thought thoughts around that. But the rollback was great, Like can you explain to me if they always ask me to explain things? Like you know, when when Justin Thomas was like coming down on Sunday at Windham, They're like, what's going on? I was like, well, you know, they just recently changed this to top seventy and no big players ever really.

01:08:47
Speaker 4: Missed the FedEx Cup playoffs.

01:08:49
Speaker 3: That's played a full season they were like, Oh, that's cool, and they were all interested. You know, we go back, we can tie this back to competition. That was that was legitimately extremely fascinating Sunday afternoon. And why why was it? Was it because they're playing for ten million dollars? Was that why?

01:09:10
Speaker 2: Random thought? Like just a random anecdotal evidence on that. Mister beast Huge YouTube creates these massive YouTube videos.

01:09:20
Speaker 1: The biggest YouTube star in the world right huge.

01:09:23
Speaker 2: I heard him interviewed once and they asked him. He does a lot of like money giveaways to people, and they asked him, what is like the optimal amount to give out to somebody to where it gets a lot of views, it's like a life changing amount of money, But you can't give out a billion dollars. And what he said was, once you get over one hundred thousand dollars to the general public, it all starts to feel the same that they can't really once you're over one hundred thousand, it all starts to blend together, so to the I actually think that's a unique way of thinking about why people don't care about players and how much money it is.

01:09:56
Speaker 4: If it's a three care about.

01:09:58
Speaker 2: Their Yeah, exactly, it's three and a half million. If it's two point seven, like once it gets over a certain threshold, mister Bee says, that's one hundred thousand. It all kind of starts to blend together for people.

01:10:10
Speaker 1: All right, Jose start living his life like that. By the way, I just want you to start. Every decision you make, you just gotta go. What would mister beasts do? That's what I'm gonna do.

01:10:18
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about mister Beast for that to mean anything.

01:10:21
Speaker 1: But cure people. Hey, you know what I appreciate mister Beast about very short videos. They're like sixteen seventeen, eighteen minutes on YouTube, perfect consumable amount of time.

01:10:31
Speaker 2: What does that mean for this podcast episode?

01:10:35
Speaker 1: This?

01:10:36
Speaker 3: I gotta I gotta say. You know, yesterday, yesterday I went for a long run run and it was like I really it was like seven or eight.

01:10:47
Speaker 1: Seven miles in the running the whole time. Yeah, no walking, So what is this pace? What's our pace looking like? And you'll be like eight thirty.

01:10:56
Speaker 3: A mile or what I used to be like a sub eight. But I don't think I am. I don't time myself anymore, and I'm running in I'm trail running. So I'm like going a lot of up and down, you know.

01:11:09
Speaker 1: Seven and eight impressed seven eight means you start to start getting the text to like do you want to do a half marathon soon?

01:11:14
Speaker 4: Yeah?

01:11:14
Speaker 3: I think, I mean, yeah, I think I could do a half marathon. But you know, the the I was thinking, I've I've been kicking around the idea of a marathon. But you know, at the same time, I don't. I just don't think my my travel schedule conduce is conducive to marathon training.

01:11:30
Speaker 4: That's the problem.

01:11:31
Speaker 3: That's like, as I've looked at I've laid it out, I looked at it, It's like, Okay, I need to run.

01:11:36
Speaker 4: You know what is it? Like?

01:11:37
Speaker 3: You know you got to start running like thirty miles a week or something. It's yeah, it's like a week if I'm if I'm at the US Open, what am I going to do? Like, what am I'm gonna I'm going to try and get my run in before I go and walk around there all day, you know, and then what am I going to Or you could just.

01:11:54
Speaker 1: Be really awkward and run at the US Open? Like what if you just ran between shots like full sprinted, You'd be like Rob Low and Parson rec.

01:12:05
Speaker 3: Well, now that the media media, they took away the locker room access. I could have just brought my running gear ran around the golf course. So we popped into the locker room.

01:12:14
Speaker 1: You know.

01:12:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, way tie to the players, take my shower.

01:12:20
Speaker 1: I got to get cleaned up. I gotta go ask Rom some questions.

01:12:23
Speaker 3: A little sweaty, yeah exactly. I feel like they don't even have treadmills in the player fitness area, right, I'm sure there's no run a marathon, right, I don't know.

01:12:35
Speaker 1: These guys are trying to talk to me and the running in New York one next year. By the way, for anybody listening to this at they're new age travelers. The best advice I can give you, if you're a person that has to travel for work, start running. Don't do hotel gym's most depressing place in the world. Get some running shoes, get into running. You can go outside. You can run in some town you've ever been in. Every town has running chair at trails. There's a couple of good running apps that'll like hack actually make a run for you.

01:13:01
Speaker 3: But I started to those where the hotels are is the worst place to run.

01:13:07
Speaker 1: It's fine. You got a rental car you can get you go drive somewhere and go find a trailhead. What are you doing, you bum you bumming rides to country club? Andy, Come on, you got a car. Maybe you're running in the country club.

01:13:18
Speaker 3: For you looking, I'm just looking out for everybody here, Shane trying to trying to look out for everybody.

01:13:24
Speaker 1: Joseph, you're a runner.

01:13:26
Speaker 2: I'm not a runner.

01:13:27
Speaker 1: I do what do you do? What do you do out?

01:13:33
Speaker 2: I work out? Yeah, I don't do no cardio running, no cardio. I'll do some cardio, but I'm not a huge runner. I do think Andy doing a marathon would be tremendous content. There could be some if he's going slow, he's a pace car. Start bringing the JB. Holmes jokes in. I do think there's a lot of pace of play content to be had. So I think from a business perspective, Andy the marathon.

01:13:56
Speaker 1: Joseph, you know those NBA fans that will like wear every jersey of the player and they'll like take them off, you know, like every team they've played for. What if Andy just had every shirt that would be a joke of something about running that he could like rip off every two or three miles.

01:14:10
Speaker 3: What if what if I did every title sponsor of the PGA Tour, you know, and I yes, each mile, I switched to the shirt.

01:14:20
Speaker 2: Wells Fargo, you know, quite complete the mile.

01:14:25
Speaker 1: At the end. We have chainsmokers playing as you finish the marathon. It could be a lot of fun.

01:14:30
Speaker 3: It's uh, yeah, we'll see. I saw that there's the Los Angeles Marathons one hundred days away. I could do that, you know, maybe that's the one.

01:14:38
Speaker 1: Hi man, Yeah, I mean that's right. Or yeah, I mean do it right before the Masters and you feel great. Yep.

01:14:43
Speaker 3: The nice thing. The nice thing is I live in a locale that I can run year round.

01:14:48
Speaker 2: You know what.

01:14:48
Speaker 3: The other thing I've this is a this is a thing that running. This is another benefit of running. So it was really rainy here last year, and I, you know, I think this is great advice anybody. People allow rain to dissuade them from doing things.

01:15:06
Speaker 1: We've talked about this Andy with the running. I'm with you on this.

01:15:10
Speaker 3: So like I I you know, like it would rain like a week straight and I just you know, and I say, like rain, It just like rains for like a week straight and I just, you know, at some point last winter, I just decided that rain wasn't gonna stop me. And like it's been you know, we I was so the Ryder Cup this year. I was in New York and like, you're doing these crazy hours. It's like two to two am to like you know, two pm effectively every day. And one day it rained like crazy and I get done and it's like, God, I haven't left this house all day. I just went for a walk out in the rain. I get back and Brenda's like, you're you're insane. It's like, what what am I insane? I got wet. I have to take a shower either way before we go to dinner. And like I got wet. I had a rain jacket on, and it's like, what's the big deal? Like it had it was delightful, nobody was out, I was walked around, I got rained on. But it's like it doesn't matter. Why is everybody afraid to get wet?

01:16:11
Speaker 2: It's a great place to end it. That could be an amazing that an amazing open ended question. Just post from the shotgun start why is everyone afraid to get wet?

01:16:20
Speaker 1: There you go starts a whole nother race. So this ay, by the way, in golf too, if you play golf in the rain, the moment you just accept the fact that you're gonna be wet makes the entire experience way better, you know, when you got umbrella and you're trying to, like tate take stuff on and off. And also, tour guys have stopped wearing rain gear, which I find really weird. If you notice that they just wear sweaters now, super strange. I don't get that.

01:16:43
Speaker 3: I think I think that the rain gloves are the single most important thing only you got. Well, no, you need your zero restriction jackets too, Come on, Shane, Sorry, sorry, You're right, you need your you need your full zero restriction rain gear. Hey, before we go, code TF thirty you get thirty percent off.

01:17:03
Speaker 4: That's a free ad right there.

01:17:05
Speaker 1: Hey, before we go, can I ask you guys both the question to go back to what we initially talked about?

01:17:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, well you do you.

01:17:11
Speaker 1: Believe you guys will consume more live golf this year than previous than last year in terms of you and watch it on TV or the app or whatever.

01:17:20
Speaker 2: Yes, because we are starting with an incredibly low baseline, but it's not gonna be uh I'm excited for the first round. It might be look at the leaderboard and I feel like I have some responsibility to be following it, and if the leaderboard is exciting, maybe tune in. But no, there's nothing I'm looking at on the calendar and actually excited for. But there are fewer PGA Tour events that I think have commercial appeal. So kind of goes back to the same point.

01:17:48
Speaker 3: I Uh, well, I saw the Kirian Vincent. You know, the the best brothers in golf, the Vincent are now both live players.

01:17:56
Speaker 4: So yeah, absolutely I'm gonna watch more.

01:17:58
Speaker 3: I would I would say I think, like general baseline, I think they have I mean, last offseason was a complete disaster. I think Greg Norman said he was gonna sign eight of the top twenty players and they signed like Sebastian Munos, you know. So I think they're they're like they're they're interests entering the the year is way.

01:18:23
Speaker 4: Better than last year.

01:18:24
Speaker 3: So that alone is gonna raise my baseline.

01:18:27
Speaker 4: But it's hard.

01:18:27
Speaker 3: I mean, like, yeah, John Ram's there now, it's like John rom Brooks Bryson like that kind of like a you know, those are three interesting. I like like watching those three guys play golf. I'm I'm generally interested their unique you know players, right, what's your dream Yeah.

01:18:46
Speaker 2: Back nine live, two golfers going at it. What's your dream matchup?

01:18:50
Speaker 4: I mean it's gotta be it's gonna be Brooks.

01:18:53
Speaker 1: I think it's Brooks Rom for me.

01:18:56
Speaker 2: I think Bryson might be one of the two for me.

01:18:59
Speaker 1: No, Bryson for me, I'm sorry. I mean it's fine. I mean like Bryson again. I mean, I'm with Andy like Bryson makes golf interesting, and I really I'm I'm most of the time interested when he's involved. But I'm if I was to our kind of initial point about checking the PGA Tour app If I was on the live leaderboard on Saturday and it was Brooks at twelve under, Ram at twelve under, and then third place was six under, and you threw Bryson in for Rom, I'm probably gonna watch the first one over the second one.

01:19:31
Speaker 2: I mean, Bryson Rom would be my deal.

01:19:33
Speaker 3: Let's flip this question. What's the PGA Tours now?

01:19:38
Speaker 4: It was it?

01:19:38
Speaker 3: I think was it Rory before? Do you think before this it was Ron Rory?

01:19:45
Speaker 2: That's a good question.

01:19:47
Speaker 3: Tiger's out of it. Let's just say Tiger's out of it, right. I don't think Chef is interesting enough, Like just you know.

01:19:55
Speaker 1: I still think it was Rory spif last year. Like I just think Rory and Spieth, you know, they just who they were and who they have been and how important they've been to golf, and golf fans seem to gravitate towards them. I just feel like if Rory Speith or battling it out in any sort of golf tournament, people are gonna probably turn it on if they weren't gonna watch it otherwise. I mean, I just think it's been Rory speed for years.

01:20:19
Speaker 2: Real real question for signature event. I think there's a legitimate question around what a signature event win means for the legacy of somebody like Rory or Jordan Speith. Would you rather watch one of those two battle each other or Loveviig Obert? Like what is actually more interesting? As a hardcore golf fan.

01:20:35
Speaker 3: I still think it's Rory Speith.

01:20:36
Speaker 2: At RBC Heritage at Travelers yeaheah, I.

01:20:40
Speaker 1: Mean it's it's Steph playing Lebron Like these are two different people, like they play golf totally different, yet they've been these I mean, it's hard to say Speth has been a fixture because he's been so up and down over the last four or five years. But I just think commercial appeal, name the fact that we haven't really got much Rory Speith in our lives outside of that third round of the Masters when Rory shot seventy seven and didn't make a birdie. How many times have they really been in the hunt together contending for a big event. It hasn't been a lot. Feels very much like what we got with Phil and Tiger over the years, whereas much as we wanted them to be in the mix together, they rarely, if ever, were actually in the mix together. So I just think in terms of the names and the fact that it's happened so little in professional golf, I'm still gonna go back to those two just because you know, it's really it's kind of wool and water, right. I Mean, one guy hits it a million miles, it hits it down the middle of the fairway. Every time, one guy hits it forty yards off the map and hits it on the green and makes it thirty footer like That's what's so interesting about watching Steph's team play and Lebron's team play is they're superstars for completely different reasons.

01:21:49
Speaker 4: I think that's a great point.

01:21:51
Speaker 3: Contrasts in playing style to me, is always going to be the thing that's the most fascinating aspect. It's why Jordan sped so fun to watch at Augusta, right is because he shoots these rounds of like sixty seven and you're like, wait a second, what, Like he was in places i'd be in, you know, like that's that's what's so, you know, and and that's what's so amazing about it. And then you can you contrast that with like, you know, John Ram and Augusta. It's it's a completely different style in which they get to similar results. Right So, and I think that's the the goal, like to tie this all together.

01:22:29
Speaker 4: I think that's the goal.

01:22:30
Speaker 3: The role the rollback and putting more stringent equipment standards into places is potentially recapturing more styles of play and allowing more styles of play to really thrive. All right, let's end it there. This was this was a fun chat. Hopefully you know, we got h, we got more positive times coming for professional golf. But hopefully the last twenty minutes of this chat were at least positive.

01:22:55
Speaker 4: So, Joseph, what do you got?

01:22:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, Joseph, but everybody should check out your your newsletter finding the edge on it's a sub stack. And then obviously you're writing on Friday, Golf Shane, you're calling Q School coming up.

01:23:12
Speaker 1: Talk about yeah this weekend. Yeah, we'll be uh, we'll be rocking and rolling me and nitties uh from Jacks. So excited to get down there and do a little Q School over the week and tune in. We'll be on Golf Channel. I think it's four or five hours of coverage. So it's it's pretty.

01:23:27
Speaker 3: PGA Tour cards on the line for the first time what almost a decade.

01:23:32
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, yep, So you got a chance. It was funny a lot of those guys at the end of the corn Ferry Tour season that were like floating around the number. A lot of them said, you'd see like quotes on Saturday Night where they go, I just got to finish top five either either here you know, in December, and so they I like that mentality from some of the players that either did get their card or didn't and then obviously we get to follow Shad tootin story see what he can do.

01:23:55
Speaker 3: After the whole death man, you know, rules, kerfuffle.

01:23:58
Speaker 1: Situation, whatever you want to call it, it on his way to close out KFT. So rooting for Shad by the way, because that would be a pretty cool story if you could get his card this way.

01:24:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, well we will talk soon and we'll be back later this week with another episode. All right, thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. Today's podcast was edited and produced by Matt Rush's Thank You Matt Hey Quick Reminder. The theme of these the reminders advertisements in the spot bend Holiday gift giving great holiday gift is to give somebody Club TF. If you're a member and you like it, you know, give it to somebody else that you might think like it, if they if that person needs a gift, if you're thinking, you know, if you're on the fence site. I just think it's been something we've really committed to this year. We've put a lot of effort into it, and we're super excited about where it's going next year. So if you're interested in joining Club TF, it is one hundred and twenty dollars for the year. There is a gifting option on the website on the Friday dot com, so go to the Friday dot com slash membership and you can find all the information there and you it gives you the option to send it as a gift. So thank you to all that have joined and supported us this year, and looking forward to a couple more episodes here in twenty twenty three. It's crazy we're at twenty twenty four.

01:25:28
Speaker 4: Thanks and we'll be back soon.