Takeaways from the 2023 PGA Tour Season with Kyle Porter

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. And when I find my ball.

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Speaker 1: In a bride egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida Egg FRIDAYGG, Frida Egg, Brian Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump. Welcome to the Friday Egg Golf Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we're discussing takeaways from the twenty twenty three PGA Tour season. My guest is Kyle Porter. You've heard him on this podcast and many others before. He is a writer for CBS, a co host of the First Cut podcast and the emailer I suppose of the Normal sport newsletter. Kyle and I will give some of our big picture thoughts on this year's PGA Tour, but we'll all so touch on the tour championship which Victor Hovland won going away, and of course the captain's picks for the US Ryder Cup team, which will be announced on Tuesday, August twenty ninth. So after this break you'll hear from me and Kyle Porter this episode of the Fridaygg Golf Podcast is brought to you by Club TFE. This is our membership program. To find out all the information you need about CLUBTFE, go to the Frida egg dot com slash membership. But one particular part of clubtf that I want to highlight is access to special member events. We've got an event coming up at the Meadow Club. This is the Maiden Member Guest we're calling it. It's just for CLUBTFE members and their guests, and it's going to be held at the Meadow Club, which is a wonderful course in San Francisco. It's Alistair Mackenzie's first American design, or at least it's commonly called that. I would like to check that historically, but in any case, it's an amazing golf course in an incredibly beautiful and peaceful setting. The Maiden Member Guest is gonna be held on Monday, October thirtieth, and it's gonna be thirty six holes a flighted match play tournament, eighteen holes of best ball and eighteen holes of alternate shot. And again, this is something just for Club TFE members, So if you're interested in that kind of thing, we're gonna have more events like this in the future. Then go to the Frida egg dot com slash membership and consider joining Club TFE. Let's go back to the episode with Kyle Porter. All right, Kyle, before we get two takeaways from the PGA Tour season as a whole, Let's talk a little Tour Championship. Victor Hoveland started at eight under and ended up at twenty seven under, five strokes ahead of second place. I think I have all those numbers right. Hoveland is now the number four player in the world. He won three times this season, and they were all big events. Do you think twenty twenty three has been a decisive step forward in Hovelin's career.

00:03:07
Speaker 2: All I know is that he's t one on the Tour Championship od VGR page, So I don't know what that means. But now I look, I think I think that Victor I wrote this up to the BMW Championship. I think Victor hon has made the leap this year, and I don't even Garret. I don't even really think it's necessarily because of what he did in the playoffs. That is sort of the forward facing, like the public acknowledging Victor Holin's great But for me, it was what he did in the majors, what he did at Augusta, the steps that he took at I mean, he was top twenty in all four majors. And if you look at one of my favorite stats of the year is aggregate score at the major championships, you got to make the cut at all four obviously, and Shuffler was first at eighteen under and Hovelin was second. I believe he was sixteen under. So for me, it was it was and we can get into like why he was better at the majors, but to me, it was like his play earlier this year sort of solidified to me that he had made the leap, and then we got to obviously great performances in the playoffs to sort of validate I guess what he had done earlier in the year.

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Speaker 1: Has the chipping gotten better?

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Speaker 2: Do you think, yeah, I think it's a little.

00:04:21
Speaker 1: Do you think it's overplayed that big miss of his because, I mean, his performance the Master sort of seemed to confirm this concern about his game, because he played so brilliantly early on hitting every green, and then kind of regressed once he hit missed a few greens and he struggled to get up and down in ways that you know, Brooks keep Gun and John Rohm did not really appear to So I don't know, you know, but go on, you think it might be a little bit exaggerated or what.

00:04:52
Speaker 2: Well, I think statistically it's unquestionable that it's gotten better. Justin Ray had the numbers on like leading into the PGA Championship and since the Pgachaampionships. I think it's better. But I think the more fascinating part of his game for me, that really improved this year is just and he talked about this. He said it so eloquently after the BMW Championship where he talked about it. It's great to be able to get better at golf without improving your skill set, which I think is such an interesting concept, and for him it's taking it's better course management. Right. We always joked about how he just rips at every flag, no matter where they're at, and that can work at resort courses where he won, right, but not in major championship play where he would shoot a sixty five and then followed up with a seventy four. And so that to me is the area where and that plays into the chip you get better at chipping because you don't short sight yourself in ridiculous places. And to me, that's the part of his game that change. Maybe I mean the chippiing has improved. That part of it, to me, improved even more. It's unquantifiable, but that really stood out to me this year.

00:06:01
Speaker 1: One thing that I'll point to as a remains to be seen about Victor Hovland and his improvement, which I believe, is whether we see him perform really, really well at courses where it's really hard to play well if you don't chip crisply off of short grass. Because you know, he's performed well at the Memorial this year, he performed brilliantly at Olympia Fields, he performed well at east Lake. These are all courses where there's rough pretty close around the greens and you can kind of use that little hacked out technique. It's not a worse technique or a less complex technique or anything like that, or less difficult than chipping off of short grass. It's just different. It's a different kind of motion, it's a different way of approaching chipping. And so I'd really like to see him next year at Augusta National really show some great form with those chips. This is something that I've heard people say about players who do well at Augusta. They're just those players when you watch them practice in a short game area, you're like, oh my god, every single thing is absolutely perfectly crisp off of this short grass. And he'll need to do that at Pinehurst too if he wants to play well there. And so I don't maybe this is a kind of built up narrative that doesn't really have much of a basis in Hovelin's actual game, but he himself has spoken to it, and the struggles off of short grass are, you know, can be pretty apparent at times with him. So I guess we'll see.

00:07:38
Speaker 2: I think of somebody like a Shane Lowry who finished in the top five at Augusta. When was that, I think it was last year twenty twenty two, and shuffler one. Where you think of a magical short game, you think of somebody, you know why, Caim. I think the other thing with Holin that is a little bit underrated is there's all these guys that are great ball strikers eight, ten, twelve, fifteen, whatever, however you want to sort of categorize them, not all of them, like love the moment, you know, and Hovelan seems to kind of rise to the occasion a little bit. I don't know if that's always been true, but it certainly seems true right now. I mean, I go back to whistling straits him and more cow shoot a best ball fifty nine on Sunday and you're like, that's a that's a big moment. That's a meaningful moment, you know. And we saw it throughout the playoffs time after time. He hit putt after putt after putt, and that's not a that's not a fourgone conclusion that great hitters, great ball strikers, great iron players will want the ball when it's tight late. Not everybody does. And you hear players talk about, you know, off the record, behind the scenes, guys who do and don't, and I think Hovelin is definitely one of those guys that does.

00:08:48
Speaker 1: He did well in that moment at the PGA Championship. Yes, he fell short of Brooks Koepka, who was obviously a little more solid in that moment. But I think that Hoveland maybe had some bad luck on the sixth hole there to kill and just you know, didn't didn't quite get over the hump, but he did well on Sunday. He hung in there. That was a that was a really good performance, much better certainly than what he did at St. Andrew's last year. So there there's been some progression there. I agree that he's a guy who seems like he's not going to be overwhelmed by a major championship Sunday, and that is that. You know, the funny thing about him doing what he did in the playoffs this year is that it raises more questions about him than it answers, because now we're going to start talking about when is he going to win a Major? Every single time there's a major. That conversation is officially at a breakneck pace for Victor Hofland, Right, this is this is somebody we're going to be talking about every single time. And so I hope for him, for his sake, that he knocks one off next year and gets that done with, right.

00:10:02
Speaker 2: I think I think the crazy part about that Kared is he's only twenty five, Right. I think it's easy with some of these guys like Holin, like Morekwa Sung. JM was one that kind of hit for me during the tour. So Jm's twenty five, he's been in five tour championships. That's a that's that is crazy.

00:10:22
Speaker 1: And you've got to live a lot of life before military service.

00:10:25
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and you got to play a lot to get into the like he does to get into the playoffs. But he's taken advantage of it. And I think, you know, the same thing is true of Holin and more cow. It's like, man, they've had really good careers and they're only twenty five getting into twenty six. And the other thing with Hovelin, I was looking up OW. I don't know what wins count for anything anymore like Xander had you could tap me into him having five lens that you could type me into him having fifteen wins. I don't know. But if you look at owgr victories, Hoven's win percentage is pretty good. Like he wins at a about an eight percent clip, which is significant because you've played over one hundred od BG Arvince. It's the same rate that Rory wins at. Now Rory's done it for fifteen years, not four years, you know, which is obviously more impressive. But that's that, to me, is at least a little bit of a signal of kind of what we're going to get over the course of Hoblin's career.

00:11:27
Speaker 1: Hoven's got something different about his swing. I just really like watching him swing the club. He is sort of simultaneously very under control and very free in the way he strikes the ball right, the way he hits his driver. You know, you can see the leverage he's creating, but at the same time, it doesn't feel like he's out of control or going crazy with it. And so you know, that's a skill that's going to stick around. It's not just raw power, it's not just timing. This is something that he's going to do time after time after time, and so it just seems like he's a solid prospect to have years like this for decades to come.

00:12:09
Speaker 2: Really yeah, I mean Rory was talking about this on Sunday, so's I think the word he uses very repeatable, which is is sort of what you're getting at there. And I mean the crazy part with him is he he was really a top five ball striker in the world since the day he turned pro. I mean I was looking it up on Sunday. If you go back and look at his numbers from twenty nineteen, the year he turned pro at that Travelers Championship right after the US Open at Pebble, and his numbers are like he was like he was gaining like two strokes ball striking, which is a joke. I mean, that's like a that's a crazy, crazy number. It was a shorter period of time, so I don't know if there was. It was a little noisier maybe than you would want it to be. But he's basically been the same ball striker for five straight I think of like a rom where it's you're just getting the same thing every year. You know, it's year after year after year, and the very of there's gonna be variance in winning because winning is luck, it's putting. It's things that have a wider variance. But man, the ball striking, both on approach play and with the driver is just so consistent and it's hard to see, like you said that changing over the next several years.

00:13:24
Speaker 1: All right, let's get into some general takeaways from the PGA Tour season. I asked you to come up with a few, So why don't we just start with whatever you want to start with. What's what's one takeaway from this season?

00:13:35
Speaker 2: Well, I think for me and I don't know. We can talk about why this was the case. Maybe it's always the case and I just have a short memory, But I thought the I thought the FedEx Cut playoffs were pretty pretty low energy. And I don't know if that's just because we put so much energy into the majors this year in light of kind of the new PGA tour schedule or I don't know. I'm curious about if you have like sort of a hypothesis behind why that was the case. But I just other than maybe the back nine on Sunday at Olympia Fields, I didn't really get I didn't really feel a ton of juice from the playoffs this year, maybe even it seemed like more so than usual.

00:14:20
Speaker 1: Did you feel it was less juice than usual for the FedEx Cup playoffs at least in like the REESA the past five years or so.

00:14:30
Speaker 2: I think, so, I don't. I don't know. It's hard to it's hard to go back and think about what you were, what you were feeling two years ago, three years ago, even two weeks ago.

00:14:43
Speaker 1: But were even picking out big moments like there was the Cantle versus Bryson showdown that was fun, of course, Hovelin versus Scheffler was great at Olympia Fields, but as you mentioned, that was maybe the lone real highlight and then Hoveland kind of ran away with a tour champ and Chip. Last year is all about kind of the battle with Live. You know, Rory was out there, uh, you know, saying fuck you Phil to the to the Netflix cameras and and uh and you know they're doing the money sign after winning the tour championship. There was a little bit of momentum there. There was kind of a cause there, I guess, But other than that, you know, it's hard to really pick out great moments from the past five years at the during the FedEx Cup playoffs, So I don't know. I mean, what would be your diagnosis here is is there? Is it just because we we spend all of the use up all of the juice and in the you know that early year PGA Tour schedule and then the majors and and we've just got nothing left by the time August comes around.

00:15:46
Speaker 2: I think that's most of it. And maybe this is just a personal thing. Maybe I was just not feeling the playoffs this year, and it's I feel for the tour because they everbody there works so hard to like put a ton into all of this, and it's it almost this is I'm taking this too far, but it almost feels like the Pro Bowl happening after the Super Bowl.

00:16:11
Speaker 3: Right where where that's exactly right where you you put like you're you're leading up to the to the US Open, the Open Championship, the whole summer, and then it's like, oh, yeah, we have this other thing.

00:16:22
Speaker 2: We have one more thing that you really need to care a ton about. And you know, I saw Shane Bacon, he might have written this for you for for the Fried Egg talking about just the timing of it. The timing of it just is it's tough, and the locals it was so just hot and miserable, I mean, honestly, like it is an indictment of the FedEx Cut playoffs. That Scottie Shuffler is saying at the BMW, Hey, I can't wait to get through next week, get through the Tour Championship. That is not like and I understand like why he's saying it into the year whatever, but imagine hearing somebody say that about like the or the you know, majorly bit like the World Series, like you it just wouldn't happen. It's just such a and I know those are not apples to apples comparisons, but I almost feel like, and I don't know how you would do this, but to shift the timing to even Players Championship time or the spring or something, I would to me there would just be so much more energy around that.

00:17:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, Shane did write something to that effect earlier in the year for The Friday Egg. I think his argument was something like, the Players Championship could be the ultimate event, right, the capstone event of the PGA Tour season, and then we're on to major season and that's something different, And there is a kind of logic to that. I'm not sure it would really work, yeah, or if it would necessarily make things a ton better, but for sure, the FedEx Cup playoffs are kind of a problem right now. And you know, one thing that was discussed a lot this week was the staggered start format of the Tour Championship. I'm curious what your take on the staggered start is. We're five years into it. Is it working well?

00:18:08
Speaker 2: It's hard because it's not. Is it working from whose perspective? I think is the question? Because there's there's a number of different perspectives that you can look at it from. I think from the players standpoint, it's mostly working. You're you're rewarding guys that have been sort of the best throughout the year. I think that, you know, the the funny part here, we were talking about this on on the First Cup podcast over at CBS Sports is no other sport talks with as much emphasis about oh, we gotta have so and so in the mix for the ratings. So essentially, like I think some of the staggared start is, you get these top players. Your top players are inevitably going to be at the top leading end of the playoffs, your biggest draws, I should say, and so you get them in the mix at the at the Truer Championship. And it's like the NFL never would never say, like, well, we have to have you know, the Packers and the Cowboys in the mix and the playoffs, and we're going to sort of not that you're doing it to favor like Scheffer or rom or whatever. You're just doing it to favor the guys that are the biggest draws. It's just such a weird thing that we do in golf sometimes and I get why we do it. There's just so many masters to serve here that I don't know that you can placate everyone. And in a member run organization, you're always going to lean toward what the players want, right and maybe not what's best for the fans. So is it working in one sense, yes, I just don't know that it's the best overall product or end result for kind of the fan.

00:19:47
Speaker 1: I keep going back to twenty eighteen and how if we had the staggered start, then Tiger Woods would not have won the tour champion and ship or there would have been a shadow leader board where we all would have said, oh my god, look at this, Yeah, Tiger Tiger Wood's won this week, whoever it is. I'm not sure who would have won if it had been a staggard start, but you know what I mean.

00:20:14
Speaker 2: This would have been so cool if we, you know, like that kind of he would have got He would have gotten the OWGR championship though, So that would.

00:20:20
Speaker 1: Have been That's the really meaningful thing.

00:20:23
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, yeah, several people would have celebrated that.

00:20:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I just I think that we're missing out on some potential great moments at the Tour Championship, if we keep going the staggered start route. Now I understand why they're doing it. I understand why it's not match play, but I think that there has to be some sort of better solution here than, you know, making it a net championship. I found it entertaining for the first couple of years, just because it was like, Oh, this is kind of a new experiment, this is new thing. Let's see how these dynamics play out. As a golf nerd. I was like, this is kind of interesting in a way. But now I just I sort of know how it's going to go. And this year was a good example of where it can be pretty uncompelling, where some of the top guys just didn't have great weeks and the one who did have a really good week ran away with the thing, and there was a relative minimum of drama. Instead of a Sunday showdown between Morikawa, Chafle, and Hoveland for the last PGA Tour tournament of the year, we had Hoveland kind of separating himself. And so I think that for the sake of this week of the year and the Tour Championship as a what should be a great PGA Tour event that even just going back to what it was before would probably be an improvement for me.

00:21:52
Speaker 2: I think I would probably disagree. I think I like this better than what we had before. What we had before or was just again it was it was not great. It was not a great product for the fan. It was confusing for the fan.

00:22:05
Speaker 1: You know, my age just because of this separate winners.

00:22:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so like my dad. My dad is just sort of who I use for the just common like wants to watch golf on the weekend type fan. And it's like, well, we got Steve Sans breaking down the calculus of Justin Rose winning the FEDEC the ten million dollars, but Tiger's doing that. You know, It's just it's again, you're trying to serve so many different masters. I'm curious about. You said something earlier about match play and not not working or not being feasible. What's your reason for that.

00:22:38
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's the players. I don't think the players want match play for the Tour Championship because it would be the ultimate random feeling capstone to the PGA Tour season. You know, you can be the number one seed and go up against the guy who's number thirty and you can lose in the first week or in the first match, I should say, yeah, well, and then you're out right. I know that should be what the playoffs are for the fan. For me, that's absolutely what it should be. I want match play, like you know, I think that would be amazing and a really good product and a great way to end the season. I don't think that you're going to get over the hump with the players. Am I wrong about that?

00:23:26
Speaker 2: Well? I think and maybe we can transition into talking about this. I think anything is feasible if you have a for profit entity that is not determined by what the you know, what the members of the of the organization think. And that's where it's we have to have some inflection point of like, okay, this is what we used to do. I mean I talked about this with it might have been with Andy on the shotguns. Start, like, if you had if you had NFL quarterbacks determining you know, who got to come into the league and didn't like, you would never have you would never have college draft picks become quarterbacks for like the next you would just create rules that would benefit and be favorable to yourself, and that's what we get with the PGA Tour. I don't really to an extent I care what players think, but in terms of like just the product itself, what players think shouldn't matter in the way that golf is sort of packaged in the future. So I think match play, I mean, this is how every other sport does it make it to the playoffs. Guess what, you kind of have an advantage because you're playing a lesser team based on your regular season, but you could still lose in the first round, you know, if you're the Warriors, if you're the if you're the DoD if you're the Braves. Whoever, lessen the players that make it, like reduce that the match We think of match find the PGA Tour as sixty four guys because that's the that's the annual event. That's way too many guys. You get weird matchups, you get a bunch of randomness. You need it to be half that. A quarter of that sixteen guys would be awesome, Right, you have this top sixteen guys, they're going at it. You get some great matchups. I think that would be an amazing way to end the PGA Tour season.

00:25:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Joseph Lamania has suggested something like this, and I love that idea. I'm just a little bit held back by how I've seen the PGA Tour work in recent history, which is that the players have a big say yeah, I don't think the players would love that format, and so I don't think it would happen. But as you say, maybe things are changing coming up soon here, and I'm actually going to table that discussion with the framework agreement and the satury a Ben piff for a bit here in the pod. One of my takeaways, my first takeaway is related to this question of the overall schedule that you started with, and that is that the PGA Tour schedule, well from the Tournament of Champions at Kapalua in early January to the Masters is amazing. It is so good every year that it happens. I think, why is it that I get sick of golf in August? This is amazing. I love golf. I love the PGA Tour when they're playing Riviera, when they're going to bay Hill, when they're just doing that sequence of tournaments on the West Coast and in Florida leading up to the Players Championship, and then the Masters. It's just wonderful. It's so good, and then it really drops off for the PGA Tour. Then we have the Majors, and the Majors are going to be the focus. The PGA Tour schedule during the summer is always going to be stop and start in a little bit hodgepodge, a little bit hard to get invested in as a coherent product. And then we have the playoffs, which, as we said, are just not working, you know, in terms of developing some interest among fans. But that first part of the schedule is so great, and I just keep thinking that this move that the PGA Tour made to group all the majors together to get them happening on an every month basis in one part of the year so that they could have the fatest cup playoffs at a particular time has really presented an unsolvable problem with the cadence of their schedule where they have an amazing first couple of months of the year, and then for the rest of the season, it's just going to be really hard to make it work. And maybe as a fan, I'm kind of okay with that, because those first few months of the year are so fun, but by the time we get to this point, I'm like, I'm ready to move on. I'm ready for it to be the Fall.

00:27:52
Speaker 2: Series, yeah yeah, or the Ryder Cup.

00:27:56
Speaker 1: Yeah that's better.

00:27:58
Speaker 2: I mean, I I agree with it. It's almost like this, it's almost like the PGA two. So I think one thing that the frameworker, like the last two years have really illuminated, is that people don't understand how many different organizations run professional golf, right, you know, somebody like again, my dad didn't And this is not like many people think this that the PGA Tour runs the PGA Championship, different things like that, and it's almost like the PGA Tour owns January to March. I guess the National owns April, PJA owns May, USJA owns June, and the RNA owns July. But the PGA Tour is still sort of trying not they're not trying to own that's not like an accusation, but they're still trying to kind of implement their stuff within all those other months. And I don't it just is it's really difficult to pay attention to so many different things. And I think that's why we're like, the sort of fracturing of attention in the summer months is sort of why we're feeling the way that we are right now at the end of August. And I don't know, I don't have a solution to that, because I'm with you January to March Rocks. It is awesome. Phoenix is amazing, you know, Tory, whatever you want to say about the golf course, it's a it's a it feels like a big deal.

00:29:21
Speaker 1: You know, that's a great PGA Tour event. Yeah, I would never want to see them move away from the San Diego Open. That needs to be there for sure.

00:29:28
Speaker 2: And I think Pebble as a as an elevated event will be way better. It's just it's really really good, and I don't I don't know what you can even do about the rest of it. I mean, do you have an idea like or do you have any ideas there?

00:29:42
Speaker 1: See, That's what I'm That's what I'm talking about. I think it's an unsolvable problem because the majors have such gravity that they're just going to attract all the attention to themselves in the months when they're happening in you know, April, in June and July, right now in May for the PGA Championship, it's got to be all about the majors. It can't be about anything else, right, it can. The best the PGA Tour can do is have like maybe one event between each of the majors that matters and that people care about. But that's tough because you're you're saying, you know, okay, come back to us this one time in the month and then move on to other things. It's just hard to divide your attention like that. And when you have the majors, they're so big that you can't create a rhythm that includes other PGA Tour events because it's it's so unequal. The thing that really works about January through March right now is that the events are kind of build on each other. Yeah, and a lot of them feel as important as each other. They don't. They're not all as important, but there's a reasonable cadence, a kind of ebb and low that has a coherence. But during major season, it's just like we're really high for the Masters and then and then we have to dip really low to go back to the other events. Does that kind of make sense.

00:31:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a unique problem. It's a problem that's unique to golf too, because you don't have in other sports, you don't really have these one off competitions throughout the year that are far more meaningful than the week after or two weeks after maybe soccer. I guess if you if you want to look at like some Champions League versus your regular season, and I don't. I don't know that I follow that closely enough to understand. I guess tennis also, but I don't know.

00:31:41
Speaker 1: But the tennis majors are so spread out.

00:31:43
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, and the tennis majors it doesn't seem it seems like they're the complete emphasis. And again I don't fall with tennis closely enough to know this, but it doesn't seem like the regular season of tennis quote unquote, it really has that much meaning other and to provide context for the majors.

00:32:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think I think maybe tennis is not a good model for golf, even because the regular events matter so little, right and we do want the PGA Tour to matter a little bit more than regular you know, the Cincinnati Tennis event for the men matters right now, So I think in that sense, maybe the PGA Tour has done a better job by at least constructing this January through March schedule that that really attracts attention and appeals to fans and casuals alike. And you know, if there's if there's a way to really emphasize that part of the schedule and make it official in terms of mattering, then that would be a great move for the schedule. And uh, you know that that's at least one positive here, all right, let's uh sorry, go ahead.

00:32:50
Speaker 2: Well, I was gonna say real quick, I think it's all I think it is a playoffs problem though, because I think that you've got such a lead into the Players Championship. That's great, Like that's why, like that would what you're talking about. It builds on itself, and then you've got I don't think the PGA Tour is necessarily even trying to take attention away from the majors in the summer months, but then you've got this playoffs jammed in on the back end. It just doesn't it doesn't contextually make any sense. And I think that's what leads to this sort of hollow, empty feeling at the end of the year, not just from you and I but from players. I mean, these guys look kind of miserable at the Tour Championship, and I know, I know it's odd. I know it's a long year, but that's a weird thing to be said about your league at the at the end of a season.

00:33:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, they seemed tired, and they seemed tired at Harbortown. John Ram was tired. Scottie Shuffler was tired already, you know, partly because that first part of the year was so great and so packed, and it seemed like nobody had all that much left for the rest of the year except for you know, Victor Hovland, I suppose, and Brian Harmon and Wyndham Clark. All right, so let's get to your next takeaway.

00:34:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, so my second one is a little bit related, and I think with the new designated, elevated whatever work signature.

00:34:10
Speaker 1: Signature events, signature that's what it is now, Yeah, I knows whatever. It's like, we're six months on designated events.

00:34:18
Speaker 2: So with that, with that new schedule or with the new format, I think one thing that one of my takeaways this year, think about how many guys didn't win this year, Jordan Speed didn't win, Colin Moore Kwa didn't win, hadn't won in two years, Xander sort of one but not really, Uh can't lay did not win. I'm just going off the top of my head. There was a lot.

00:34:42
Speaker 1: Roy McElroy just won once in this calendar year that that almost feels like a no win season. Yes, he just won the Scottish Open.

00:34:49
Speaker 2: There were a lot of guys and he barely won that. There were a lot of guys that didn't win this year, and that's true every year, right, you guys that play good golf that don't win. But the thing I was thinking about it is you're gonna have because all the guys are playing the same events you're gonna get, You're gonna have guys that probably win fewer times than when they were, say twenty years ago, kind of spread out over like across different events. So now you're not necessarily gonna have I'm just using an example speak winning Colonial when nobody else is really playing and he's just kind of playing because it's a sort of a hometown event. So I think that was one of my takeaways of like, guys are just not gonna win that often and we're gonna have to sort of adjust to what is a two win season or even a one win season, mean, compared to five, ten, fifteen years ago.

00:35:45
Speaker 1: That's a great point, you know, when players, when the top players are showing up all at the same time, it is by definition gonna be hard for one player to rack up five wins in a season. Now, I think that within the new structure of the PGA Tour that players are going to be encouraged to play some non signature events and maybe that's when they'll get those numbers for their resume. You know, John Ram winning the Mexico Open or sure right, which which he should do every year. If he goes to the Mexico Open, just you can book it, John Ram is going to be like first or second place. So I think that there's still going to be some of that. But you're right that a strange side effect of the signature concept getting all the players together at the same time at the same moment is Yeah, I mean a six win season, a five win season. How often are we going to see that happen again?

00:36:46
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I go, okay, So I just looked up justin Thomas's five point twenty seventeen when he won the PJA at quyl Hollow.

00:36:52
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this too. Yeah, it might be the is this kind of the last time that this really happened?

00:36:57
Speaker 2: So Speed won five and twenty fift I think it is. I mean, Rory and Rom win three like every year, but they're they're.

00:37:04
Speaker 1: Neither of them have gone crazy and done like a VJ saying or anything.

00:37:07
Speaker 2: No, and I kind of I guess, well, Rom won four this year. I think Scotty won four last year. But yeah, nobody. I don't think anybody's gotten a five since JT. So that year he won, I guess it was that season, not even that year he won the CIMB in the Fall. You know, is that even an event that he would play in the future he won?

00:37:26
Speaker 1: Doesn't? Does it? How much does it exist at this point?

00:37:30
Speaker 2: Does I don't.

00:37:31
Speaker 1: I don't think it exists.

00:37:32
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, Tigers won like eight, you know, WGC Mexicos even though he's never played. I don't know what event is what anymore? Uh, So he wins the CIMB Classic, he wins Tournamental Champions, he would he would play that if qualified. Uh he won the Sony might not play that, right, Like, I mean, maybe, but maybe not. And then he won obviously the PGA Championship and then the first playoff or the second playoff event that year, So those are events obviously that he would play. But the point is like if he if if the new schedule existed, then he might have only won three or four times and not five. So you're gonna have guys in this era that just, you know, win. Think about how much Phil played in his in his career. He Phil's played like six hundred times. You're not gonna You're not going to see that anymore, I don't think. And so as a result, you're gonna get guys that win fewer than maybe you think they would compare to a Fill or even Tiger over the course of their career.

00:38:38
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think this is a really good point, and it kind of connects with my second takeaway, which is how fleeting dominant form seems to be on the modern PGA tour, And maybe what you're saying about the structure of the events and the amount of times the players are going head to head against each other partly plays this dynamic. But we had John Ram start off the year at basically a historic pace, but he really didn't do much after winning the Masters by John Rohm standards, right, He of course played John rom golf. He played brilliantly, but not really what we expected out of him when he won the Masters. Rory played extraordinarily well at times, but as I said before, one only once in this calendar year. His other win in this season was at the first event in the fall. I think it was at the wasn't at the CJ Cup maybe, all right, So that's that's Rory's year. That's not really a dominant Rory season that we might expect from him. And then you have Scotti Scheffler striking the ball like prime Tiger absolutely could not put to save his life. That that's our big three right now, and they had moments of real dominance, but not dominant seasons. Now I think Coveland would have to do a little bit more in order to be considered in their ranks. So right now it's Rom, Roy and Scheffler, and we see the potential for them to have an absolutely dominant, exciting season, but they just didn't quite do it in twenty twenty three, maybe because of some of the scheduling dynamics that you're talking about, and also maybe because of just generally how hard it is to win in today's competitive game, even if you're striking the ball really really well.

00:40:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you think there's more parody? When did you start covering golf, like like the PGA too or golf?

00:40:43
Speaker 1: It's a great question, probably covering it in twenty eighteen.

00:40:48
Speaker 2: So I'm curious about whether you think there's more parody now than like, let's say, I don't know. I think back to when Luke Donald and Lee Westwood were number one in like twenty ten, eleven, twelve, kind of that era. Do you think that there is become because obviously you were paying attention to it even if you weren't covering it. Do you think there's more parody now than in kind of that era of ten to fifteen years ago.

00:41:18
Speaker 1: It's so hard to compare eras, and that Luke Donald era was weird. You know, there was the gaping absence of Tiger, and all these players that you might not expect to fill the void ended up filling the void.

00:41:36
Speaker 2: The Martin Kimer e, the Martin Kimer as the majors.

00:41:42
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's tough to say what I would say about today's era, and this is just a hypothesis, is that it's harder for a Rory McElroy to win as many events as Lee Trevino did in the nineteen seventies. And there are various things behind that. I think that there are more players who are really, really really good without necessarily being great. I think there are more of those players now than maybe there ever have been. And there are a couple of different causes of that, one of which is maybe track man training, which has enabled a lot of players who would have been merely good to be really really good. And then equipment, where you know, extraordinary ball strikers are not as unique anymore because a lot of people can be extraordinary golf ball strikers with the current equipment. And so you have a Lucas Glover popping up. I mean, he's a great he would be a great ball striker with per Simon, So he's not a good example. But you know, for somebody like Rory, somebody like John Rahm, who would be amazing with any equipment, it's just a little bit harder for them to get over the hump on a week to week basis because so many more guys can get up to their level are able to do that. Whereas you know, this is going way back, But when Jack Nicholas was winning a lot of events, when Lee Trevino was winning a lot of events, when Tom Watson was winning a lot, they didn't have to do quite as much to get over that hump of the you know, middling PGA Tour player who on a given week could be as great as they were.

00:43:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think a good example of this is a and this is not a slide at Hymn because I think he's actually a very good player. But Brian Harmon, right, I think one sort of category that I would add to your hypothesis is, and this has been my soapbox for the last five years, is it when you when in money, When there's an influx of money in any industry, you're going to see increase competition over time. Now, I don't know that you see that increased competition at the very very top, like the upper crust. I think you see it in the Brian Harmon range, where it's like, man, there's a lot of guys like Brian Harmon that, in theory could put could have like all time weeks and win the Open Championship. That guess who that makes life hard on. It makes it hard on John Rahm right in a way that you're that. I agree with you. It wasn't as it was still hard, but it wasn't as hard on Alit Trevino or an Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicholas because that middle group probably wasn't quite as strong. So I think that's where you see the I don't know if it's even called parody, but that's where you see guys it's just more competitive and I think more difficult to win golf tournaments than it's ever been, partly for the reasons that you mentioned, but also because when there's more money in an industry, you're going to get a lot more competent and a lot of guys that are trying harder to be better at it.

00:45:05
Speaker 1: I think that's a much better way to phrase the point that I was trying to make. For sure, there are just more guys who can win on a given week, and so it kind of is like the Brooks Kopka formula of winning majors, where Brooks thinks about how many guys he has to beat and he manages to come up with a formula that makes it so he doesn't have to beat many guys. I think that's partly fooling himself, but it seems to have worked for him mentally. There are just more players that a Rory or a Ram or a Scheffler has to beat on a given week. And I think if you look at Scotty scheffler season, it's a great example because he got seconds and thirds so many times. Maybe in a past era when there weren't as many players who could get over the hump on a given week, Scheffler would have won four or five times this season, when you know this year he got second or third those times. And I think that leads into your last takeaway. Actually, I'm stepping on toes and also revealing that we briefly talked before this podcast started, so I'm breaking a couple of rules here. You have a takeaway about Scotty Scheffer. Let's talk about that.

00:46:21
Speaker 2: I do. I posted these numbers on Twitter today, but I'll just read them because they're unlike anything I've seen probably since maybe Rory in twenty fourteen, or maybe a Tiger season, you know, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. So Scotty Scheffer finished first in the following categories on the PGA Tour this year, Strokes ganned off the tee, Strokes gained approach, Strokes gained tea to green, Strokes gained overall greens, and regulation scoring, average, money earned, top tens, and aggregate score at the major championships, which I mentioned earlier unbelievable that I mean, honestly, just to see the first two strokescane off the tea and strokescane approach. If you're first in both of those, it's honestly it's kind of difficult to only win twice. And people on Twitter who are super nuanced ro like, oh, the putting matters. Of course, putting matters. All I'm saying is the the sort of outcomes that you're gonna get from just that resume two wins on it. There were good wins Phoenix and TPC Sagrass, but to only have two wins on it is a really I would I would kind of say it's an outlier outcome, like if you played that season out one hundred more times, I doubt there's very many seasons where you where he only wins twice. So it was just a very unique season to me and one that I think he'll look back on with kind of some disappointment in the future, because he cares very deeply about winning and not very deeply about my tweet, and so I think he'll go back and just kind of be bummed out that he didn't win more tournaments.

00:48:04
Speaker 1: He's got to be really frustrated right now, and I think you've seen signs of that from Scheffler this season. You've seen him show frustration in ways that he really didn't before. He was kind of more known as a stoic, I guess, but we've seen cracks in that this season, and I think probably the putting performance has something to do with it. It is such a strange thing. I mean, I was looking at that The PGA Tour website now has this little visual for the strokes gain stats where it's like a circle graph and you see what a player is really good at when the dot is kind of far away from the center, and so it creates a little shape that allows you to visualize how well a player is doing in strokes gained, putting, strokes gained around the green, strokes gain approach, strokes gain off the tee, et cetera, and right now, Scotti Scheffler is like maxed out in everything except for putting, which is kind of almost flat against the middle of that graph, And it's just a it's it's a really striking thing to look at. But another way that I might view this is how impressive it is that, in spite of not putting well basically ever, he had the season that he had. Because we know the profile of the great ball striker shaky putter, Hideki Matsuyama might be the best example of it in this era, but we also have guys like I don't know, like Charles Howell or Boo Weekley or you know guys like that who are extraordinary or Kyle Stanley. Great great ball strikers can't put These guys aren't getting second and third place. They're racking up top twenties and top thirties. But Scotti Scheffler is so great of a ball striker that he's basically riding that alone along with his around the green skills, to contending on a week to week basis. That's pretty extraordinary. I'm not sure we've seen something like it before. We've seen the great ball striker who can't putt, but usually he's farther back in the pack.

00:50:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, the consistency there is incredible, and I think it's a little bit we start you and I started this podcast talking about Victor Hovlin and sort of the way he manages the golf course and the way he handles tournaments, and I think Scheffler's an even better version of that. If that's I mean, that sounds dumb to say about somebody like Victor Avlin, but that's how good Scheffler's been. One thing that goes under the radar. Scheffler finished, I think he was in the top ten and strokes gained around the green this year it was in the top ten. And that is the crazy part about that is that you can go and Justin Thomas has talked about this before you go to big time events and and you have the confidence that you can get up and down from anywhere. It allows you to take it allows you to hit shots at some tucked pins or some and Scheffer doesn't do that a lot. He actually plays very conservatively most of the time. But to have that weapon to sort of cover up any mistakes you might make from two in your ball striking, is that seems unfair. That's the johnt Like I think John Ram and Scotti Scheffer probably have the two most underrated short games in the world, just in terms of we don't talk about him really ever for obvious reasons, but those guys have incredible hands. They can do a ton of different things with the ball around the green, and that's the part for me that really kind of elevates Scotty to being in contention almost every week.

00:51:45
Speaker 1: All Right, My last takeaway opens up a bit of a can of worms that I'm not sure I want to dig too deep into on this podcast, but it's got to be mentioned. The framework agreement, the supposed future partnership between the Saudi Arabian PIFF and the PGA Tour. There are a lot of possible takeaways here, but I guess where I landed by the end of this year is that non major competitive golf is not worth as much as what's been spent on it in the last two years. Because the only way that this framework agreement between the PGA Tour and the PIF makes sense for both sides is if both sides don't really like their current financial situation. I think we know that the tour must have seen that it is quickly running out of money. Between the purses and the lawsuits and all that, they were in a precarious situation by their standards. I'm sure they still have plenty, but I don't I think the financial assessment was a little bit dire by the middle of this year, and then the PIFF. You know, obviously it's never going to really run out of money. I'm not sure if it can, but this is a really well managed fund, and these guys are not in the habit of throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions on a concept that's probably never gonna work. We're seeing it not work right now. It's basically kind of disappeared from the discourse, aside from you know, those weird sections of Twitter. So I think that if the Framework agreement goes through, the implicit emission is we've overextended ourselves, put too much money into this sport, and it's in the interest of both sides to consolidate, organize, rein in the spending. And that to me is how it would make sense if they both go through with this. Now, there is the possibility that the PIFF backs out and that it has already gotten out of this situation what it wants to get out of it, which is more mainstreaming, you know, Al Ramayan sitting next to j Monaghan, cleaning the image a little bit. Maybe maybe that's what they're after. But if they both go through with a partnership, I think they're both saying, we we've done too much here. This is too much money on this sport, and and we've got to bring it in a bit. I'm not saying that I like it. I'm not saying I like the partnership. I'm just saying I think that might be the logic.

00:54:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean what you're saying certainly makes sense. I think I'm curious to know whether that was always the play for for the for the Pith, you know, and for Live.

00:54:31
Speaker 1: Was that Live's purpose to just force this partnership, I suppose.

00:54:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think sometimes the way that people uh close to Live or are that are fans of Live, which is a weird, weird corner to be on, Like to be a fan of a of an organization or a league or whatever, like, that's so bizarre to me. If you're a fan, just like if you're if you're just a fan of like if you're wearing PGA tour gear. That's odd to me too.

00:55:01
Speaker 1: I don't get that shots fired at I'm sorry if you're listening to this podcast, Kyle doesn't mean any offense. I know you're a fan of the NFL.

00:55:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I mean that's the last two years have been basically the Robblo meme essentially, And so I forgot even what I was saying.

00:55:20
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I had to take it, but but.

00:55:24
Speaker 2: The the I just am curious about you know what what? Yeah? What was lipspar? Like? I don't I don't think I've said this before. I don't believe the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and Yasser, like, do they want to be in the in the business of of golf tournament logistics? Right, Like, that's that's a I I just don't really believe that that's true. Maybe it is, and maybe there's a path that they see that I don't I'm not really understanding or getting or whatever. But and so if that's not, like, if that's true that they don't really want to be in that business, then the logical outcome is that they sort of overplayed their hand to get something that they did want, and I think that's sort of what you're saying, which I think is from a business perspective, really smart. I again, I don't necessarily agree with anything that's happened over the last year and a half on a number of different fronts, but it's a if you just take all the golf and all that, like everything ethical out of it, then like, if you're just looking at business and numbers like, it is fairly smart to over to like overextend yourself and then get this is probably the wrong way to say it, but to get bought or absorbed by the kind of pre eminent organization in your industry. That's essentially what's happening. And if if that's your desired outcome, then the way they've gone about it is actually, I think makes a lot of sense.

00:57:06
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk a little bit of ryder Cup before wrapping up. The Captain's Picks are coming tomorrow. I'm going to try to get this podcast out quickly so that there's a little bit of time that it exists in the world before the Captain's Picks descend on all of us. So this is, as far as I can see, this is what the lay of the land is for Zach Johnson right now. The automatic qualifiers are Scotti, Scheffler, Wyndham Clark, Brian Harmon, Patrick Cantley, Max Homer and Xanderschofflee. There are six more spots on the team, the guys who are pretty much locks, and whom I don't think we need to discuss and tell me if I'm wrong, Kyle Are, Jordan Speith, Ricky Fowler, Colin Morikawa. I don't think there's any point in discussing whether those guys are going to be on the team or not, because they're on the team, yep. Fred Couples has also said that Cameron Young is lock. I believe that Brooks Keepka should also be a sure thing. What do you make of those two? Are they pretty much a sure thing? Meaning that we have one more spot to give? Basically?

00:58:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yes. I don't think you can afford to not take Kopka. To not take a five time major winner in a year in which you want a major would be.

00:58:25
Speaker 1: The PGA Championship, no less, Yeah.

00:58:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, would be sort of negligent. I think I actually made the case against Brooks in twenty twenty one at Whistling Straits. But and I said this on the Knowing Up podcast last week, I sort of I give him a lot of credit for the way that he in like would just became a really important part of that team and sort of he didn't do his usual like Brooks kepture routine. He was truly like part of that team, and that takes some humility, and I think he deserves a lot of credit for that. And I think he wants to be part of this team, and I think he will be the Cam Young thing. I think he will be part of this team. I think he's going to be on the team. I think he's going to be a captain's big I'm it feels like he's getting a level of like sort of a free pass in the same way that Brooks is, except Brooks is a five time major winner and Cam Young hasn't won a PGA Tour event.

00:59:30
Speaker 1: I know, you know, like I know, strange couple say that he's a lock. It just doesn't seem obvious to me that he is. I mean, I think he's probably a good fit for Churse. Yeah, but yeah, I don't know. That puzzled me too.

00:59:44
Speaker 2: I thought, after the way he played it, I think Andy said this on Shotgun Start after the way he Andy said this about twenty five different guys, so too, he said it about he said it about Luca's Glover after Oh, he's definitely on the Ryder Cap team, Like, well, there's only twelve spots, so we can't take you know, seventeen guys. But I thought cam Young was a lock after the Open Championship, but he just I wanted to see some momentum from him, and it's just been start stop, start stop for really the last kind of just for twenty twenty three, which is a disappointment. But I do think he'll be on the team all right.

01:00:20
Speaker 1: So that leaves one spot basically, and we can kind of put an asterisk next to cam Young's spot, saying that we're not sure why he is supposedly a one hundred percent sure thing for the team. But with that one spot left, as far as I can see, the main candidates for it are Justin Thomas Russell, Henley Keegan Bradley, Sam Burns, and Lucas Glover. Is there anybody else who would be considered?

01:00:50
Speaker 2: I think you saw Bryson and DJ in there just because of what they did at Whistling Straits. And Bryson has been playing very good golf, even at the mad Your Championships. He's been he's been solid. So I would throw those two names in that in that mix.

01:01:05
Speaker 1: And and Bryson. I think that long irons are going to be really important at Marcos Simone. I think that they're going to do some things in the landing zones for long t shots. And Bryson is a great long iron player and does really well at Bayhill, and that that might be a good model for a player on this team. I haven't seen Bryson and DJ come up that much for the spot, and maybe that's because we kind of know that Justin Thomas is going to get it. How how how certain are you? How certain are you at this point that Justin Thomas is going to be the guy?

01:01:41
Speaker 2: I'm probably more certain than that Cam Young is on the team.

01:01:45
Speaker 1: So I mean, is there any even any point in discussing it, or do we talk about why Russell Henley should be more in consideration, or Keegan or Sam Burns or Lucas Glea. I mean, should any of these guys really be considered for this spot? Or are we okay with it? Being Justin Thomas almost more certainly than Cam Young.

01:02:06
Speaker 2: Well. I mean, of course those guys deserve to be on the team more than Justin Thomas. Justin Thomas, if we're just talking, deserve, he does not. He did not automatically qualify, He did not come really super close to being in the top twelve. His strokes gain numbers are terrible. His performance this year is bad. There's nothing to deserve about Justin Thomas being on the team. He knows that, Zich Johnson knows that everybody on the team knows that. The thing I would say about him, and I wrote something about this on Twitter earlier today, is you're trying to do something you haven't done in thirty years. And I think what the US is always like, their mindset has always been We're going to take as much talent as possible and try to out talent Europe. Right. That's not working in Europe anyway. And I think what JT brings to the table is something that without him, this team doesn't have, and that is a lightning rod, a captain, like somebody who's going to rally the troops on Sunday when they're down three, going into singles and that sounds trivial, but it's just so different than stroke play, PGA Tour events, or even major championships. It's a team, it's one on emotion, and I realize all that stuff sounds like I'm just trying to justify a JT pick if this was honestly, if this was more Kawa or Scheffler or almost anybody other than the only three guys I think that this sort of tempo applies to in this event are Rom, JT, and Rory because they bring something to the table that is intangible. They can't be measured on data golf that you can't find in any of their numbers, sure any of their results. So that's my case for JT, and I think i've not since nobody went out and like was obviously the guy, I think I've taught myself into him that he should be the pick for this team.

01:04:14
Speaker 1: You know, this is where Live really throws a wrench in things, because if Bryson Deshambeau had been on the PGA Tour this year and had won an event or two and had clearly outclassed Justin Thomas in terms of form, which he might have, then this would be a tougher argument he is they are DJ and Bryson, of course, in the same class of player as Justin Thomas. And the problem with Russell Henley, Keegan Bradley, Sam Burns, and Lucas Glover, although all of those players have shown the ability to play better than Justin Thomas recently, they simply aren't in the same stratum of golfer as Justin Thomas. Is Justin Thomas won a major in twenty twenty two. He just yeah, he's been bad recently. But I have a hard time saying take Russell Henley. Russell Henley is kind of my guy for this. I'm like, I think he would be good. I think he would do well at this golf course, and he's been great this year. But he's Russell Henley and we're talking about him versus Justin Thomas, and at a certain point it just starts to feel a little bit ridiculous to say that you should take Russell Henley.

01:05:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I listen preaching of the choir.

01:05:31
Speaker 1: I think there are gonna be people who are mad at us about this. There are a lot of people who are mad at or like the pro JT bias, And believe me, I would love to be against JT. Here. I really don't like him that much. I really he rubs me the wrong way in so many ways. I do not root for the guy at all. But I'm sorry. You know, you just can't take Russell Henley or Sam Earns over him. You just can't.

01:06:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I think you know, people have popped me for like, oh, you just like JT because he yells a lot, and he's he's loud, and and and and it's like not I like him because he galvanizes the team. You know, you go. We went we did this exercise last night on or the other day on the First Cup podcast where we went down the roster and we said, hey, is this guy getting the team fired up for Sunday or for Saturday, any any of the days?

01:06:28
Speaker 1: Uh?

01:06:28
Speaker 2: Scotti Scheffler, no Xander Schoffley, no Patrick Cantlan. You go all the way down and there's nobody there. Who's who's that? Who's like the guy that is, you know, rallying the troops, getting everybody ready to roll. It's there's nobody on the roster like you lack that guy. And I think that's a Again, the US has tried to out talent out whatever out name out a lot of things Europe in the past, in European Ryder Cups, and it's not working, like put together a team that really cares about each other that of guys that you want there, it's not it just to me, like, and this is a this is a unique case. I would not say this about like the bottom four spots on the roster. You have to have guys that are playing good golf. But I just think that in this specific instance, JT makes sense for this team, for this moment and for this Ryder Cup. And I understand if people are like, I understand why you would be against that and think it's just the good old boys club and all these different things. But I don't know, man, like those guys really want him. And the other part, Garrett, is Europe really doesn't want him, Like they are not excited about JT being at a Ryder Cup, and I think that matters.

01:07:47
Speaker 1: I'm with you there. Well, you know, we'll see what the picks are, but pretty sure that those that those spots are going to go to Cameron Young, Brooks Kopka and Justin Thomas. So you know, it's just a matter of what we think about that team, how we feel about that team, and there will be plenty of time to discuss it because between now and the Masters next year, the Ryder Cup is sort of what matters here, at least in men's golf, so looking forward to it. Kyle, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I want to point people to the Normal Sport newsletter. This is something you've been doing recently and you're i think, experimenting with different release patterns for it, so to speak, but very enjoyable newsletter. Wanted to let people know about that.

01:08:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you anormalsport dot com slash newsletter. I have enjoyed writing it. It's kind of a look at the amusing but sometimes deeper parts of golf. And yeah, I appreciate you saying that.

01:08:57
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Golf Podcast was produced and edited by me. This time actually Matt Rushius, our usual editors, in the process of moving, so best of luck to him. If you would like to do something really helpful for the Friday Golf Podcast, I'm not saying you have to be helpful to us. Just listening to the program is all we really ask of you. But if you want to do something a little bit extra, then go and rate and review us wherever you're listening to this podcast. My understanding is that the Apple podcast reviews and ratings are especially meaningful for garnering new listeners. So if you're listening to us in that app, then go ahead and quickly rate and review us, tell us how we're doing, give us your feedback, and that alone would be super helpful. All right, thank you for listening, and we'll be back again soon