Nick Mackay on the Business Side of Professional Golf

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at B Dradty. Yesterday was a heap blast here in Chicago. Got me thinking about spring and golf. So now is probably a good time to evaluate your closet, look at those golf clothes, those polos and see which ones might be slightly worse for the wear. And a great place to go replace those is bdratty dot com. And you got they got a ton of polos. These guys make the best polos in golf. My personal favorites to the Liam polo. It comes in five different colors. It is made with that soft Peruvian cotton that be Dratty is famous for. It's got a hint to stretch. And one of the cool things you can do with this polo is you can add a monogram to it, so you can add your initials to it on bdratty dot com. Uh, check out it's the liampolo at bratty dot com and if you use the code Frida Egg fifteen you'll get fifteen percent off your purchase. So go do a little spring cleaning in your closet. We got at a little heat wave here in Chicago for the next week. I might even get out to the golf course. But check out the liampolo from our friends over at bratty dot com. Today's episode is with current assistant golf coach at Georgia State and former agent Nick Mackie. Nick is a guy that I met, you know, out on a golf course covering amateur golf. Nick was out scouting players for at the time, he worked for Blue Giraffe. He's Australian. He played a few years of professional golf trying to chase it. Was a very very good amateur player, and you know, he's got a lot of really good insight into the game from a playing standpoint, a young kids standpoint, and from the business side of golf. So we hit on a lot of different topics, from you know, what he looks for and players to the business side of golf with sponsorships, exemptions and all sorts of stuff. So I really appreciate the time from Nick. And without further ado, here's Nick Mackie.

00:02:23
Speaker 2: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball.

00:02:30
Speaker 3: In a frid Egg Friday egg, the dreaded Friday Friday, Frida fridagg bride egg.

00:02:35
Speaker 4: Lie.

00:02:35
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off of the course.

00:02:47
Speaker 1: So, yeah, you're out of the age in the world. You're now the assistant golf coach at Georgia State. How's the transition, Ben.

00:02:54
Speaker 5: It's been good Man.

00:02:56
Speaker 3: I like to say when we were recruiting with Blue Droff and talk to college kids, you know, like to kind of say that, you know, when you had your parents looking after you when you're in high school and you had your college coach looking after you in college. Young young guys and girls coming out of college. That's what we were doing as an agent. So it was it's a similar kind of skill set. It's especially the recruiting sides very similar. You just you're recruiting high school kids for college instead of college kids for the pros. So you're looking at kind of you're looking at kind of similar skill sets and similar similar attributes to players that you think are going to be useful, and you know, and the travel is kind of similar in terms of tournaments and you know, and there's a fundraising element to both as well in terms of sponsorships for two or players and in terms of you know, fundraising for college. So yeah, it's a lot of a lot of similar kind of stuff, just just shift at different levels.

00:03:49
Speaker 1: What so you're evaluated players all the time, you know, you have been for for a long time. What uh, what are your kind of favorite things to look for when you're looking at these younger kids and how they play golf.

00:04:04
Speaker 3: Well, we get a lot of We get a lot of like cold emails from kids from all over the world. You know, they might be from Georgia, or they might be from We get one from a kid from Malaysia the other day, and you know, I love them from recruiting recruiting groups and stuff like that that have access to us, which is fine, and I look at all of them. I don't kind of dismiss them and delete them because you'd never know when there's a kind of diamond in the raft or anything. But I mean, without ever seeing a kid play and getting a lot of those emails, the first thing I look for is just the ability to shoot low scores.

00:04:36
Speaker 5: Really, Like, if I look.

00:04:38
Speaker 3: At a kid's regime and they're like I finished first in this event and fifth in this event, and tent to this event or whatever. That's great, but I don't know how many players, I don't know the distance you played it from that, there's a lot of factors we're not going to know. If I can see, you know, you've got a sixteen or seventeen year old that's putting up sixty sevens or sixty eighth or sixty nine's we've raased some regularity. That's that always picks my intro to start with. So that's in terms of like looking at kids that that I haven't seen, but it's it's similar when it's similar, and I'll go watch a player, you know, I'll watch how they kind of handle themselves on the golf course. I know had it going Northwest, And I remember hearing him say something one time, I think it was on podcast that he likes watching players when they don't play well because you can look at a resume and tell if the kids pretty good, and you can watch them and tell them what they tell what they're good at.

00:05:33
Speaker 5: But it's really.

00:05:34
Speaker 3: Interesting watching how they handle adversity, you know, because it's.

00:05:38
Speaker 5: Such an up and down game.

00:05:39
Speaker 3: As we all know that they're watching a kid struggle sometimes when you know they're a good player, they're not going to play good every day. Watching them struggle kind of gives an interesting insight into not only into their personality as as an individual, but their personality as a golfer. Two.

00:05:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine that that it's you know, everybody's everybody looks really good when they're shooting sixty seven.

00:06:02
Speaker 2: But it's the guys.

00:06:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, seeing seeing what happens when the guys not hitting it great, and and what they what they do, you.

00:06:09
Speaker 5: Know, Yeah, that's it's exactly right.

00:06:11
Speaker 3: Like you can see if you go watch a kid and you go plays goes and plays pretty good, and you're kind of like, well, he's played pretty good. You know, he's done all the things, you know, right for whatever type player he is. You know, well, may he may be you know, long enough over powdered course, whatever it may be. But yeah, it's interesting when they when they don't play well, when they're struggling, Can they put together school? You know? Can they go can they can they rely on their short game a little bit some days? Can they find a go too shot when they struggle to control it? You know? And can they put up can they put up a seventy three or seventy four when they're having a really off day. Because that's what I see like with our guys or with a lot of college players.

00:06:53
Speaker 5: When they play well, they.

00:06:54
Speaker 3: Can play well. It's kind of what they shoot when they when they play poor. League Sometimes it's whether they can you know, if you've got a couple of guys struggling, can I give you a can they give you a number that you can account or if they start struggling, they're just going to continue struggling and throw throw a seventy eight or eighty or eighty two at you that you've gont do anything with, you know.

00:07:13
Speaker 1: So I imagine it's kind of a look into how they would be, say, you know, they're they're playing poorly, they they aren't playing on the traveling squad, or or if in the professional space when you're going through a rough stretch, shows you kind of how they handle themselves too, because that's so much of golf is dealing with that kind of stuff.

00:07:33
Speaker 3: Oh and I think that that gets that's absolutely true. I think it gets that gets extrapolighted even further when you're playing as a professional, because you know, I would say to when I was an agent. I would say the kids, you know that were coming out of college, like, you think you play a lot of golf now, way till your term professional, Like, don't tell me.

00:07:50
Speaker 5: Don't tell me you're.

00:07:51
Speaker 3: Tired because you've just played five events in a in the spring season and you know you're only going to play two or three events over the summer because you don't want to get burnt out.

00:07:59
Speaker 5: I'm like, jeez, I know guys, and you know you do. Two guys that were.

00:08:03
Speaker 3: Playing, you know, the webble of corn Ferry that have gone like twelve sixteen weeks in a row at the end of the year, like one of my one of my friends I traveled with and I played, Travis Pattoni.

00:08:14
Speaker 5: I know, trave played.

00:08:15
Speaker 3: Every event on the on the web one year just because he was he was playing okay and he was kind of right around the numbers for exemption and he just couldn't take a week off and he just he played every week, you know. And so it's a lot of it. It's just so much getting used to that because there's you're not going to play good through all those stretches, and there's going to be a lot of up and downs, So it's it's it's been able to handle those those down not just weeks, but you know, down months or six months or whatever it may be.

00:08:43
Speaker 2: So yeah, that it's almost like the guys that make it.

00:08:48
Speaker 1: I always say, have like the shortest memories and I built them. As always used to say about like guys like J R. Smith who irrational confidence.

00:08:57
Speaker 2: Guys, Yeah, absolutely great to have.

00:09:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's one of the reasons I find I find Bryson really really fascinating is because I've said this to younger guys too as an advice thing. I was like, you don't necessarily have to be doing exactly the optimal thing for your golf game, but you have to believe it is completely. You know, you have to you have to have one hundred percent faith that the instructor you're working with, you know, what you're working on, the two, you're playing on, you equipment, using like all these things, everything you're doing is is exactly what you need to be doing. And that that kind of builds into that irrational confidence that you're talking about, you know, and you have to kind of just have faith in that and just and trust it because it's so competitive that if you're doubting yourself in one or more of those areas. It's easy to get blown by by ten guys, you know.

00:09:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think a lot of people wonder how how do you get into the golf agent space? Like how did how did you find your way into being a golf agent.

00:10:09
Speaker 3: I fell into it a little bit. I'll try, I'll try and get the sh story falls short. But I played on tour for a while over here and then played in Australia for a couple of years, came back and got into the coaching side of things with Kennesal State. I was with the women's program there for two years, and while I was doing that, I was doing my masters because it was a graduate position. So I had two years there and did my masters in sports management through Georgia State while coaching at Kennesaw and then towards the end of.

00:10:39
Speaker 5: That, I was I kind of wasn't sure what I was going to do.

00:10:41
Speaker 3: I wanted to stay in coaching because I liked it, but there's only, you know, so many good coaching positions or ones that I would have liked to take. And one of my college teammates when I played I played Jacksonville State on the women's side. She'd been working for an agency for a couple of years, so I'd met everyone she'd worked with, and I kind of knew what she was doing and stuff like that. Towards the end of getting me game my masters, I was at their practice facility. They had a Blue Giraffe sports is who I worked for that They had their dad a teaching academy here in Atlanta, and one of my buddies was in instructure out there. So I was out there one day just kind of hang out and getting balls. And one of the principles for Blue Giraffe is then as Matt Judy, who ended up being my boss, and that was that was out there, and I'd met him through through my old teammate a couple of times, so we knew each other and we were just kind of chatting and he asked me what I was up to, and I kind of explained. I was like, look, I'm doing my Masters and coaching a little bit, but I'm not sure the next step is going to be and blah blah blah. And it just so happened that my old teammate, Florencius, she would she was about to go out on maternity leave and I had to do an internship to finish up my masters, and it just kind of mat go into place. And that's alone, when you come to your internship with us, would be the idea that you know, if it works out, you can you can stick around. So that's how I kind of I kind of started. I did. I did my internship with Blue Draft, which lasted through the summer, and then Florence was still out on maternity leave and I think I'd done a good enough job, but they were like, yeah, we'll keep you on, so they brought me home full time and yeah, we kind of went from there and I was I was with them for close to five years. Transition back into the coaching world, just this last August.

00:12:23
Speaker 1: What in terms of the general sphere of agents, what what is Is there a predominant background that most have or is it all kind of random, different walks of life that got in there. I imagine summer, legal summer, so there's probably a lot of different ways to get into it.

00:12:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is, And that's that's what I was like, It's one of the hard things. And Matt explained this to me really well, really well, there's one of the really good and really bad things about the industry as a whole is that you don't have to pass a test to be an agent or specifically a PGA tour or a golf agent. You don't have to have a degree, you don't have to have anything. You can if you knew a kid, and we saw Tim Michelson do this with with John Rahm. You know, like if you have a kid that you have a relationship with and they're turning pro and you think they're good enough, you can act as their agent. That's you know, players have players have their wives listed as their agents sometimes later in their careers or whatever it may be, or the actors their own. So that's there's no real regulations to it, which is good. But there's also no real regulations to it, which can be bad because you can get people jumping into the industry that don't really know what they're doing and they kind of throw the market around a little bit. Because that you know, there's moral and ethical lines you have to walk between that aren't necessarily drawn in writing sometimes. So so yeah, so a lot of people. The two principles from my company was Matt Duty and Bobby Kreisler, both had law backgrounds, so they started the company coming out of another agency and use their use their law backgrounds to be able to you know, you have to wrect contracts and stuff sometimes, so that really helps. But some agents are like me. They come from the playing playing side of things. Some come out of the equipment side, you know. Some some have degrees, law degrees, some have master's degrees in or NBA's and some have nothing, you know, but most most had some sort of entryway into the golf world through through kind of high level, high level golf, whether it's coaching or playing or you know whatever, So a lot of a lot of you can kind of get into it.

00:14:48
Speaker 1: What what do you think in terms when you've played professionally, there's like a lot of many tours that you could have success. I mean the Hooters Tour, egof tour, and now the mini tours have pretty much died, you know, outside of a few that aren't really big mini tours, and there's really one pathway up through Canada, Latin America to the corn Ferry. What what do you what were your thoughts and the strength and I guess the pros and cons of this system versus the old system.

00:15:23
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, when I played, it was kind of the height of the Hoodahs Tour era where that's where everyone played, and that was you know, the eGolf tours pretty big as well at that time, so so guys kind of either played one or the other. We'd have you know, guys in Texas or guys in California, based in California or wherever coming over to play. And we had a bunch of Australian guys come over and play the Hooters Tour every year because that was the only place to play really where you could you could earn good money. Back then, the money on those means tours were pretty decent, you know, we had every year there was a you know, one or two guys who led the money list would make over one hundred grand and you know that's obviously gross, and that's before expenses and stuff, but it's pretty good. And so Latin American and Canada existed then, but there wasn't the money on them, and it certainly wasn't the money to entice anyone to go play them because there was with all the mini tours at the time, there was no way to kind of move up. So I think one of the really big advantages. And the good things about those two tours having affiliation with the PGA too, now is there is now a stepping stone from that level, where before the only stepping stone was Q School, and that Q School could have got you a pgo to a part of the end of the year, which is really cool and there were some great stories came out of that. But at the same time, if you missed out on now that was it. You know, you're going back to play mini tours for a year and you know roll the dice at the end of the next year. Now it gives guys a chance to play somewhere, gives them a chance to learn how to travel and how to deal with kind of the rigors of week to week being a professional golfer. They don't they don't pay enough, obviously, but that's the same with corn Ferry and we everyone's kind of aware of that. But but there's now kind of a stepping stone and a and a pathway that they can they can get on that has the lack of a ter a light at the end of the tunnel. Before real playing mini tools, you know you could make some money on it, but you know, if you didn't do well at you school, the end of the year, you'll straight back to where you were before.

00:17:25
Speaker 1: That's the thing with golf too, is that you could be the best player in the you know, in the world fifty one weeks of the year, and if you don't play well and that that one week in Q school, it's it's you know, kind of make or break time for those guys.

00:17:40
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and there was.

00:17:42
Speaker 3: I mean there's still a lot of pressure on Q School, you know, for most of the guys, because not everyone's going to get through. I mean there's only a handful of cards in Canada of Latin America getting through. But but now you can get exempt through the second stage. You know, if you play really well in one of those tools, you can get extempt through the finals, if you play really well in one of those tools, and that, yeah, that kind of wasn't there before, and you just you had to go if you had to go to first stage. You had to go to first stage, and you had to go, you had to go ball out for that week, and then you had to go do even better the week after. Because I think, I think still and back then and still that second stage is so important because you know, it's the difference between at least having some status the next season and not having some status.

00:18:25
Speaker 1: I mean, it's even as small as small as it sounds, it's having somewhere to practice for free and play for free, right that was huge.

00:18:33
Speaker 3: Like I was living with one of my best friends, David Skins shoutout skins Eat. We were living together in Atlanta, and one of the things I didn't have during the later periods of Playehoodess Tours, I didn't have really somewhere to practice like I didn't. I didn't go fork out money for a membership anywhere. But Skins he got status at the end of eight by getting the finals, and he could go out to Sugar Loaf and TBC course out there in Atlanta and go practice out there. So all of a sudden, like he had a really good practicality to be able to go to every day. And I went out there occasionally with him, but it wasn't very often, and just having been able to do that was you know, it was a really big thing I think for his development, for any kid that gets that kind of status, you know, I.

00:19:20
Speaker 1: Think that's something that people overlook is like if you're in a minor league situation, and almost any other sport, you're going to have a great place to practice because it's going to be affiliated with a major league team and you know you're gonna have trainers everything.

00:19:36
Speaker 2: But with golf, it's you.

00:19:38
Speaker 1: If you don't have status, you don't have a place to play, you gotta to pay for it.

00:19:42
Speaker 3: You know, exactly.

00:19:44
Speaker 5: And that's that's what I was.

00:19:47
Speaker 3: The poor decisions I made when I was playing, was, you know, instead of folking out with five grand for a junior membership somewhere somewhere decent, I said, I'd always look at it and be like, that's five tournaments I could play, you know, And I was always more concerned with what the return on those five tournaments were, rather than looking at it as an investment and saying, yeah, but now I have a place to practice, and you know, I only have to play well in a couple of tournaments and I'm going to make that back. But we would say that's a when I was working as an agent, we would say that's a college kids coming out a lot because we'd talk to kids occasionally that were or talk to their parents whoever it may be that they are thinking about coming out early and turning pro as a junior or a sophomore, and nine times out of ten, maybe more than that, they probably weren't quite ready. And we would always say them like, why would you why would you risk coming out and you know, trying to get some status in Latin America or Canada when you can play and practice and get better on someone else's dime and play a really good schedule about with the best teams of the country, have a phenomenal practice facility. You know, this is for kids that are playing at some of the some of the larger schools and some schools within cash you know, stay in school and get better on someone else's like another year or two is not going to hurt if you're not quite ready and you're just you're thinking about it because you kind of you're over college golf, whatever the situation may be. Like, you have a lot of these kids have the best ability to get better and they were kind of didn't realize it or you know, it wasn't kind of running from them.

00:21:20
Speaker 2: It's something you bring up. It made me think of something.

00:21:24
Speaker 1: It's like we've seen like the proliferation of the youth explosion in every other sport with drafts, like you know, NBA, if you're if you're twenty one years old, you're an old prospect in the NBA draft. Do you think that because of the way the tour system is structured where you can't go straight to the tour very easily, that keeps kids in school longer?

00:21:49
Speaker 5: I think it probably does.

00:21:52
Speaker 3: It's kind of like the argument for paying NCAA athletes, like, in all likelihood, there's only a handful of athletes like r Zion Williams or your Johnny Manziel's or whoever it may be, that are really going to profit from that. You know, there's going to be a little bit of maybe profiting from likeness and appearance for some other players every now and then, but it's it's really it's really for those one or two big players. And the same with It's very similar with golf. You know, there's only it's really only advantage coming out early for kids that know they're going to be able to get seven starts on the corn ferry and seven starts on tour. And that's really the top handful of guys like you're you know Wolves and more Cowers and you know Norman Jong's or whoever it may be. You know, you get with a big agency, you know you're going to get enough starts that you can at least kind of put a dent in trying to get a card somewhere.

00:22:48
Speaker 1: How do the sponsor exemptions is it?

00:22:51
Speaker 2: Is it?

00:22:52
Speaker 1: How much of it as agent agency based and then playing playing merit based, and then how much of that is other than too.

00:23:01
Speaker 3: There's there's a real mix. It depends on what level. I mean there's been there's been some issues in the last year or two. I know, talking to guys that are still in it that with the the corn Ferry and and and agents or agents or sponsors buying spots for guys, and I know they've tried to put a little bit of a restriction on that. But you know on that tour, you know in previous years, if you went to them and said, look, we've got a sponsor who will sponsor you know, a hole or whatever it may be, you know they've got a player they want in the field. So that's that's the sponsor exemption. You know, they're they're paying, they're basically paying to have a player put in there. That doesn't really happen on tools, so I think it's a lot more merit based, but it's a real mix of who's running the tournament because you know, certain agencies run tournaments as well, so there's a real conflict of interest there sometimes that I actually kind of sat down one time and kind of went through it and looked at all but looked at all the tournaments and looked too random and tried to see worth these agencies kind of giving away all the exemptions just to their guys, and they really weren't. There was kind of I think there's a little bit of a quid quid pro quo pro quo in the in the industry, where you know, we might be like, hey, we've we've signed this kid and we run this tournament, so we're going to put him in this one. But if we can get him in your event, you know, then we'll have a spot for one of your young players. You know.

00:24:27
Speaker 5: So there's I can't say.

00:24:30
Speaker 3: Sure that that happens, but it just seems like that happens based on where the exemptions kind of go.

00:24:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, so like IMG has like an event side of the business as well as your agency, and the event side will run tournaments, right.

00:24:42
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, So then and they run a lot of Europe and stuff as well too.

00:24:47
Speaker 1: So what what do you think about the pathway going to Europe where you can get that direct card.

00:24:55
Speaker 2: Why don't more Americans do that?

00:24:58
Speaker 3: Probably because it's a little bit of the unknown and that you're based here and it's just a little If you're based here, it's a little more expensive. But I honestly don't know, because I think it's a great option. That the hard part is the challenge to it is just so expensive and hard to play because it's there's a lot of travel, so you almost have to be if you if you're on that level, you have to be based over there. And if that's the case, then it's even more expensive to do it, and it may just be more worthwhile monetarily for kids too, you know, if you're from California or from Georgia or wherever, just to be based at home and then go play Canada or Latin America from there, and that's that probably ends up being cheaper than you know, renting an apartment in London or wherever you might be.

00:25:38
Speaker 5: But I think it's a really good option.

00:25:40
Speaker 3: I'm surprised more more kids don't do it, but I think from what I've seen, more and more Americans are starting to look into it, and I think, you know, guys like Brooks really open the door for that to say you can go do it and it's a good it's a good breeding ground for your game, and you know, it teaches you more than any probably planning Challenge dro and proably teachers you want needing how to be a professional because you're just traveling so many very places.

00:26:04
Speaker 1: You know, it's crazy like Kirk Kidiama didn't even have Web students and then he goes over there and wins three times.

00:26:11
Speaker 3: It's just nice.

00:26:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's played WGC and the guy guy was just bumping around Web and Latin America.

00:26:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you never you never know what tour and he's going to suit your your kind of game as well. You can kind of guess, like we know, you know, Canada generally plays shorter, tighter courses tree lined.

00:26:34
Speaker 5: You know, Latin America can be at elevation and be a little bit different.

00:26:39
Speaker 3: You know, the Challenge Tour, they can go to some dodgy places where the greens might not be very good for a few stretches. So you kind of got to be like you know, figure out like some some stuff may suit your game a little bit more, you might adapt to whatever those conditions are a little bit better.

00:26:54
Speaker 5: But figuring that out can be a little bit of a.

00:26:58
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, you just you just don't know.

00:27:01
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a process. You don't really know.

00:27:03
Speaker 3: It's a hit and miss really until unless you know someone with some experience that's been out there. Which is one of the things that we tried to do as an agent was be able to advise our young guys what what tools would be good places to play and should they put their money into playing mini tools or should they put their money into trying to get through Canada, Latin America QUEU school. You know, it's all it's very individual based.

00:27:27
Speaker 2: So I think.

00:27:28
Speaker 1: Everybody I get to ask this a ton when I play golf with people. Is is the economics of turning professional? See obviously, if you're if you're one of the big names, you're going to get a big club deal, which is going to subsidize a lot of things, right, But if you say you're a guy that that comes in, that's not the you know, Matt wolf more Kawa level player, you're a you're a very good college player, and you're you're going to make a run at it, what what type of what's the.

00:28:02
Speaker 2: The bare bones?

00:28:03
Speaker 1: What do you need to really make a legitimate run at trying to play professional golf per year? Or we'll just see if you were gonna if I if I was just graduating college, I'm not walking into huge endorsement deals. What kind of money do I need to legitimately play and have a good chance.

00:28:26
Speaker 3: The number i'd probably put on it is about fifty a year. That may not necessarily even be considering covering, you know, rented home or anything like that, but probably fifty thousand a year can get you a couple of Q schools.

00:28:42
Speaker 5: It can get you travel if you get on.

00:28:45
Speaker 3: A tour, It can get your travel for you know, I would say pretty much the whole year, and might be able to get your membership somewhere. You know, if you can get a junior membership, you know it'll pay for the majority of your year. I'd say maybe other than some living expenses and stuff like that. So you know, we tell like you very rarely. See, we had a really good player we signed my last year when I was a blue draft and we had to try and find them some money, because that's a lot of money for most people to come up with per year to whether it's a parents giving it, or whether it's sponsorship, which is hard to find, or whether it's just you know, sponsors from your golf club. Like, it's a lot of money to put together to be able to say, here's a lump sum, go be a professional golfer. You know, you don't have to. You don't have to go caddy in the mornings at a swanky club to make a couple of hundred bucks a day and then go hit balls in the afternoon like that.

00:29:42
Speaker 5: You're doing that.

00:29:42
Speaker 3: You can.

00:29:43
Speaker 5: Certainly, there's certainly plenty.

00:29:44
Speaker 3: Of guys that have made their way up to it, and that's absolutely a legitimate way to do it and probably an admirable way.

00:29:53
Speaker 5: To do it as well.

00:29:54
Speaker 3: But it's it's hard when you're battling so many good players in such a deep field competition coming out every year to not be able to say, I'm going to be a professional golf for one hundred percent of my day, you know, I mean not, I'm going to do it for fifty percent. Then trying some money on the side, you know.

00:30:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and hitting golf balls after a day of carrying two bags is a lot.

00:30:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, you're not.

00:30:17
Speaker 1: It's not like the guy that just went and worked out at Joey D's or you know, and yeah rolled into you know, had a great breakfast and then just went.

00:30:26
Speaker 3: To a coffee and then rolled into the Yeah Bears club and went hits and wedges and then played eighteen.

00:30:31
Speaker 5: You know, you're getting done at two in the afternoon.

00:30:34
Speaker 3: It's summer, and you sweat, and then you don't really feel like hitting five hundred balls, you know.

00:30:37
Speaker 5: So it's about.

00:30:38
Speaker 3: Putting yourself in the the best possible place you can, is what I would always say two younger guys when they're coming out and figuring out what that is for you. And look, if that's living at your parents' house for a couple of years, so be it, like who gives a shit? Honestly, Like you're not there that often anyway, if you're playing professional golf. So yeah, it's about finding the right set up that can allow you to be as good as you can possibly be. And a lot of the time that means having some money behind you. So finding that it's a real big part of the first couple of years of I would say of a professional's life, if like you said, if you're not a kid that's coming out and saying how it's given you a couple of hundred grand a year, you know, which is not not many guys.

00:31:22
Speaker 1: What were some of the most creative ways you saw guys do, like get the money they need.

00:31:30
Speaker 3: I saw it a few times where guys would get you know, have people buy shares in them at their golf club, which is always a good way to do it. Yeah, there's a lot of different ways. We would always say to young guys young girls when they were coming out, like, look, you need to just tap all your contacts. And if you're if you're a personal person at your home golf course and you've grown up there, like you have to take some sort of advantage of that, and you have to be able to try and if you want to put some money behind yourself, that's a really good way to do it, you know. Or it's you know, it's finding busines. This is that you know, maybe alumni businesses from the school you play that or finding donors that you college coach may know, or.

00:32:09
Speaker 5: Whatever it may be.

00:32:10
Speaker 3: But yeah, there was those guys that would sell shares in themselves, you know, and have to pay those back.

00:32:16
Speaker 5: I've seen some deals go bad.

00:32:17
Speaker 3: I was in a texting conversation with a couple buddies the other day that have been around golf for a fair bit, and we were talking about, you know, deals we've heard about that have gone bad where you know, sponsors were paying them one hundred grand or seventy five grand for the year and they could do whatever they want with it, but you know, they got locked into having to pay that back at an interest rate, and then you know, then they weren't playing well and then the contractor determined they need to pay money back. And like, it's just there's good ways and bad ways to do it. And sometimes sometimes even just getting a lot of money isn't the right way unless it's unless it's kind of structured right for the every individual.

00:32:56
Speaker 2: There's good money and bad money, you know, there is for sure.

00:33:00
Speaker 3: On depends on where it's coming from, depends on who's giving it to it, depends on if you have to give it back and what percentage and kind of all that stuff.

00:33:07
Speaker 1: So it's crazy that one of the crazy ones I heard of was the Kenny Perry one where he where a like a notable alumni from Lipscomb gave him money and then he The deal was he had to set up a scholarship if he if he made it, to donate earnings back and like for his entire career, he donated a decent sized chunk of his earnings back into lipscumb It is the scholarship fund for Lipscomb.

00:33:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had a little bit to do with So we recruited one of the players at Lipscomb a couple of years ago, Dawson hamster On.

00:33:39
Speaker 5: Great kid, really good player, really good player.

00:33:43
Speaker 3: I got to know his family really well and they're just wonderful people, and we didn't end up signing him, but I know his dad was involved in the fundraising stuff with Lipscomb and they do they do a phenomenal job. So I vaguely heard that story before, but yeah, it's like, yeah, that money was probably going somewhere that was really worth while and great for their program. But Kenny Berry might have been on two for twenty years and he's like, why is this check still going out every year? You know?

00:34:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he was going to give it up. It was his last try. The guy, like I mean he wouldn't have been to our.

00:34:13
Speaker 3: Players, he wouldn't have been Kenny Barry. It's amazing like those and I think this is what like you guys and you know the Monday qu twitters and stuff like that, you guys do a great job of highlighting that stuff because it's it is. It's cutthroat, and it's it's amazing and there's there's guys I've seen. It had incredible amounts of talent. They gave it up, probably before they should have or before they could have, but for whatever reason, whether it was whether it was starting a family, or it just became financially not viable, or or they just got sick of it and didn't like the grind of being on the road all the time. Whatever it is, like, you have to there's a little bit of a personality you have to have to kind of be a professional golfer sometimes, especially if you've got to go through a significant amount of years of going through the wilderness and you know, fighting your way up to the top of the mountain.

00:35:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the misconception is that that that way up is one of the least glamorous positions you know, you can have, you know, you see what the guys go through, and it's like, you know, that doesn't seem like stuth that I would want to do.

00:35:18
Speaker 3: Sometimes, Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of it's a lot of work to get there for a lot of guys sometimes. And so like the rewards of the money that's on the PGA tour, which is incredible, is is the you know, the goal of the end of it, or you know, even just being as good a player as you can be. But yeah, it's a slug for most guys. I would say, to get there, and you know, it's at some point even if you've got the ability, sometimes guys are just like, I'm gone, you know, I'm just I'm tired of beating the head against the wall, which certainly was the case when when I when I finished.

00:35:49
Speaker 1: Uh, what with the sponsorship deals, what's the order and priority? Like the value of the different spots people see on people's apparel, so hat you know.

00:36:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, headwears number one, so front of the hat. So a lot of deals kind of go based on what that front of the hat is going to look. Like. We saw a lot when Nike got out of the manufacturing business because they were willing to pay players a little bit more because they know, they know guys were going to be playing different equipment, but they you know, they were going to outfit them in the apparel still, but they had to pay a little bit more because that front of the hat was going to be taken and that wasn't going to be able to be taken by by another spot.

00:36:34
Speaker 5: And Nike was also very insistent.

00:36:37
Speaker 3: They relaxed on him a couple of times, and I had it with Jason Day, but they were very insistent that there were no other logos on the on the clothing, and that's why you can't see most of their players just in straight Nike year and you have to find somewhere else for the logo. So, yeah, front of the hat is usually the most valuable spot. Then the chest opposite whatever your shirt logo is usually second. Then it kind of can vary a little bit, but usually it's it's one of the sleeves, collar, belly of the bag, you know, back of the hat or back of the shirt were usually kind of the last ones you try and sell, so you know, when you see I was talking a couple of my players about this the other day because I'm asking about it, but when you see Ricky is a really good example because Ricky's got premium sponsors, he's a he's a probably one of the most recognized players out there, So there's definitely a market value to like each spot on his apparel, you know, so you can he could they could sell those for X amount based on kind of what the market value is.

00:37:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, what how does that change from tour to tour?

00:37:49
Speaker 3: It it changes from tour to tour. It also changes from levels on tours. So it's particularly particularly the BJA tour. You know, for a guy, there's a really big diffference between those top twenty thirty whatever. It may be really recognizable players like your DJ's Tiger, Jason Day, Ricky, those kind of guys, and then your other guys that are maybe not that level but are very recognizable or like a like an Ian Pulter or trying to think it would also be in that category. Yeah, maybe like Zak Johnson now but he's not kind of in the top ten in the world anymore. But those kind of guys that are still very recognizable. There's a really big difference between those guys and like your Kelly Craft, Yeah, Kelly Craft, or like the guys we had like Mark Hubbard, who like Hubbs, the Hubs us on to it for like three is straight when he got out there, and I don't know if anyone knew who it was.

00:38:46
Speaker 2: You know, one of my favorite guys I've met.

00:38:49
Speaker 3: He's a fast guy, he's awesome, and he's a great personality, but he wasn't he went in tournaments out there, and he wasn't up there regularly, So you're every day golf fan doesn't know who he is, even though he's getting his two card back every year. And like he went back down to the the corn Fair and immediately went out there and got straight back on tour. You know.

00:39:09
Speaker 5: So the guy can seriously play, but he.

00:39:12
Speaker 3: Hasn't won any tournaments, and he hasn't won any big name tournaments, so no one really knows who he is. So the ability to sell sponsorship dollars on him is so much different than as Zach Johnson, even though they might be about the same spot on the money list.

00:39:26
Speaker 1: You know, something I've thought about a lot is that part of me thinks that the hat actually diminishes the marketing value of the person because it makes him less recognizable.

00:39:38
Speaker 3: Are you talking like like talking about like how recognizable like all he is or yeah.

00:39:42
Speaker 1: But like the NBA, the NBA most recognizable athletes, they wear the least like they're the most recognizable because you see their entire face. It's only at sport where you see their entire face, like tennis would be a similar one, Like you're it's very rough.

00:40:00
Speaker 2: Nadal is very recognizable, you know.

00:40:03
Speaker 1: Versus golfers like can because they wear the hat, it limits their recognizability with especially the common fan, not the diehard.

00:40:13
Speaker 2: But that to me, that's where the marketing is.

00:40:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, or but what the marketing companies see is instead of recognizing their face as much as a player, you associate that brand to the person. That's that's what they're selling it for. But because everyone does wear a hat, there is the inverse reaction of you know, what's Robert rockinoally Schneidergen's note for. You know, they're known for not wearing hats and have a great hair. So maybe because that, maybe because of that, their value to sponsors, you know, on their shirt or on their bag or whatever it may be, is increased. So there's there's certainly there's certainly that aspect of it, but it'd be interesting to go to have a situation where like I love watching like old Masters videos, like it's one of I put all the old final rounds on just in the background and I'm working and stuff sometimes and to see like Greg Norman not wearing a hat in nineteen eighty six, you know, whatever it may be, and going, God, how much money. If he was doing that today would have been leaving on the table, you know, that kind of thing. But you know half the guys were probably doing that, so it wasn't as it didn't stand out as much as Lam Robert Rock does with their old Schnida Dans does it. But yeah, ess interally, but that's what that's what companies are doing, like they like like how many of its knew what KPMG was before still put it on his hat, you know. Yeah, and so then and then he becomes recognizable more because of because of that sponsorship and vice versa, that company becomes recognizable because of their association with him.

00:41:47
Speaker 2: That's true. It's a give and take, you know.

00:41:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, So say you're middle of the road PGA tour player, what kind of value is is a shirt or a shirt getting.

00:42:03
Speaker 3: I'll tell I'll tell his story beforehand. And I'll preface it with this, but my boss Matt, when I was a Blue ger Arfe used to tell me about like the glory days of sponsorship money and stuff like that. He was telling like, before the financial crash, they had they had a guy like that, had Brett Quickly for a long time. And you know, Quiggs is one of those real journeyman guys, like was out there every single year. But I mean he was almost notorious because he didn't win out there after being out there for so long, you know, in one recently, which was really cool. But they were telling me what they could get for Quiggs's sponsorship stuff, even like his shoes or his equipment and whatever it may be back in the day, and like, I don't want to put a number on it necessarily because I'm probably wrong, but saying at a guess, it was like they could get like seven hundred and fifty grand for all his sponsorship stuff together.

00:42:51
Speaker 2: Ye scene.

00:42:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like, and now a guy, if you want to put a guy, you know, we'll use Hubs as an example because he's kind of the same sort of level of guy that's been out there a bunch. But it hasn't won. I mean you can't get anything near that. That's like, that's like top thirty playing the world money almost And they were saying, like back in the day, like when the Tiger boom was kind of really really rolling, like it was like every playoff, So it was really lucrative to be not only to be an agent, but have have a number of players, where now it's lucrative to have a really big players, like a handful of really big players that pays out way more.

00:43:30
Speaker 1: I mean they used to get paid just to put a putter in the bag right for a week.

00:43:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, we used to get used to get tea up money. I remember when when I first turned pro, the guys that I was with Cleveland and Trickson for basically my whole career, and they still send me golf balls occasionally and stuff like that, and and my wrap through them told me when I went to Monday for one of the one of the web events back then and it was being in nationwide back Animal buyot Come. I can't remember, but I was in a playoff to get in and he'd messaged and I said, I think I called him. I said, look, I got in the playoff you know, he's like, awesome, Go get in, he said. If you get in, he said, go buy a tailor made driver from the golf store. Put it in your bag, because if they see you have it in your bag and you have one of our drivers in their bag, they will attempt to pay you for using that. And said, then you can just take it out later on. You know, like the tea up money even on the on the secondary tours and stuff like back then, was you know, like a grand a week, you know, the for your hotel whatever it is. You know that that stuff doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, it wasn't. I guess it wasn't actomically sound and more the bible.

00:44:44
Speaker 1: Over the long period, we're seeing more and more players go no no sponsorship deal on equipment. Is that because of the diminishing amounts of money that the equipment companies are paying.

00:44:56
Speaker 3: It's probably a combination that it's also accommodation and unless you're Ricky Fowl or one of those guys, you're probably always going to make more money off the course than you are on the course. You know. I know we've seen like Brooks and Paul Casey and those guys go to the no equipment deals and they've done great, and they're they're an exception because they're obviously very marketable as well. But even for a Paul Casey type of guy, like if he goes and has a really good year on tour and makes four or five mil, he's probably not pulling four or five mil off the course, you know. So it's advantageous for almost all the players to play what you play really well with. And so, I mean, you know, how many times have you seen like a guy switch equipment? And there was some yes, And I saw some stuff on Twitter this afternoon about a certain certain truth believing leaving the ranks, like it may be in the equipment of may just be's not playing well, whatever it is. We would always kind of advise players to be really careful about kind of chasing money with because they're like, look, these guys are paying you this amount, these guys want to pay you a bit more, but is there going to be worth it to take that little bit extra to play with equipment that you may not be comfortable with.

00:46:10
Speaker 5: You may find stuff.

00:46:11
Speaker 3: That works really well for you with whatever company it is, but yeah, especially for someone like him, because I know, I know the Ping engineers and stuff that those guys all went over to XG and that was that's probably what made his switch a little easier. But Ping are a company like that, a really specific equipment company, and if you've played them for a long time, it's a certain feel that you really like. So jump into a different equipment company. You know it can sometimes be really really different. It can take some time to get used to, and you know, if you're not playing well, even with a ball and stuff like that, you know it can cost you on the golf course, and that's going to cost you in the long run with sponsorships because you're just not going to be as visible as you were before. So we would always advise guys like, don't necessarily chase them mine. If if someone another company is offering you more money and you find stuff that you really like with them, that's great, but don't chase it for the sake of chasing it because it's more money. Because you're gonna make more money playing well, and that's need to priority.

00:47:12
Speaker 1: I mean, for some of these guys, it's like it's the difference between a T fifty and a T T tenth. If you've turned one T fifty into one t tenth you pretty much make up the money, right.

00:47:24
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, yeah, I mean there's it's very rarely, there's there's a real market value to every level and every tool player. So it's never gonna be a massive disparity, Like you're not gonna You're not gonna have a guy in the web who's been out there for a couple of years and he's a decent player who's getting twenty five grand a year from his equipment company. You're not gonna have another equipment company all the comes all of a sudden come along and tell him they're gonna pay him a quarter of a mill right, Because it's just not market value. It's not gonna happen. So it's never that big a difference that it shouldn't be that big a difference that it's it's gonna make a difference. But I think you was a real difference with PKG because they came in and you had no conject with with the world of players, and that their mo o was, you know, we're going to spend money to sign the players we want signed kind of thing. So that was a little bit of a difference, and there could have been some some disparity between you know, what what maybe your horsal type player was getting and what PKG could offer him. But you know, for the most part, there's going to be a real market value that goes along with the player and the level they're at.

00:48:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, Justin Rose just took the han Ma out of his bag. He's in a tailor maid this week.

00:48:32
Speaker 5: Yeah, he went back to the tailor rate, didn't he.

00:48:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's interesting.

00:48:34
Speaker 5: I mean, did he did he chase It's a question.

00:48:39
Speaker 3: That's a question probably only he and maybe his agent and a couple other people can answer. But did he did he go to them because he thought it was a better, better equipment fit, or was what's happening with Taylor More likely what was happening with Taylor Made, they weren't putting him front stead up because they had a bunch of young guys coming through, so he probably was going to leave anyway, and and Hanama was the one that had the you know, the best maybe minitary deal for him or best set up for him, or gave him whatever. So yeah, it's really interesting. Well, I heard that coming down the pipeline when I was when I was working about Taylor Made, because they were they were talking about dropping so many players because they were in the hole so much, because they were they were giving away so much equipment basically. So I think they've kind of changed their structure a little bit.

00:49:27
Speaker 1: I mean it and to a certain extent for these equipment companies, that the impact that that a DJ Rory Tiger have comparatively to a you know, what's that bag on hubs all all, but compared to you know, Mark Hubbard, they actually have some influence over consumers.

00:49:48
Speaker 2: You know.

00:49:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, like like even like Nick Taylor when in the other week, like no one's gonna run out and buy a new driver because Nick Taylor was using it, you know, like and he's a PGA tool winner. He's a hell what like they don't get me wrong, but but he's not he's not selling drivers.

00:50:06
Speaker 2: Like I think you're underrating the Canadian factor.

00:50:11
Speaker 3: I think there's a spike in in driver sales in Toronto that way because something.

00:50:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.

00:50:18
Speaker 1: You can't under Canada over underestimate Canada's uh, you know, national pride.

00:50:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, the GDP, the gdpaye jumps when Nick Taylor won that way, that very well in the case. But yeah, like guy like, yeah, like Jason dayes, Jyson did is always gonna sell more drivers than him, you know, even if he wins two events a year and Jayson Day doesn't win one this year, all right.

00:50:40
Speaker 1: So then those lower level guys they become kind of more. They're important because of the the big number of statistics like you see on the on magazine ads where yeah, eighty percent of the tour you know, game to tailor made not eighty percent, but fifty percent of the tour game to tailor made driver this week at this tournament.

00:51:02
Speaker 3: For sure. I mean, and like like Tiitless in particular, hangs so much on that ball count. You know. They they, i think, not only pride themselves on it because they've been the most played ball for one hundred years or whatever it is, but that's their that's their point of pride with their their company, especially when related to the PGA Tour and stuff. That's it's the most played ball.

00:51:25
Speaker 5: So so it's the same with all the other equipment companies. Yeah, those other.

00:51:28
Speaker 3: Guys become really important at the end of the day for the driver accounts and the iron counts and stuff like that, and and it's it's a big thing for those companies to be able to say the most played iron on the PGA Tour and be able to actually put that in print and say, look that this is legitimate because it's you know, the Darryl survey says so or whoever you know, whatever survey says say so, or that you know, the most played driver and professional goal or whatever it is. That they have to be a track of that stuff. And it's important because they it works in their advertising, you know. And that's so for the average consumer seeing that in print is can be striking. You know.

00:52:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it makes sense.

00:52:08
Speaker 1: And that's what ups the value of the of the guys from from say fifty to one twenty five on the tour to two hundred. Is that hey, And that's why there there used to be those the bonuses to play it in a given week, right, is to get get them over that edge if they're sure.

00:52:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And I just don't think those bonuses ended up being economically sound. I just don't think they were. You know, I know a couple of the equipment companies issues ended up being that they were giving away too much product almost and that there was just so much product at the end of the year that was an accounted for that. It was like it was a bottom line number that was jumping out it. You know, the accountants of whoever it was looking at it. So that's tweaked it a little bit, but yeah, it's it's really important for all those companies.

00:52:55
Speaker 5: So yeah, that's where and.

00:52:58
Speaker 3: I think some some equipment company, some of the smaller ones, they know they're not even going to lead those, so their focus becomes we're going to get the best players for us, or the best pit for our players, that pit for our brand or whatever it may be. But certainly for the ones that have the money to spend leading drive accounts and ball counts and stuff like, that's the big thing for them.

00:53:19
Speaker 1: It'll almost be interesting to look at all the players that don't have deals, Like I know Scottie Scheffler didn't sign equipment deal, which is so rare for a young player. But look at all what the equipment that all the guys that don't have deals play, And that probably is gonna lead you to what who's the best in different categories. I know Brooks uses miszoino irons and well.

00:53:42
Speaker 3: That's what that's what Casey was using. But I was working as an agent. We wrap Johnny Vegas and Johnny. When Johnny went when Nike left, he went to a no club deal. He played Miszoono a lillions, you know, and so like that's not a surprise to guys like us who have been around golf a lot and have you know, know that that's a really.

00:54:02
Speaker 5: High quality product.

00:54:04
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's super interesting if the guys that that don't have deals what they actually play.

00:54:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, so yeah, going around because there's it's more and more every year.

00:54:14
Speaker 1: And the top thing for those companies they can't market it because they don't have the deal with them.

00:54:18
Speaker 5: Yeah exactly, No, they can't.

00:54:20
Speaker 3: Well you can't use the name and likeness if they're not if they're not under contract with them. So yeah, so that makes it really hard.

00:54:27
Speaker 1: So with the with these deals, say say you're a Hubbard, is it just as an example, how much does the money go down when they when they lose their card?

00:54:40
Speaker 3: Pretty significantly, because because when it goes down, they they then fall into like the corn fairy basic corn fairy category. There may be there may be some wheel room if they played it with a company for a long time and they maybe just had an off year. And your agent can kind of negotiate to say, hey, look they've been one down year, but you know this is this is the type of player they are. So instead of getting corn corn fairy, the basic corn fairy payment for equipment for the year, whatever it is, you know, let's let's put them either at the PGA low PGA to the level or somewhere in between or something like that. But a lot of times it's just cut and paste on the status. You know.

00:55:19
Speaker 1: So what.

00:55:23
Speaker 2: With the with the PGA tour?

00:55:26
Speaker 1: As an agent, how do like, how does the whole finding process work? And like, say you're just a regular. Does every player get fined in a given year or is it just every once in a while?

00:55:38
Speaker 2: What kind of finds happen.

00:55:41
Speaker 3: I wasn't improving to a lot of that stuff because they do keep it pretty close to the vest and then it goes through the player most of the time. I wouldn't like I'd be speculating. I'd say, but I don't think every player gets fine. But it's certainly there's certainly probably a lot of more little fines.

00:55:58
Speaker 5: You can look it up at the end of the year.

00:55:59
Speaker 3: And I've looked at list and stuff before but there's probably a lot more little fines than you realize, and maybe not as many really big finds because they really big ones are the ones you see like they're so do You're putting a hole in the bunker or Bryston putting a hole in the putting green or whatever it is, Like you know that they're probably gonna get get slapped for that, where you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of kind of smaller ones to do with you know, pace of play or just you know, little stuff like that, but that the week to week doesn't make a difference, but the players might get popped for occasionally.

00:56:33
Speaker 1: So something I talk about a lot is how there's no kind of give and take on the PGA tour, where like we see it right now with the NFL going through this collective bargaining agreement where you got the owners pushing one way and the players pulling the other way, you know, yeah, and with the tour it's just the players. Do you do you think that's like a pretty fair representation that that the because it's a there's not really a pull the opposite direction of what the players want, we get kind of a very closed off player centric model.

00:57:11
Speaker 5: I think we do in a way.

00:57:13
Speaker 3: I also think the PGA Tour are pretty good about manipulation of the wrong word, but certainly suggesting to their players that this is the best course of action for whatever they you know, for what they want. And I think, you know, obviously it generally all comes down to the pack at the end of the day, but I think the tour has a really good ability to say, you know, this is this is what we need to do for TV because we're in charge of this and even though it's your product and you guys are the independent contractors, you know, this is what we're best at.

00:57:46
Speaker 5: So this is what we think, you know, the course of.

00:57:48
Speaker 3: Action should be. And the tour and the players are going like, yeah, we don't, you know, we don't know enough about that, so we'll probably go along with that and explain it to us and what the options are and stuff like that. So I think the tour is pretty good about doing that. But yeah, it's real. It is a real player centric model. And I think it was you guys were talking about it the other week, but I think it was a good point that, you know, it was a goodel that was one of the commissioners was saying, like even bad press is good press sometimes, so the tour doesn't. The tour very much goes the opposite way from that. They they try and get as much bad press I guess swept under the rug or just not released, just not putting the public as as they can and as there is because they're trying to protect the players. Like that's the players of the are their brand. You know, the the NFL, the brand is the NFL. You know, the NBA, the brand is the n the NBA. But I think with the PGA Tour, their brand is the players more than anything, which is which is why they you know, every three years they cycle through, cycle through their guys that are going to be the face of the tour. You know, it's Ricky's been there for a long time. And I know when I was just talking about Rider coming on that you're doing some some research.

00:59:05
Speaker 5: On a guy that used to be, you know, one of the face.

00:59:07
Speaker 3: Of the tour for a couple of years. I realize it's.

00:59:10
Speaker 1: Crazy how they can just like that's the thing with golf is so different than other sports, is like how how it could just go so fast?

00:59:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so and because those other, and because all the other major sports are team driven as well, you know the teams the you're with golf, you're a fan of Brooks Kepker, you're a fan of philm Michelson or whatever. You might have a couple of players you'd like with With football, you know, like you're a you're a Bears fan, and I'm a Falcons fan. Like that's what we you know, I like, like, you know, Matt Ryan or whoever gets traded or one of the Falcons guys gets traded, I don't care about himymore because he's on a different team. You know. That doesn't that doesn't happen with the PGA too, because those yeah, well unless unless something happens in the next couple of years with this new league.

00:59:57
Speaker 1: But that's that's that's not a I always struggled before the Frida Egg. When I was just like every people knew that I love golf and played golf. People would be like, who's your favorite golfer. I'd be like, I honestly have no.

01:00:11
Speaker 3: Clue, especially when especially when I was playing, because I was very adamant in the fact that like I can't have a favorite play because they're my peers, you know, like and and to admit that I have a favorite player admits that they're better than I am, and they certainly probably are. But yeah, I found it tough, like I once I got into college. You know, my my favorite players growing up were probably Norman and coming out of Australia, that's pretty standard. And Fred Couples was always one of my heroes. And then towards the end of high school, when I was getting in college, I loved Duvall like he was just I thought he was the coolest guy out there. And after that, like, really, I didn't have a favorite player, and I don't know if I do. They're guys I like to watch, for sure, and then maybe guys I root for a little bit more. And when I was working as an agent, so cool for our guys as much as I could, But yeah, I don't. I don't think I have a favorite player, you know, which is which is weird to be a fan of a sport and not have someone every week you're like, man, how so and so do this week?

01:01:12
Speaker 1: You know, when we were having this conversation that made me think of this that almost I'm almost fans of a fan of tournaments.

01:01:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, Yeah, absolutely, or golf courses or which is I think I think we're The popularity of the Rider Cup and stuff like just goes to another level because you're not only yeah, we've seen it with like a lot of guys that like don't you know, and there's some guys, some guys on Twitter, you know that the dude this are like their Americans, but they pull for a lot of your being guys that they like those personalities beout.

01:01:44
Speaker 1: But our crap of American golfers is just kind of extraordinarily unlikable.

01:01:52
Speaker 3: At there's a real mix, that's for sure, you know. So, I mean, especially when you're putting guys that are like as volatile and as controversial as like read or provice them on your team every year, Like they're gonna be on a team every year, so you're either gonna love and or hate him like that, there's no in between. So but it's it's interesting when the ride a Cup rolls around because not only does it become brooks Kept is my favorite player, but he's now playing for my country, so it's kind of doubled a little bit, and you know, probably staying with the European so like they you see it, like most of a lot of the European guys probably don't like, like Saidio forty nine weeks of the year year, but that week he plays for him in the right A Cup, he's the hero.

01:02:33
Speaker 2: So so what do you think of the PGL.

01:02:38
Speaker 3: I think if it wasn't backed by a regime monarch regime that liked cutting heads off and journalists and torturing and treating women as.

01:02:51
Speaker 5: Second class citizens, it might be a cool idea.

01:02:53
Speaker 2: Like that honestly is like.

01:02:58
Speaker 1: From like a pure product standpoint, there's no it's so much better than the PGA Tour in my opinion, but that all the issues are on the morality side, and the huge issues, huge issues.

01:03:14
Speaker 3: And if if you're if you're a player that can put your put your head in the sand and not care about those things, or convince yourself that you don't care about those things or really don't care about those things, then then you might go and play it, you know. But if you've got if you've got a conscious or conscience or aware of it, then yeah, it's a really hard thing to reckon with it, I would imagine.

01:03:36
Speaker 5: But I think it has the putting it in the putting it in the vacuum.

01:03:40
Speaker 3: I think it has the ability to be a really really good product if they do it the right way. So it's going to be very interesting to see because I think if they don't get Tiger and Rory and Bill, if they probably don't get two of those three, I think it struggles or it maybe doesn't even get off the ground. But I think if they get two of those three or three of those three, then I think it could really take off.

01:04:09
Speaker 1: So that's the thing I think is that we're going to have a very slow, drawn out kind of and kind of just process here. And if if two if two of those guys go yeah, it's everybody's gone like.

01:04:26
Speaker 5: That, I think, yeah, I think you're right.

01:04:27
Speaker 4: I think it's to be one of those situations where we're either going to be talking nine months from now and be like, hey, you remember that premier golf leag we haven't really heard much about that recently, and it fizzles out over the course of a year or so because they just kind of it off the round, or it's going to be like it's starting in six months and years the schedule years who was playing.

01:04:47
Speaker 3: Like like it's it's almost kind of got to be a little bit one of the other. It's either're just gonna gonna get going and everyone's going to sign on and they're going to figure it out and announce it all at once, or it's just going to kind of fizzle over a period of time.

01:05:00
Speaker 1: It reminds me of I'm a big NBA fan, and when Lebron went to Miami. I think it was that one that free agency, like a week went by where really nothing happened. I think Joe Johnson was the only guy that signed. Yeah, he was signed with the Hawks. Yeah, so dope, and and nothing happened, and everybody was just waiting for Lebron, and then Lebron made a decision and then twenty four hours everybody, Yeah, everybody was on board with the.

01:05:31
Speaker 3: Team like okay, yeah, because they're like, okay, he's he So that space is gone, that money's gone, that cap space is gone, which means this is open, which means that's open.

01:05:40
Speaker 5: It's like, yeah, it's it's gonna be a little bit like that.

01:05:43
Speaker 3: I think.

01:05:43
Speaker 5: So, yeah, it's good.

01:05:44
Speaker 3: I mean, it's got potential to be really cool, But I don't think I could. I mean, if I was out there right now. It's gonna be interesting to see what plays try and jump on with it that are in that like.

01:05:58
Speaker 5: Thirty to fifty range.

01:06:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you might struggle to get a bunch of those guys, or you might get a bunch of those guys. But does it really matter to their bottom line? I think their bottom line is about the four or five big names they can get it.

01:06:13
Speaker 1: To me is it's Rory Brooks, Tiger, dj J T are the ones that like really matter and yeah yeah, and then everybody else it's like it doesn't really, it doesn't matter, Like if if Patrick Reids signed tomorrow, it really wouldn't matter.

01:06:35
Speaker 3: Well that's and that's and practically reads a really high profile player like who's gonna Who's gonna care? And this is not a disparate, disparaging comment against the player, but who's gonna care if like Charlie Hoffman signed somewhere. Charlie Hoffin's a hell of a player, He's played on till forever, he's so good.

01:06:56
Speaker 5: But is the average golfing.

01:06:57
Speaker 3: And be like man turning on the premier golf because you know Charlie Hoffman's playing it this week. You know they're not, it's they're turning on because one of those big names is playing and they're the captain of their team and.

01:07:08
Speaker 5: The other guys of the Yeah, they're the other guys that you're j R.

01:07:11
Speaker 3: Smith's and you're you know, Kyle Korb's of the world.

01:07:15
Speaker 1: That's It was so funny because I saw a headline that said Charlie Hoffman's out on the on the PGL. I'm like, well, he's the one hundred and sixty seventh right player in the world.

01:07:25
Speaker 2: I think he's I think he's out. I'm not sure.

01:07:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, IM not sure.

01:07:29
Speaker 3: As invited, I think yeah, I equated to. It's happened twice in Australia. Actually, the cricket split in the late seventies and early eighties with the one day game and Kerry Packer, who was Norman's Norman's buddy who Norman build his course for and played golf with and whatever, he split cricket from the traditional kind of five day and created this one day series and like it changed the sport, but it tore it apart for a few years. But now the sport's completely different and probably a lot better because of it. Because there's different versions of it. Now you can go watch a five day match, you know, one day, two inning match, so you can go watch basically the home run derby version of it, which is great fun too. But they also tried it in rugby league, probably in the nineties sometime a company back in maybe late nineties and split off to be the Super League. So they created a bunch of teams and I tried to poach a bunch of players, and they kind of did, and these two leagues ran concurrently for like a year or two, and then they eventually just had to amalgamate it back together because neither one was profiting enough against the other one to kind of destroy the other one, I guess. So they ended up just like the teams ended up back combining and it was like five years later it was all it was a couple of new teams and a couple of combined teams and then some of the old teams and it was the same. So the thing again. So yeah, it's like, that's the president I've seen in my lifetime for it.

01:08:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, that nba ABA would be one where that's true to have something similar to workoff of the US. It one of the things that makes so much sense to me that I never had really thought of it because I'm like, not, you know, I go to a golf tournament and I watched like an obscure group for eighteen holes.

01:09:14
Speaker 2: That's just the way I am.

01:09:16
Speaker 1: I am very rarely watched the stars because like, you know what, I don't want to deal with the people, you know.

01:09:21
Speaker 3: Yeah you.

01:09:22
Speaker 1: And with with the but for the regular fan, like Ricky just shot seventy six at at the Honda on Thursday, Like, there are a bunch of people that probably bought tickets for the weekend, like one of the reasons they're excited to go so watch Ricky Fowler and he's not going to be playing.

01:09:40
Speaker 3: And it's just like, yeah, it's like when which doesn't happen that often, but it's happened to lom more recently. It's like the hit that those tournaments take financially when he doesn't play the weekend is massive, Like it's I mean, I'm sure this tournament directors have just had to pull their hair out of a target playing poll missing the cut and been like, well, they're guys, you know, trying to clear this amount for the year. You know, we're now we're trying to break even or whatever it may be. You know.

01:10:07
Speaker 1: So, uh, last last, I guess, last big question before we get out of here, and then we'll have one fun one Dad, What do you think about the USGA R and A report.

01:10:22
Speaker 3: I've talked to a few friends about this a lot. I think you've got to I think you've got to take it for what it is and say that's where the game's heading. My old thing is like, it's not necessarily for like I'm in favor of a rollback in some way, shape or form because one because I think I think the main, the most important skill in golf should be hitting the center of the face, with hitting a sweet spot. With everything from driver through to partter. Everything the technology has done, particularly in the past twenty years, has been to reduce that skill. I think that should be the most important skill. And I think I.

01:11:04
Speaker 1: Think the important thing there is that the the advancements to help the eighteen handicap have helped the the the plus two plus the scratch golfer to plus ten exponentially more than they've helped the eighteen handicap.

01:11:27
Speaker 3: I think they well, I think what they've done is it's brought that talent pool together. Yes, it's turned it's turned the average players into pretty good.

01:11:35
Speaker 5: It's turned the not the.

01:11:38
Speaker 2: Average average average professionals.

01:11:40
Speaker 3: Right yeah, so yeah, we're talking professionals, aren't lead amateurs together as a whole. Like it's taken the lower end of that and brought them more towards the middle. It's taken the middle and slightly pushed them towards the front. And it's actually taken the best players and brought them back slightly. So it's kind of it's condensed and making hand just just it's condensed that it's condensed that skill or that talent pool. So I'd love to see that talent pool expanded.

01:12:06
Speaker 5: And like I know, I do it and you do it. I go and play with.

01:12:10
Speaker 3: Like a bunch of retro equipment all the time just because I think it's fun.

01:12:13
Speaker 5: And I wouldn't necessarily go and do it at.

01:12:17
Speaker 3: Like say the Atlanta Athletic Club around here or like the Honors up in Chattanooga, because they're like seventy five hundred from the back and it would just be like, you know, kicking yourself in the nuts per a day. It wouldn't be much fun. But go do it at like our home course here Bobby Jones, or like a Sweeten's Cove or the fields down in the Grange like somewhere like that. It works really really well because those courses were designed for that kind of level of equipment, or at least they play at that level of equipment, So it all the kind of depends. So I think my big thing is I think that skill needs to be brought back somehow, And whether that's with a ball that spins a little bit more, with a driver heads are limited inside, or whatever it may be, I don't know, but I think it's not necessarily for right now because I think we're on the border, you know, we're adding teas to championship courses and things like that, and shorter courses are becoming less appealing because they're easy to overpower. Whatever it may be. For an elite player, I think.

01:13:21
Speaker 1: They don't just are hitting wedges, you know, like that's exactly. It's just when you're just hitting wedges in every green, it's you've lost that variety.

01:13:30
Speaker 3: Lost dimensions, yeah, to the game. But it's not necessarily for that as well, Like right now, it's for what's the game going to look like in one hundred years you know, because because Jesus, we didn't have iPhones a little over ten years ago, you know, and now you can walk around with every piece of knowledge in the world in your pocket, you know, and that's in that's in like twelve years or whatever it may be, from the iPhone coming in. What's what did golf equipment look like one hundred years ago, what did it look like fifty years ago?

01:13:56
Speaker 5: And then think about what it's.

01:13:57
Speaker 3: Done in the last twenty or you know, twenty ten to twenty years. I don't know how much further it can go, but I don't think looking back twenty years we could have envisioned where it could go either, you know, I don't think launch monitors was something in the mid nineties were like, you know, what's going to be really important in about twenty years is these Doppler radars are going to be able to measure everything, and we're going to be able to maximize everything we do. I don't think anyone could have really predicted that unless you're kind of working deep in that tech space. So who knows in a hundred years what we're going to be able to do. And if that's the case, everything's going to keep improving, you know, and we talk about golfers now bringing athletes becoming athletes. That's for sure the case, but we're also got better equipment. We're going to be able to maximize stuff to the end degree. Who knows what we're going to be able to do with things like three D mapping and like artificial intelligence.

01:14:52
Speaker 5: In ten years time.

01:14:53
Speaker 3: We can maximize the golf club now, we might be able to maximize the human body in twenty or thirty years time. You don't know. So we don't know where those advancements are eventually going to head. If the ball and the driver are at their absolute limits right now and they're.

01:15:08
Speaker 5: Not going to go any further, that's that's that may be the case.

01:15:11
Speaker 3: That may not be. I don't I don't know, and I'm not first answer to that, but that's kind of my take with it. It's like, I think there needs to be some sort of cap or at least limit looked at from now because we don't know where it's going to go in the future.

01:15:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree.

01:15:30
Speaker 1: And it's like people say, oh, Cameron Champs the anomaly, but if you go to a college event, that's not.

01:15:38
Speaker 3: That you want to know you want to know how many guys on my team out of nine can hit one twenty if they really want to swing speed, like seven of them.

01:15:46
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we're not even that good.

01:15:48
Speaker 3: Like we've got some good players, but they've all they've all got speed man because they've trained for their whole life, you know, and they're swinging clubs that allow them to do it as well. And you know, I've got nine kids on my team. One swings it at one o six, one swings at one fifteen, and the others are all one fifteen to one twenty five, like all of them.

01:16:08
Speaker 1: I remember when I got the the nine to seventy five j I think, yeah, I got it, and they I got I think I got fit. But it was really, you know, at that time, rudimentary fitting, and they put me in like a seventy five or eighty gram cheft.

01:16:24
Speaker 2: It's just like crazy to think about.

01:16:26
Speaker 3: It's like and they were they were giving you the best option at the time. Well that what they thought was the best option at the time. The sarlfs are going to get lighter and stronger and be able to react better, like just I don't know, like I'm I'm it's and like you said it's not necessarily for the average play because that's great for them. The technology is getting better, it's fantastic. But when you look at the elite amate game or the elite you know, college golfers or professional golfers. Yeah, I just I just feel like skills being takeaway so much like I pull out I put out my clubs. I went and play with the boys the other week, my first eighteen whole round, and I played with a half set, and I tied one of them and beat the rest of them, which I'm super bragging about that in one one respect, but also in the other respect, it really made me like play shots.

01:17:19
Speaker 5: And I probably might not have beaten.

01:17:20
Speaker 3: Them if I'd had a full set in because I wouldn't have engaged as much in every shot. So little things like that, you know, I just you know, playing playing clubs that are hard to hit make you real to me, make me really engage in what I'm trying to do, you know. I was.

01:17:35
Speaker 1: I got in this stretch this summer where I just like, I've always have been a great driver of the ball, and I just really struggled with my driver, and I start I went back and started playing with a persimmon driver, and it just it made me like, actually hit it, like what you said. It made me think about hitting the sweet spot as opposed as opposed to trying thinking about speed.

01:18:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to you have to like you have to, you have to put a swing on it. I mean, you can still swing it hard like but not everyone could, like back in the day, like Norman and Savvy could go after it and Savy was wild, but Seve also swung it hard than most guys. And I think I think Clats would be like the first to say that's kind of the case. Norman had such an advantage because not only could he swing it close to as hard as he wanted to, he was really straight doing it so and not everyone could do that, So there was a there was an advantage to being to that skill. And that skill wasn't necessarily just the speed. It was the speed combined. We've been able to hit the middle of the club face consistently so and now guys like you can you can go. You can go with drivers close to as hard as you want most of the time, you know, And the difference between hitting an inch off center with a precimmin driver and an inch off center with a you know modern day three sixty cc head drivers massive you know, well, that's that's.

01:18:53
Speaker 5: My big thing. I was, like, it's it's so much more skill based.

01:18:57
Speaker 1: All you have to do is take a driver today and hold the ball an inch from the sweet spot and look where it is on the face. And then take an old driver and hold the ball an inch from the sweet spot. And when you're swinging harder, you're you're bringing more variability of hitting the ball in that sweet spot. And that's been gone now because on a lot of drivers that high toes the hottest place.

01:19:22
Speaker 3: Absolutely and like even like you look at like tailormate bring out the role face technology and like, I mean, I can't say whether that works or not, but the concept of it, the concept of it is to like, you don't have to get in the middle of the face and it's going to go straight like that's the that's the basis behind it.

01:19:38
Speaker 5: So everything we've done in technology in.

01:19:40
Speaker 3: The last twenty years is to me to diminish the biggest of the shooting, even even down to putters.

01:19:47
Speaker 5: Like the like and a putter is is.

01:19:50
Speaker 3: Fairly important from my understanding. But go back and my Dad's got a bunch of like Wilson Ade and O three's and stuff like that because he protaly wanted for like his whole life until until not long ago. So he's got a handful of those at home and I've taken them out to part with.

01:20:06
Speaker 5: And then he come off so bad.

01:20:07
Speaker 3: If you don't hit it in a dead sweet spot, like just you've got a twenty four and you don't strike it right, it's coming up like six feet short, Like now I got a six foot because they didn't strike my puddle.

01:20:17
Speaker 1: Well that's you know, it's a great point. That is a huge reductionist skill is the big mallet putters.

01:20:27
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:20:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, And then and they get misfit all the time.

01:20:31
Speaker 3: I was listening to the Fully Equiped podcast boys the other week, and I've kind of gotten into those a little bit and it's really interesting and you know, that's really eye opening. But that's one of like they get misfit a lot, but one thing they do is really help.

01:20:46
Speaker 5: Really help roll the ball when.

01:20:47
Speaker 3: You don't strike it great sometimes, you know. So yeah, that's that's that's kind of where I sit with it. So I don't know the answers. I don't think there is a black and white answer, because if there was, we'd we'd have everyone agreed on it already. So it's gonna be very interesting to see where it kind of goes over the next few years.

01:21:06
Speaker 1: All right, last question, Uh, what's your what's your favorite story from your years as an agent? You know, whether it's funny one scrambling, you know, there were.

01:21:20
Speaker 3: Some good ones, but getting uh getting Jonathan Vegas uh to the Open Championship and we had some vasor issues was was probably the most dramatic I can think of coming off of my head.

01:21:34
Speaker 5: And we cool it was funny. I saw it, and I'm bad about.

01:21:37
Speaker 3: Looking on Twitter and reading the comments and stuff, but we called a lot of flack post that for him not having the vasa ready and stuff like that. And I saw comments like, man, his agent should be fired and stuff like that. And I wasn't as heavily involved with Johnny. I worked with love the younger players and the girls and stuff. But but man, that was that was somewhere. Like we told him numerous times leading up through the year, your visa's ready to expire. He needs to renew it, and you need to renew it. And I'm probably gonna get the sequencing of events wrong, but essentially essentially like he didn't get it done. And then like that was when Venezuela was just like like literally on fire for a period of time, Like there was just so much so turmoil and stuff going on down there. It was very hard to get through that government to get stuff done. And so John ended up not getting a visa and then he had to go He ended up getting it done.

01:22:32
Speaker 5: I think he had to go.

01:22:33
Speaker 3: Pick it up in Houston maybe, and he went to pick it up.

01:22:38
Speaker 2: So this was when he won that Canadian Open.

01:22:40
Speaker 3: Right after he won the Canadian Open, so.

01:22:42
Speaker 2: He got one of the spots. It was the week before, right.

01:22:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so he had to try and he had to pick it up, and then his clubs got he had to stay it like he waited all day to pick it up, Like he was there from like a start to the end of day, I believe it one stage, and then his clubs got sent to the wrong place. I think at one stage during this whole fiasco, I remember talking to a couple of guys that I worked with, like in the morning and realizing what had happened to be like, yeah, we've literally be on the phone like the entire night trying to figure out how we're going to get him there. And in the end, like we that helicopter that he took from from landing to get to the golf course and then had like a rental set of clubs waiting for him. Like we had to not not myself, but we had to organize all of that, Like we paid for that helicopter. You know, that was out of our that was out of our company budget. So like we ended up getting in there. You might add a rental set of clubs, but you know, we got in there. But that was just one of those like like scramble situations that the guys did an incredible job. Like it really took me off seeing these comments like his agent should get fired, because one it was it wasn't our fault, it wasn't renewed.

01:23:53
Speaker 1: Earlier that was on you can't you can't renew somebody else's visa exactly, that's something then that the person has to do.

01:24:01
Speaker 3: Exactly.

01:24:02
Speaker 1: You can't go on a passport office and get a passport.

01:24:07
Speaker 3: It doesn't work like that. So so yeah, took me off that we got so much black about it because we did.

01:24:14
Speaker 5: The guys were above.

01:24:15
Speaker 3: And beyond actually getting there, you know, but I mean we we had to deal with like like the Lexi ballmarking scandal because we represented they still do, so that was that was a big thing. That was like kind of putting out fires and I did I did a lot about social media, so it was kind of like you know, having I think I think I wrote one of the press releases for that, and like just having to figure out how you're gonna how you're gonna put a spin on it, not necessarily has to live will not tell the truth, but try and put as much a positive spin on it as you can, you know. So it was difficult. Yeah, it was difficult because and that's a the thing about and we talked, I've talked to other friends about It's like Patrick Reid gets a lot of crap, but he also gets a lot of crap because he's Patrick Reid and he has certainly earned it, but that but the crap he gets his is tenfold more than if the if the whatever incident was was just isolated in a vacuum and it was another tool player that never had an incident, you know, So there's some personality that goes along with with kind of people's reactions and like, Lexie is just the nicest person in the world, and it's someone that I would would not ever, you know, put in put in the category of they have to be scrutinized for a lot of those decisions. But it was certainly something that we looked at and were like, yeah, that that wasn't good. You know, at some at some stags, you just have to kind of admit that and we go, you know, what a mistake was made, and you know.

01:25:53
Speaker 5: Own the mistake.

01:25:56
Speaker 3: And kind of and then people will move on to the next news cycle, will forget about it. And I think that's that's one that reads the issues right now, is that he hasn't owned it at any stage and has kind of almost gone the other way and been very dismissive of the criticism he's got for it. And because of that, it keeps coming up in a news cycle where I think it.

01:26:17
Speaker 5: Would go away a lot.

01:26:19
Speaker 3: Of people, not necessarily everyone, but I think it would go away for a lot of people if you just kind of embraced it as a mistake and as you know, and even a foe apology or whatever.

01:26:29
Speaker 1: We live in a society that loves to forgive and almost like you know, like there's a thing, there's a human element to when you're when you're when you make mistakes, everybody there is some sympathy. Obviously the initial reaction everybody's hired mighty, but at the end of the day, like seeing people realize that everybody makes mistakes for sure.

01:26:52
Speaker 3: If you can kind of paint it that way and say, look, yeah, it was a mistake, then it goes such a long way to doing quote unquote damage control. I mean, you look at some of the some of the athletes that went through scandals kind of before before Twitter is a big thing or whatever it maybe before social media was was really you know, prevalent in everyone's lives, and you know, like you wonder if they could have gone through it the same way if they were doing it today, you know, because like ray Lewis has a job on television and and like some of the stuff Jordan went through would have been a way bigger deal probably if he'd gone through.

01:27:30
Speaker 1: It, even Tiger was. It's just at the very beginning of social media.

01:27:36
Speaker 3: I mean Twitter started in No Waiter or nine.

01:27:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do what that was going on at that.

01:27:43
Speaker 3: Point exactly, like no one knew what it was yet.

01:27:45
Speaker 1: I think that's when it was like it was like a text message. It wasn't even a yeah, you know remember that.

01:27:52
Speaker 3: Yeah posting service.

01:27:53
Speaker 5: I don't even know.

01:27:54
Speaker 3: I wasn't on that early. I didn't. I didn't adopt it until like twenty twelve or something like that. Third me, maybe I can't remember, but but yeah, it'd be interesting to see like that would just I think the your Internet might explode if that happened something like that happened to Tiger today, because now we now we react to you know, him him getting a D or I or something like that, which is certainly a serious thing, but you know, it's it's almost like when that kind of happened to him, it was always like, hey, it's an that's been another it's another event in the sequence. It wasn't the first one that was like an atom bomb going on, you know. And if yeah, social media was was what it was today for a lot of those those scandals, I think I think certainly a lot of it gets blown out of proportion, but I think a lot of it comes comes back down to earth pretty quickly too. Because of that, just because of the just because of the new cycle, and then something else is going to be more important to us in fifteen minutes.

01:28:50
Speaker 1: The tours just being stupid too, you know, they're they're they're making it look terrible too. Like that, I think that Major League Baseball is kind of in the same same bucket.

01:29:01
Speaker 3: With the Astros are done. The Astros and the Major League I feel like, yeah, they've done a similar awful job in terms of not owning it and not me too, have been even dressed as a problem kind of thing that becomes the for me is a person that becomes the big issue when you don't even regard it as a problem. Yeah, you know, which is which is what it seems like the major Major League Baseball's done with the astroids, so like, yeah, this isn't a problem, Like yeah, it's a really big problem. It's a serious, serious thing, and fans and players alike are gonna treat it that way until you address it. And they're just not doing that.

01:29:40
Speaker 2: And that's the thing.

01:29:41
Speaker 1: It's like, read wins last week, and all I can think about right after he wins is like, I wonder how many lies he he did?

01:29:49
Speaker 2: Is his club tap on you know, it is.

01:29:52
Speaker 3: The first thing is the first thing I thought of, Like when he won as well, it was like when when I saw him, like he's now got eight two wins or whatever, like, yeah, but how many of those a little legitimate now, like maybe eight of them maybe maybe you know.

01:30:06
Speaker 5: Seven of them, maybe one of them.

01:30:07
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's the thing, And you don't know when a play has certainly has the reputation for it now, and that it's a pattern. It's not a one off, like like talking about Lexi's stuff, Like I know it was a bad mark and it should have been a penalty and whatever and whatever and whatever. But she doesn't have a pattern of doing that either, Yeah, like like she does, she doesn't as a history going back to college and junior golf of these things happening of people who've been around her for years. It was it was kind of an isolated, one off incident for the most you know, for the most part. So but with someone like Read, it's a little bit of a different story. And look, we love villains, and I think I think overall he's probably good for the game in some way, but i'd certainly hate to be the guy sharing a locker across the locker room with him.

01:31:00
Speaker 1: I think he's good for the game in the sense that he's different, but he's really really damaging to the game when he's cheating and being enabled. Like that's the thing is, like I don't whatever.

01:31:14
Speaker 3: You know. That's what I was kind of getting at, Like I would struggle as a player having to having like that's what I said about sharing locker room with him, Like I would struggle as a player not being able to address that, you know myself.

01:31:27
Speaker 2: And that yeah, and then players being quieted. It's just crazy.

01:31:31
Speaker 5: So yeah, it is well protect the shield or whatever, you know.

01:31:35
Speaker 1: So hey, so we're gonna let you get out of here. We've you've had more of the generous with your time. You're you're you got private Twitter account so nobody can chirp at you.

01:31:47
Speaker 5: But they can try.

01:31:49
Speaker 2: But you know, hopefully a bunch of New Georgia State golf fans.

01:31:53
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.

01:31:54
Speaker 5: I'm sorry.

01:31:55
Speaker 3: Like I I will say, I'm really enjoying the coaching side of things with with trying to build a great program here. It's just it's college golf's fun, man, And I would encourage everybody if you're a golf fan and you're in an area where like any college golf's going on, even like a D two or D three or whatever. It might be a low level D one. You know, women's golf doesn't matter, Like get out and watch it because it's like, you know, you might be watching the next Matt Wolf. You might not be, but it's it's fun and these kids can These kids can ball like they can play. I'm telling you, Yeah.

01:32:28
Speaker 2: It's an amateur event. College events. They're really fun.

01:32:32
Speaker 1: They're they're basically you know, you get they aren't PGA tour players, but they're really good. You're gonna get that same shock and a watching them, you know, hit a golf ba.

01:32:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like I alluded to before, you're still gonna like for all this talk about fans like to see the long ball, like you know, like I was, I had a I know, we got along, but I'll tell a quick one. We would play a practice around last week in one of our events, and my guys would talk about certain players on tour and we were walking along and one of them was said something about Justin Thomas and like how fast the swings are you know his ball speeds. This I was like, guys, every one of you has that ball speed on more, like you have to that part of my point was too, and I was like, you have to realize these guys aren't necessarily gods in the athletic ability they have. They're better golfers than you one hundred percent, but it's not because he's hitting it further, you know. Like I was like, and we walked down the family one of the balls and I was like, hey man, how far that one go? And He's like, that went because it was our practicing. I was really dry and really windy. He's like, no one went three forty five. And I was like, there are like Justin Thomas didn't hit a twenty pasture on this whole. Like I guarantee that he's here or behind you, So you know, you got to you gotta recognize that. It's it's like I went, like I was talking about earlier, it's a lot of the skill factor is what separates those the absolutely great players.

01:33:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, skill and brain the way they.

01:33:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, and being smart for sure.

01:34:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:34:00
Speaker 3: All right, thanks so much, Nick, Thanks Andy, enjoying it, buddy,