Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a fried egg
Speaker 1: Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egg
Speaker 1: brid Egg, Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready
Speaker 1: to run off with the use. Welcome back to another
Speaker 1: edition of the Frida Egg Golf Podcast. I am excited
Speaker 1: today to be joined by the Frida eggs very own
Speaker 1: Kevin van Valkenberg. We had we had a fun exercise.
Speaker 1: We we put together some big questions in golf that
Speaker 1: are rattling around in our head and kind of just
Speaker 1: batter them around for a bit. This was really we
Speaker 1: hit on a ton of things. It was super fun.
Speaker 1: Uh and we'll probably use this format more going forward.
Speaker 1: A great way to just discuss some of the things
Speaker 1: that are happening in golf. So before we get to Kevin,
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Speaker 1: van Valkenberg, It is great to have you on spent
Speaker 1: great having you on the team, and I'm excited to
Speaker 1: bat around some big topics of golf. I feel like
Speaker 1: a few years years ago we did a golf Star pod.
Speaker 2: We did that was I've forgotten about that until you
Speaker 2: just brought that, brought it up earlier today. That was
Speaker 2: that we should go back in fact check see how
Speaker 2: many of those things came true, how many things those
Speaker 2: things we've predicted.
Speaker 1: I don't know if those predictions it was more of
Speaker 1: a I think the premise was a charge all golf
Speaker 1: you can do whatever you want.
Speaker 2: So none came true then, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can't even remember what mine were. To be completely honest,
Speaker 1: I thought about looking into it that I you know,
Speaker 1: I got avalanched with some calls and that got in
Speaker 1: the way. But this is in a similar vein a
Speaker 1: similar deep thought experiment. I think golf in general, if
Speaker 1: you look at the entire sport, is in an unprecedentedly
Speaker 1: great place for our life. You know, pop popularity participation
Speaker 1: through the roof pro golf maybe in one of the weirder,
Speaker 1: more convoluted states it's been, so are The premise of
Speaker 1: this podcast is what are five big questions in golf
Speaker 1: that are kind of rattling around in your head? And
Speaker 1: this could be any form of golf that you are
Speaker 1: looking at and uh and interested in. So I will
Speaker 1: I will see the floor to you. You get first,
Speaker 1: you get first question. Let's hear it.
Speaker 2: Okay, My first one I'm gonna say is what dumb
Speaker 2: bet will some golf entity make on AI that where
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, we're going to use AI to design
Speaker 2: our courses, or we're going to use AI to run agronomy,
Speaker 2: or we're going to use AI to just set up
Speaker 2: all the t sheets at our public course. Someone is
Speaker 2: going to make a very terrible, disastrous bet on AI
Speaker 2: and all it's going to do is really piss off
Speaker 2: people who have treated golf like some sort of combination
Speaker 2: between commerce and art for many years, and I think
Speaker 2: that they're going to look like very stupid in retrospect,
Speaker 2: But I think it's going to be kind of funny
Speaker 2: that how kind of gung ho whatever portion of golf
Speaker 2: that kind of latches onto this without even really understanding it,
Speaker 2: but just sort of assuming. I see that there is
Speaker 2: already talk of I saw my golf spy was saying
Speaker 2: there will be no fitters in the future. It will
Speaker 2: just all be ai as if you know, fitting isn't
Speaker 2: a dumb enough kind of like difficult enough exercise to
Speaker 2: get people fit properly. I think that that is kind
Speaker 2: of insane, And now no one ever kind of talks
Speaker 2: about like how silly it would be to just put
Speaker 2: a put out of work, like all those kinds of people,
Speaker 2: whether they are fitters, whether they're agronomists, you know, maintenance people,
Speaker 2: whether they're people who like how good is it that
Speaker 2: when you get to know like the guy who runs
Speaker 2: the t sheet at your local course and you have
Speaker 2: sort of a friendly relationship with him, even so you
Speaker 2: can just kind of say hi, and hey, man, is
Speaker 2: there anyway you can get me in like in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: I'm just a singles you know, can you fit me
Speaker 2: in with a group that's actually a bunch of cool
Speaker 2: guys as opposed to a bunch of dbags. AI will
Speaker 2: probably try to wipe out all of that and will
Speaker 2: be a net worse for as a result of it.
Speaker 1: Well, I've read stories about about kids becoming friends with
Speaker 1: their AI platform, so I would push back and say,
Speaker 1: maybe friendship is possible with the AI starter. But in
Speaker 1: all seriousness, I think it's fair to say that AI
Speaker 1: is a form of science.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's fair. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't this just the classic push and pull
Speaker 1: of golf over the over this now centuries of golf.
Speaker 1: Is it art or science? It's just the human involvement
Speaker 1: and human error element of golf. Like everybody says, really,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the way to play a golf course,
Speaker 1: and you know, if you do follow these ways to
Speaker 1: play a golf course, you're you know, you'll never shoot,
Speaker 1: you know, worse than you need to shoot. But like
Speaker 1: there's also like a a thing of like, well, I
Speaker 1: know I shouldn't take on this target, but I'm I'm
Speaker 1: two back with three to go, and there's just like
Speaker 1: human instincts that take take its course and it becomes
Speaker 1: an art of there's an art of like who knows
Speaker 1: when to push the pedal and go at it and
Speaker 1: and not? And there's constantly been you know this with
Speaker 1: with swing mechanics and and you know, the the art
Speaker 1: of teaching and what resonates with different people the way
Speaker 1: they think about for a golf swing. And I guess
Speaker 1: the question is, like, you know, with AI, I think
Speaker 1: I think there are going to be like some very
Speaker 1: useful applications of of AI in the golf world that
Speaker 1: could yield really good things for the consumer. Now I
Speaker 1: also think there could be some really bad applications of AI.
Speaker 1: It's not that I'm against bad for the consumer.
Speaker 2: It's not that I'm against AI per se. And I'm
Speaker 2: sure that there are some people out there who are like, oh,
Speaker 2: Kevin is A is a moron. He doesn't always talking
Speaker 2: about it, so that I'm kind of against dumb people
Speaker 2: trying to use AI to cut corners. Like if smart
Speaker 2: people are using AI and we get a net benefit
Speaker 2: as a game, as a society, whatever, then I think
Speaker 2: that you can see that that's like there's a good
Speaker 2: practical use to that it's when people who kind of
Speaker 2: like don't want to do the reading, don't want to
Speaker 2: do the studying, just are looking to be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's like paying attention to like things is dumb. I
Speaker 2: can just go around to the you know, get the
Speaker 2: answers this way. That's what annoys me.
Speaker 1: Sore. You're talking about Instagram influencers who clearly use AI
Speaker 1: to script their their viral videos.
Speaker 2: Sure, that's that could be one way.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think one of the things that it could,
Speaker 1: Like I'm just thinking out loud here, like a great
Speaker 1: application of AI would be the idea of of randomization
Speaker 1: of of of golf course setup where you know, I
Speaker 1: think people get tired that set up golf courses and
Speaker 1: it just becomes well, we we like this whole location,
Speaker 1: we like this whole location, and a lot of whole
Speaker 1: great whole locations out of green might not never be
Speaker 1: used because of this just you know, set up person bias.
Speaker 1: Another area that I think has like an incredible amount
Speaker 1: of opportunity for AIS is the handicap system. M Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I know that they have they have made
Speaker 1: some leaps and bounds with like adjusting scorers based off
Speaker 1: of weather and scoring average. I imagine that AI can
Speaker 1: do a lot of a lot of heavy lifting in
Speaker 1: that department. But yeah, I think that there's like key
Speaker 1: things that human element and human involvement have to continue with,
Speaker 1: Like I'll never take an AI golf lesson, but I
Speaker 1: can see somebody AI is going to fix your golf swing.
Speaker 1: I mean that might be a great article, is he is.
Speaker 2: I fixed kbb's slice.
Speaker 1: I went to AI to see if they can fix
Speaker 1: my slice.
Speaker 2: Spoiler Nope, AI couldn't help me. I do say I
Speaker 2: will think AI could be of good use for like
Speaker 2: municipal tea time sheets if like used properly. I don't
Speaker 2: have a lot of faith, having like reported on the
Speaker 2: best page stuff and the la T time stuff that
Speaker 2: they would be used properly, in part because the municipalities
Speaker 2: involved are not always like going to do those things
Speaker 2: with the right intentions in mind. The T sheets are filled,
Speaker 2: so what do they care? They're sort of like a
Speaker 2: you know, there's kind of a sometimes there's cronyism involved
Speaker 2: where it's like, yeah, well we're not changing because this
Speaker 2: system is working and benefiting these people as opposed to
Speaker 2: benefiting everyone. But I could see some instance where it's like, hey,
Speaker 2: on this day, we know that we can get this
Speaker 2: many groups through, so the only these many tea times
Speaker 2: are available, and that's kind of speed up pace of
Speaker 2: play if we don't try to, you know, based on
Speaker 2: the weather, based on the setup or whatever. Maybe that's
Speaker 2: a practical application of it.
Speaker 1: Could I give you a hilarious but absolutely conceivable scenario
Speaker 1: of AI being used in a high leverage situation in golf.
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 1: The year is twenty twenty nine and Europe has won
Speaker 1: another Ryder Cup. Okay, once again, our captain whoever it is,
Speaker 1: has fallen fallen. You know, they don't know what they're doing. Yes,
Speaker 1: they they They bring in a captain who who runs
Speaker 1: on an AI forward agenda, and the USC uses AI
Speaker 1: to determine the most the best pairings for their their
Speaker 1: UH four ball and foursome sessions for the for the
Speaker 1: Ryder Cup in twenty twenty nine. Where is it is
Speaker 1: it at Olympic Club?
Speaker 2: Uh? Is it an Olympic It's a hazel teene hazel.
Speaker 1: They use AI to generate the ideal pairings the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty nine Hazel teen Ryder Cup.
Speaker 2: What if Bryson is the Ryder Cup captain and he
Speaker 2: uses AI to and he's and what if he's successful?
Speaker 2: Then like, do we even need a Ryder Cup captain? Andy?
Speaker 2: If a I could just handle it from there, I mean,
Speaker 2: who would give better Ryder Cup press conference answers? Zash
Speaker 2: or AI Robot USA captain dot Com.
Speaker 3: For fans, Probably the AI fans wanting insight, the AI
Speaker 3: captain for content creators and writers and podcasters such as ourselves.
Speaker 1: Definitely Zach without without question, Zach Johnson. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about the other other day out of a year he
Speaker 1: had in Twente twenty four, this had to feel like
Speaker 1: just like a great year for Zach Johnson because he didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, he didn't tell fans at Augusta nashvill to
Speaker 1: f off, and he didn't have a run it at
Speaker 1: Scottsdales where he said don't serve me.
Speaker 2: He did get ranked as the worst Ryder Cup captain
Speaker 2: since nineteen ninety nine in the Friday Ryder Cup Captain's rankings.
Speaker 2: So I believe that was my first assignment, and that
Speaker 2: wasn't even assignment. I just volunteered to write that one
Speaker 2: and rank him as such.
Speaker 1: So all right, I'll go to my first question here.
Speaker 1: This is a big, one loaded gun. And we'll get
Speaker 1: a resolution probably pretty soon on this. My question is,
Speaker 1: will men's golf accept the rollback.
Speaker 2: God. I think that they will scream and pitch and
Speaker 2: moan and squirm, but mostly as long as the Masters
Speaker 2: and the US Open are played with a rollback ball,
Speaker 2: they will have to get in line with it in
Speaker 2: some way. I can't imagine this scenario where they're like
Speaker 2: actually protesting and like sitting out the Masters because they
Speaker 2: refuse to play with a rollback ball, or suing the
Speaker 2: Masters because they say like that they're you know, interstate
Speaker 2: commerce has somehow been affected by the rollback situation.
Speaker 1: I think we are sprinting towards a split resolution where
Speaker 1: the Open Championship, the Masters, and the US Open are
Speaker 1: played with a roll back ball, and the PGA Tour
Speaker 1: and the PGA is playing endings. And I think it's
Speaker 1: going to be one of the more nonsensical, ridiculous storylines
Speaker 1: in golf when we look back on it, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty years from now, will be like, remember when the
Speaker 1: players thought it was a huge deal to use this
Speaker 1: ball that goes slightly shorter than their regular ball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know eventually, over time, the rollback ball will
Speaker 1: just become the accepted ball. Because the Masters, the US Open,
Speaker 1: and the Open are the three most important championships in
Speaker 1: pro golf. And you know, you love to say majors
Speaker 1: don't mean anything, but I think those three are so
Speaker 1: far entrenched ahead of anything else that it will take
Speaker 1: you know, it would take decades for other things to
Speaker 1: erode and chip away at them. But I have the
Speaker 1: growing sense that we will be running for another giant
Speaker 1: schism in the game of golf, this time not with
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, you know, lighting five billion dollars on fire,
Speaker 1: but rather with with pro golfers refusing to get out
Speaker 1: of their own way and and not accepting that that
Speaker 1: regulation in forms of equipment is okay as every other
Speaker 1: single sport it that are all more popular than yours
Speaker 1: experienced regular regulation.
Speaker 2: Who will be like the leading like Canada to bitch
Speaker 2: about because you know that there will be some massive,
Speaker 2: like tone deaf statements over and over and over again
Speaker 2: from you know, guys who are just like, it's so
Speaker 2: absurd we have to play different balls, and they're just
Speaker 2: they can't bring themselves to adjust too from one week
Speaker 2: to the next and all this. It'll be great content
Speaker 2: for us because it'll be like, oh, no, when you're
Speaker 2: playing the week before the Masters, do you play the
Speaker 2: new rollback ball anyway? Or do you know, instead of
Speaker 2: playing Valero? Do you just go home and practice with
Speaker 2: the rollback ball?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: And how like they're bitching. The constant bitching I think
Speaker 2: will be a lot of fun to listen to.
Speaker 1: Well, a couple names that I think might not be
Speaker 1: irrelevant enough for this, because they might they probably won't
Speaker 1: be in the Masters at that time. Top of the
Speaker 1: list is always going to be Web Simpson and then
Speaker 1: radio show hosts Lucas Glover, who just I love all
Speaker 1: the takes he gets off his rollback takes, maybe not
Speaker 1: his best ones, but if you were going with like
Speaker 1: a big name player, I feel like Justin Thomas is
Speaker 1: just like the number one on the list at this
Speaker 1: like where he'll just say things like it's stupid, but
Speaker 1: with with like the reality is is like if you
Speaker 1: cut twenty percent off the ball, I think Justin Thomas
Speaker 1: is one of one of the players that benefit the most. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who would you suggest for this?
Speaker 2: So I feel like sometimes and I mean this with
Speaker 2: all due respect, that Billy Hoe sort of like throws
Speaker 2: himself in front of the train to try to make
Speaker 2: a good point on behalf of others that he doesn't
Speaker 2: even necessarily like do the research or do the reading.
Speaker 2: But he feels like because he's an outspoken person, he
Speaker 2: wants to stick up for his fellow brethren, you know,
Speaker 2: whether they be a cushnet, you know, spokesman, or just
Speaker 2: like tour pros in general. So I could see Billy
Speaker 2: really just kind of running to a microphone to say
Speaker 2: some insane things about it.
Speaker 1: I will I'm gonna say I'm push back here Billy
Speaker 1: on this podcast pro Rollback. He just doesn't believe the
Speaker 1: ball methodology. He is a big believer of shrinking the
Speaker 1: driver head. Oh very on the record for shrinking the
Speaker 1: driver head. And I don't disagree with him, Like I think,
Speaker 1: like one of the things that I spent I played
Speaker 1: a lot of golf the last two weeks for work,
Speaker 1: which is you know, but I played a lot of
Speaker 1: golf with a lot of different equipment in that time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's just shocking to me the way just your
Speaker 1: whole mentality over a small head off the t versus
Speaker 1: the four hundred and sixty sec driver, Like it's just
Speaker 1: like wild. The psychology, the thoughts that go through your
Speaker 1: head are just completely different with the two drivers. So
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I obviously I think I'm probably
Speaker 1: pretty pretty extreme on one side of the debate. So
Speaker 1: like I want to just put my hand up that
Speaker 1: I'm I would I'd be an extremist. Maybe I'm the
Speaker 1: q Noon of golf being the way over on this
Speaker 1: side or the uh yeah, I'm a uh you know,
Speaker 1: I roll out yeah, uh, But like I would, I
Speaker 1: would just put my hand up and say, like I
Speaker 1: think like that we should be doing like full we
Speaker 1: should be looking at everything and just just get this
Speaker 1: thing cettered on like Max had two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: c c's and and a ball that that doesn't just
Speaker 1: launch and go obscene distances.
Speaker 2: Yeah. God, I would love for like a one tournament
Speaker 2: to have like persimmon heads, just to sort of see
Speaker 2: who was good in that old world, ye, because it
Speaker 2: might be like the forty five year olds or the
Speaker 2: fifty year olds. Like you always talk about how some
Speaker 2: people had to learn how to play golf one way
Speaker 2: and then learn how to play golf a completely different way,
Speaker 2: and like the disadvantage to the younger kids who just
Speaker 2: learned to just absolutely wail on the ball without ever
Speaker 2: worrying about a big miss. Like, yeah, what if what
Speaker 2: if bar Boy Earning finally won the Masters at like
Speaker 2: fifty seven years old, because you know, we rolled back
Speaker 2: everything so much to where the skill was it was paramount. Again.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who's you know, Ernie would come back,
Speaker 1: he'd all sudden be a factor and Agusta again if
Speaker 1: you could get in. I have a friend who teaches
Speaker 1: like very high level juniors and occasionally brings out for
Speaker 1: simmon clubs, and he says, it's just like for the
Speaker 1: first like ten to twelve swings, it's just like chunk
Speaker 1: pop ups and then they realize they have to hit
Speaker 1: the center and they then they start ripping. But he's like,
Speaker 1: he's like the most amusic thing as someone who grew
Speaker 1: up playing a small head, you know, hit him is
Speaker 1: like watching them just like hit chunk pop ups for
Speaker 1: ten swings before they figure out the club.
Speaker 2: God, that's good stuff. Yeah. I have swung one just
Speaker 2: occasionally here and there, and it's even you know, for
Speaker 2: someone at my skill level, it's even worse. Obviously, it's
Speaker 2: just it's like toe nicks that they're screaming, you know,
Speaker 2: fifty yards, right.
Speaker 1: I see. I think, I don't know, maybe I'm I'm
Speaker 1: off base here. I think like one of the things
Speaker 1: that kills mediocre golfers is the big miss.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the thing about the old equipment is that there
Speaker 1: there were no big misses. When you miss the sweet spot,
Speaker 1: it just gets on the ground and it rolls like
Speaker 1: if I can only go one hundred and twenty yards,
Speaker 1: but it's only like, you know, twenty yards off the fairway.
Speaker 1: It's not eighty yards in the wrong direction like the
Speaker 1: modern equipment, you know.
Speaker 2: And I have two sets of blades just for like
Speaker 2: goofing around times whatever. And I truly feel like the
Speaker 2: biggest myth in golf is like that the game improvement
Speaker 2: irons will like improve your score because I will take
Speaker 2: them out all the time and shoot very similar scores.
Speaker 2: Like I it's just remarkable how much better I know,
Speaker 2: like where the ball is gonna miss, Like, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: gonna be short, right, and that's fine, like or you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's never gonna trampoline twenty yards over the green
Speaker 2: or catch a fly in this sense, like I just
Speaker 2: I swing more under control. I honestly, if I played
Speaker 2: with blades all the time, I think I'd choot about
Speaker 2: similar scores. Some days would be great, some days would
Speaker 2: be fine, some days bad.
Speaker 1: See I I'm so I've shot some really great scores
Speaker 1: with with blades in per seven in recent years, like
Speaker 1: some really great golf, played some great golf rounds with it.
Speaker 1: To me, like the difference between them, so like if
Speaker 1: you did if you went back to you know, if
Speaker 1: you waved a wand if we were cizarre former font
Speaker 1: if we've just waved a wand and it was persimon
Speaker 1: and blades Like I don't think like people's low scores
Speaker 1: and like their ability to break ninety or eighty or
Speaker 1: seventy whatever that is, would would drastically change. I think
Speaker 1: the frequency, Like what what you would see is a
Speaker 1: lot more score variance. It would be a lot harder
Speaker 1: to be consistent in a level. Like to me, what
Speaker 1: happens for me, and this is just a personal anecdote,
Speaker 1: is that I shoot a lot less rounds of like
Speaker 1: one or two over, and I shoot a lot more
Speaker 1: rounds of like six over. And it's like what happens
Speaker 1: with modern technology for me, is it masks when I'm
Speaker 1: playing mediocre golf and when I'm swinging kind of average,
Speaker 1: is is it? It kind of masks it? And I'm
Speaker 1: still able to get the ball around. And it's because like, oh,
Speaker 1: like I just I have ledges a lot, and it's
Speaker 1: not you know, it's not showing them hitting the driver
Speaker 1: like off the heel every time, and it's pretty gnarly,
Speaker 1: but it's still going, you know, relatively straight and far.
Speaker 2: I just think what it does for me is like
Speaker 2: takes ego out of the equation. It's like, well, I
Speaker 2: know I can't like hit this seven iron like one eighty.
Speaker 2: I have to like this might be one fifty the
Speaker 2: seven iron, And I just like when you're playing blades,
Speaker 2: you're like, yeah, that's no big deal because that's their blades.
Speaker 2: And so you say up to more and then instead
Speaker 2: of being like, oh, this is my number, I'm going
Speaker 2: to hit this uh, and you're just like, it becomes
Speaker 2: more about feel and.
Speaker 1: At the pro level, we would just see exponentially more
Speaker 1: shot making, which is the real appeal of those clubs.
Speaker 1: You can turn the ball right to left, left or right.
Speaker 1: They would have longer clubs into into greens, which would
Speaker 1: yield more unique shots, more possible outcomes. And yeah, but
Speaker 1: I think we're running the opposite direction right now, keV.
Speaker 1: That's my that's my ear to the ground. We are.
Speaker 1: We are sprinting towards towards schism, which has always done
Speaker 1: golf well.
Speaker 2: They'd have they'd have more unique shots unless AI told
Speaker 2: them to hit it, you know, a certain way, that
Speaker 2: they didn't need to go for it because you know,
Speaker 2: their cone was a certain direction.
Speaker 1: The PA tours in an early adopter. They the setup tool,
Speaker 1: They had the bot years ago that wrote the articles.
Speaker 2: Right putts it was sixty six.
Speaker 1: They could do a press release and say, AI told
Speaker 1: us not to roll back the ball.
Speaker 2: We simulated the season with the rollback ball and audience
Speaker 2: audience dipped significantly. So we're not moving forward with this.
Speaker 1: The model, the models not to do this. What's your
Speaker 1: next question?
Speaker 2: All right? My next one would be how will golf
Speaker 2: handle its first true cheating or gambling scandal when it
Speaker 2: comes about Football has had its own gambling scandal dating
Speaker 2: way back to said multiple ones, but like Paul Horning
Speaker 2: and Alex Karras being suspended for betting on NFL games
Speaker 2: Calvin Ridley suspended obviously for betting on like the Fando
Speaker 2: apps whatever a year. Baseball obviously has had their scandals
Speaker 2: black socks, Pete Rose, even Showhey and his interpreter thing.
Speaker 2: NBA just had their gambling scannel. Tennis has had ton
Speaker 2: to match fixing. Soccer is just rife with Max Max
Speaker 2: fix fixing all over the world. Golf has so far
Speaker 2: been kind of immune to this, but there's too much
Speaker 2: money involved now for someone to not be tempted. There's
Speaker 2: too many kind of smaller tours that don't quite have
Speaker 2: as much oversight and regulation. Someone is going to get caught,
Speaker 2: get nailed, either shaving strokes or you know, throwing a
Speaker 2: tournament or or in some way like Joseph has talked
Speaker 2: about throwing some of these head to head uh, you
Speaker 2: know matchups that they have. They're particularly popular, you know
Speaker 2: in in the in British isles. I think that is
Speaker 2: coming and how will golf react to it? You know,
Speaker 2: it's always been sort of it's a game of honor,
Speaker 2: no one would ever cheat, but that's just bs Like,
Speaker 2: we know that this is coming and what the reaction
Speaker 2: will be. What I guess guardrails will be put up
Speaker 2: is quite compelling to me.
Speaker 1: The biggest farce of of men's pro golf is the
Speaker 1: holding on to golf as a game of honor. It
Speaker 1: is the biggest like illusion. And I think like Patrick
Speaker 1: Reed obviously was like a lightning rod, and he was
Speaker 1: a big name player who who people didn't necessarily like.
Speaker 1: I don't think he was the only one on tour
Speaker 1: that has done some of the things that he allegedly did.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to I want to make sure
Speaker 1: that there's no lawsuits coming by way. Uh, but the
Speaker 1: I would I would say that like that is going
Speaker 1: on more often than people think. Anytime tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars are at steak, people cheat and in the
Speaker 1: with the gambling aspect, there are tens of millions of
Speaker 1: dollars at steak that aren't even in the tournament. Yep,
Speaker 1: every week on on these pro golf tournaments. And I
Speaker 1: think something that Joseph has hit on that is so true.
Speaker 1: If you're a player in a head to head and
Speaker 1: you are speeding towards a miscut, it's really easy to
Speaker 1: just miss a couple short putts and ensure that you
Speaker 1: like whoops. It's really it's really easy to launch one
Speaker 1: out of bounds without like you can't like nobody's gonna
Speaker 1: prove intent like on the spot without the paper trail.
Speaker 1: Like the paper trail, to me, is the only way
Speaker 1: that these are gonna get caught because like golf's a
Speaker 1: game where like out of people just spray one out
Speaker 1: of the blue. That's like the nature of the sport.
Speaker 1: You miss short putts, like it's not a one that's
Speaker 1: like easy to pick up. I think like the NBA,
Speaker 1: like when you're watching tape can be a little bit easier,
Speaker 1: like oh, this guy like literally just like dogged the
Speaker 1: defensive rope tation and just like let the guy score.
Speaker 1: You know, it can be easier to pick up on
Speaker 1: the patterns. But with golf, like you know, it's such
Speaker 1: a highly variable sport with like extremely high variance shot
Speaker 1: to shot that it can make masking this really difficult.
Speaker 1: I think the only way the sport can can you know,
Speaker 1: survive widespread issues with this is when it happened, they
Speaker 1: have to lower the boom and it has to be
Speaker 1: like a you're out for good.
Speaker 2: And that's what I don't know that I have full
Speaker 2: confidence in, like because of golf being fractured a little bit.
Speaker 2: Like if someone you know on the PGA tour got
Speaker 2: you know, accused of a huge gim thing, if they
Speaker 2: were big enough name would like, would Live Golf take
Speaker 2: them in and be like, yeah, we like the bad
Speaker 2: boys over here, you know what we think it's you know,
Speaker 2: the guys just trying to get an edge. I probably not,
Speaker 2: Probably the players on Live would be livid if that happened.
Speaker 2: But I also think like, if you coming from a
Speaker 2: perspective that's not you know, traditional golf, it's easier to say, like,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll take them on, Like people want to
Speaker 2: see this guy, you know, hit dingers over here, and
Speaker 2: so you're right, like, I think that the hammer would
Speaker 2: have to come down really hard and it you know,
Speaker 2: would they instead try to cover it up? You know?
Speaker 2: I think that there's there's a lot of allegations that
Speaker 2: out there that VJ saying raised that you know, certain
Speaker 2: medical records, certain you know things people testing positive for,
Speaker 2: certain things were never actually were covered up by you
Speaker 2: know places, and those that lawsuit had to be settled
Speaker 2: right on the time it was about to sort of
Speaker 2: go into you know, actual trial. Sort of a shame
Speaker 2: that VJ pulled that plane up before he was like
Speaker 2: really willing to go forward with it. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's it's hard to say that golf
Speaker 2: would choose like the the we're going to choose integrity
Speaker 2: here when I think there's some evidence that maybe they
Speaker 2: have not in the past.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like a whole another ball wax
Speaker 1: with the tour and they've run into the arms of
Speaker 1: gambler gambling sites of all this, and they're the least
Speaker 1: transparent league. And you see this like what's happening with
Speaker 1: the Lamar Jackson when they they people feel like they
Speaker 1: falsified his his yea, his practice reporting to make it
Speaker 1: seem like he's playing, and then he's not playing and
Speaker 1: people can't get out of their bets even though he's
Speaker 1: still won. They still won the bet against my lowly bears.
Speaker 1: But like this is golf has its own problem with
Speaker 1: like injury reporting, where you see this happen all the
Speaker 1: time as somebody wd's with like a shoulder injury and
Speaker 1: then they're like, yeah, I mean it's been bugging me
Speaker 1: for you know, the last couple of days, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: like if you're going to be all in on gambling.
Speaker 1: The gamblers need to know that you're you're nursing a
Speaker 1: shoulder injury. And instead golf so always been a black
Speaker 1: box sport and I think.
Speaker 2: Didn't wonder risk. Speith hid that wrist injury for like
Speaker 2: a whole year. It was like, no, it's fine. I
Speaker 2: just I just pop it back into place like everything's fine,
Speaker 2: and then no, no, I have to get surgery on it.
Speaker 2: This is why gambling is terrible. Idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's well, I think like one of the things
Speaker 1: the reality, Like I I wouldn't be shocked if golf's
Speaker 1: already had gambling incidents that we don't even know about,
Speaker 1: because that's how black box and closed off they keep
Speaker 1: these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Remember years ago Phil got a fine for betting
Speaker 2: that Jim Furick was going to chip in on a hole.
Speaker 2: He was like sitting in the clubhouse. It's like, I'll
Speaker 2: bet you know, one hundred dollars that Furick makes this
Speaker 2: or whatever with somebody, and he he got a big
Speaker 2: slap on the wrist from the tour. It was like,
Speaker 2: you know, definitely, do not do this. I don't know why,
Speaker 2: like probably just because it was Phil. He went and
Speaker 2: shared that with some some other person. It was a
Speaker 2: reporter or shared it with someone. How it got out,
Speaker 2: but that was one of the things I'm remember and
Speaker 2: certainly that wasn't the first time that Phil you know,
Speaker 2: was gambling on professional sports and ran afoul with certain people.
Speaker 1: So all right, I've got a I'll change the discourse here.
Speaker 1: I've got more pro golf ones that I'll get to.
Speaker 1: But something I've been thinking about is, like, what happens,
Speaker 1: you know, record high participation? Golf's never been cooler. I mean, yep,
Speaker 1: it's honestly unbelievable. I say this as as a kid
Speaker 1: who grew up playing golf, played high school.
Speaker 2: Golf extremely cool.
Speaker 1: Were you played high school golf on like a very
Speaker 1: good high school team? And I went to college and
Speaker 1: I was ridiculed because I was a golfer. I mean,
Speaker 1: like literally ridiculed. And then all my friends said, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry in their thirties when they started playing golf, I
Speaker 1: wish I had played golf when I was younger. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that we've made fun of you for being a golfer.
Speaker 1: I say this because now the sport is cool. It
Speaker 1: is is very neat A question that keeps me keeps
Speaker 1: me up at night? Is that, you know? And and
Speaker 1: I think likest like I'm not necessarily worried for my
Speaker 1: own you know, interest of owning a business in golf,
Speaker 1: Like I our audience, I don't is diehard golfers there.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're like going away if they if
Speaker 1: there's a market downturn, they might play less golf, but
Speaker 1: they aren't gonna like care about golf less. But I
Speaker 1: do wonder if if there is financially, if there's financial
Speaker 1: stress and and there is the you know, the downturn
Speaker 1: that has been talked about for for a number of
Speaker 1: years now coming, what happens to golf participation is it it?
Speaker 1: It obviously will go down because it is a disposable
Speaker 1: income luxury you know kind of spend. But will it
Speaker 1: crater the way it did, you know in past financial downturns.
Speaker 2: I think that's a great question. I wonder if the
Speaker 2: floor has been raised to the point where like there's
Speaker 2: so many more people playing kind of municipal golf, to
Speaker 2: where that will still feel affordable to people like it's
Speaker 2: that it will hurt the the mid level courses you
Speaker 2: know that are charging one hundred and fifty bucks or
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty five bucks or I just saw
Speaker 2: an insane Jack Nicholas course. It was four hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty bucks, you know. So it's it's not even the
Speaker 2: country club private life. It's the sort of you know,
Speaker 2: mid level courses that are in between country clubs and
Speaker 2: municipals that would suffer in that sense. The one thing
Speaker 2: I always think about in this, like, if there is
Speaker 2: a golf recession, will there be a net good in
Speaker 2: some ways from that, because there's a lot of people
Speaker 2: playing golf right now who didn't grow up with the
Speaker 2: game like the way that you did, even the way
Speaker 2: that I did, where my parents played golf and taught
Speaker 2: me etiquette, taught me the rules and taught me to
Speaker 2: kind of be respectful and not be a jackass during
Speaker 2: other people playing and stuff. I think what you saw
Speaker 2: a little bit at the Ryder Cup was a little
Speaker 2: bit of the downside of this huge boom and grow
Speaker 2: the game mentality of the people who treated it like man,
Speaker 2: this is just like, why is this any different than
Speaker 2: a football game? Why can't I scream crazy shit like
Speaker 2: this isn't this is just sports? Like you're soft if
Speaker 2: you think that I shouldn't be able to make fun
Speaker 2: of Rory and his family or whatever. And so you know,
Speaker 2: there's like overall, if you're not growing, you're in trouble
Speaker 2: as a business, as an entity, right, And so golf
Speaker 2: is kind of taking that mentality. We've got to grow
Speaker 2: the game, got to go to the game. I kind
Speaker 2: of wonder if we haven't reached a point where maybe
Speaker 2: it wouldn't be the worst thing if there was a
Speaker 2: little bit of aggression. You know, that sounds snotty, but
Speaker 2: it also is just very frustrating to have a six
Speaker 2: hour round at my forty five dollars UNI and people
Speaker 2: are you know, hitting five balls off the tee and
Speaker 2: taking hacks out of the green and like being generally knuckleheads,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to run each other over with carts occasionally,
Speaker 2: Like I don't, I don't know that I love that
Speaker 2: growth of the game.
Speaker 1: I think the the reality is that golf in certain
Speaker 1: markets is very over subscribed and it's mostly public. You know,
Speaker 1: most of the new development has been destination private golf.
Speaker 1: And but when you look at destination golf and like,
Speaker 1: you don't you know, and obviously the Kaisers are at
Speaker 1: the top of the market with dream golf, which is
Speaker 1: you know, banded dunes in Sand Valley, Like they are
Speaker 1: so over subscribed with demand. And then if you look
Speaker 1: at you know, your rustic canyons of the world, the
Speaker 1: Rancho parks, the best pages of the world, they're over
Speaker 1: subscribed with demand. I think the demand for quality golf
Speaker 1: has never been higher on the public side, and I
Speaker 1: think it's set up. You know, obviously, the more people
Speaker 1: that are playing golf, the better setup you are for
Speaker 1: a downturn. But I think there is a level of
Speaker 1: golf that is over subscribed, Like I would imagine that,
Speaker 1: like you're doing a lot of things wrong at this
Speaker 1: point if your golf courses is struggling in this segment
Speaker 1: of golf, Like, I think it's been a good time
Speaker 1: for all you know, public golf courses, which is like
Speaker 1: really rare for like an entire industry to just like
Speaker 1: everybody's winning and there's like and there's nobody that is
Speaker 1: losing big because the demand is so outside the supply.
Speaker 1: So I think you could make an argument that golf
Speaker 1: right now like but like also like you could look
Speaker 1: at it from the other lens of like if you
Speaker 1: wanted to build golf courses right now. It's never been
Speaker 1: like more economically crazy and impossible to build a golf
Speaker 1: course that remains affordable by like most people standards, like
Speaker 1: it is. I think it might be impossible to build
Speaker 1: an eighteen hole golf course that you could charge fifty
Speaker 1: dollars around it. Yeah, like I don't think you can
Speaker 1: build a new course for that, and so like, in
Speaker 1: a way, I think golf is actually okay because the
Speaker 1: demand is so outsized the supply, and if there was
Speaker 1: a downturn, it would actually act like more of a
Speaker 1: normal market, where hey, we lose some of these businesses
Speaker 1: because they're just frankly not running a good business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting you say about the kaisers. This is
Speaker 2: only like tangentially related. But I'd say barely a week
Speaker 2: goes by that I don't get an email from somebody
Speaker 2: who's like very frustrated about the abandon like lottery system.
Speaker 2: And I think that's an example of like how demand
Speaker 2: has grown so significant that they had to go to
Speaker 2: a lottery system or felt they had to go to one,
Speaker 2: and now people feel like, man, it's just this is
Speaker 2: occurring in this shadowy box over here. I apply three
Speaker 2: times a year to get to go to Abandon and
Speaker 2: I can't get picked in this lottery? What is going on?
Speaker 2: Please look into this? And I kind of don't know
Speaker 2: exactly what to tell those people because I, you know,
Speaker 2: the correct answer is probably like, well, it's just there's
Speaker 2: a massive amount of demand. There's twenty five thousand people
Speaker 2: that put in to try to get Abandon trip now,
Speaker 2: and you know there the only can pick whatever three
Speaker 2: thousand of those people. And you know what do you
Speaker 2: do that on TV with like frozen envelopes kind of
Speaker 2: situation like an NBA draft to sort of prove you
Speaker 2: know that it's all on the up and up. But
Speaker 2: it's it's frustrat rating a lot of people because it
Speaker 2: used to just be about desire. Like you called the
Speaker 2: day that the Tea Times opened, you got on the
Speaker 2: phone and you were at it. It waited on hold for
Speaker 2: eleven hours, but you were going to get your banded
Speaker 2: trip now. Or if you went to the Old Course
Speaker 2: and you couldn't get in the old course, you know, ballot,
Speaker 2: you were going to stay up all night and you know,
Speaker 2: meet people out in the shack there and you were
Speaker 2: going to get on the old course probably next day
Speaker 2: and those things just don't exist anymore. And I feel
Speaker 2: a little bit like golf is a little worse for that.
Speaker 2: Maybe that ties in a little bit of the AI
Speaker 2: thing is just like that human element got removed a
Speaker 2: little bit, and that's I think a little bit frustrating
Speaker 2: for a lot of people. And that's where the demand
Speaker 2: is like making it that frustration grow higher.
Speaker 1: I mean, the banded situation. I can assure you as
Speaker 1: someone who does lotteries for art events, like yeah, like you,
Speaker 1: there's no way they could fill it with just like
Speaker 1: friends of the program, like they're a whole demand, Like
Speaker 1: I guarantee it's like pretty much random, you know, like
Speaker 1: there's no way that they are filling all their tea
Speaker 1: times like there, I I what is it? I I like,
Speaker 1: as someone who runs lotteries, like it would be way
Speaker 1: worse if people found out that our lotteries were rigged.
Speaker 1: Then then the benefits of rigging the lotteries and we
Speaker 1: would never be able to fill lotteries with strictly rigged participants,
Speaker 1: you know. But the uh, yeah, I just think that
Speaker 1: it's just an example of like everybody want. People want
Speaker 1: to go experience something extraordinary, which they have extraordinary products
Speaker 1: and the demand for it is like out of this world.
Speaker 1: Like I don't think I'm I might not be plugged
Speaker 1: into this much. But are people outraged that they can't
Speaker 1: get a reservation at like French laundry? Is that like
Speaker 1: a thing that happened permeates through the food industry? That'stic
Speaker 1: situations where there's there's a limited amount of tables, there's
Speaker 1: a limited amount of tea times, and there's only so
Speaker 1: many people that can go in a given time. Sure,
Speaker 1: are people outraged? Like I, you know, now there's all
Speaker 1: these systems, right, But as a kid, when I went
Speaker 1: to six Flags and I wanted to ride, shout out
Speaker 1: to all all the people that grew up in the
Speaker 1: Chicago area, and I want to ride Raging Bull, the
Speaker 1: great roller coaster they opened in the peak of my childhood.
Speaker 1: I knew I was waiting in line for two and
Speaker 1: a half hours to ride it. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: the way. Like, Nope, Are people outraged about the Master's
Speaker 1: lottery or is it just because they know that they
Speaker 1: have no chance?
Speaker 2: I think people are. There's a lot of people who
Speaker 2: are like I've been putting in for fifteen twenty years,
Speaker 2: and I have never gotten picked to the Master's lottery,
Speaker 2: and they're very frustrated. And I know there are people
Speaker 2: who got picked last year when it rained out Monday
Speaker 2: and they were devastated until the Masters said, oh, we'll
Speaker 2: give you, you know, tickets to twenty six Masters because
Speaker 2: of the rain out. So you know, I think that
Speaker 2: there's a balance in there. If if there were like
Speaker 2: videos every day that you had to watch that were
Speaker 2: like people eating at the French Laundry and be like, oh,
Speaker 2: look at this amazing food that I'm eating, and that
Speaker 2: was that was a part of it, I might. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I mean, honestly, I don't follow food.
Speaker 1: People do I get for golf. They're doing it for food.
Speaker 2: I think maybe, But I would bet the French Laundry
Speaker 2: is like, please put your phone away and enjoy the experience.
Speaker 2: I haven't. You know, occasionally when you see those videos,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, Gavin Newsom was spotted at the French
Speaker 2: laundry or you know something. And during the you know,
Speaker 2: the economic crisis, what a what an elitist dick? So
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think that it's a double edged
Speaker 2: sword of like destination golf and if this is going
Speaker 2: to tie into my next point. It was like we
Speaker 2: and we're guilty of this having worked for you know,
Speaker 2: independent golf meeting companies. When you show people like this
Speaker 2: is the best thing that you could want and this
Speaker 2: is eventually they're going to like, oh, I want to
Speaker 2: experience that, and then if that's not available to them,
Speaker 2: I think it creates a lot of frustration and envy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I get a lot of messages of like when
Speaker 1: I go to public golf course, please don't talk about
Speaker 1: being here, yeah, or people tell me this and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: like my job's kind of to tell people what are
Speaker 1: cool places to go see. And also from like the
Speaker 1: business owner standpoint, they deserve to be rewarded for having
Speaker 1: a cool place and taking care of a cool place
Speaker 1: to see, and that business deserves to be propped up
Speaker 1: and have high demand because that is a neat place
Speaker 1: that is different from most places. I don't know what's
Speaker 1: your next question, So I would hail it to like
Speaker 1: three different topics with absolutely this is what makes this
Speaker 1: great When we do this every five years, Hanny, I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is going to be the next thing that emerges
Speaker 1: in golf media that sort of takes the place of
Speaker 1: like what podcasting is now, or what Twitter was in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen to twenty fifteen, or what YouTube videos were
Speaker 1: in sixteen through twenty, or what like good Good matches
Speaker 1: are in twenty twenty or you know, I think.
Speaker 2: We're all I mean, we'd you and I would love
Speaker 2: to know that, right because we could figure it out
Speaker 2: and make millions of dollars, Like a Good Good just
Speaker 2: got like what one hundred and fifty million dollar private
Speaker 2: and equity equity investment in their business. But the way
Speaker 2: that golf media has evolved, certainly in the time since
Speaker 2: I've been doing it, Like it used to be really
Speaker 2: kind of cool to be Doug Ferguson or Bob Herrick
Speaker 2: or be the beat writer for the golf thing. And
Speaker 2: then it became like, oh, well, this this guy's knowing
Speaker 2: ups doing this Twitter account thing, and here's like these
Speaker 2: cool destination golf videos. I'm really fascinated to sort of
Speaker 2: understand what the next thing is because I think like
Speaker 2: podcasting and blogging and Twitter and on stuff, it democratized
Speaker 2: media in a lot of ways, so you didn't have
Speaker 2: to be like, you didn't have to take the route
Speaker 2: that I did, which was go work at a newspaper,
Speaker 2: go work at ESPN, fight your way through the bureaucracy
Speaker 2: of that, and get to be a golf writer, get
Speaker 2: to be a golf you know, columnist, and then you
Speaker 2: can have a voice within golf. It's like Nope, Now
Speaker 2: you can just sort of fire up your phone and
Speaker 2: look into it and start, you know, give and takes
Speaker 2: on why Roy McElroy will or won't ever win the
Speaker 2: Grand Slam, and you can become a voice within the game.
Speaker 2: And so I am fascinated to think about what the
Speaker 2: next thing will emerge in that world.
Speaker 1: It's it's a question I'd love to know. You don't
Speaker 1: think it's going to be the creator classic.
Speaker 2: I think it's gonna be newsletters. I think it's gonna
Speaker 2: be heartfelt newsletters that arrive in your inbox three days
Speaker 2: a week. That's yeah.
Speaker 1: I think if I was going to opine about that,
Speaker 1: I think it. I think it's I think like the
Speaker 1: hardest thing in media right now is to figure out
Speaker 1: how to have staying power. You just mentioned like seven
Speaker 1: things that have happened in the last fifteen years, and
Speaker 1: I think this is like where people get struggle with
Speaker 1: media is like is like the models are constantly changing,
Speaker 1: and what what tastes are constantly change. And you know,
Speaker 1: as long as your advertiser driven, model driven, as long
Speaker 1: as the advertiser is going to be the thing that
Speaker 1: you're going after, you're also subjected and your success is
Speaker 1: dependent on you having things that are the current flavor
Speaker 1: of the month for the advertiser. In the time that
Speaker 1: I've been doing, I've seen drastic, drastic swings and what
Speaker 1: people want to advertise, which at the core of many
Speaker 1: media outlets is their financial stability, source, their ability to hire,
Speaker 1: their ability to invest in stories, all these things, the
Speaker 1: ability to basically run a business driven by these by
Speaker 1: advertisers and subscribers. And it's gone. It's gone from where
Speaker 1: nobody wanted. Nobody knew what podcasts were, that was that
Speaker 1: was the thing until like twenty nineteen. Then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, everybody was told they had to had to
Speaker 1: advertise in podcasts, and they did a lot of bad
Speaker 1: podcast advertising deals there at the time podcasts a podcast
Speaker 1: metrics were nascent. A lot of people lied. It was
Speaker 1: you know, just bad business like and and advertisers felt
Speaker 1: burned because they're like, wait, we can't get these robust
Speaker 1: analytics that we can get from other things. And and
Speaker 1: you know, some bad actors burned people on podcasts and
Speaker 1: now they're you know that there's interest in video. And
Speaker 1: I feel like newsletter has swung back around where people
Speaker 1: are super interested in newsletter because of the direct click
Speaker 1: to conversion. But like, the media is so dependent. What
Speaker 1: my long answer here is, what's going to be next
Speaker 1: in media is so dependent on where the money is,
Speaker 1: similar to pro golf, similar to any industry. If like
Speaker 1: I I think that right now as it stands, and
Speaker 1: you know that YouTube is the most open platform to
Speaker 1: create on, which is why people are running there because
Speaker 1: it is kind of what Twitter used to be in
Speaker 1: the sense of I can go onto YouTube and discover somebody.
Speaker 1: If I log into Twitter now, I discover a bunch
Speaker 1: of people I don't want to be around.
Speaker 2: And of them are like Romanian botsmen.
Speaker 1: And Instagram is like has never been like a great
Speaker 1: like it. It It promotes like short form content like
Speaker 1: nothing you're really gonna like get invested in. Twitter was
Speaker 1: so great because it was a place of discovery for editorial,
Speaker 1: for podcasts, for writing for long form, the long form
Speaker 1: discovery platform, right now, the only good one is YouTube,
Speaker 1: and I think that's why YouTube is is doing so
Speaker 1: well now. But the problem with anything is that YouTube
Speaker 1: like you're you're you're subjected to what they decide their
Speaker 1: algorithm is right, and like the hard thing is you
Speaker 1: can't be all in on one platform. And I think
Speaker 1: this is the reality is like the key to building
Speaker 1: a really good media business is having diverse distribution channels
Speaker 1: and diverse revenue channels. Because if you are strictly dependent
Speaker 1: on one of these big tech companies, and that's Google
Speaker 1: with YouTube, Facebook with Instagram, or Facebook Twitter or x
Speaker 1: with with elon, if you're if you're beholden to one
Speaker 1: of those substack to a lesser extent. But I don't
Speaker 1: think a lot of people like go to substacks to
Speaker 1: browse to read, like you find your author is on
Speaker 1: there and go there. But if you're beholden to one
Speaker 1: of those three tech companies, what you're beholden to is
Speaker 1: like how their algorithm works, and the second they change it,
Speaker 1: you're crushed. Which is why like things like email are
Speaker 1: really stable, right, Like you know it's going to be
Speaker 1: a long time until email is like dramatically altered. But
Speaker 1: like I think that we're just if I was gonna
Speaker 1: give my answer now that I've you know, filibustered here
Speaker 1: for five minutes about media, my answer is that we're
Speaker 1: at the tip of the iceberg with YouTube. As long
Speaker 1: as they don't change the algorithm, and that more and
Speaker 1: more neat stuff and more stuff that is geared towards
Speaker 1: your interests will be available on YouTube in the next
Speaker 1: five years as long as it remains so. As long
Speaker 1: as it remains don't I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: the exact right word democratic in the sense of, like
Speaker 1: I go on there and the algorithm is feeding me
Speaker 1: things that appeal to my taste. That's the key to
Speaker 1: all of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess the only counter to that,
Speaker 2: what I would be is that like Google obviously screwed
Speaker 2: up their own their biggest platform, Google Search, to where
Speaker 2: it's like not nearly as enjoyable to Google something anymore,
Speaker 2: Like they had that brand of essentially like what is
Speaker 2: like Kleenex, where it's like to Google something just meant
Speaker 2: to Internet search something. And now like I don't think
Speaker 2: there's anybody who thinks that Google Search is what it
Speaker 2: once was, you know, will they do that with YouTube.
Speaker 2: Some people will probably argue they already have. And I
Speaker 2: would really be fascinated to think about as a thought experiment,
Speaker 2: like how do you cover golf as like professional golf
Speaker 2: in particular from a YouTube perspective when so much of
Speaker 2: it is tied up in rights fees and are we
Speaker 2: allowed to be on site, you know, doing Like let's
Speaker 2: say I was going to go to the Masters next
Speaker 2: year for the Friday and you were like, We're only
Speaker 2: going to cover this from a YouTube perspective. Well, man,
Speaker 2: Like I'd have to negotiate with the Masters for months
Speaker 2: about like could I even have a room where I
Speaker 2: could film something in YouTube? Could we just do voiceovers
Speaker 2: with still photos? Like how do you cover those things
Speaker 2: in which how I have billions of dollars of rights
Speaker 2: attached to them? Through that? Because for a long time
Speaker 2: it was the opposite. It is like the Masters wanted
Speaker 2: newspaper writers to come because they wanted to promote the tournament.
Speaker 2: Now you know, the media organizations don't have any of
Speaker 2: the power in that relationship and the Masters has all
Speaker 2: the power. And the Masters is actually one of the
Speaker 2: few places that sort of values that relationship from where
Speaker 2: it began in the beginning is like, yeah, we'll let
Speaker 2: you do stuff and we're happy to provide you with
Speaker 2: an environment. There are going to be limitations to that.
Speaker 2: So I don't know like what the future is from
Speaker 2: that sense, but I think you're right. There has to
Speaker 2: be some kind of way to figure it out because
Speaker 2: so much of like you know, the way that people
Speaker 2: consume media who are like teenagers is just short form
Speaker 2: video or YouTube clips. They don't even you know, they
Speaker 2: barely read. So you know, how is that gonna What
Speaker 2: are we going to do to chase that kind of thing?
Speaker 2: That's a that's a great unknown.
Speaker 1: I think the reality is that we have to get
Speaker 1: somewhere where where the ability. I think the NFL has
Speaker 1: done this wisely with their All twenty two footage. The
Speaker 1: NBA allows this, Like the coverage has to be you
Speaker 1: have to be able to use foot highlight footage in
Speaker 1: your in your coverage. And I don't know, I think
Speaker 1: the golf so far away from this, but that's the
Speaker 1: reality of like, if you want golf coverage to prosper,
Speaker 1: where it has to go, and until it goes there,
Speaker 1: the tour is just going to waste so much time
Speaker 1: and energy fielding DMCA requests and and and you know,
Speaker 1: and I think that's in what you're doing is you're
Speaker 1: you're you're kind of hitting the opportunity for popularity of
Speaker 1: your sport right at the kneecaps. And and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: so golf media where it goes fascinating fascinating topic. I
Speaker 1: don't think. I don't think it's just going to be
Speaker 1: the ten handicaps playing matches against each other. That's not
Speaker 1: the future. It's just the first iteration of like this
Speaker 1: move to YouTube, is my opinion. But I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: I could be completely wrong. All Right, let's take a
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Speaker 2: What do you got for me? What's next?
Speaker 1: All right? I this is prep for another pod that
Speaker 1: we're just we're steamrolling into and we're not. We're not.
Speaker 1: We're not getting through our topics as quick. It might
Speaker 1: be four. We've promised five. It might be four from
Speaker 1: each of us based off timing. I just was I
Speaker 1: was just looking at under twenty eight players under the
Speaker 1: age of twenty eight twenty eight nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw this tweet about this. I made me think,
Speaker 2: I hope this comes up in the Who's the.
Speaker 1: Next super duper star? We have? There are there's a
Speaker 1: truckload of talent. Yes, I just I think that there
Speaker 1: is no clear answer, and I think everybody's knee jerk
Speaker 1: reaction to this would be, you know, Mercedes Benz, Ambassador
Speaker 1: Ludwig Obert is the guy that's going to be the
Speaker 1: next star. He's twenty six and he's won twice in
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour, and I just and he's great. He's obviously.
Speaker 1: I think like if you say that, like you're what
Speaker 1: you're doing, you're locking yourself into someone who is going
Speaker 1: to be a top twenty player for a very long time.
Speaker 1: But at certain point, and like most really great stars
Speaker 1: won a lot, like most superstars won a lot at
Speaker 1: every stage, and I think, like Ludwig may be the guy.
Speaker 1: He might be, but I don't. I think like this
Speaker 1: is maybe the most like least clear it's ever been
Speaker 1: on who the next guy is.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent agree. I was trying to think of
Speaker 2: this as potentially one of mine because you know, every
Speaker 2: what we would say, probably five to seven years, like
Speaker 2: the next person emerges as like this the great star. Right,
Speaker 2: so we can go back to you know, Els Michelson.
Speaker 2: You know, then Tiger sort of surpassed them, and right
Speaker 2: as Tiger was sort of fading out in two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, Rory comes along and he's the next stud
Speaker 2: and and you know.
Speaker 1: Serdio and Adam Scott in there too, like.
Speaker 2: Uh, and you know, Scotty then emerges. But you're right,
Speaker 2: like Scotty won you know, multiple us MS, right, or
Speaker 2: at least the one USAM maybe he was.
Speaker 1: He won the us junior. I would just say, I
Speaker 1: don't think Scotty was like this can't miss guy. I
Speaker 1: think he got he was he was someone who's really
Speaker 1: good in junior in college golf and then became exceptional
Speaker 1: as a pro. But like the idea, like my thing
Speaker 1: with this topic right now, we're gonna end twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Right now, the number of players older or younger than
Speaker 1: twenty eight that are in the top twenty twenty eight
Speaker 1: or younger in the top twenty is three and a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago this was like a huge number,
Speaker 1: and you know, like you start to look at like
Speaker 1: Chris Gottrup is twenty six, he is he the next guy?
Speaker 1: If you look at like just a list, and I think, like,
Speaker 1: we have so many good players, but none of them
Speaker 1: have made an emphatic like if you get past Marikow,
Speaker 1: so if you go twenty seven and younger, you lose
Speaker 1: Hoveland and Morikawa and cam Young and you get to
Speaker 1: this like big list of players who none of whom
Speaker 1: have like dramatically outside of Ludwig, separated themselves from each other.
Speaker 1: But they're all really good players. One of them is
Speaker 1: going to pop. I just am really curious who it is.
Speaker 1: It could be Jackson Coavin, it could be you know,
Speaker 1: but like we've gotten to this place where, like you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of years years ago, Michael Thorbiorn's are everybody's
Speaker 1: like watch out for this kid, watch out and then
Speaker 1: he doesn't have like this immediate success. And I feel
Speaker 1: like it's happening with Luke Clinton right now. Also, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the reality is like they're really good, but none
Speaker 1: of them have been really.
Speaker 2: Great sure, And I think when you identify greatness, right,
Speaker 2: like Nicholas was in the US Open final when he
Speaker 2: was twenty one, like he and Arnie Wright were duking
Speaker 2: it out. Tiger wins the Masters at twenty one, Rory
Speaker 2: almost wins the Masters of twenty one, and then does
Speaker 2: win the US Open like later that year.
Speaker 1: I mean Jordan Speed, j Speed, you're kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, and obviously he was in there in his
Speaker 1: career went sideways, but like three majors before twenty five.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. So when we talk about greatness, like in
Speaker 2: some ways greatness might have already passed Ludwig By, Like
Speaker 2: you're twenty seven, you've won twice, you have won a
Speaker 2: single major, Like, yeah, you can have a great career,
Speaker 2: you could win three majors. But greatness is like a
Speaker 2: whole nother bar, right right. Greatness is like, well, I'm
Speaker 2: potentially a top ten golfer of all time. That's already
Speaker 2: gone by for Ludvig in that sense, for Havin, you know,
Speaker 2: and so is it Miles Russell?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: Blade Brown? Is it some of these sixteen year old
Speaker 2: kids who are you know, getting a sniff here and there,
Speaker 2: or dominant high school players. I don't know, You're right.
Speaker 2: I think it's a great unknown, Like are we entering
Speaker 2: into this stage where everyone has speed and so it's
Speaker 2: harder to sort of be like this super young athletic,
Speaker 2: dynamic person who comes out then immediately has like that
Speaker 2: talent thing that over overwhelms everybody.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a great point because it seems like
Speaker 1: nobody has been able to cross that like one ninety
Speaker 1: threshold the ball speed with like enough accuracy to make
Speaker 1: it work to where you like, you see like the
Speaker 1: the high end great drivers kind of sit at one
Speaker 1: eighty six, one eighty seven eight, And I wonder if
Speaker 1: like maybe this there's like a cap on speed right
Speaker 1: now with because of the you know, the speed and
Speaker 1: accuracy work against each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God, that's great. You know what, And I think
Speaker 2: we were automatically assuming, right like this is an American.
Speaker 2: It could be a kid in India, could be a
Speaker 2: kid in China, could be a kid in you know, Vietnam,
Speaker 2: where golf is booming, could be a kid in Australia
Speaker 2: where golf has how long, obviously great history. We have
Speaker 2: kind of an American centric view of things like the
Speaker 2: next truly great player, the next Gary player, the next
Speaker 2: Roy McElroy probably not going to come. You know, we're
Speaker 2: not going to see him on the radar because they're
Speaker 2: going to come from outside the United States.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's I just you know, when you
Speaker 1: look through this, it's just a fascinating topic. And it
Speaker 1: might it might happen next year, we might know, it
Speaker 1: might happen in two years, it could be five years.
Speaker 1: But like that, to me, it's one of the biggest
Speaker 1: questions right now in golf is that when you when
Speaker 1: you look past Scottie, there's no there's there's a big
Speaker 1: gap of players, none of whom have separated themselves to
Speaker 1: a level of like that's the star and Scotty's twenty
Speaker 1: nine yeah. You know he's he's right in the middle
Speaker 1: smack dab middle of his prime. Rory's at the end
Speaker 1: of his run. You know, he's got probably four more
Speaker 1: good years of really great years of.
Speaker 2: Golf, of being a top three player, right yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's like, I don't know, you know, Xander
Speaker 1: obviously having a down year took someone, but there is nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody from twenty one to twenty eight has distinguished themselves
Speaker 1: as close to that level of player. And usually we
Speaker 1: have known this by then.
Speaker 2: We might just be remember, I mean we were kids,
Speaker 2: Like there was this real sense of like, oh, you
Speaker 2: don't really hit your prime until as a golfer until
Speaker 2: your thirties, which you know, maybe was true for like
Speaker 2: the the average like great player. I mean, everybody thought
Speaker 2: Fred Couples was going to rip off, you know, four
Speaker 2: or five majors in his thirties because he was finally
Speaker 2: like had his first major augusta ninety two, and ah,
Speaker 2: he's coming into his prime. And you know, the guys
Speaker 2: like Justin Leonard, the guys you know that we're winning majors,
Speaker 2: we're kind of guys in their thirties. Then are we
Speaker 2: returning to a time when that is more likely to
Speaker 2: be the scenarios. The guys in their thirties are sort
Speaker 2: of seen as the dominant force in the game, and
Speaker 2: it's a total outlier when a young person comes along
Speaker 2: and kicks ass.
Speaker 1: Another possible thing that you just sparked off of mentioning Tiger,
Speaker 1: Are we just in a Tiger era where like he
Speaker 1: kind of mutes how good everybody else is. And that's
Speaker 1: Scottie right now. And you've got Rory and who's been
Speaker 1: great and is great, but like outside of him, like Scott,
Speaker 1: the bar of those two is so extraordinarily high that
Speaker 1: they are muting the talents of everybody around him.
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 1: What's your next one?
Speaker 2: All Right? I kind of have a wild card one here,
Speaker 2: and it's I have this theory, Andy that if you
Speaker 2: plotted like fame and how weird you are on the
Speaker 2: x Y graph, that Tiger and Phil are two of
Speaker 2: the weirdest athletes that the world has ever seen. They
Speaker 2: are just true. I mean they like, there have been
Speaker 2: weirder athletes, but no athletes who are as weird as
Speaker 2: they are and as famous as they are, and they're
Speaker 2: weird in different ways. Let's be clear about that, but
Speaker 2: I would my question is that what will Phil Mickelson
Speaker 2: do over the next ten years that will sort of
Speaker 2: shape his legacy for better or worse, because I could
Speaker 2: see Phil getting increasingly weirder and getting into even more
Speaker 2: strange shit. The story that came out about Tom Brady
Speaker 2: cloning his dog recently struck me as like a very
Speaker 2: Phil Michelson to do to.
Speaker 1: He's on the level of weird as those.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's probably true. Tom Brady is like
Speaker 2: right there, there's sort of a trifecta of them. Although, however,
Speaker 2: like Phil is always sort of flirting with various like illegalities.
Speaker 2: You know, this latest report that came out that maybe
Speaker 2: he was possibly committing some light insider trading or allegedly
Speaker 2: it's hard to quite understand that report that came out
Speaker 2: or if that stuff will even be investigated. I could
Speaker 2: see Phil doing like a Ted Williams scenario where he
Speaker 2: decided to like freeze his head and you know, hoped
Speaker 2: that he could be brought back cloning himself. I could
Speaker 2: see Phil running for governor of California basically saying that
Speaker 2: he was trying to save the state of the Great
Speaker 2: State of California from the menace that is Gavin Newsom
Speaker 2: stranger that would bring up Gavenue and twice on this podcast,
Speaker 2: but Phil seems to bring up gaven news some frequently.
Speaker 2: You know, he's very, very, very obviously annoyed with the
Speaker 2: policies of California at the moment. What would Phil be
Speaker 2: like on the campaign trail? Hard to say, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: will Feel continued to sort of be a lot of
Speaker 2: thumbs up, and what could that be like magnetic? Could
Speaker 2: Phil to be like a great governor? You know, who's
Speaker 2: to say? Like I I don't know. Phil's a pretty
Speaker 2: good communicator. Communicating goes a long way, as we just
Speaker 2: saw in the race for mayor for New York. If
Speaker 2: you can communicate, you can win over a lot of people. So,
Speaker 2: you know, I am will Pheil continued to sort of
Speaker 2: play the masters. Will Feel like somehow get his way
Speaker 2: back into the booth where he would be totally great
Speaker 2: as like a color person like that in a very
Speaker 2: I say, this is a very genuine, like one of
Speaker 2: perhaps like the best voices since Johnny Miller, you know,
Speaker 2: other than John Miller to do it. I think that's
Speaker 2: a great unknown with Phil may Phil's whole career in
Speaker 2: life has been a great unknown, but we are sort
Speaker 2: of still entering into yet another potential stage of weird,
Speaker 2: fascinating things.
Speaker 1: I think, more so than any other sport, golf legends
Speaker 1: are kind of like lionized and remain a part of
Speaker 1: the fabric of the sport.
Speaker 2: I mean, rarely excommunicated from the sport.
Speaker 1: And look at Gary Player like he just did. He
Speaker 1: just released a memo that got like shared everywhere, canceled
Speaker 1: the Ryder Cup, something he said months ago. I I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask, I think all of your questions are valid,
Speaker 1: and I have no fing clue what Phil's gonna do next,
Speaker 1: and I don't even don't even want to ponder to
Speaker 1: guess my question. Are Tiger Phil and Tom Brady so
Speaker 1: strange because they're all athletes who were at the peak
Speaker 1: of their powers when social media came about, and thus
Speaker 1: it made it like they they they raised power under
Speaker 1: a certain set of rules of like how their life
Speaker 1: in sports and their personal life was divided.
Speaker 2: So if you have Jordan on this side and Lebron
Speaker 2: on this side, those guys kind of fit right in
Speaker 2: that middle area where.
Speaker 1: I would say that Lebron belongs with with Brady and
Speaker 1: Tiger and Phil as a total weirdo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's weird, but I think like less weird than
Speaker 2: they are, like they're well, you amaz a interesting point,
Speaker 2: I think because like obviously we talk a lot about
Speaker 2: Jordan couldn't have had the same career and impact had
Speaker 2: like smartphones and Twitter existed, and so he grew up
Speaker 2: under a certain set of rules, and Tiger kind of
Speaker 2: believed that those would always be the rules about privacy
Speaker 2: and was sort of had his brain short circuited by
Speaker 2: the unfairness and the changing kind of attitudes about media
Speaker 2: in that time. I think Brady a little bit too,
Speaker 2: like he certainly was raised under one way and then
Speaker 2: had to live in another world and marrying a very
Speaker 2: famous person in that sense too. Uh. But Phil, to
Speaker 2: me is just like he like leaned into like social
Speaker 2: media and stuff in ways that they those others didn't,
Speaker 2: and just you know, has continued to dive deeper into
Speaker 2: the weird corners of the Internet to sort of seek out,
Speaker 2: you know, information. I just I think Phil kind of
Speaker 2: takes the cake for like the strangest professional athlete of
Speaker 2: them all and sort of what and this isn't even
Speaker 2: people are going to say, oh, this is about his
Speaker 2: political beliefs. No, I just think it's about Phil's just
Speaker 2: general kind of things that he seeks out and things
Speaker 2: that he's interested in, Like you.
Speaker 1: Just have to look at his playing career.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the thing is he gets himself into rabbit holes, yes,
Speaker 1: and and and then what happens is he gets committed
Speaker 1: on a pathway and he will go as as far
Speaker 1: down the pathway as possible, Like.
Speaker 2: That's the only reason to feel alive, like what you
Speaker 2: know what, and I respect it.
Speaker 1: Like, I think it's also lends into what makes him
Speaker 1: great is that he is like full he has so
Speaker 1: much commitment, yes, and belief in in in what he
Speaker 1: thinks as being true. And that's what makes a great golfer.
Speaker 1: Like if you can just get up and have full
Speaker 1: commitment in your mind and swing at golf club, it
Speaker 1: is like so such an easy game, and that's like
Speaker 1: the whole challenge of the game is just getting that
Speaker 1: level of commitment. Commitment is like the hardest part of golf.
Speaker 1: It's just getting yourself over the ball, confident and committed
Speaker 1: on what you're trying to do. And I think like
Speaker 1: that is like Phil's it makes him extremely weird, it
Speaker 1: makes him do really stupid stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, it's all kind of a refuge for the weird.
Speaker 2: I kind of think Phil would make a good politician
Speaker 2: because I actually think it would work really hard on
Speaker 2: the issues that he'd think, and he's a good communicator.
Speaker 2: We might not see the world the same way, but
Speaker 2: I actually think like his his weirdness would fit right
Speaker 2: in with like the you know a lot of the
Speaker 2: way that politics conduct business.
Speaker 1: All Right, I'll get one more off, so we get
Speaker 1: four each. What what does the PGA Tour going to
Speaker 1: spend its money on? M They got billions of dollars
Speaker 1: just sitting around and I don't know what the what
Speaker 1: what they're doing with it. But I don't think like
Speaker 1: I do think the live threat seems less than ever,
Speaker 1: but it's actually sneakily like in a weird spot where
Speaker 1: I'd actually be very worried about it because like, they're
Speaker 1: not going anywhere and they're still incredibly well funded. I
Speaker 1: I just seem I'm very fascinated what they're going to
Speaker 1: do because we're we're I mean, it's what two years
Speaker 1: removed from the investment now, Yeah, and they haven't. They
Speaker 1: seemingly haven't spent any of the money. Yeah, And usually,
Speaker 1: like people invest money into you, so you invest money
Speaker 1: to make more money. M hm, And I don't. I
Speaker 1: guess I'm I'm curious, and I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: Is it the PGA or the Ryder Cup. It seems
Speaker 1: like that's the one people talk about the most, so
Speaker 1: that generally leads me to say, that's not going to
Speaker 1: be the one that happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, you're dealing with like a very cautious organization, right,
Speaker 2: that isn't particularly good at like change, that isn't going
Speaker 2: to like do the breakfast move move quickly and break
Speaker 2: things sort of mentality. I would have thought that they
Speaker 2: would have made it by this point, like a larger
Speaker 2: investment in media, in you know, having the best app
Speaker 2: and the world in like you know, being able to
Speaker 2: sort of have their own apparatus of storytelling. I mean
Speaker 2: they you know, they've they've slowly, like you know, they
Speaker 2: are friend Sean Martin like making you know, documentaries, videos
Speaker 2: and stuff. I think that's sort of like a sole investment.
Speaker 2: You could argue that, like the the full swing stuff
Speaker 2: that the investment in in Pro Shop stuff with Happy
Speaker 2: Gilmore too, that that's sort of a further extension of
Speaker 2: like what they're interested in. But like it doesn't you know,
Speaker 2: all this talk of yeah, the PGA Tour is going
Speaker 2: to buy the Ryder Cup. They're going to spend a
Speaker 2: billion dollars and take over that property, like doesn't seem
Speaker 2: like that's an e closer. I don't know why at
Speaker 2: this point, if the PGA of America could survive the
Speaker 2: backlash that happened from this Ryder Cup without feeling pressure
Speaker 2: to like do something or change, I don't know what
Speaker 2: would cause them to ever think that they should sell
Speaker 2: a piece of it, because they could just kind of
Speaker 2: keep printing money from it and not running a particularly
Speaker 2: great or efficient event. So I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem like there's like a bold swing there,
Speaker 2: you know, it would take I was talking about this
Speaker 2: the everything that I've sort of heard secondhand, and I
Speaker 2: think you guys know this too, is like that one
Speaker 2: of the things that roll up has seems very like
Speaker 2: confused by is like the fact that they don't own
Speaker 2: any of the venues essentially, right, like the wait where
Speaker 2: you have to like ask permission to go play at
Speaker 2: the Memorial or you know, at at Pebble Beach or whatever.
Speaker 2: We have to figure this out. And so what he
Speaker 2: you know, because NFL stadiums, they own the stadiums, and
Speaker 2: you would think, guy, I've come from the NFL, would
Speaker 2: think like, well, what if we just had our own
Speaker 2: places to hold these events, then we could just reap
Speaker 2: in all the profits and we could set them up
Speaker 2: that we wanted to and then ask permission. But the
Speaker 2: investment in that of like you know, the TPC network
Speaker 2: is not going to work, right. We've talked about this
Speaker 2: even recently. So is it like a ten year investment
Speaker 2: in like building your own courses, building your own venues
Speaker 2: to do this? Like, you know, that's a long frickin' time.
Speaker 2: We were talking about why have they made any moves yet,
Speaker 2: making moves that aren't going to come to fruition for
Speaker 2: another ten years of like buying the land, building the courses,
Speaker 2: getting the stuff, you know, set up to be able
Speaker 2: to hold a tournament there. I don't know that seems
Speaker 2: like a like a long term good investment for the tour.
Speaker 2: But I just don't know that they are going to
Speaker 2: be willing to wait ten years to kind of pour
Speaker 2: that money into it. If I were to asked this
Speaker 2: g people, I would be like, what are you guys doing? Like,
Speaker 2: you know, the money's there, we've we've green lit half
Speaker 2: of it for you guys to use whatever you want
Speaker 2: go make us some more money. And you know it
Speaker 2: hasn't really happened yet, but maybe they have big plans
Speaker 2: that they're going to roll out just out of nowhere
Speaker 2: that I don't know.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things that I heard and I
Speaker 1: think like we're I'm happy to relay this as has
Speaker 1: spent a long time. One of my favorite things I
Speaker 1: heard was that when when they when they first came
Speaker 1: down and they were like, okay, so where are your
Speaker 1: plants for all this money there the tour? It was like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna buy the Marriotte next to.
Speaker 2: We're tired about how to use Marriott points for the players.
Speaker 2: We're just gonna make this hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The golf course things, I think like if they
Speaker 1: had started on it three years ago, I think there
Speaker 1: would be like a huge demand. I've said this to people,
Speaker 1: but like the idea like as a twenty I don't
Speaker 1: know when the last time that the cog Hill hosted
Speaker 1: the Western Open. But I was like in my mid
Speaker 1: twenties working a job in Chicago, and I managed to
Speaker 1: get a Monday after the tournament tea time or Tuesday
Speaker 1: after the tournament, it might have been Tuesday, and me
Speaker 1: and my buddy went and we thought it was the
Speaker 1: coolest thing ever to play the course with the grand
Speaker 1: stands up, And like there's some agronomic things, but like
Speaker 1: the idea of like playing a course with the tournament
Speaker 1: stands up is like just like a once in a
Speaker 1: like it feels like this once in a lifetime experience,
Speaker 1: and like you think about how much how much cost
Speaker 1: goes into setting up the infrastructure around these events, and
Speaker 1: it's just like, oh, like we could just build the
Speaker 1: golf course. And like TPC Stowgrass is a extraordinary business.
Speaker 1: They charge eight hundred dollars and have a pact sheet
Speaker 1: for ten months a year. Like you start doing the
Speaker 1: math of two hundred three hundred players paying eight hundred
Speaker 1: dollars ahead and it's like, you know, it'll make your
Speaker 1: mind blow with a maintenance budget of five million dollars, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's a it's an incredible business, and I think
Speaker 1: it's like replicable. And then all of a sudden, your
Speaker 1: events get better, your ability to run events get better.
Speaker 1: But I just it would be as you said, like
Speaker 1: as hard and you got to get it right. Is
Speaker 1: the other issue is like I have zero zero faith
Speaker 1: of the PGA tour building actually good golf courses is
Speaker 1: the other aspect of it. So yeah, it's it's tricky,
Speaker 1: like you have to find the land. It would be
Speaker 1: exorbitantly expensive to get it anywhere close to a lot
Speaker 1: of metro areas.
Speaker 2: What do you think it costs to build a golf course,
Speaker 2: like to build a great golf.
Speaker 1: Course where in a city?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, i'd say within a thirty minute drive of
Speaker 2: a major metro area like a Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: The clubhouse and ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously you gotta have a land. Yeah, it's twenty
Speaker 2: five million, not low.
Speaker 1: No, No, you're talking fifty to one hundred million depending
Speaker 1: on your land costs right now. Yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: that could be higher. That's with your clubhouse, your maintenance facility, everything.
Speaker 1: Like I think you're looking at. I think you at
Speaker 1: a minimum, if you're trying to be within an hour
Speaker 1: of a metro area, a big major metro area, you're
Speaker 1: probably at the one hundred million mark.
Speaker 2: But how much does it cost to build a football stadium?
Speaker 2: Obviously different, but billion dollars? Right, It cost a billion
Speaker 2: dollars to build a good football stadium. You use that
Speaker 2: for sixteen times a year, you know, obviously use it
Speaker 2: for concerts and things like that. But you can use
Speaker 2: a you know, a great golf course. Let's say you
Speaker 2: built equivalent of SAGRA at TBC sagrass in Boston and
Speaker 2: New York, in Seattle, in major metro area. You could
Speaker 2: use that for two hundred and seventy days a year.
Speaker 2: You know, is it is the long term investment? You
Speaker 2: know you could you make that hundred million back in
Speaker 2: year five? Maybe maybe maybe maybe not, But you know,
Speaker 2: I think like if that's the kind of long term
Speaker 2: vision that probably someone needs us out and be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this would be a major headache, but would set us
Speaker 2: up if we can build five of these and have
Speaker 2: five of our own events where we just basically like
Speaker 2: cleared all the money. We don't have to share it
Speaker 2: with anybody who't have to share with the charity more
Speaker 2: all that must be looking at that and be like, wait,
Speaker 2: you give half this money to charity? What are you
Speaker 2: kidding me?
Speaker 1: So the tax benefits though, I suppose. All right, Kevin,
Speaker 1: I got a run. We got four in. I feel
Speaker 1: like that's good. Next time we pod, we'll unload our
Speaker 1: fifth on whatever topic we're top talking about. It's been
Speaker 1: great having you on your tea on the team. Everybody
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Speaker 2: I would love that, and thank you so much.
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