Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's episode, I am joined by ESPN's Kevin van Valkenberg.
Speaker 1: Kevin is back on the golf beat, but you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about the Olympics, and I figured
Speaker 1: I should talk to somebody that's got, you know, some
Speaker 1: experience in clout and other sports. Kevin wrote one of
Speaker 1: one of my favorite pieces and any any sports piece
Speaker 1: this year, about Simone Biles earlier this year and taking
Speaker 1: his daughter to Olympic trials. Highly recommend that read if
Speaker 1: you have not read it yet. We talk about Olympics
Speaker 1: and golf state in the Olympics, and you know, I
Speaker 1: think I think both of us really enjoy golf in
Speaker 1: the Olympics, so seeing where it can go in the
Speaker 1: you know, we only have to wait three years for
Speaker 1: the next Olympics. Where it can go in the next
Speaker 1: three years and hopefully get a little bit more creative
Speaker 1: with the formatting and hopefully more top players play. As
Speaker 1: a quick reminder, if you haven't been to a Friday
Speaker 1: Egg event, I highly recommend him. Obviously I'm a little biased,
Speaker 1: but super fun days. I think anybody that's been to
Speaker 1: one will testify that we we it's a really fun
Speaker 1: day out at some world class golf courses. So we
Speaker 1: have three left on the calendar. For the rest of
Speaker 1: the year. We are sold out. In Lancaster. We have
Speaker 1: a few spots and Prairie Dunes on October fourth, and
Speaker 1: some spots at White Berr Yacht Club on September thirteenth.
Speaker 1: So two magnificent golf courses with Prairie Dunes and White
Speaker 1: Berr Yacht Club. I would highly recommend seeing both of them.
Speaker 1: Really fun, different golf courses and world class courses in
Speaker 1: their own right. So, without further ado, here is Kevin
Speaker 1: van Valkenberg.
Speaker 2: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 1: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my.
Speaker 2: Ball in a brid egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida
Speaker 2: Egg Frida, Egg Frida, egg egg Frida egg bride egg.
Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf Kevin,
Speaker 1: welcome back.
Speaker 2: It's been a while, it's been much too long. I'm
Speaker 2: excited to be back in the golf podcasting world.
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta I gotta one of those like
Speaker 1: X number of years ago, things popped up on my
Speaker 1: phone the other day and it was of us golfing
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis uh pg a bell Reeve and I
Speaker 1: brought it brought a smile to my face.
Speaker 2: That's fabulous. I uh yeah, that.
Speaker 1: Was a hot day, this extremely hot day.
Speaker 2: Gosh. I was definitely sweating my face off when we
Speaker 2: were doing that.
Speaker 1: So sounds like you got one of those ahead of
Speaker 1: you today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very possible. It's like the heat index hair
Speaker 2: in Baltimore is like one hundred and four, and I've
Speaker 2: somehow been talked into some sort of golfing adventure. So
Speaker 2: pray for me.
Speaker 1: Hey, when it's January and it's like ten degrees, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be praying for the one hundred and four. That's
Speaker 1: what I always tell myself. When it's really hot.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be like, hey, guys, just just plus
Speaker 2: for second. Last time, I was sweating my balls off
Speaker 2: like this. Andy wanted me to point out the various
Speaker 2: layers of the and the bunkering here and Mike Cart
Speaker 2: has none of that, So let's just imagine what it
Speaker 2: looked like if it did.
Speaker 1: Hey, I really enjoyed your piece as a you know,
Speaker 1: not really recent girl, dad, but a girl dad, a
Speaker 1: blossoming girl dad. I guess that's probably a weird word
Speaker 1: to use, but I enjoyed your piece about some of
Speaker 1: Biles and going to the trials with your daughter. I'm curious,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to talk about the Olympics today
Speaker 1: and golf in the Olympics, but I'm curious in a
Speaker 1: larger sense, does your daughter, at age ten eleven, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of revel in the Olympics more so than other sports?
Speaker 1: Does she understand like the significance is that. Do you
Speaker 1: think there's something that when you're younger, the Olympics mean
Speaker 1: more than say, other, you know, sporting championships.
Speaker 2: There's definitely the case with my girls. My oldest in particular,
Speaker 2: she adores the Olympics and will just kind of soak
Speaker 2: up as much gymnastics as she can possibly do. Like
Speaker 2: the Peacock people like, we got our money's worth out
Speaker 2: of all the gymnastics stuff this year because we were
Speaker 2: watching it at all hours, various preliminaries and men's gymnastics
Speaker 2: and women's gymnastics. I don't know what it is about
Speaker 2: it exactly. Both of my girls like golf, but they
Speaker 2: have a special kind of affection for the Olympics, and
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I was watching Lydiaco get all
Speaker 2: emotional were in that bronze, and I was thinking, like,
Speaker 2: I get it, like my girls see this as something
Speaker 2: bigger than like, you know, I don't even they don't
Speaker 2: even think like the avy On is like a They
Speaker 2: couldn't even tell you that's a major, you know, like
Speaker 2: most people, I bet they know of the women's majors.
Speaker 2: They know the US Open and in the Open Championship,
Speaker 2: and that's about it for the women. And they love golf.
Speaker 2: They're like in the one percent bracket for girls their
Speaker 2: age of who were into golf. So I'd say, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Olympics does have a sort of a special appeal
Speaker 2: for them, and I if anybody's no, Like I took
Speaker 2: my daughter to the gymnastics trials because I had promised
Speaker 2: her that I was going to do that for like
Speaker 2: a tenth birthday present, and then the gymnastics trials got
Speaker 2: canceled like everything else because of COVID, and so we
Speaker 2: ended up going this year and it was a really
Speaker 2: kind of surreal interesting experience. Is the first sporting event
Speaker 2: that I had been to in like eighteen months since
Speaker 2: the Super Bowl when the Chiefs and Niners played. So
Speaker 2: I wrote a little thing about for ESPN, just about
Speaker 2: the kind of whole experience of being a parent and
Speaker 2: trying to take your kid back out in the world
Speaker 2: and them, you know, someone like Biles being there her hero,
Speaker 2: and just kind of trying to understand what it meant
Speaker 2: to Biles to be in this position. And it's sort
Speaker 2: of time of divisiveness and racial unrest, and Saint Louis
Speaker 2: provided a very interesting backdrop for all of that. Uh,
Speaker 2: And yeah, it was, it was really it was one
Speaker 2: of the more emotional moving things that I ever written, uh,
Speaker 2: and just kind of spilled out of me.
Speaker 1: I think it's you know, it's a great piece. Everybody
Speaker 1: should read it, whether you're a fan of gymnastics or not.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is google Kevin van Valkenberg,
Speaker 1: Simone Biles. It pulls right up. That's I find the
Speaker 1: easiest way to find anything these days. It's just to
Speaker 1: google the publication that you know it's in, and or
Speaker 1: the author's name and the topic. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: on a little website called the ESPN doc In case
Speaker 1: you hadn't heard of it. But I think about the
Speaker 1: Olympics in you know, golf's got had an interesting start
Speaker 1: to the Olympics, just in terms of like I don't
Speaker 1: think it's really been fully embraced as much as the
Speaker 1: golf organization say they're fully embracing it. I don't think
Speaker 1: they necessarily have really thrown their weight behind it. But
Speaker 1: I think back to like me being a kid. Your
Speaker 1: piece about your daughter made me think about, you know,
Speaker 1: the significance of Olympics as as kids, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, we had weady boxes like you get you know,
Speaker 1: the Olympic medals. You know, the weady box was such
Speaker 1: a big deal. And and I just I remember watching
Speaker 1: all the sports. You watched, figure skate, you watched, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd watched figure skate with my mom and sister. I'd
Speaker 1: watched gymnastics, like that's what they wanted to watch. I
Speaker 1: wanted to watch the hockey in the winter of the Olympics.
Speaker 1: In the summer Olympics, I wanted to watch basketball, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's uh, you know, it's really interesting, but there's
Speaker 1: that it definitely when you're a kid, and it's and
Speaker 1: still is almost like I think, like a habit in
Speaker 1: you and throughout, Like I remember even in college when
Speaker 1: I would fall out of watching, Like, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't watch every major when I was in college of golf,
Speaker 1: but you know, I always remember distinctly watching Olympics when
Speaker 1: I was in college or what I was in the summer,
Speaker 1: when I was in maybe the worst state of my
Speaker 1: human being, you know, I still carved out time to
Speaker 1: watch Olympics because it was something that like I think
Speaker 1: obviously the scarcity has a lot to do with it.
Speaker 1: I think in probably some of the pageantry, which you know,
Speaker 1: somehow they pull it off. I think probably because of
Speaker 1: history they pull it off. But like if if golf
Speaker 1: had an event with the amount of pageantry that the
Speaker 1: Olympics had, we would just crush it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just talking about this. I was thinking
Speaker 2: about I hadn't thought about this in years, but I
Speaker 2: remember as a eleven year old like sneaking down to
Speaker 2: stay up and watch the men's volley ball gold medal
Speaker 2: match in South Korea in Seoul. This is nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: and like Karch Karai and Steve Timmins, two dudes who
Speaker 2: I would have never otherwise like had any knowledge that
Speaker 2: they even existed, were like these heroic figures in my life.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, these guys are so awesome.
Speaker 2: I want to be like karch Karai and probably like
Speaker 2: went outside and practiced volleyball, which wasn't even a sport,
Speaker 2: you know, in in Montana for me growing up. And
Speaker 2: so that that's like the weird appeal of the Olympics, right.
Speaker 2: I remember Greg luganis hitting his head on the diving board.
Speaker 2: I you know, I exactly felt the same way. I
Speaker 2: can vividly remember where I was when I remember when
Speaker 2: the Dan and Dave thing was playing out, and Dan
Speaker 2: didn't make the he like didn't make the next round
Speaker 2: of it. He like you know, couldn't clear the h
Speaker 2: the pole vault in one level whatever, And so it
Speaker 2: was like the whole rebox hole like super duper ad
Speaker 2: campaign like fizzled out. These two dudes who are supposed
Speaker 2: to be like the best you know, have athletes or
Speaker 2: pen athletes in the world, where we're not going to
Speaker 2: have this showdown. Like all of that is vivid or
Speaker 2: memories of my childhood. And I couldn't tell you, like
Speaker 2: who won a single major in nineteen eighty eight without
Speaker 2: looking it up and golf.
Speaker 1: So was that maybe Bob Tyat Andverness was that eighty.
Speaker 2: Eight that's extremely memorable.
Speaker 1: I just said in nineteen eighty eight. You say nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight fell, that was fella those masters eighty nine
Speaker 1: ninety right, yep, So it wouldn't have been Fell though masters.
Speaker 1: But you know the interesting thing too with what you
Speaker 1: just talked about, like the instigma, like you're an eleven
Speaker 1: year old, you go down, you sneak down and watch
Speaker 1: volleyball because it like you wanted to see if they
Speaker 1: won the gold medal. And ironically the medal count, like
Speaker 1: the gold medal count, the US has thirty nine gold medals,
Speaker 1: China's second with thirty eight. US got two gold medals
Speaker 1: from a pretty new sport in the Olympics, golf, and
Speaker 1: would have been a big story if China had more
Speaker 1: gold medals of the US. Yes, but that that bargin
Speaker 1: to victory. The reason they you know, the difference between
Speaker 1: first and second, and that that count is golf, which
Speaker 1: is really and you think there there could have been
Speaker 1: whether it happened or not, there could have been kids
Speaker 1: that were really obsessed with the with the metal count
Speaker 1: and Nelly Corda's win coming down the stretch like at
Speaker 1: that kind of the tail end of the Olympics was
Speaker 1: a big deal when it came to that metal count.
Speaker 2: It's true it made me think of like I would
Speaker 2: it would be so fun to have like an INCAA
Speaker 2: tournament style pool of like who you pick who the win?
Speaker 2: My remember sports ill trade used to run like this
Speaker 2: big you know, prediction of who would win medals, and
Speaker 2: so I would like study it, like how it would
Speaker 2: be super fun of that was like a mainstream thing
Speaker 2: nowadays where you would sort of have to guess and
Speaker 2: do like research as to all right, who's going to
Speaker 2: win the medal in skateboarding or you know, synchronized swimming. Okay,
Speaker 2: it looks like Ukraine is really strong this year. I'm
Speaker 2: going to pick them, and like that was as important
Speaker 2: as picking like a first round upset in the in
Speaker 2: a pools like that would be awesome.
Speaker 1: We need to get a Joe Lonardi type of character
Speaker 1: on the on the feat true bracketology. We got to
Speaker 1: come up with a catchy name.
Speaker 2: Tell NBC to you know, get Steve what's that guy
Speaker 2: who does the election stuff? He was nacky guy. Be
Speaker 2: the predicting of all Right, looks like Nelly Corda is
Speaker 2: the favorite and the gold medal match this week, so
Speaker 2: lay your money down on that.
Speaker 1: So you know, zero again. On golf, What did you
Speaker 1: watch a bunch of the golf in the Olympics, and
Speaker 1: if so, what were kind of your big takeaways.
Speaker 2: I watched a little bit of it. I didn't get
Speaker 2: to watch as much as I would have otherwise because
Speaker 2: I was traveling during a bunch of it, but I
Speaker 2: did peek in on it whenever I could and sort
Speaker 2: of would talk and touch with my girls about Oh,
Speaker 2: you know, did you see that that Nelly Corta is
Speaker 2: leading by a bunch because they're My guest is super
Speaker 2: into goolf and she wants to be either Nelly Korda
Speaker 2: or Lexi Thompson for Halloween this year, and this may
Speaker 2: have tipped off her. She's not she's short, she's not
Speaker 2: tall like Nelly, but she this may have tipped the
Speaker 2: scales to her. Wanted to be Nelly Korda for How
Speaker 2: exciting that? Yeah, she gets the dire hair blonde either way,
Speaker 2: so she's pretty excited about that.
Speaker 1: You know, if she wants if she wants to be
Speaker 1: Lexi make sure she knows how to mark her ball.
Speaker 2: I think she's a better chipper than Lexi right now,
Speaker 2: you know. Look, yeah, there has definitely been some discussions
Speaker 2: as Lexi. The long fade during the s Open was
Speaker 2: was kind of crushing, and we had to talk about how, oh.
Speaker 1: My god, that had to be brutal with your daughter,
Speaker 1: Lexi fan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty brutal there. But they they they haven't
Speaker 2: quite they can process like sports failure. But like I
Speaker 2: was really worried about how my oldest would process the
Speaker 2: Simone Biles news when she didn't compete. But mostly they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I just hope she's okay, like I. You know, they
Speaker 2: don't don't have quite the crushing like when the Lakers
Speaker 2: would lose when I was a kid and I'd go
Speaker 2: up to my bedroom and just cry for ten minutes
Speaker 2: and then be done with it. They don't quite look
Speaker 2: at it like that just yet.
Speaker 1: So it's or like how I feel when the Bears
Speaker 1: drafted to a quarterback.
Speaker 2: Exactly true.
Speaker 1: Yes, something I've kind of like watching a good amount
Speaker 1: of it. I feel like the Olympics, it doesn't it's
Speaker 1: not like a regular tournament. It's definitely elevated, especially on
Speaker 1: the weibi's side. I felt like coming down the stretch
Speaker 1: of the tournament, players played noticeably differently, whether it was
Speaker 1: you know, the bronze medal contention, silver gold, you saw
Speaker 1: the type of things you see in large tournaments, maybe
Speaker 1: even more so than even majors, because I think the
Speaker 1: significance of second and third led to more players feeling
Speaker 1: that pressure not to take Azinger's term, but feeling that
Speaker 1: uncomfortability in the moment. You know, like, how would you
Speaker 1: assuming golf continues to be a major part of the Olympics,
Speaker 1: where do you see it going and being when we
Speaker 1: start to talk about careers.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to get more wait as things
Speaker 2: go forward. I've I don't know if I came around
Speaker 2: a little bit more on it this year, Like the
Speaker 2: first year of it, I was sort of more on
Speaker 2: the rory side of things where I didn't really think
Speaker 2: like Justin Rose and Matt Kocher like winning medals and
Speaker 2: Hendrickson like you could have. I had to look up
Speaker 2: that Hendrick Stinson was one second in Reo Olympics.
Speaker 1: I did not.
Speaker 2: It's not something like a performance that stood out to
Speaker 2: me as like a big historical thing. But you know,
Speaker 2: this time around, like I thought it was a lot
Speaker 2: more you know, compelling, and it feelt it had a
Speaker 2: better field. It felt like it had a little bit
Speaker 2: more history to it, just in the sense of we
Speaker 2: already had one Olympics and so now we're adding to that.
Speaker 2: The thing that kind of just stuck out to me
Speaker 2: thinking about the Olympics this year is just how few
Speaker 2: things there are in golf where history is what you're
Speaker 2: playing for, not money, because at some point money just
Speaker 2: becomes kind of like background noise. Like you could, no
Speaker 2: amount of money is going to change Rory McElroy's life,
Speaker 2: like you could. You could have a tournament for a
Speaker 2: billion dollars and he could play super hard, but it
Speaker 2: would affect his life like maybe one percent at all,
Speaker 2: Like he'd be able.
Speaker 1: To own it, yeah, maybe own a plane, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and his wife gown another plane like that.
Speaker 2: There's nothing really that would change that. But honestly, like
Speaker 2: if he had won a gold medal, it probably would
Speaker 2: make him further kind of delve into identity and like
Speaker 2: what does it mean to be an Irishman or a
Speaker 2: Northern Irishman and what does it mean to have. I
Speaker 2: think you saw some of that when when the Open
Speaker 2: Championship was at Port Rush, right, because the weight of
Speaker 2: all those things was super heavy on his shoulders and
Speaker 2: all this idea that like Rory McElroy could unite a country,
Speaker 2: even if only briefly, that had experienced, you know, hundreds
Speaker 2: of years of secular divisiveness, and he just couldn't, like
Speaker 2: his brain kind of short circuited during that. And so
Speaker 2: I think those kind of things are rare in golf,
Speaker 2: and like the US Amateur is one, like it's a
Speaker 2: meaning that's part of the reason why we love it. Right,
Speaker 2: So these guys aren't just being handed a big check.
Speaker 2: They're kind of etching their name into history, and they're
Speaker 2: sort of thinking, like Jack did this, and Tiger did this,
Speaker 2: and Bryce and the Shamba did this, and so this
Speaker 2: is meaningful to me because I know that my name
Speaker 2: is kind of among those things. And I think that
Speaker 2: there is a chance that golf will have some of
Speaker 2: that kind of meaning if if this kind of continues
Speaker 2: to be something that where all the you know, top
Speaker 2: players actually really wanted. The first year, I think it
Speaker 2: was just kind of like there was no one even
Speaker 2: knew if the golf course was going to be ready
Speaker 2: like three months before the Olympics, and Zekas was either
Speaker 2: you know, a fake excuse for not wanting to go
Speaker 2: or a real concern for some of the guys. And
Speaker 2: so Justin Rose in retrospect probably will be seen as
Speaker 2: sort of an important figure in the history of Olympic
Speaker 2: golf because he's the first, and he can only be
Speaker 2: the first winner. That can only be one of those
Speaker 2: I didn't love Justin Rose kind of try to shame
Speaker 2: Rory for sort of not competing. Rory had sort of
Speaker 2: admitted in one of those Paul Kimmage interviews, you know
Speaker 2: that Justin Rose had texted him and been like, Yo,
Speaker 2: the boys, all the boys here want you to know
Speaker 2: you missed out. And it struck me very much as
Speaker 2: like a daft englishman's understanding of what it means to
Speaker 2: be from Northern Ireland. And you know that Rory would
Speaker 2: not be thrilled to sit up there and listen to
Speaker 2: the Tri colors. You see the Tri colors and hear
Speaker 2: the international anthem and it'll be like this, this feels
Speaker 2: so foreign to me because this doesn't even feel like
Speaker 2: my country. So I think Justin Rose kind of was
Speaker 2: a fool in that sense of looking at it from
Speaker 2: Rory's perspective, But I do understand it from Justin Rose's perspective.
Speaker 2: How probably cool it had to sort of seem. And
Speaker 2: these guys, you know, they all grew up watching these
Speaker 2: Olympic moments like we did, and so for them to
Speaker 2: get a chance to sort of, you know, feel like
Speaker 2: they're a part of that instead of just adding more
Speaker 2: dollar signs to their you know thing. I bet you
Speaker 2: that if you took a poll of like, oh, would
Speaker 2: you rather win a gold medal or FedEx Cup? Of
Speaker 2: all the guys who'd never been to the Olympics, THEYD
Speaker 2: probably said like, oh yeah, FedEx Cup, that'd be sort
Speaker 2: of life changing. But of the people who have like
Speaker 2: a ton of money, I would bet they'd say Olympics
Speaker 2: because it's like, what is ten million dollars when you
Speaker 2: have one hundred million dollars? It's really the way the
Speaker 2: mount that it changes your life is almost nil. And
Speaker 2: so I do think that will kind of matter. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's if you die and you've won a gold medal,
Speaker 2: one of the first lines in your New York Times
Speaker 2: obituary is going to be like gold medal winning Justin Rose,
Speaker 2: who won the US Open and a gold medal passed
Speaker 2: away this year in twenty sixty five. Whatever, that's what's
Speaker 2: going to read in his oh bit. You know it'll
Speaker 2: be you're the one major that you won and the
Speaker 2: gold medal that you won. So I do think it matters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think you hit on something that
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought of, is like the purity of the Olympics.
Speaker 1: There's you know, there's no money at stake, and then
Speaker 1: you know, everybody isn't a walking billboard. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't have NASCAR drivers out there filled with logos, and
Speaker 1: you know, if Bryson had played, it would have been
Speaker 1: in one. It would have been interesting to see if
Speaker 1: he had thanked his sponsors. But you know, that's one
Speaker 1: of the things, is the purity of it. And while
Speaker 1: the golf in the Olympics doesn't necessarily have history, you're
Speaker 1: definitely you're chasing the history of of what you watched
Speaker 1: growing up as a kid, and thinking of all the
Speaker 1: great athletes like you know, Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, like
Speaker 1: these these transcendent you know, Usain Bolt in recent time,
Speaker 1: like these transcendent athletes, like you become in the same
Speaker 1: class as them if you win a gold medal, and
Speaker 1: I do think golf is I've thought wrangle my head around,
Speaker 1: like how can we get significance out of second and
Speaker 1: third place in regular tournaments? Because it made the Sunday
Speaker 1: telecast where you know, in both cases, like the women's
Speaker 1: got close quick but Xander, you know, both set up
Speaker 1: where Xander and Nellie Corda had big leads going into Sunday,
Speaker 1: and at the start of the telecast there was still
Speaker 1: ample things to watch because you know, effectively ten players
Speaker 1: were in it for something significant in a medal, and
Speaker 1: we saw lydia Co obviously very emotional about winning a medal,
Speaker 1: you know, just you know, and then we saw a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, Adity talked about how she's never
Speaker 1: been so you know, disappointed in a fourth place finish,
Speaker 1: which was, you know, the best finish of her year.
Speaker 1: So I think that's the it's got sticking power. Where
Speaker 1: I started with the formatting, the embrace of the overall
Speaker 1: golf world is kind of where it has a lot
Speaker 1: of room to grow.
Speaker 2: Sure, I've never told the story before, but I wrote
Speaker 2: a piece about lydia Co a few years ago. I
Speaker 2: remember that we talked to a bunch of people about it.
Speaker 2: And one of the stories that I heard but didn't
Speaker 2: get to use in the piece because it didn't sort
Speaker 2: of fit structurally, and it is, you know, her parents,
Speaker 2: her father in particular is pretty strict and sort of
Speaker 2: a driving force in her golfing life, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who for a while felt
Speaker 2: that she would be better off if she you know,
Speaker 2: did like Michelle Wee and essentially cut her parents off
Speaker 2: at a later age and said, you know, I'm my
Speaker 2: own person now, like you don't want you to travel
Speaker 2: with me or whatever, but we are in the Olympics
Speaker 2: in Rio. Her father was really really pushing her. He
Speaker 2: really wanted her to win a gold medal, like this
Speaker 2: was extremely important to like their family, he felt, and
Speaker 2: their sort of you know, identity as South Korean slash
Speaker 2: New Zealanders. And she felt kind of an overwhelming amount
Speaker 2: of pressure and maybe didn't play quite as well as
Speaker 2: she could or as she finished second there, but that
Speaker 2: that was like a lot of people were like, WHOA, Like,
Speaker 2: she's under a lot of pressure, and I don't think
Speaker 2: people really realize that or understood that at the time,
Speaker 2: in part because it was the first Olympics, but like
Speaker 2: to the co's it really really mattered. It was a huge,
Speaker 2: huge deal, And so I was reminded of that when
Speaker 2: I saw her emotional and talking about her grandmother and stuff,
Speaker 2: and I think, like, you know, growing up part in
Speaker 2: South Korea and part in New Zealand and just thinking
Speaker 2: about sport in the sort of larger context. I mean,
Speaker 2: she was the kind of she I asked her about this.
Speaker 2: She went to like a ton of other events when
Speaker 2: she was in Rio to watch like New Zealanders compete.
Speaker 2: And I think if you're someone who you know, grows
Speaker 2: up in one place and has a connection to to it,
Speaker 2: like South Korea, but then moves to another place, part
Speaker 2: of what makes you maybe feel like a part of
Speaker 2: that culture and that country is like Olympic sport. Like
Speaker 2: here she is like cheering on like weightlifters and like
Speaker 2: you know, rugby players and these more traditional you know,
Speaker 2: Kiwi New Zealand type sports. And so that I thought
Speaker 2: was a cool thing to kind of understand why the
Speaker 2: Olympics made her feel like she was more in New Zealand.
Speaker 2: Then you know, some outsiders might sort of look at
Speaker 2: us because she was like, you know, I'm one of these,
Speaker 2: I'm a New Zealand Olympian.
Speaker 1: The Lydia cow whole evolution, just the way she's evolved
Speaker 1: as a as a person, Like I thought that last
Speaker 1: round of the like I've never found her so endearing,
Speaker 1: like her attitude towards Nelly Korda, the way she competed.
Speaker 1: Obviously played an incredible round of golf, had a little
Speaker 1: bit of you know, a few missteps in the middle
Speaker 1: of the round, but the way she battled, and then
Speaker 1: just the graciousness of her as a as a competitor,
Speaker 1: as somebody who came up just short. I found just
Speaker 1: it was unbelievable. And I think over the last year
Speaker 1: there's something about when these athletes go through struggles and
Speaker 1: come out of them that I think has such a
Speaker 1: It creates such a humility and a so much more
Speaker 1: balance in their life. They become I feel like, more relatable,
Speaker 1: and Lydia Co has gone from you know a few
Speaker 1: years ago, I kind of didn't know how I felt
Speaker 1: about her. Probably one of my favorite LPGA players.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, this is the same person
Speaker 2: who fired you know, nine caddies whatever in the first
Speaker 2: few years of her career and who everyone kind of wondered, like,
Speaker 2: is she, you know, behaving a little spoiled? Is she
Speaker 2: not looking in weird or whatever too? You know, I've
Speaker 2: seen her. She's sort of famous on the LBGA tour
Speaker 2: for like packing great snacks during rounds and like having
Speaker 2: like fresh fruit, And so I watched her, I'm serious,
Speaker 2: I watched her walking during a round and like, this
Speaker 2: is like a major round. I think it was the
Speaker 2: Ana and she whips out like a big tub of
Speaker 2: like freshly cut pineapple and watermelon and like starts handing
Speaker 2: pieces of it, like offering it up to the people
Speaker 2: she's playing with, Like hey, you know, and these are
Speaker 2: like her competitors. I mean, can you imagine Bryson like
Speaker 2: sharing protein bars or you know, anything like that during rounds.
Speaker 2: Like she's the kind of person who will offer you
Speaker 2: half her sandwich in the middle of a you know,
Speaker 2: one hundred and ten degree day because she's like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm not to eating all this and I'd love it
Speaker 2: if you got a chance to experience it.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. I might have to have her on just
Speaker 1: to talk about what her favorite fruit is luely discussed,
Speaker 1: like the intricacies of what's the best fruit on the
Speaker 1: golf course. See, the thing I worry about with pineapple
Speaker 1: is sticky fingers, you know.
Speaker 2: And you know what they use toothpicks. Yeah, I pluck
Speaker 2: it on the insight to the fruit I'm offering onto
Speaker 2: this podcast unbelievable.
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Speaker 1: Now back to Kevin van Valkelmberk. So you know, moving forward,
Speaker 1: how would you We did a Golf Star podcast a
Speaker 1: few years ago where we got to just you know,
Speaker 1: change change golf. You know, I don't I should listen
Speaker 1: back and see see if anything's changed at all. Or
Speaker 1: moved in a direction. But how would you make the
Speaker 1: Olympics better Golf in particular, not the overall Olympics.
Speaker 2: Well, I would adopt more of an NC DOUAA tournament
Speaker 2: model where you have a stroke play sort of section
Speaker 2: that determines a sort of a champion of her team.
Speaker 1: Kind of like an all around title for the women's gymnastics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then but where then I would sort of
Speaker 2: follow the Antiba model where then it breaks into match
Speaker 2: play because I think like that would be really cool,
Speaker 2: Like that would sort of you would really feel like
Speaker 2: you had vanquished everyone if you were the match play
Speaker 2: gold medal winner, right, Like that's kind of how most
Speaker 2: other of the Olympic sports work in some sense, Like
Speaker 2: if you couldn't do that, which I don't know that,
Speaker 2: like golf will ever go away from just a stroke
Speaker 2: play champion to sort of determine their thing. I would
Speaker 2: just love to see we'll do three rounds of stroke
Speaker 2: play stuff and we'll determine a gold medal winner from that,
Speaker 2: or we'll sort of fit it in five whatever we'll
Speaker 2: do this for. But I really would love to see
Speaker 2: some sort of mixed gender alternate shot for like a
Speaker 2: thing I mean this, think of how much fun that
Speaker 2: would be, and especially like in an alternate shot format
Speaker 2: where you know, you could have two people who from
Speaker 2: like a small country who just happened to sort of
Speaker 2: play really great together and catch fire and it's like
Speaker 2: a Cinderella kind of thing, like where they're matched up
Speaker 2: against you know, Justin Thomas and Nelly Korda and the
Speaker 2: or Xander and Daniel King or whatever in the final
Speaker 2: Like that would be so much fun. And I think
Speaker 2: watching the men and women have to kind of work
Speaker 2: together and read puts for each other and high five
Speaker 2: and get exuberant. I mean, imagine what a visual like
Speaker 2: image it would be if like Nelly Korda and Patrick
Speaker 2: Reid played an alternate shot thing and like Nelly made
Speaker 2: like a twenty foot bomb to win, and Patrick Reed
Speaker 2: like ran over and picked her up in the air.
Speaker 2: Like that would be. That would make Patrick Reid so
Speaker 2: much more likable and so much more endearing. And if
Speaker 2: they ended up like hating each other, that would make
Speaker 2: for fun kind of get interesting visuals too. Like I
Speaker 2: think alternate shot with with a one man and one
Speaker 2: woman would be so much fun for the Olympics, and
Speaker 2: there would be nothing else like it, and you only
Speaker 2: have to do it. Let's just only do it for
Speaker 2: one round, right, Like, let's just let's just sort of say,
Speaker 2: like who can post the best score with these two
Speaker 2: players each each going out? And I think that would
Speaker 2: be a really interesting way to kind of get a
Speaker 2: team element. It would sort of show like, Okay, you
Speaker 2: don't have to necessarily have a super deep team to
Speaker 2: compete in this. Maybe there's you know, one male Indian
Speaker 2: golfer and one female or one New Zealand male golfer
Speaker 2: who can compete with Lydia Co and like, you know,
Speaker 2: one golfer could be so good from the female side
Speaker 2: that it could make their team super competitive if they
Speaker 2: didn't have like a super strong male candidate or vice versa.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're tell me, like there aren't two golfers
Speaker 2: in all of Russia, who couldn't you know, have one
Speaker 2: day where they compete and play well, Like it's such
Speaker 2: a huge country, or like South Africa, like all of
Speaker 2: these places where we maybe we don't think of them
Speaker 2: as like traditional hotbeds for men's and women's golf, Like
Speaker 2: that would be a great chance to showcase, like, well,
Speaker 2: the best player in the best female player from some
Speaker 2: country might just be like a one which might not
Speaker 2: be good enough to play like professional golf at a
Speaker 2: highest level, but an alternate shot they could be pretty
Speaker 2: darn like good. How is that any different than some
Speaker 2: of the other Olympic sports where being a niche.
Speaker 1: Like a swimmer. I remember a swimmer from I can't
Speaker 1: remember where a few years ago qualified and it was
Speaker 1: you know, they were It was a huge story, but
Speaker 1: you know, the guy came and last in the qualifying rounds,
Speaker 1: but he was there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it would be awesome, and I think
Speaker 2: it would just everybody would be I think, kind of riveted.
Speaker 2: You'd get some really bad shots and you'd get some
Speaker 2: really cool recoveries too. I just alternate shots one of
Speaker 2: the best formats and we only ever see it at
Speaker 2: the Ryder Cup, and so I think it just would
Speaker 2: be a super fun way to get people really engaged
Speaker 2: in a larger sense of like, all right, I'm a
Speaker 2: fan of women's golf and men's golf, and so now
Speaker 2: I get to see them come together for this brief moment.
Speaker 1: I completely agree about the mix event. So you know,
Speaker 1: with the current construct with sixty person fields, it's very small.
Speaker 1: I don't you know, if you just did one small tweak,
Speaker 1: I don't see why you can't have a women and
Speaker 1: men's tournament happening concurrently. So that's a one one A
Speaker 1: like why aren't why isn't this happening at the same time?
Speaker 1: How cool it would be to have, you know, two
Speaker 1: events going on at once, right, B. There needs to
Speaker 1: be some matchplay format of this or team competition, whether
Speaker 1: you know or and the mix thing is also a
Speaker 1: thing that I've I thought would be a great idea.
Speaker 1: So idea would be obviously, like a team competition for
Speaker 1: the men, Chili would have won depending on how you
Speaker 1: split up the American team into two if you put
Speaker 1: them into two man teams, Chili would have won the
Speaker 1: men's team. How fricking cool is that?
Speaker 2: That's amazing? That would be really cool, Like I.
Speaker 1: Mean, like that, that's the whole point of having the
Speaker 1: team competition and what you just illustrated with, you know,
Speaker 1: a small country like if Chili, Like that's a huge
Speaker 1: deal in Chili. I can't imagine. I don't have how
Speaker 1: many medals they won in front of me, but I
Speaker 1: can't imagine they won many, you know, and It's the
Speaker 1: same thing we saw with why Aditi was such a
Speaker 1: big deal was that, you know, it's a country that
Speaker 1: doesn't win a lot of medals in the summer Olympics,
Speaker 1: and this, you know, golf, her chasing a medal in
Speaker 1: golf was like became national news. The other idea I had,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there shouldn't be an event the
Speaker 1: week after and either men's or women's golf, Like, there
Speaker 1: should not be a WGC the week after. There shouldn't
Speaker 1: be in a very important event. Whether it's important for
Speaker 1: us as media, I don't find wgc's at all important,
Speaker 1: but it's important for the pro golfers because of the
Speaker 1: free Bunny and the world ranking points that go along
Speaker 1: with it that they need to play in that. So
Speaker 1: that should never be after Olympics. That's that's just doing
Speaker 1: the Olympics. That's where I feel like the tour hasn't
Speaker 1: really embraced the Olympics, as you don't schedule at WGC
Speaker 1: after the Olympics, and I think, you know, part of
Speaker 1: this is like they don't own the Olympics. They don't
Speaker 1: get you know, they don't have a big financial benefit
Speaker 1: of the Olympics. Happening, so they don't, you know, they
Speaker 1: don't want to push it, right. But then I was
Speaker 1: thinking the other thing you could do, Like I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of calls for amateurs. What if the mixed
Speaker 1: event was an amateur event the week after the men
Speaker 1: and the women play the same week, and you get
Speaker 1: like the you know, it becomes you know, builds these people,
Speaker 1: these young golfers as you know, on a large platform,
Speaker 1: and you you maybe have someone like you know, Pierson,
Speaker 1: Cootie or whatever playing with Rojjang for the US, like
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, I guess I hate
Speaker 1: the term grow the game, but I just think that's
Speaker 1: these are the things like the Olympics. Of all the
Speaker 1: grow the Game initiatives, of all the tournaments that the
Speaker 1: golf hosts and everybody like, oh, growing the game, the
Speaker 1: one event that truly do have an impact and ability
Speaker 1: to grow the game is the Olympics.
Speaker 2: It's true, I will say I was I was a
Speaker 2: big like roll my eyes that they grow the game stuff.
Speaker 2: But I read somewhere that when golf is designated as
Speaker 2: an Olympic sport in order to send an Olympic team,
Speaker 2: to like to be a part of the Olympic Federation whatever,
Speaker 2: you have to invest a certain amount of money in
Speaker 2: each of the Olympic sports. And so there is actual
Speaker 2: like investment that has to be made as long as
Speaker 2: golf stays an Olympic sport. Like even the little country
Speaker 2: of Yeah, so they have to moore a bunch of
Speaker 2: money into their junior golf programs or whatever to sort
Speaker 2: of say to the Olympic Committee, you know, this is
Speaker 2: look weird doing this for golf, so, you know, knowing
Speaker 2: the IOC and its history of corruption and probably take
Speaker 2: their sort of piece off the top first. But there
Speaker 2: is you know, precedent for you know, these countries is saying,
Speaker 2: are right, well, if golf stays this way, we have
Speaker 2: to do it. You know, there's each each year the
Speaker 2: Olympics comes around, it seems like there's another like quirky
Speaker 2: sport added to it, like another basketball. Yeah, but how
Speaker 2: fuch far are we really from like having a TrackMan
Speaker 2: Olympics from having like a.
Speaker 1: Long drive thing Bryson Olympics.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, like two hundred mile an hour ball speed
Speaker 2: a way to sort of win a gold medal, and
Speaker 2: you know Bryson would just get dusted by those long
Speaker 2: drive guys, So like that would it would like send
Speaker 2: Bryson further and further down the rabbit hole of trying
Speaker 2: to find extra speed and flat drivers with you know,
Speaker 2: zero degrees of loft, like you could totally see like
Speaker 2: a track man that would How is that any different
Speaker 2: than like the hammer throw or like there's break dancing
Speaker 2: in the Olympics next year or next time this day
Speaker 2: in France.
Speaker 1: So that's unbelievable. Yeah, break dance that I mean they
Speaker 1: could do. I've always wondered why we have we don't
Speaker 1: have any like skills competitions. Like one of my favorite
Speaker 1: memories of of the Pro Bowl is when Mitch couldn't
Speaker 1: throw it over the over the the like plywood, the
Speaker 1: plywood defender to the receiver to the best one of
Speaker 1: the best receivers in the league. That was you know,
Speaker 1: the skills competition part could be fascinating. You know. Victor
Speaker 1: Hoflin loves to talk about dog out himself about how
Speaker 1: bad he's at chipping, Like, let's let's get him under
Speaker 1: the Olympic lights going for a metal chipping like that.
Speaker 1: It I think you could do something similar. I don't
Speaker 1: know how many metals golf is really barritted to hang
Speaker 1: a hand out. You know, this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot of metals.
Speaker 2: But you know might not. They're swimming. How many metals
Speaker 2: is there in swimming? Like there's there's like thirty medals
Speaker 2: for seven different disciplines. Like you know, every time Olympics
Speaker 2: comes around, you see all these people bitching about how
Speaker 2: Michael Phelps isn't truly the best Olympian of all time
Speaker 2: because what is the difference really between like the butterfly
Speaker 2: and the freestyle and the you know, the backstroke, and
Speaker 2: they're not that it's just swimming in a different way
Speaker 2: going forward. So why can't golf just say like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: like this is just this track man Championships has you know,
Speaker 2: very little to do with the actual stroke play, but
Speaker 2: it's still a clear golf skill.
Speaker 1: What if like he did like something like like wedges
Speaker 1: and and Ireland's like, no, Rory, we're sitting you out
Speaker 1: for this one. We're bringing we're bringing in like some
Speaker 1: sixty five year old.
Speaker 3: Man Christie O'Connor or whatever, that guy who won the
Speaker 3: rider up for him, Like what a what a controversial
Speaker 3: decision is the Irish team or skidding Rory? This We'll
Speaker 3: see how he reacts, but right now it's.
Speaker 1: I mean, this just would bring so much Uh, it
Speaker 1: would almost bring like a great level of bananity that
Speaker 1: would be so so entertaining uh to the Olympics. I'm
Speaker 1: all for it, And then it would give It would
Speaker 1: also spice up our regular weekly telecast and be like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, Patrick Cantley won the UH one, the
Speaker 1: all round driving gold medal, he's a gold medalist.
Speaker 2: Well, like you never it's funny that they never talk
Speaker 2: about how Rory's got such an average wedge player in
Speaker 2: the broadcast. Maybe that would finally force CBS's hand or
Speaker 2: ABC's hand to kind of discuss the reality that we
Speaker 2: like that truth about Rory only exists in like the
Speaker 2: podcast world.
Speaker 1: He got bench. He got bench famously for a sixty
Speaker 1: five year old man who had played competitive golf in
Speaker 1: twenty years.
Speaker 2: We just had Olympic pressure and he just couldn't handle
Speaker 2: the pressure.
Speaker 1: Maybe Gary Player would get in some copies.
Speaker 2: I mean, bunker play is for Olympic medal, Like, are
Speaker 2: you telling me that Gary Player couldn't isn't the like
Speaker 2: the fourth best bunker player in South Africa? Still the.
Speaker 1: Fact to a serious. So the other thing with the
Speaker 1: Olympics is talk about with golf is like the the
Speaker 1: circumstance Deltha with Zeke between Zeka and COVID, like no
Speaker 1: no swimmer, like elite swimmers skipping because the Olympics is
Speaker 1: like everything right, but for golf, with it being at
Speaker 1: this point not fully established in not a must go,
Speaker 1: you know, between the two things like the dampened I
Speaker 1: saw DJ cited the dampened you know, Olympics experience. I
Speaker 1: think he said that it wasn't really a real Olympics.
Speaker 1: So those two things obviously had had a huge impact
Speaker 1: on I think players showing up or they were convenience
Speaker 1: excuses for people that didn't want to make the travel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what would be the excuse for I mean, will
Speaker 2: Bubba Watson say he can't go because he vowed to
Speaker 2: never go back to France as the food was weird?
Speaker 2: And you know, I don't know if.
Speaker 1: There's something if Bubba Watson was qualified at that point
Speaker 1: forty years years.
Speaker 2: From something has mid forties, right, if it was still
Speaker 2: he's like forty one now or something, I don't know,
Speaker 2: that'd be that'd.
Speaker 1: Be super exciting to see if could have a crazy
Speaker 1: excuse at that point.
Speaker 2: Not allowed outside the country because of extradition rules or something. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like I'm already imagining though, where you're
Speaker 2: your your amateur slash pros take like that we could
Speaker 2: have the pros play at leg Off National and the
Speaker 2: amateurs could play at Montefort or whatever that more Fonte. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's just what a great pression.
Speaker 1: It's okay, it's if you had me pronouncing you know,
Speaker 1: NFL linements. You know.
Speaker 2: How great is that course? And yet like I probably
Speaker 2: couldn't stand up to the pro game, so you could
Speaker 2: totally like showcase it. But with the amateur game that
Speaker 2: would be sweet.
Speaker 1: Well. The other thing I think that they're missing out on,
Speaker 1: which you touched on in your piece, is like, why
Speaker 1: don't we have a qualifying tournament? Why is it just
Speaker 1: like straight like how fun would a qualify tournament be?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Olympic, the US Olympic Trials, that's true. I
Speaker 2: haven't thought of that that. I think when when we
Speaker 2: were talking about the difference between like money and history,
Speaker 2: it would be fun if the masters like through in
Speaker 2: all right, you know that you get to you get
Speaker 2: to come to the Masters, if you finish you know,
Speaker 2: in the top if you win a medal, like no
Speaker 2: matter where you are, because that would that isn't like
Speaker 2: a mon Yeah, that isn't like an right, Like why not,
Speaker 2: Like that would be a great incentive for you know,
Speaker 2: imagine other than like if you grow up in Chile
Speaker 2: or you grow up in you know, Bali or wherever,
Speaker 2: one of your dreams if you're a golfer might be
Speaker 2: to someday play in the Masters, and like the Olympics
Speaker 2: would be a way into that, you know, without having
Speaker 2: to finish what in the top fifty or when you're
Speaker 2: Latin amateur or Asian Pacific amateur, Like getting an Olympic
Speaker 2: medal would be a great way to get to play
Speaker 2: in the Masters. That would be just as huge too,
Speaker 2: like the the golfing population of some of these smaller
Speaker 2: countries as other things. So like why not the Masters
Speaker 2: can just add three more people in their field. It's
Speaker 2: not like they're really you know, stuck on a certain
Speaker 2: specific number, and they could just do that for the
Speaker 2: sort of history of the game, for fun.
Speaker 1: It'd be great. I mean, there's all kinds of things
Speaker 1: you could do. All the majors could do it. This
Speaker 1: would this would fall under the bucket of golf actually
Speaker 1: embracing the Olympics as as a real thing. That would
Speaker 1: be you know, it's good. It's good for any time
Speaker 1: that like casual viewers, like a large like golf was
Speaker 1: on the NBC telecast at points, it's like you're picking
Speaker 1: up people that not really do not watch golf, whether
Speaker 1: you're like any time you can get in front of golf,
Speaker 1: So like all of golf should embrace it. This is
Speaker 1: a all boats rise situation. This is not a this
Speaker 1: or them. Only the tour might look at it and
Speaker 1: say they're gonna they're gonna take our fifth major away
Speaker 1: from the players. But outside of that.
Speaker 2: You know, it does get into the like the scarcity argument, right,
Speaker 2: is what we a lot of what we talk all
Speaker 2: the time about why golf kind of has a monotonous feel,
Speaker 2: right because you never get the chance to miss it,
Speaker 2: Like you never get a chance to sort of have
Speaker 2: a a week where you have a breath and like
Speaker 2: think like okay, like I don't have to think about
Speaker 2: golf this weekend or whatever, and yeah, like it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's I guess it's important for playing opportunities and the
Speaker 2: tour is never going to sort of take away tournaments,
Speaker 2: but I mean, you know, it might benefit in the
Speaker 2: long run if like some tournaments, some cities only got
Speaker 2: a tournament every other year, you know, and then it's
Speaker 2: the whole the whole populace of that city is like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, like we didn't get the you know,
Speaker 2: the Quad Cities or the three m or whatever this year,
Speaker 2: the John dere like, but it's next year, We're going
Speaker 2: to be so excited. Like it's the Ryder Cup argument.
Speaker 2: Like some people say, oh, there should be a Ryder
Speaker 2: Cup every year. I actually don't think so. I actually
Speaker 2: think one of the things that makes it really makes
Speaker 2: you really into it will wait. It's so long that
Speaker 2: you get more and more build up and excitement and
Speaker 2: so like I kind of love it when there's two
Speaker 2: weeks between the the AFC Championship game in Super Bowl,
Speaker 2: because it's like, okay, like you're itching, like after that
Speaker 2: first week of like we don't have football for the
Speaker 2: first time or whatever, Like I'm now I'm super jack.
Speaker 2: Like the players are exhausted by it because of the
Speaker 2: media obligations and stuff. But I think it would be
Speaker 2: kind of fun if there was just a little break
Speaker 2: here and there.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's football is like the perfect example, the
Speaker 1: perfect Like, I am a football fan and right now
Speaker 1: I've got I've got the football itch. I've started to
Speaker 1: listen to my football pods. I'm getting back into it.
Speaker 1: I'm like and it's like, oh, thank god it's back.
Speaker 1: And you know, every Sunday it's yeah, I love Sundays.
Speaker 1: You know, I've flipped between golf and football, and it's
Speaker 1: like the football, I mean they haven't figured out where
Speaker 1: I mean, they added a game, so they're getting less scarce,
Speaker 1: which is you know, eventually we probably will get to
Speaker 1: the point where we have fifty two weeks a year
Speaker 1: of football if they if the owter's at their way.
Speaker 1: But you know, the one game a week, it's a
Speaker 1: smaller commitment. It's easier to be super invested when the
Speaker 1: commitments smaller. You know, of your time, Like you think
Speaker 1: about golf, I get it's on for it's like twelve
Speaker 1: hour a day, four days a week. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to be committed to that. It's hard for
Speaker 1: me if somebody covers the sport to watch like as
Speaker 1: much of it as I think I should.
Speaker 2: I wonder what percentage of people watch all the golf
Speaker 2: that there is available to watch. You know, it's probably
Speaker 2: zero point, you know, five percent of the golf watching audience,
Speaker 2: whereas like the percentage of people who watch every football
Speaker 2: game that's available to them, you know, within reason, like
Speaker 2: we're not watching four games at once, is much higher,
Speaker 2: I'm sure, and that's because it requires a smaller investment. Like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll watch Sunday night.
Speaker 1: It's one day, really not football.
Speaker 2: Monday night football, Thursday football, and Sunday football. That's a lot.
Speaker 2: That's most football fans probably don't watch all of those things.
Speaker 2: But that's still less of a commitment than would take
Speaker 2: to watch all the.
Speaker 1: Golf and one week, one week of golf versus like
Speaker 1: seven you know, fifty two fifty weeks a year. That's
Speaker 1: golf is Thursday through Sunday from seven am till seven pm.
Speaker 1: Let's just say football seventeen weeks or May twenty weeks
Speaker 1: a year is noon my time to ten pm, ten
Speaker 1: thirty one day week, and then you get night games
Speaker 1: two other days. It's like it's kind of wild, I can't.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, sometimes when people root for the
Speaker 2: PGL to sort of come into existence. They I just
Speaker 2: try to imagine the like the chaos that it would
Speaker 2: be as a golf fan, like trying to follow. All right, well,
Speaker 2: we got two tournaments on today and ones that you
Speaker 2: know that this team could be relegated if they don't win,
Speaker 2: and then we're gonna come back to watch the three
Speaker 2: m where the you know, the leader. There's nobody in
Speaker 2: the top thirty in the world who's in this tournament,
Speaker 2: And like what does.
Speaker 1: It mean, Like we're Brendan Todd's battling Jim Herman down
Speaker 1: the stretch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the riveting. Maybe that's what Maybe that's what golf
Speaker 2: was like in like nineteen eighty eight before Foaldo came
Speaker 2: along and started winning majors.
Speaker 1: To bring us back to the beginning, all right, KVV,
Speaker 1: it's always a pleasure. Give us one one football take
Speaker 1: that you've been rubinaing on with the season right around,
Speaker 1: and then we'll let you out of here.
Speaker 2: My football take is that the Packers will once again
Speaker 2: collapse in the more important, more.
Speaker 1: Important player audience here, Yeah, most.
Speaker 2: Important game of the year. Like there's look, Aaron Rodgers
Speaker 2: is a great player. Have loved watching him. Think he's
Speaker 2: the most enjoyable thrower of the football that I've ever
Speaker 2: seen in covering the game for twenty years. But there
Speaker 2: is something to be said for why, like he's only
Speaker 2: his record in NFC championship games is not great. And
Speaker 2: it's not just like, oh, he doesn't have the right
Speaker 2: pieces around him or he's always got some bad breaks.
Speaker 2: Like guys like Tom Brady like put their teams in
Speaker 2: position to win, like over and over and over again
Speaker 2: by doing the simple right things, And Aaron Rodgers doesn't
Speaker 2: do those things. He does all the miraculous things, but
Speaker 2: he is not great about like in what seems like
Speaker 2: a meaningless thing picking up a third and six on
Speaker 2: a you know, and I think that that puts his
Speaker 2: team in a position to where they can choke it
Speaker 2: away more often than like what Brady's greatest talent, all
Speaker 2: the time, for his entire career has just been like
Speaker 2: you need four yards, I'll get you five, and Aaron
Speaker 2: Rodgers is like, you need four yards, I'm gonna try
Speaker 2: for thirty eight.
Speaker 1: You know. The The other thing he did was that he, uh,
Speaker 1: he said that his teammates stunk all off season. Yeah,
Speaker 1: could cast some you know, whether or not, you know,
Speaker 1: apparent at first glance, when the gooye gets tough, some
Speaker 1: some scars that you know.
Speaker 2: When Justin Fields starts leading the Bears to you know,
Speaker 2: a string of unexpected victories and they upset the Packers
Speaker 2: on like a Thursday night, and there's a mutiny in
Speaker 2: the Packers locker room where guys are screaming at Aaron.
Speaker 2: You didn't want to be here anyway, Then that'll be
Speaker 2: like you're Nirvana.
Speaker 1: I'm not getting any hopes up about Justin Fields. I've
Speaker 1: been down this road too many times, I know. I
Speaker 1: still I still have haunting nightmares of Kate McNown and
Speaker 1: his throwing balls into the dirt.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't like make this that public because
Speaker 2: I kind of cover the game. But like, I grew
Speaker 2: up a Bears fan, so you and I will trade
Speaker 2: texts about the history of terrible Bears quarterbacks and you know, uh,
Speaker 2: we're together in our misery to get through the season.
Speaker 1: But I went to games that were more illuminating than
Speaker 1: any any two games that I think we could possibly Like,
Speaker 1: I watched Peyton Manning play Craig Krenzel Crenzil and then
Speaker 1: I can't remember who it was. I watched Tom Brady
Speaker 1: in like a blizzard light up the Bears. I can't
Speaker 1: remember who the quarterback was. I don't think it was Grossman.
Speaker 1: I was in a little bit of a haste due
Speaker 1: to my own doing the night before, and it was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was like something like both games were
Speaker 1: like I think the team scored fifty points, you know,
Speaker 1: the Patriots of the Colts both scored like fifty and
Speaker 1: the Bear scored about seven. And it was just like,
Speaker 1: we don't have one of these quarterbacks. We never have
Speaker 1: and we've never been close to having one of them.
Speaker 2: I like waited my entire life to go to a
Speaker 2: soldier field, like I had sort of dreamed of it,
Speaker 2: and then when I finally got to do it, it
Speaker 2: was I was like writing a Teddy bridge Runner story
Speaker 2: and it was like Teddy Teddy Bridgewater versus God. I
Speaker 2: can't even remember who the Bears quarterback was.
Speaker 1: It was a couple of years ago. It was when
Speaker 1: Bridgewater was on the Saints. It was, uh, who was that?
Speaker 2: God it was? I I do know that. I like
Speaker 2: texted some friends and I was like, oh God, this
Speaker 2: is not this.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Glennon, it was It might have been. Uh
Speaker 1: it wasn't Foles, No, that was Folds was last year.
Speaker 1: Who was it?
Speaker 2: I'm trying to look it up. I don't know. It's brutal.
Speaker 1: It was someone Mitch is back. Oh who's uh it
Speaker 1: was what's his name? Uh, he's the Chase Daniel.
Speaker 2: It wasil. This is clearly a dream matchup for me.
Speaker 2: That was I waited my whole life just for that.
Speaker 1: So oh all right, we'll end on that high note. KBV.
Speaker 1: You can find KVV on Twitter. Is right, I got
Speaker 1: ESPN dot com. Enjoy your sweaty golf today and we'll
Speaker 1: talk to you sooner than later. Thanks buddy, Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: We will be back next week. Garrett Morrison has another
Speaker 1: edition of his popular Frida Egg Stories. This is gonna
Speaker 1: be a good one. I don't want to give too
Speaker 1: much away, So next week in your feeds early in
Speaker 1: the week will be a new Frida Egg story with
Speaker 1: Garrett Morrison. This episode was edited by the aforementioned Garrett Morrison.
Speaker 1: And thanks for listening. If you got a second, write
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Speaker 1: at it too. Have a nice day and thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to the Friday Podcast.