Speaker 1: It's the Son of a Butch podcast. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Claude Harmon. We always come to you every Wednesday. This
Speaker 1: week's guest Kira Dixon doing work now for NBC and
Speaker 1: Golf Channel, a former Miss America won that crown in
Speaker 1: two thousand and fifteen. But listen, she's a golfer. That's
Speaker 1: why I wanted to have her on the podcast. You're
Speaker 1: going to be seeing her, um interviewing you know, the
Speaker 1: guys on the PGA Tour. But Um, she can play.
Speaker 1: She's made the cut at the A T and T
Speaker 1: Pebble Beach Pro Am and um loves golf. Golf has
Speaker 1: been a huge part of her life. And again she's
Speaker 1: one of those people. Um, it's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why I wanted to do the podcast. Get people who
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily playing golf on TV um weekend week out,
Speaker 1: but our golf people. And I mean, what a story.
Speaker 1: I mean if I if I had told myself five
Speaker 1: years ago, I'd be doing a podcast and interviewing a
Speaker 1: former Miss America who's now interviewing people on Golf Channel,
Speaker 1: in NBC and in the golf space. Um. You know
Speaker 1: that's the cool thing about all the people that you meet,
Speaker 1: um when you're get to be around golf like I am.
Speaker 1: And she's got a great story and uh, to to
Speaker 1: make that jump from pageants to now being part of
Speaker 1: the NBC Golf Channel crew. Um, it's cool story. UM.
Speaker 1: I think it's some good stuff and I think everybody
Speaker 1: will enjoy um listening to Kira. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: let's get to the interview. Well, it's not every day
Speaker 1: that my guest is a former Miss America. But the
Speaker 1: idea behind the podcast was to get people that are
Speaker 1: in the golf space, not in the golf space, in
Speaker 1: the golf space and love golf. Um. I gotta be
Speaker 1: honest with you, I didn't think i'd get a Miss
Speaker 1: America winner on the podcast. Ask HERA, UM, it's been Avery,
Speaker 1: there's a I mean, you're working for the Golf Channel,
Speaker 1: now working for NBC and stuff like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: are you even surprised that kind of the trajectory that
Speaker 1: your career is going to where now you are firmly
Speaker 1: entrenched from being you know, Miss America to now firmly
Speaker 1: entrenched in the golf world. Yeah, if you had asked
Speaker 1: me five years ago, if this is where I would
Speaker 1: be I would laugh. Um, but here we are and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean you get more into it. But
Speaker 1: Miss America really blows up your life and kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, in the best way. So prior to you
Speaker 1: think you're going to do one thing, and then you
Speaker 1: get exposed to this entire new world of opportunities and
Speaker 1: doors that can be opened. And I happened to walk
Speaker 1: through the golf door and here we are and now
Speaker 1: I'm sitting down with you. What a life. Um. So
Speaker 1: obviously now you're part of You're you're involved with NBC,
Speaker 1: with Golf Channel, you're interviewing players, are at all the
Speaker 1: tournaments competition to you're you know, interviewing professional athletes. How
Speaker 1: much of a competition or the pageants because as an
Speaker 1: outsider looking at looking into me, it just looks like
Speaker 1: an absolute free for all, it just looks like it's
Speaker 1: just it would be crazy. It would be a lot
Speaker 1: of competition, it would be a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: you know, all this crazy energy. What's it like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, I really compare pageants to golf because
Speaker 1: you are competing against yourself and um, it's an individual
Speaker 1: sport and you can only blame yourself if you mess up. Okay, So, UM,
Speaker 1: golfers could could really find a lot of parallels to
Speaker 1: walking across that stage because it's all about you. And
Speaker 1: I've always found that that's been an interesting thing for
Speaker 1: me to draw on of of how can I relate
Speaker 1: to players because I understand that UM certainly on on
Speaker 1: a on a basic level. But I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: people have seen ms congeniality or movies or cultural things
Speaker 1: about about pad. It's ensure there's some of that that
Speaker 1: is very much true. But um, for the most part,
Speaker 1: this is just a really awesome group of women that
Speaker 1: comes together once a year from all walks of life,
Speaker 1: from all different backgrounds, UM, that end up really becoming
Speaker 1: amazing friends. At twenty five of the goals I competed
Speaker 1: with it, Miss America came to my wedding. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so I've got to ask you this question. Is the
Speaker 1: pageant equivalent of you've got a one shut lead. You're
Speaker 1: standing there in the middle of fairway back back left pin,
Speaker 1: you snap hook at the water and you make triple
Speaker 1: or double and you lose. Is that is the pageant
Speaker 1: equivalent the the IRAQ statement, Is that the same thing? Yes,
Speaker 1: the onstage question is kind of a make or break
Speaker 1: it moment. It's that last plush to really show the
Speaker 1: judges that, like I, I can speak on national television
Speaker 1: or in front of whomever and be able to give
Speaker 1: a good year and answer on this thing. And if
Speaker 1: you stand up there like a deer in the headlights,
Speaker 1: then it's probably not going to go well. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely the triple boggy that you're trying to avoid. Also,
Speaker 1: I think in two it would be easy to look
Speaker 1: at I'm sure there is a segment of the population
Speaker 1: that looks at the Miss American Pageant is being you know, bad,
Speaker 1: bad for women and justifying women, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: really really kind of tearing women down. As somebody thats
Speaker 1: going through this and there's someone that has probably made
Speaker 1: lifelong friends who are part of this world. What place
Speaker 1: in in in the current weird culture that we live
Speaker 1: in where everybody is so quick to try and cancel
Speaker 1: anybody U in two, what what where are pageants today?
Speaker 1: I mean, what what what does that world like? And
Speaker 1: where do you think they should be and where do
Speaker 1: you think moving forward they can be? Because the Miss
Speaker 1: American Pageant is a huge part of cultural American history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just celebrated its hundredth anniversary. It's crazy. Yeah yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: so I will explain why I did miss America and
Speaker 1: then you know how it's evolved to today. So as
Speaker 1: a kid, I loved to sing and dance. I love
Speaker 1: to be on stage. I loved anything involving a performance.
Speaker 1: And one day we got a flyer in the mail
Speaker 1: for like a local no makeup, very basic, just opportunity
Speaker 1: to put yourself on a stage. And my mom I begged,
Speaker 1: my mom begged, beg, beg. My parents who are Russian immigrants,
Speaker 1: so they have no context for what this is. They
Speaker 1: have no idea. They moved here in nineteen ninety. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what was the not to get touch? What was the
Speaker 1: reason that your parents chose to leave the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: income to the former Soviet Union at that point or
Speaker 1: was it still the Soviet Union at that point? That
Speaker 1: was called in nine believe, and then because I remember
Speaker 1: I was in college when we watched the Wall come down,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole kind of Soviet Union was so
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, parents say, Okay, we're gonna get out out
Speaker 1: of this situation, come to America. Yes, Uh, well, my
Speaker 1: dad's a surgeon in America now, but at the time
Speaker 1: he was a surgeon in Russia, and a surgeon in
Speaker 1: Russia was getting paid less than a bus driver. Um.
Speaker 1: He they mean, they uh, this is a much you know,
Speaker 1: we can talk about that for for hours and hours.
Speaker 1: But they wanted a better life. They wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to live in a country where they could depend
Speaker 1: on food sources and education and you know, possible peace
Speaker 1: and not have to beg barter and steel for anything
Speaker 1: and everything that you have. So um, they were able
Speaker 1: to get out. And I mean my dad wrote hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of letters to doctors whose addresses not email
Speaker 1: addresses at the time, but physical addresses were listed in
Speaker 1: the back of like the American College of Surgeon's Medical Journal.
Speaker 1: And he wrote hundreds of letters to all of these doctors.
Speaker 1: A few of them responded, and one doctor Prince in Chicago,
Speaker 1: helped him get his piecea to come here. Um, and
Speaker 1: Dr Prince came to my wedding as well. So my
Speaker 1: wedding was like, you know, big meeting of the minds
Speaker 1: of all these people of different of different parts of
Speaker 1: our lives. Um. But you know, they came here with
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing A couple of suitcases and no money. Some
Speaker 1: distant family took them in California. They then lived in Chicago.
Speaker 1: My dad lived at a Y m c A for
Speaker 1: for months while he was trying to get his first
Speaker 1: research job, and got into a residency in Kentucky, a
Speaker 1: fellowship in Texas, and then finally a private practice and
Speaker 1: now um works for Kaiser in Oakland. But that's a
Speaker 1: whole aside of it grows up to be miss American.
Speaker 1: It's like the ultimate American dream. But you don't. That's
Speaker 1: one of those stories. And there are you know, millions
Speaker 1: in American history, millions of people who whose parents, whose grandparents,
Speaker 1: whose great had that same experience. And so if somebody
Speaker 1: brought you a script and said, I'm gonna take down
Speaker 1: your mother and father's life. I'm gonna write this script
Speaker 1: and all of these things that kind of happened by
Speaker 1: chance a sidents. Look, you'd read the script and go,
Speaker 1: I mean that's not believable, right, I mean that that
Speaker 1: there's no way that could happen. It's what it actually
Speaker 1: really happened to your parents. Yeah, you can't make this
Speaker 1: stuff up. So's it's wild that we ended up here
Speaker 1: that they ended up where they got to that I
Speaker 1: get to live the life that I get to live
Speaker 1: because of so much hard work and sacrifice, and that's
Speaker 1: certainly not lost on me. I have such a wonderful, charmed,
Speaker 1: privileged life because of what they did. Um, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazy. So the end of
Speaker 1: this script, somebody's writing the script on your parents life
Speaker 1: and they say, I've got a great way to end
Speaker 1: this this this movie. She grows up and she becomes
Speaker 1: Miss American, and you don't get the hell out of here.
Speaker 1: She does. She does, Okay, so I'll take you back
Speaker 1: to how this happened. So I convinced them to let
Speaker 1: me do this. Great We end up doing this like
Speaker 1: once a year till I'm sixteen, seventeen years old, and then,
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of go out of it. I
Speaker 1: go off to college and then and I decide that
Speaker 1: I want to go to law school. I get into
Speaker 1: Notre Dame. You know, I've finished taking me outside Dame.
Speaker 1: I've paid my deposit. And at the time, I was
Speaker 1: living in New York, and I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I kind of missed that that part of my life.
Speaker 1: I have some friends still from from that age that
Speaker 1: have gone on and competed in Miss America Miss USA,
Speaker 1: and they are the largest provider of scholarships to women
Speaker 1: in the world. And I'm about to go to law school,
Speaker 1: so why not this will be fun while I'm still
Speaker 1: before I go off on this next big thing. So
Speaker 1: I compete once at Miss New York. I make the
Speaker 1: top ten. Okay, well that's fun. But I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: it one more time. And if I win, great, I'll
Speaker 1: stay in New York for an extra year. I'll defer
Speaker 1: my law school acceptance. If not, I'll go straight to
Speaker 1: to Indiana and that'll be that. And I end up
Speaker 1: winning Miss New York UM, which is awesome. Being Miss
Speaker 1: new York is the best thing ever because you're like
Speaker 1: writing the subway to appearances and being like, you know,
Speaker 1: doing the grit with the glamour and you know, fighting
Speaker 1: every day for appearances and being elevant because nobody cares
Speaker 1: about Miss New York and New York. There's like all
Speaker 1: these other things to pay attention to. It's a lot
Speaker 1: different to be Miss whatever other state. UM. So that's
Speaker 1: that's an education in itself. The two women that were
Speaker 1: Miss America before me were also Miss New York's. The
Speaker 1: organization had never had a three pet or you know,
Speaker 1: three winners in a row from the same state, so
Speaker 1: it was statistically impossible for me to win, which is fine,
Speaker 1: and people would tell me that, and it took so
Speaker 1: much pressure off. So this is a great lesson for
Speaker 1: all your golfers out there. It took so much pressure
Speaker 1: off being yeah, being results oriented. All I did was
Speaker 1: have fun and be myself and be relaxed and do
Speaker 1: do the things that I knew that I was going
Speaker 1: to be really good at and those were my strengths,
Speaker 1: and I let those strengths come out without putting so
Speaker 1: much pressure on myself to the point where it was
Speaker 1: crippling and I couldn't perform at my best. So I
Speaker 1: won because everybody else but a lot of pressure on themselves.
Speaker 1: And it's also you know, different day, different judges could
Speaker 1: be a crapshoot, who knows um And Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: way that at the time, Miss America was produced by
Speaker 1: Dick Clark Productions. They produced the Billboard Music Awards, the
Speaker 1: American Music Ward Awards, American Country Countdown, Academy Country Music,
Speaker 1: La La La, and the deal was that Miss America
Speaker 1: would not only be at these red carpets, but present
Speaker 1: at these shows, these huge national shows. So I went
Speaker 1: from being this little law student, hopeful grit, you know,
Speaker 1: writing the subway in New York to getting my hair
Speaker 1: and makeup done every day and having this you know,
Speaker 1: this insane life and you know, getting exposed to you know,
Speaker 1: and in this, America does a whole lot more than that.
Speaker 1: I went on a USO tour around the world to Afghanistan, Bahraine,
Speaker 1: South Korea, Diego, Garcia, which is a tiny island in
Speaker 1: the Indian Ocean, and all these other places. I visited
Speaker 1: hundreds of children hospitals for Children's Miracle Network, um and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, all these things in between. But I
Speaker 1: also played golf and I got invited to play in
Speaker 1: all these big celebrity programs, and you know, you can
Speaker 1: connect the dots and how that ended up to where
Speaker 1: I am today. But at the time, I felt like
Speaker 1: they did such a great job of including Miss America
Speaker 1: in the pop culture landscape as a gold role model
Speaker 1: for women, as an advocate for causes that you care about,
Speaker 1: as um, you know, somebody that can grow up and
Speaker 1: have these really big dreams and actually achieve them. Um.
Speaker 1: In the organization has very much changed over the last
Speaker 1: seven to eight years. And there are things about it
Speaker 1: that I still love, and there are things about it
Speaker 1: that I very much uh you know, don't necessarily agree with.
Speaker 1: But what it has given me is this incredible life
Speaker 1: and an opportunity and a platform. I wouldn't be sitting
Speaker 1: here with you today. We're getting to do the job
Speaker 1: that I get to do if I hadn't had those
Speaker 1: opportunities the insane growth. Um. So that is what I
Speaker 1: would say it can contribute to a woman's life now.
Speaker 1: There is so much about the organization to unpack, whether
Speaker 1: it's you know, looking at it from from an image standpoint,
Speaker 1: or how people how it what it does too if
Speaker 1: you're like your mental health or how you look about
Speaker 1: like there's there's plenty of negative stuff that I still
Speaker 1: deal with on a day to day basis of just
Speaker 1: like yourself image or dealing with bullying online or how
Speaker 1: people would talk about you at the time, um, which
Speaker 1: is something that I still deal with every single day. UM.
Speaker 1: But I'm here and I'm thriving and doing the best
Speaker 1: that I can. So that is a very broad to
Speaker 1: thousands of view of what the experience was like. I
Speaker 1: would imagine being a young woman being in the pageant
Speaker 1: world where it is competition. Um, I would imagine that
Speaker 1: world very much parallels to junior golf world, to where
Speaker 1: you have stage parents. I mean, I deal with that
Speaker 1: all the time. I deal with you know. I mean
Speaker 1: one of the things that I always do. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll have a young a woman or a man come in,
Speaker 1: young kids, they're you know, fift and you know they're
Speaker 1: they're trying to play competitive golf, and I'll say, you know,
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about your game, and the
Speaker 1: dad asks, and the dad answers, the mom answers, and
Speaker 1: the kids don't want to answer. And I always say
Speaker 1: to the to the to the kids, whether it's a
Speaker 1: guy or a girl, I said, why is he answering?
Speaker 1: I'm not asking your dad what what your game is like,
Speaker 1: I'm asking you. And you can tell that there are
Speaker 1: certain kids to where no one asks so many questions.
Speaker 1: The mom and dad kind of run the show. The
Speaker 1: mom and dad are crazy, crazy involved, over involved. And
Speaker 1: then you can also tell, I would imagine from a
Speaker 1: pageant sample, you can tell the girls that are doing
Speaker 1: this because they want to do this, and they're doing
Speaker 1: this because their mother and father wanted this. And I
Speaker 1: can spot the kids in a heartbeat that like golf,
Speaker 1: that want to be playing golf, that really really want
Speaker 1: to do it, and you can you can just tell,
Speaker 1: and you can see that they're doing it for their
Speaker 1: own reasons, whatever those are, um, and not doing it
Speaker 1: for the moment. Was the pageant world kind of like
Speaker 1: that where you had this group of parents that were
Speaker 1: like super pushy, super aggressive, you know, the judges. My
Speaker 1: favorite year as I get this all the time, I
Speaker 1: get the kid that wants to play competitive golf. Um,
Speaker 1: played one year of college golf. The reason why he
Speaker 1: played didn't play more was the coach didn't like him. Um,
Speaker 1: so he never played on the coach played favorites and
Speaker 1: you know, um, you know hey my son. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: used to beat Jordan's feet and Justin Thomas all the time. Sorry,
Speaker 1: when was that? Oh when they were like nine and right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was like it was twenty years ago. Is the
Speaker 1: pageant world as crazy as the junior golf world is?
Speaker 1: So yes? So similar? You can, um, you can spot
Speaker 1: it from a mile away, which I'm sure you can
Speaker 1: also do in junior golf. And this is also a
Speaker 1: funny parallel in my life because I played very serious
Speaker 1: junior golf at the time when my my dad was
Speaker 1: getting his fellowship done in Texas. So I know that life,
Speaker 1: I know those parents. I have been there, um, and
Speaker 1: my parents almost kind of were a bit like that
Speaker 1: with golf, because you know, foreign parents are like, my
Speaker 1: child will do this, that and the other thing, and
Speaker 1: you will. You know, they wanted me to learn golf
Speaker 1: because they thought it would be very important business skill,
Speaker 1: and then it turns into like, oh, you know, we
Speaker 1: have to do all this with the accessories and the
Speaker 1: lessons in la la la la um. So that can
Speaker 1: evolve very quickly. Um. But in pageants you can. So
Speaker 1: if you're genuine and like a normal person that you
Speaker 1: want to have a lunch with or drink with people
Speaker 1: like you, judges will, like you write, a few people
Speaker 1: pick up on on that nice energy. But the minute
Speaker 1: that you have that kind of put on facade or
Speaker 1: someone else told you to say this in your interview answers,
Speaker 1: which is very very clear you have this what you're
Speaker 1: you're putting on. We think people want to hear a performance.
Speaker 1: Then immediately. It's like you can spot that from a
Speaker 1: mile away next a bye, and it very much indicates
Speaker 1: inner strength and inner ability to have to have the
Speaker 1: chops to be able to be miss America or miss
Speaker 1: whatever banana pudding festival, which I'm sure you can also
Speaker 1: find in. Does this person truly have the chops to
Speaker 1: to play golf on a certain level beyond what mom
Speaker 1: and dad are trying to market to me. So let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our partner for wellness.
Speaker 1: You guys have heard me talk about it. I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of their coffee, big fan of the good stuff.
Speaker 1: I put it in my coffee on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: The thing I like about it, no sugars, no artificial sweeteners.
Speaker 1: It's gotten me off dairy. Um, quit putting sweeteners, sugars
Speaker 1: in just the good stuff. But I also put the
Speaker 1: good stuff. Put a scoop of that in my coffee.
Speaker 1: But I also put it in smoothies and take it
Speaker 1: on the road with me. And the other thing that
Speaker 1: I've been using are their energy bites. Um, I keep
Speaker 1: them with me on the golf course. UM. A lot
Speaker 1: of times when I'm out on tour, I don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of time to sit and eat. So these
Speaker 1: energy bites, a little coffee hit, a little bit of energy, um,
Speaker 1: all the good stuff, all natural and UM. If you
Speaker 1: haven't given those a try, check those out. They've given
Speaker 1: me a special code to share with some of a
Speaker 1: Butcher listeners. You can get off your order plus free
Speaker 1: shipping and a free starter kit worth thirty dollars for
Speaker 1: a limited time when you visit for Wellness dot com
Speaker 1: slash podcast. That's spelled fo r w E l l
Speaker 1: n E s S dot com slash podcast and enter
Speaker 1: the code c H three at check out. It's their
Speaker 1: best offer right now, so give it a try. They
Speaker 1: even back every purchase with a sixty day money back guaranteed.
Speaker 1: That's again the code c H three at full Wellness
Speaker 1: dot com slash podcast. So now let's get back to
Speaker 1: the interview. I have a golfer. Were you as a
Speaker 1: kid and said you played junior? Did you play a
Speaker 1: j g A stuff? Did you play you know, South
Speaker 1: Texas stuff, North Texas stuff, San Antonio Junior Golf Association, Babby?
Speaker 1: What was your okay? So? What was what was the
Speaker 1: handicap when you so, when you're really playing competitive golf.
Speaker 1: What ages were you? Um, let's see, I started playing,
Speaker 1: uh like every almost everyday goal from age seven to
Speaker 1: probably about twelve. We lack In Tara have these um
Speaker 1: these golf clinics um all summer long. So my parents
Speaker 1: would just drop me off at lock In Tara in
Speaker 1: the morning and pick me up. That's where they used
Speaker 1: to place the s the San Antonio Pig. So now
Speaker 1: when I go back to San Antonio, which I've done
Speaker 1: in the last two years as a reporter at the
Speaker 1: Valero Texas Open, which is the only PGA Tour event
Speaker 1: I ever went to as a kid, I stand there
Speaker 1: as a reporter and I'm like, holy crap, Like what
Speaker 1: how did life to evolve like this? This is insane?
Speaker 1: Which is you know, put that into the rest my
Speaker 1: book story or whatever that we talked about the beginning. Um,
Speaker 1: But to be honest, Cloud, I don't remember exactly my
Speaker 1: handicaps or how well I did. I remember there was
Speaker 1: this this girl named Samantha. I don't remember her last name,
Speaker 1: but she was always so good. She always beat me,
Speaker 1: always always beat me. And I remember one time like
Speaker 1: I sunk this huge punt and as a twelve year old,
Speaker 1: I remember just like in the middle of the round,
Speaker 1: cheering and being so obnoxious about having finally beaten her,
Speaker 1: and like my mom being mortified that I was so
Speaker 1: excited that I had, you know, not shown this like
Speaker 1: sportsmanship moments, like a really good lesson for me to like,
Speaker 1: you know what, when good things happen to you, even
Speaker 1: if it's really exciting, just like chill, it's fine. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean anything really in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 1: You can celebrate later. Um, but yeah, like those are
Speaker 1: the moments of the junior golf teaches you of like,
Speaker 1: you know what, you don't need to have these insane moments,
Speaker 1: insane celebrates at someone else's extense. Was the was the
Speaker 1: the impetus to get you involved in golf from your
Speaker 1: parents really the idea that this was going to be
Speaker 1: a great business vehicle tool for you. Because golf obviously
Speaker 1: is a game that you can play from you know,
Speaker 1: being you know, nine years old to being you know,
Speaker 1: seventy years old. It's so it's a game that you
Speaker 1: can play for a lifetime. My parents thought that golf,
Speaker 1: or they still do. They think that golf is an
Speaker 1: American rite of passage that it gets you into rooms
Speaker 1: and circles that you otherwise would not have access to,
Speaker 1: which was so brilliant of them, because Claude, I have
Speaker 1: been in meetings and rounds of golf with people I
Speaker 1: have no business talking to ever, especially at the ages
Speaker 1: that those meetings were happening at, only because I could
Speaker 1: play golf, because I could hang, they could give the
Speaker 1: illusion that I'm like a certain level of player. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to actually score well, you don't have
Speaker 1: to go crazy. But as becase he had a couple
Speaker 1: of good drives, you know, you're getting your You've got
Speaker 1: your pace of playoff like great. They don't care. You're
Speaker 1: just out there to have a good time. And the
Speaker 1: relationships that I've created have given me this life that
Speaker 1: I've got now. I mean the amount the amount of
Speaker 1: parents junior golfers that you know who brought their kids
Speaker 1: to me and said, listen, he's probably not going to
Speaker 1: be a great junior golfer, but the dad will say,
Speaker 1: you know, at fifteen, listen, I want him to be able.
Speaker 1: You know, I've done well in business, I'm golf is
Speaker 1: a huge part of my life. I want my son
Speaker 1: to to be able to play golf. At a decent level.
Speaker 1: So that moving forward, after he goes to Harvard or
Speaker 1: Yale or whatever, illuminat school they think he's going to
Speaker 1: go to you know, then he'd used golf as a vehicle.
Speaker 1: And there was a kid that I taught, I told
Speaker 1: him as a junior. He just I think he went
Speaker 1: three or four years to Florida Gulf Coast. And then
Speaker 1: I saw a kid recently that was here to take
Speaker 1: a lesson with another one of the instructors and he said, hey,
Speaker 1: you remember this kid. I said, yeah, whatever happened to him?
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, he's in New York working, you know,
Speaker 1: on on Wall Street, and you know, still plays golf
Speaker 1: and you know, still using the golf thing. So played,
Speaker 1: and we hear that, I think that is more stereotypical
Speaker 1: thing in the golf world. For me, that's more of
Speaker 1: a stereotypical male thing as it is I feel. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have met a lot of young girls going yeah,
Speaker 1: our parents who said, my fourteen dog, you know, she's
Speaker 1: probably not going to play on the tour, but we
Speaker 1: wanted to do this from a business standpoint. That's that's
Speaker 1: the reverse of what we normally hear. Yeah, but we
Speaker 1: should be hearing that more absolutely the time I meet
Speaker 1: parents that have young girls, especially get your girl into
Speaker 1: golf and don't let her quit. I quit in high
Speaker 1: school because it made me weird and different, and there
Speaker 1: were not many girls around me that played golf. I
Speaker 1: couldn't see on social media the cool things that Nellie
Speaker 1: and jess Quarter and Michelle we get to do because
Speaker 1: of golf. So I just thought it was never really,
Speaker 1: at that age gonna give me much else. But I
Speaker 1: had played so intensely at a young age that I
Speaker 1: had those fundamental skills that when I did finally pick
Speaker 1: up on the back of my golf was going to
Speaker 1: continue to be such an important force in my life
Speaker 1: that when I was started again, it was very easy
Speaker 1: for me to pick up and immediately rep rewards from.
Speaker 1: But that is my number one advice to any parent.
Speaker 1: It doesn't you know, your kids probably not can be
Speaker 1: nearly Quarda, but your kid is going to be able
Speaker 1: to really take advantage of this and have a leg
Speaker 1: up and competition either in business or whatever else um
Speaker 1: simply because she or he understand this game. So going
Speaker 1: back to what I was talking about earlier, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was growing up. Pageants were only about the
Speaker 1: way women looked. It was you know, it was only
Speaker 1: the physical side of things. So it's a swimsuit competition.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember as a kid watching the swimsuit competition.
Speaker 1: You'd watch these things, um, and I could see that,
Speaker 1: you know now through the lens that we look back at,
Speaker 1: you know, from two we look backwards. That was incredibly
Speaker 1: misogynistic and incredibly kind of narrow minded on what people
Speaker 1: thought women should be. You know, let's just stand up, smile,
Speaker 1: put a swimsuit on. That was it. There wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, there wasn't. There were only
Speaker 1: when I'm fifty three, there were only three channels. Growing
Speaker 1: there's four channels. There was NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS.
Speaker 1: There wasn't cable, right, So anything that was big on
Speaker 1: TV and the Miss America pageant every year it was
Speaker 1: the Academy Awards, the Grammys, the Miss America Pageant, the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl, all of those things were part of our
Speaker 1: regular viewing as a kid. So I think it would
Speaker 1: have been easy. And I think, you know, pageants and
Speaker 1: Miss America and people that were there, it was easy
Speaker 1: to kind of just say, yeah, you know they're not
Speaker 1: smart people. They don't and and so I think that
Speaker 1: is that has really changed. And you know, you look
Speaker 1: at someone like yourself. You speak three languages, You've traveled
Speaker 1: all over the world, You've done a listen, the pageants
Speaker 1: allowed you to see the world, Like you said, I
Speaker 1: don't think people realize that I had. I had heard
Speaker 1: that before, but when you said that, I was reminded
Speaker 1: of that that the Miss American Pageant, the work that
Speaker 1: they do to help put young women into universities, into
Speaker 1: college educations that some people like, like sports for both
Speaker 1: men and women, will never have that opportunity because they
Speaker 1: can't afford it. Yeah. Completely. I mean I the scholarship
Speaker 1: money that I earned was around UM eighties and ninety
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and I ended up not going to law school. However,
Speaker 1: I use that money to pay for a master's in
Speaker 1: journalism at USC Vannenberg, one of the best journalism schools
Speaker 1: in the world. UM, and it's that it's helped me
Speaker 1: get to where I am today with my career. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny people people do see that the
Speaker 1: swimsuit competition, and UM, I competed in the swimsuit competition.
Speaker 1: They've actually now taken that away from from the competition,
Speaker 1: which I kind of have mixed feelings about. But that's
Speaker 1: a whole, a whole different discussion. Um No No. So
Speaker 1: so seriously, as a woman who competed in a pageant,
Speaker 1: you said, listen, there was a swimsuit competition. They've taken
Speaker 1: that away. So where do you fall on that? Do
Speaker 1: you think? No? No, because I think that's really fascinating,
Speaker 1: because it's hard for me. It's hard for men to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I think they should put the swimsuit competition into the
Speaker 1: paget because I can't have an opinion on that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't come down on either side of it.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a really really fine one. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm interested as a woman who's competed in it. The
Speaker 1: you're where you're coming from with regards to all of it,
Speaker 1: from the evening gown, from the interview, from the swim
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Oh man. So um I in my experience,
Speaker 1: I enjoyed competing in the swimsuit competition because I go
Speaker 1: walked across that stage and it was such an empowering
Speaker 1: moment of the culmination of so much hard work of
Speaker 1: being an athlete in the gym, So it was an
Speaker 1: opportunity for me to to showcase what I had achieved
Speaker 1: with my body. UM. However, so that's that's one part
Speaker 1: of it. The other part of it is it's it
Speaker 1: seems to reward a certain type of body and that
Speaker 1: other like other types of bodies are not competing on
Speaker 1: these stages because of the um. The people that that
Speaker 1: end up winning because of the perception of who UM is.
Speaker 1: You know, has a great body. You know, just because
Speaker 1: you look this way from from the gym, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody else might put in the same amount of time
Speaker 1: in the gym and look completely different UM. And the
Speaker 1: so that there's also evening gown people wear makeup there.
Speaker 1: It's very much a an image thing because they've they've
Speaker 1: branded it as you are the face of an organization,
Speaker 1: you should look at a a certain way. But the way
Speaker 1: that the organization has gone now is they've removed the
Speaker 1: swimsuit competition. The evening gown portion I don't think is
Speaker 1: really even there. It's not scored like you can you
Speaker 1: can win wearing in an evening gown, but you can
Speaker 1: also if you decide to wear a pant suit for
Speaker 1: the crowning. They they'll let you wear a pant suit,
Speaker 1: which is fine. Um. So much of it is also
Speaker 1: based on how how you can market yourself on social media,
Speaker 1: Like last year they had this whole campaign TikTok um,
Speaker 1: how you know, how how can you best use those
Speaker 1: those skills? And and then a ton of it is
Speaker 1: also like a an impact statement where you're talking about
Speaker 1: you're basically giving a speech on whatever cause it is
Speaker 1: that you care about. So I don't know that they've
Speaker 1: done a great job of bridging the gap between like
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it's still a pageant, right,
Speaker 1: Like at the end of the day, you can take
Speaker 1: away evening gown, you can take away some so you
Speaker 1: can take away all those other things. And I'm still
Speaker 1: judging people based on their appearance in some way, shape
Speaker 1: or form, And that's just what it is. So if
Speaker 1: you don't agree with that, then like, you know, fine,
Speaker 1: but then Miss America should go away, Like it should
Speaker 1: just be like an essay contest or uh, you know
Speaker 1: whatever else. I don't know, So it's there at a
Speaker 1: certain point you have to be like accepting of what
Speaker 1: it is. And it's a pet at the end of
Speaker 1: the day. In my lifetime, I can't remember. I can't
Speaker 1: remember how old I was, but it must have been.
Speaker 1: It's got to be in the nineties. It had to
Speaker 1: be in the nineties. There was a commercial. I want
Speaker 1: to say it was a bud Light commercial because I
Speaker 1: don't even know why. They did a how Miss American Pageant?
Speaker 1: It's like a parody of a Miss American pageant, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like the obvious choice or something like that. And
Speaker 1: so it was this guy, you know, the pageant guy.
Speaker 1: This is this is a commercial that was on national
Speaker 1: television and it was like the guy's like, how how
Speaker 1: would you make uh, the planet a better place? And this,
Speaker 1: you know, this brunette girl goes, you know, investment tax
Speaker 1: credits for this, and then the next girl says, um,
Speaker 1: you know, education and stuff. And then at the end
Speaker 1: there's this blonde girl and she looked into the camera
Speaker 1: She's like, which planet and they at the end of
Speaker 1: the commercialist then crowning her with the scene. I was like,
Speaker 1: in my lifetime, that was so commercial that an ad
Speaker 1: agency came up with and sold it to a major
Speaker 1: US corporation and they ran it on nighttime TV. It
Speaker 1: was unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah, I mean people love to poke
Speaker 1: fund it and people love to uh. You know what
Speaker 1: you mentioned at the very beginning was the the Iraq Girl.
Speaker 1: Um it. It is such an interesting thing that's entered,
Speaker 1: like the American cultural lexicon. Um. And I think at
Speaker 1: a certain extent, like you just have to accept it
Speaker 1: for what it is. And I don't know that it
Speaker 1: has a place in the world today the way that
Speaker 1: it's being marketed now. Um, I'm not really involved with
Speaker 1: the organization anymore. I loved my experience. I love the
Speaker 1: friends that I have made, um, but it's yeah, it's complicated.
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's a direct answer. Do I
Speaker 1: want Miss America to have a place in the world
Speaker 1: because of the opportunities that I got from the organization, Absolutely, um,
Speaker 1: But I don't know that we've figured out the exact
Speaker 1: formula for modernizing it and making it, um, you know,
Speaker 1: at least a more open forum, uh than than how
Speaker 1: it's kind of been in the past. Is limited to
Speaker 1: certain body types, certain looks, certain whatever. Um. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I mean I love, I love um Miss America as
Speaker 1: like a institution, you know, part of these these women
Speaker 1: we have like a list and email list serve of
Speaker 1: you know, however, many of us seventy of us, there's
Speaker 1: only been nineties something miss America's um the only years
Speaker 1: that they skipped the pageant or COVID and I think
Speaker 1: some of the World War through the World War two
Speaker 1: over One'm not sure. Um. So to be a part
Speaker 1: of that history is pretty insane. UM. But I wanted
Speaker 1: to continue to have another hundred years. And I don't
Speaker 1: know that we've gotten to the point where we figured
Speaker 1: out the formula from modernizing it for those next hundred years.
Speaker 1: So to to be disperment God E B D TB
Speaker 1: D keep up on that check back soon. As a
Speaker 1: result of you being in Miss America and being Miss America,
Speaker 1: you got to travel. UM. I kind of heard through
Speaker 1: the grape vine, there's an interesting story about your husband
Speaker 1: who was in the military. You on a trip. Um,
Speaker 1: I'd like, she did, I'd love you, I'd love you.
Speaker 1: I'd love you to tell the story because I she told,
Speaker 1: I was like, that can't be real. That's my mother.
Speaker 1: My husband was in the Marine Corps and the week
Speaker 1: the week before, let's see, he was Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: was deployed the to Afghanistan the day that I won
Speaker 1: Miss America. So as he's on his way there, he
Speaker 1: stops in Germany for whatever transfer at the Air Force
Speaker 1: based in Germany to get to Afghanistan, and he checks
Speaker 1: his phone and he's got a million text message saying, dude,
Speaker 1: you're you're dating effing Miss America. So on the U.
Speaker 1: S O Tour that I mentioned earlier, UM, I found
Speaker 1: out that we were going to be going to Bagram
Speaker 1: Air Force Base in Afghanistan, which is where Andrew happens
Speaker 1: to be stationed. And I was going on this tour
Speaker 1: with the Vice Chairman of the Joints Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Speaker 1: Admiral winifeld Um. It was his tour, so he's, you know,
Speaker 1: a high security individual in the military. So they told me, I,
Speaker 1: under no circumstances can tell anybody that I'm going on
Speaker 1: this tour. I was convinced UM the n essay or
Speaker 1: somebody was listening into my phone calls, because every time
Speaker 1: I would get on the phone to call anybody, I
Speaker 1: was hearing these clicks. I was like, Okay, somebody is
Speaker 1: tapping my phone. For tapping my phone for sure. So
Speaker 1: every time Andrew and I would get to talk. I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell him because you know, maybe someone from a
Speaker 1: stand is listening to the call. I don't know that
Speaker 1: this is gonna be the whole thing, So I didn't
Speaker 1: tell Andrew that I was actually going to be at
Speaker 1: the base. He found out on his own because there's
Speaker 1: a poster posted in like the mess hall or something
Speaker 1: of who is going to be coming on the U
Speaker 1: s O Tour. And he walks by the poster with
Speaker 1: one of his Marine Corps buddies because that's my girlfriend,
Speaker 1: and they're like yeah, okay, and he's like no, no,
Speaker 1: So everybody, everybody Andrews America, Yeah yeah, sure, sure ha ha.
Speaker 1: We get there and it's this I haven't seen him
Speaker 1: in six months, Like this is such a reunion, It's
Speaker 1: this American love story moment. And and Andrew, my husband,
Speaker 1: is like bleased. He ever wants to be on a stage,
Speaker 1: is very shy, like it's not for him. They pull
Speaker 1: him up on stage in front of like five thousand
Speaker 1: Marines and Air Force people, army people or whatever, and
Speaker 1: this is like his worst nightmare. When I asked him
Speaker 1: about it, he's like, I blacked out for the entire thing.
Speaker 1: All the Marines in the back or just like cheering
Speaker 1: and screaming, and oh my gosh, it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a huge American flag behind. This was one of
Speaker 1: those moments of like, how did I end up here?
Speaker 1: Seeing Andrew in Afghanistan? It just it was a while.
Speaker 1: It was the most highly supervised date of four hours
Speaker 1: that I've ever had. And now and now you're married,
Speaker 1: and now you you guys just adopted rescue dog named Steve.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's full circle. Now you've got a dog
Speaker 1: named Steve. What is life? Yeah, it's wild. We live
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. We just renovated a house. We're like
Speaker 1: real adults. It's crazy. Is he still in the military.
Speaker 1: What does he do now? Um? So he's got he
Speaker 1: got out. I think last year he was had five
Speaker 1: years after duty five years there's reservist and um now
Speaker 1: he runs a defense tech software company, UM that works
Speaker 1: primarily on drones. Drive a Tesla, you guys live. It's
Speaker 1: just it's just such a stereotype. When people in San
Speaker 1: Francisco find out that I don't work in tech, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: so interesting. You're telling me how you're one of those
Speaker 1: I've heard about those of those. Yeah, I've never seen
Speaker 1: one in the wild. But what what for? What venture
Speaker 1: firm do you work for? Yeah? What round of seed
Speaker 1: funding are you on? So now you work in golf,
Speaker 1: talk to me about how you got into I mean,
Speaker 1: now you're at golf tournaments interviewing the best players in
Speaker 1: the world and you work for Golf Channel. Man, how
Speaker 1: does how does someone go from pageants to golf Channel? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So during the year I mentioned, I played in those
Speaker 1: proems in the Golf Channel interviewed me. I think they
Speaker 1: actually broke down my swing in slow motion once and
Speaker 1: this was really unfair because it was so bad at
Speaker 1: the time. It can't it can't be too bad. You've
Speaker 1: made the cut twice, a T and T double of
Speaker 1: each program. I mean, yeah, I should have gotten much better.
Speaker 1: I've been grinding on the game. There are there are
Speaker 1: people that play that every single year, rich people, um athletes, actors,
Speaker 1: musicians who are desperate to make the cut and they
Speaker 1: never make it. You've made it twice. It's really pretty
Speaker 1: good to tell you. Yeah. Yeah, So after the year,
Speaker 1: I thought I wanted to do entertainment news because of
Speaker 1: all the Dick Clark stuff that I've gotten to do.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to work for like entertainment Tonight or
Speaker 1: Extra or something like that, and moved to l a UM,
Speaker 1: and I was I was doing a ton of that
Speaker 1: type of work, all on a freelance basis, but to
Speaker 1: supplement my income, I was also hosting random golf pro
Speaker 1: am events. And you know, there's a lot of big
Speaker 1: clubs in the LA area, so I was you know,
Speaker 1: people would hire me for you know, whatever charity fundraiser
Speaker 1: to to be able to host their golfing and then
Speaker 1: sometimes I would play. And I started to make a
Speaker 1: lot of connections in in that world. And I was
Speaker 1: also because I was working on this like entertainment lifestyle
Speaker 1: e type content that is very transferable to the golf space.
Speaker 1: So I was doing some random freelance work for either
Speaker 1: Golf Channel or the Tour or whatever brand on some
Speaker 1: of that more you know, not not as newsy, but
Speaker 1: more like let me do this outfit video or I'll
Speaker 1: go and host this travel series. UM. And my first
Speaker 1: crack at real reporting was the U s g A
Speaker 1: was looking for a digital reporter for the US Open
Speaker 1: Shinnikock and I had never really done any true golf
Speaker 1: news reporting, and they called me out of the blue. Uh.
Speaker 1: Through a random connection, I got a phone call from
Speaker 1: the creative director guy named John Mummer, and he was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know this is I'm from the U s g A.
Speaker 1: We're looking for La La La. And I was like,
Speaker 1: is this a joke? Like do they know that this
Speaker 1: isn't really what I do? But okay, sure why not? UM?
Speaker 1: I was also in a time where I was like,
Speaker 1: my what am I going to do with my life?
Speaker 1: Maybe I should go to business school, but I'll give
Speaker 1: this a shot. So I worked the U S open.
Speaker 1: They handed me a piece of paper on Gary Woodland
Speaker 1: and they asked me to write a report and do
Speaker 1: this report. And I was like, what's the report? What?
Speaker 1: How do I? How do I do that? So I
Speaker 1: like looked up. I think it was a video of
Speaker 1: like Jessica Marksbury from Golf Magazine of something that she
Speaker 1: had done for them in the past, and I just like,
Speaker 1: you know, used her template essentially and like Gary Woodland
Speaker 1: owned the day today, La La La La, and I
Speaker 1: figured out how to very much fake it till I
Speaker 1: made it and was able to create this content for
Speaker 1: them that I was actually about what happened at the
Speaker 1: US Open as opposed to what people were wearing and
Speaker 1: eating at the US Open. And I grew more and
Speaker 1: more with the U s g A doing all their
Speaker 1: championship coverage and doing some lifestyle e stuff as well. UM,
Speaker 1: and then eventually figured out I've always said that specificity
Speaker 1: in this business is really key to figuring out how
Speaker 1: to get to the next stage. When in the minute
Speaker 1: that I figured out that I specifically wanted to be
Speaker 1: a golf reporter that I really love the day to
Speaker 1: day storylines of the PGA Tour, golf players that go
Speaker 1: through these insane ups and downs, how they get there,
Speaker 1: what makes them tick, everything that goes into the process, UM,
Speaker 1: is when I got that job with the Golf Channel
Speaker 1: and became a reporter, I also UM in the meantime,
Speaker 1: when and got my masters and journalism said also very
Speaker 1: much underlined why I wanted to do what I do now.
Speaker 1: And now it's been two seasons. I just finished my
Speaker 1: last season, my last event at BMW Championship. I have
Speaker 1: a bit of time off. I can't believe it's been Um,
Speaker 1: it's already been two years. It's been an insane two
Speaker 1: years to be a reporter in golf. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: here we are. I mean, I mean does it. I
Speaker 1: mean I did. I worked for Sky for I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you've done some stuff for Sky and when
Speaker 1: they first started bringing up the skycart, we were the
Speaker 1: first people to do the sky cart and then Amanda
Speaker 1: did the same thing at CBS. So but when we
Speaker 1: were doing that, they've done some stuff for Golf Channel
Speaker 1: um and done some morning drive stuff. And so my
Speaker 1: dad had worked for Sky and they said, hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have we're just some new contract with the pg Tour.
Speaker 1: We've got to have teams at every PGA Tour event.
Speaker 1: Now Sky does. So they brought up the sky cart
Speaker 1: and they said, listen, you you can audition for it
Speaker 1: because we need bodies, right because we just you know,
Speaker 1: we've got forty some odd tournaments. Um. It took me
Speaker 1: a long time to get comfortable on TV because when
Speaker 1: you go on TV, especially when you do golf television,
Speaker 1: I think, um, you feel like you have to play
Speaker 1: a character on golf television, right because golf golf is
Speaker 1: so specific. You feel like you have to talk a
Speaker 1: certain way. And I think the people that come on
Speaker 1: like yourself, who come from not a real golf background
Speaker 1: or even really a television background. I think that's why
Speaker 1: you know you've been successful. We've got a new crop
Speaker 1: of young people. You Amanda knows you. You all were
Speaker 1: able to just come on TV and just be yourself.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's a very that's hard to
Speaker 1: do because you're trying. I always found like they throw
Speaker 1: me into commentary and I'd be like, I am just
Speaker 1: horrendous at commentary because I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I got pretty good at doing the skycar, and I
Speaker 1: felt like I could interview people. I felt like I
Speaker 1: could do all the stuff. I didn't mind doing stuff live,
Speaker 1: but when they put me in commentary, I I found
Speaker 1: myself saying, Okay, I'm going to try and talk like
Speaker 1: a golf commentator as opposed to just talking like I
Speaker 1: talked exactly. And I have had moments of, especially the beginning,
Speaker 1: thinking that I needed to talk a certain way or
Speaker 1: to be a certain way, to interview a certain way.
Speaker 1: And the moment that I was able to let go
Speaker 1: of that and just be myself and have a real conversation,
Speaker 1: which is like such a novel idea. Um reporting and
Speaker 1: interviewing got so much easier um, and I also have
Speaker 1: to recognize that, you know, if they want me to
Speaker 1: be there, if they're gonna hire me, then they want me.
Speaker 1: They don't want you know, insert name. They're there paying
Speaker 1: for the specific product of Ci Dixon. And I need
Speaker 1: to accept that, be okay with that, and feel empowered
Speaker 1: through that and just be myself completely. And it seems
Speaker 1: to it's working out. Let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: we are back. I'm always interested in the female reporter
Speaker 1: in the male dominated in the male dominated sports. UM
Speaker 1: is very is very different. UM. I used to always
Speaker 1: we would when when Amanda and CBS started doing their
Speaker 1: you know, their cart, Um, it kind of got put
Speaker 1: right in the same areas as ours, and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: and I'd say to Amanda, they all want to give
Speaker 1: interviews to you. They don't want to give any interviews
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, yeah, you know, it is interesting. UM,
Speaker 1: but I think that, you know, I'm just there to
Speaker 1: do my job and and I'm doing it well, Amanda's
Speaker 1: doing it well. UM. You know, there's a certain like
Speaker 1: social aspect to it, especially with golf, but hey, if
Speaker 1: you know your sport and you know how to discuss it,
Speaker 1: you know they don't care, um, if you're a man
Speaker 1: or of They're just happy. They're just happy that they
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to have an interview because that means
Speaker 1: they played well. So for the most part, these guys
Speaker 1: will stop and talk to whoever and whatever because it
Speaker 1: means that things are going well for them on the
Speaker 1: golf course. Uh. And if if I get to talk
Speaker 1: to them, that's also a privilege for me. So it's
Speaker 1: always it's I don't think people realize that the best
Speaker 1: part of your job is on Sunday when you get
Speaker 1: to interview the winner. Right, you know Jordan's speech, Hey, Georgan,
Speaker 1: you know it's amazing. But invariably they're going to ask
Speaker 1: you to interview somebody that's just the last four holes
Speaker 1: coming down the stretch and throw away an opportunity to
Speaker 1: win their first tournament. And I don't think the fans
Speaker 1: and people that watch golf that on TV that don't
Speaker 1: understand how TV works, is they throw these players they
Speaker 1: don't want to talk, right, that's just the last thing
Speaker 1: that they want to do. You've you've got to stand
Speaker 1: there and ask them questions. It is. It can be
Speaker 1: a really awkward thing because I don't also think the
Speaker 1: fans realize they've literally come it's ten minutes from the
Speaker 1: last time since they come off. The poles signed their card.
Speaker 1: The winners are elated, But the guys that you have
Speaker 1: to interview sometimes that I didn't get it done, that
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to win. I mean you can see them,
Speaker 1: they're they're driven with sweat. They've just come off the
Speaker 1: golf course. That that's a tough one. Oh yeah, you're
Speaker 1: just describing it gives me like the hejs. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't do you do the same thing that you apologize, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. We have to I'm sorry I have to
Speaker 1: do apologize because they know the deal, right, Like they
Speaker 1: know that this is part of the deal. So I
Speaker 1: just say, like, we're going to get you out of
Speaker 1: here as quickly as possible. I'm I try not to,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not going to belabor the point that
Speaker 1: you just lost. Maybe maybe max three questions depending on
Speaker 1: what they say. Usually keep it to two. I mean,
Speaker 1: my first interview post round interview with winner and loser
Speaker 1: ever was at riv the year that Max Homa beats
Speaker 1: Tony Fine in a playoff, which is already insane. It's
Speaker 1: like an instant classic, right, Like Max misses this shorty
Speaker 1: to have to get into the playoff, Tony plays out
Speaker 1: of his mind and I So we interview Max first,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm just managing the nerves of doing this
Speaker 1: for the very first time, and so I you know,
Speaker 1: get to be a part of this amazing, you know,
Speaker 1: life changing dream moment for Max. And then go and
Speaker 1: talk to Tony who it's like a thing now people
Speaker 1: are talking about I'm not able to finish the win
Speaker 1: and the tournament to be able to actually raise the trophy.
Speaker 1: And he was so gracious in defeat and so understanding
Speaker 1: that this is part of the deal, this is just
Speaker 1: what what he needed to do. He gave me a wonderful,
Speaker 1: very nice, eloquent answer. And that was that same with
Speaker 1: when you know Patrick Cantley loses to Jordan's speed at
Speaker 1: the RBC Heritage. You know we have to we have
Speaker 1: to talk to Patrick, like in the little tunnel of
Speaker 1: where they get they go to to get into the
Speaker 1: car to leave, like he stops answers two questions. Great,
Speaker 1: moving on. I mean there's so many moments of just
Speaker 1: like they get it. Um, it sucks, it's uncomfortable, for
Speaker 1: all parties, but they owe it to the viewer and
Speaker 1: the fan to do it. That's why they have to
Speaker 1: do it. Um, they don't always do it. There there
Speaker 1: are some that don't don't do it, and that's up
Speaker 1: to them. Um. But getting to do the winner interview
Speaker 1: for me is always so special because it is in
Speaker 1: a huge responsibility because it is incumbent upon you to
Speaker 1: facilitate a moment in a very high pressure, high emotion
Speaker 1: piece of of time and their lives. They will always
Speaker 1: associate you with that moment, so you must make sure
Speaker 1: to facilitate a positive, great way for them to be
Speaker 1: able to express the emotions of of winning on the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour or wherever. So um, yeah, those are my favorite,
Speaker 1: you know, high stakes. Just I walk away from that
Speaker 1: with adrenaline, in so much excitement of this is what
Speaker 1: I do. This is so much fun. So there's parts
Speaker 1: of this job that can be really monotonous and long
Speaker 1: hours and long days whatever, but when you get to
Speaker 1: that moment and it's great, you walk away feeling like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I just crushed that, Like it's everything
Speaker 1: I always liked when I was doing the skycart because
Speaker 1: you know, they bring the players for interviews. You know
Speaker 1: you're in you're in that last hour of the tournament
Speaker 1: and you've got your producer, you're watching the golf. You're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who you're going to get for interviews.
Speaker 1: You're like, Okay, if he if he Bertie Celestry, holes,
Speaker 1: we've got to get him. And then you know you've
Speaker 1: got to get him in a very very quick period
Speaker 1: of time, and then they get out and then somebody us.
Speaker 1: But I always found that last hour to be a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. It's chaotic. You're trying to get the
Speaker 1: requests in, You're trying to run around, and then they
Speaker 1: keep bringing them and you're like, Okay, we're doing this now. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this now. And that was the part
Speaker 1: of it. I actually are always liked um. I think
Speaker 1: one of the dirty secrets about TV. Unless you're Trevor
Speaker 1: Immelman or Tony Roma and they're grooming you to take
Speaker 1: the seat where you're on camera, they don't really give
Speaker 1: you a lot of training. People people say to me,
Speaker 1: you know how, what kind of training you have for Scott?
Speaker 1: I said, listen, believe it or not. One of the
Speaker 1: ways that you're gonna stay on TV is you show
Speaker 1: up on time, you don't cause really any drama with
Speaker 1: the crew or the lighting, and everybody likes you, and
Speaker 1: you don't mess up on air. If you do those
Speaker 1: three things on a consistent basis, they'll invite you back.
Speaker 1: Because the amount of people that cannot mess up on
Speaker 1: air when it's live, that don't get flustered, that don't
Speaker 1: show up on time because I don't think people that
Speaker 1: come out. I found a lot of um, the influencers
Speaker 1: that come into the Gulf television space that I've worked
Speaker 1: with in the past, they're so used to doing everything
Speaker 1: on their own to themselves. They don't realize that Okay, no, no,
Speaker 1: Now there's a guy operating the camera, and there's five
Speaker 1: people for lighting, and there's producers. There's no editing. There's
Speaker 1: there's no editing. You've got to do it live and
Speaker 1: it's not just about you in front of the camera.
Speaker 1: It's about this whole thing you're telling. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: completely different skill. I will say NBC did a good
Speaker 1: job of, um, you know, sitting me down and just
Speaker 1: describing exactly know what this was going to be like.
Speaker 1: Lah lah lah. They had me um speak with a
Speaker 1: very seasoned reporter that took me through a bunch of
Speaker 1: examples of the way that you know that she phrases questions.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, even with the
Speaker 1: master's journalism, the only thing that will truly prepare you
Speaker 1: for TV is reps. And when the light goes on,
Speaker 1: when the light goes on, some of the better come
Speaker 1: out of that mouth. Um. You know, you can theorize
Speaker 1: about how it's going to be, so many people can
Speaker 1: walk you through, but the feeling, like the inner body
Speaker 1: feeling of live television of millions of people watching, is
Speaker 1: something that cannot be taught, and it will only come
Speaker 1: with reps. And you can either do it or you can't.
Speaker 1: And it's not meant for everybody. But when you do
Speaker 1: master it, it is the most exhilarating thing on the
Speaker 1: planet to to me at least. Um, And look, I
Speaker 1: have messed up so many times I have, um, you know,
Speaker 1: said the wrong number, said the wrong stud And the
Speaker 1: golf audience will not go not like anything by the golf.
Speaker 1: Social audience loves any mistake of human you know, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: you know Tony, it was a great put on fourteen
Speaker 1: and it was a put on fifteen you immediately as
Speaker 1: soon as he walks away, you your your social feed
Speaker 1: just goes yeah, nice going, idiot. It's like, come on man, totally, totally, totally, totally,
Speaker 1: or or if you phrase something to the golfer themselves
Speaker 1: that and they don't like the way that you phrased it,
Speaker 1: they will in the interview call you out for it,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I'm on television, bro, like give me
Speaker 1: trying to make you look good. I'm trying to just
Speaker 1: to help me out here. So there's just so many
Speaker 1: of those little nuances and things that you don't think
Speaker 1: to think about ahead of time, and it takes years
Speaker 1: to understand. And those nuances changed from player to player.
Speaker 1: Your tone of voice, the way that you the way
Speaker 1: that you phrase something to them, the way that you
Speaker 1: bring up something from the past or whatever. Like you know,
Speaker 1: one player might react to question with this wording um,
Speaker 1: but if you use the same wording for a different player,
Speaker 1: they'll give you a one word answer. So you have
Speaker 1: to then also understand, like you know, from a field
Speaker 1: of a hundred and fifties six people, how you're going
Speaker 1: to to make sure that you're catering this to every
Speaker 1: single athlete that you speak to and that just takes time.
Speaker 1: So anyone that's interested in reporting, just keep in mind
Speaker 1: that it takes a lot of time. And um and
Speaker 1: just reps is year, Like my second year at Sky,
Speaker 1: they threw me out at Deutsche Bank during the playoffs.
Speaker 1: They threw me out and they said we're gonna throw
Speaker 1: you on course and I was like, grand, I've never
Speaker 1: done on force reporting in my entire life, never done it.
Speaker 1: And so Rory was in the group. Um, I had
Speaker 1: me out there. They weren't really coming to me a
Speaker 1: lot um and so a couple of times they'd come
Speaker 1: to me, and so Rory middle, I mean, we're now
Speaker 1: on I think we're on fourteen or fifteen. It's late,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going off air. We're just gonna follow
Speaker 1: them in. So um, and it's a Thursday, and so
Speaker 1: we're out on the course and so um, Rory's the
Speaker 1: military hits one over the green and I don't go
Speaker 1: down there to check the lie because I'm like, they
Speaker 1: haven't come to me at all. So they're like, and
Speaker 1: he's standing over he's getting ready to hit, and I
Speaker 1: was like, and I panic, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's hit that. I was like, Oh, that's that needs
Speaker 1: to slow down, that that's gonna roll all the way
Speaker 1: off the green, and my reporter Dave Randall says, to
Speaker 1: be in my ear, yeah, we can see that, and
Speaker 1: and so they go away, and I immediately pushed back
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, that's all that training you
Speaker 1: gave me, Like I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's I fully empathize with that feeling of
Speaker 1: like oh crap, like what did I just say? Um
Speaker 1: and whatever. It's part of the learning process. And the
Speaker 1: people that I've worked that I work with have been
Speaker 1: really great about giving me feedback. I am, um, probably
Speaker 1: really annoying about constantly calling people and asking them for
Speaker 1: for feedback um. And and when you ask for it,
Speaker 1: they'll give it to you. They're not necessarily just hand
Speaker 1: things out willy nilly, but I uh yeah. I bother
Speaker 1: my producers and everybody back in Stanford to constantly let
Speaker 1: me know if things are good, if they're bad, what
Speaker 1: can I change? La la la. I saw Jim Nance
Speaker 1: at Wimbledon this summer and we were talking Trevor and
Speaker 1: woman who's one of my very close friends. I worked
Speaker 1: with Trevor when he was a player and now Trevor's
Speaker 1: going to take um uh Nickleson's seat at at CBS.
Speaker 1: And I was talking to we were having lunch and
Speaker 1: I was talking to Jim about it, and he was saying,
Speaker 1: you know, the thing I love most about Trevor is
Speaker 1: from day one, he would any time he was on air,
Speaker 1: he would he would see me and he would say, Hey,
Speaker 1: anything that you could give me advice, any pointers and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And Jim said, to watch Trevor's kind
Speaker 1: of rise from when he started as as a player,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out if he wanted to play, then
Speaker 1: going to TV to where he gets the big chair
Speaker 1: now next to an icon in in you know, sports
Speaker 1: broadcasting a guy like Jim nance Um, I don't think
Speaker 1: the fans realize how much homework and how many reps
Speaker 1: you're trying to get. It is like a sport. Being
Speaker 1: on TV is like a sport. The more the more
Speaker 1: times you're in the hunt on the back nine on
Speaker 1: Sunday as a player, the less you're gonna panic. Your
Speaker 1: first time, you're gonna panic. Lie, TV, they're throwing a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff at you. You've got to do a
Speaker 1: bunch of interview like it, and it happens sometimes so
Speaker 1: fast here it does it You're like, are we done?
Speaker 1: Are we all fair now? Because it seems like it happens,
Speaker 1: but it is. It does take reps and practice to
Speaker 1: get comfortable. Because I think the great people on TV,
Speaker 1: guys like Jim nance Um, guys like Dan Hicks, they
Speaker 1: make it look so easy. I mean, they just make
Speaker 1: it look like and people don't realize how hard that
Speaker 1: job is to make. Being on air and telling stories
Speaker 1: and all of that seems so easy. I've had a
Speaker 1: conversation with Jim about that as well, and he this
Speaker 1: is so Jim, he said, the way he describes what
Speaker 1: it's like to sit in the booth and talk about
Speaker 1: it is he because it's just like poetry, like like
Speaker 1: freestyle poetry, which it really is. But to be able
Speaker 1: to react, not to just you know, everybody can say,
Speaker 1: okay to twelve, the approach shot for Tony Final, whatever,
Speaker 1: But to be able to react to breaking news or
Speaker 1: crazy situation or a wild story or a moment within
Speaker 1: seconds and to be able to put it eloquently in
Speaker 1: a way that moves people is just It's an insane skill.
Speaker 1: To Rico is also really really good at Mike's amazing,
Speaker 1: and it's it's mind blowing that they're able and like
Speaker 1: the retention that they have on the stats and they
Speaker 1: you know, of course there's people that are that are
Speaker 1: helping them out with some of the specific numbers. But sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, Torico will be like, and how could you
Speaker 1: forget you know, in two thousand and five that la
Speaker 1: la la, Like, uh, yeah, I'm sorry, Mike, I don't
Speaker 1: have that in my back pocket. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: from a reporter standpoint, you have, you know, some breaking
Speaker 1: news happens. You have to walk the range and convince
Speaker 1: guys to talk to you about maybe something that they
Speaker 1: haven't even looked at or seen or whatever. And they're
Speaker 1: going to stand there and be on live television and
Speaker 1: like make sure that they are comfortable with knowing that
Speaker 1: you're not going to put them in about situation. You're
Speaker 1: just trying to get the facts. You're just trying to
Speaker 1: get reaction. And that's another thing with you know, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that you run into all the time. It's just
Speaker 1: your relationships and developing your credibility with people on tour,
Speaker 1: on the range or whatever that they know that they'll
Speaker 1: talk to you and that everything will be okay in
Speaker 1: terms of it's it's on the record, if it's on background,
Speaker 1: if it's whatever, um And that takes time of just
Speaker 1: establishing because when I first started, especially I first started
Speaker 1: with when COVID was very much um you know, everyone
Speaker 1: was masked. You couldn't even go near at players. So
Speaker 1: it's very hard to report in golf when no one
Speaker 1: knows you, and then they also cannot physically speak to
Speaker 1: you because they're so far away. I also think professional golfers,
Speaker 1: certainly on the men's sides, are a little bit like dogs.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll kind of look, they'll look at you, they
Speaker 1: might bark a little bit, but if they see you
Speaker 1: enough times, then they'll come over and they'll they'll kind
Speaker 1: of there's a familiarity to where where a lot of
Speaker 1: times they can be stand off. Two years in um
Speaker 1: um interviews that you like, because obviously when I was
Speaker 1: doing interviews, if there were people that I knew, people
Speaker 1: that I had good relationships with, people that I felt
Speaker 1: comfortable with off camera, I think not always shines strong.
Speaker 1: Are there players that you look forward to interviewing? Are
Speaker 1: their players that you say to yourself, I mean, let's
Speaker 1: be honest. There are guys that are good interviews that
Speaker 1: think that way, um, and then there are got me.
Speaker 1: Rory is a great interview. Rory likes to talk, Jordan's
Speaker 1: speech likes to talk. DJ doesn't like to say much.
Speaker 1: Brooks doesn't like to say much. Right, Um, Who are
Speaker 1: the interviews that you really really like? And have there
Speaker 1: been interviews that you've done to where when you walk
Speaker 1: away you have that moment where you both look at
Speaker 1: each other and you go, that was really good. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had. I've been lucky to have a lot of them,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned a few. Jordan's speek is amazing to
Speaker 1: talk to. Will always give you a thoughtful, insightful answer
Speaker 1: that's real. Um. Rory obviously will always do that. John
Speaker 1: rom if you ask him good questions, we'll give you
Speaker 1: amazing answers. Um. Zala Torus has become one of my
Speaker 1: favorites to always talk to, always willing to give genuine,
Speaker 1: real insight. Um. I'd say, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: interviews that have been my favorite over the last few years.
Speaker 1: I interviewed Joseph Bramlett last year after he won the
Speaker 1: Corn Ferry Tour Championship. And this is a guy that
Speaker 1: has had, you know, five six years of insane health
Speaker 1: issues with his back, battling back to finally get to
Speaker 1: a place where he can be competitive and professional golf,
Speaker 1: and he wins the Corn Ferry Tour Championship and it's
Speaker 1: this moment of just it was overwhelming to know how
Speaker 1: much he had fought through to get to that place
Speaker 1: of a winner interview and to be the one that
Speaker 1: facilitated that moment that emotion for him was was so
Speaker 1: it was so incredible. It was such a special thing
Speaker 1: of like this has truly affected and changed to this
Speaker 1: person's life. And I walked away from that just feeling like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, like this is this is why I
Speaker 1: do this, This is the best thing ever. I love
Speaker 1: this job. I had a similar thing with j T
Speaker 1: Posting at the John Deer Classic this year. He uh
Speaker 1: just was so raw and emotional about how hard this
Speaker 1: is and was able to share that in a um
Speaker 1: just a really genuine way that you don't always get.
Speaker 1: And then I had a great one with Rory after
Speaker 1: he won the c J Cup. I think it was
Speaker 1: his twenty win, which gives you lifetime status. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was right after they had lost the Writer Cup.
Speaker 1: There was still a lot of emotion associated with that.
Speaker 1: So it just it felt like a a really poignant
Speaker 1: moment in his career, an insane career, that I could
Speaker 1: have a small piece of being a part of that history.
Speaker 1: Um So if those are the ones off the top
Speaker 1: of my head that come to mind of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this was really special. Lastly, you said that you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that you have to do is
Speaker 1: is is be able to react to breaking news stories. Um,
Speaker 1: the golf professional landscape right now, I was like a lot,
Speaker 1: but it is. It is as crazy as it's ever been.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, Um, you're on the p g A Tour.
Speaker 1: You're working for Golf Channel and NBC, who are very
Speaker 1: closely aligned with the PGA Tour. There is this massive
Speaker 1: divide right now. I've gone the opposite direction. Right now,
Speaker 1: the only players that I currently am working with are
Speaker 1: playing on the live tour. So it's like I've gone
Speaker 1: to and entire as as as you know, and I
Speaker 1: think it's hard for people to to realize that aren't
Speaker 1: around it like we are. There is a giant PGA
Speaker 1: tour ecosystem. There is a real living, breathing ecosystem that
Speaker 1: is the p g A Tour. And now that you know,
Speaker 1: I would say that that's been I guess I guess
Speaker 1: maybe a lot of people on the PGA tour think
Speaker 1: LIB has threatened that um, but it is for for
Speaker 1: those of you that are in media, that are on
Speaker 1: the front line, it's I mean, you don't have to
Speaker 1: search for things to talk about. No, no, it's so funny.
Speaker 1: Every week it's like, oh boy, like, what's what's those
Speaker 1: the breaking storyline this week? So like the week of
Speaker 1: three m was the week that um, I believe the
Speaker 1: lawsuit news was announced that this that you know I watched,
Speaker 1: I watched you going up, so you know, the three
Speaker 1: players announced that they're gonna be um um suing for
Speaker 1: temporary restraining order and then the anti trust suit and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And it was one of those exhilarating,
Speaker 1: you know, adronaline moments of like, Okay, we gotta track
Speaker 1: down sound, we gotta get reaction from people, um so
Speaker 1: that we have something to put on the show, uh,
Speaker 1: and also some information, some actual concrete facts about what
Speaker 1: is happening, what what is the kind of legally is
Speaker 1: behind this that I can say in layman's terms, um,
Speaker 1: without you know, pretending to actually understand what the legal
Speaker 1: ramifications of all these things truly are. UM. And then
Speaker 1: you know, this week it's last week at the BMW Championship.
Speaker 1: It's this secret meeting of twenty two. So every week,
Speaker 1: like are now running joke with the producers is like
Speaker 1: what are we going to talk about this week? And
Speaker 1: it's it's honestly really exciting when we get to just
Speaker 1: talk about birdies and bogies because the other stuff is like,
Speaker 1: now it's just guaranteed that we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: some breaking news. I mean, you know, you kind of
Speaker 1: you have to laugh at it because otherwise it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, it gets very serious and bogged down and
Speaker 1: like the ramifications of what this is going to have,
Speaker 1: the you know, the impact on professional golf if you
Speaker 1: think about it, like two years, five years, whatever down
Speaker 1: the line, like who knows what all this is going
Speaker 1: to look like. But in the meantime, like we're just
Speaker 1: like in the trenches trying to find the facts. It
Speaker 1: seems like they change not day by day but hour
Speaker 1: by hour, and just get the facts to the people.
Speaker 1: But honestly, on a serious dark here. Have you noticed
Speaker 1: that since Lived has launched, since they've had three tournaments, now,
Speaker 1: have you noticed a difference on the PGA Tour from
Speaker 1: a vibe standpoint pre we Live? Because you know, I
Speaker 1: was talking to my dad about this, um, you know,
Speaker 1: privately a couple of weeks ago. I was like, I
Speaker 1: just come back from Bedminster, and I was like, if
Speaker 1: you you know, they had the Big Live had their
Speaker 1: Big Player party at Gotham Hall and downtown Manhattan. Nelly's
Speaker 1: on stage, you know, Donald Trump's. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: and I'm saying to myself, Okay, if I can go
Speaker 1: back in time, and I can go back to the
Speaker 1: Masters and say, okay, guys, I've gone forward in time,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take you with you, take me, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take you with me. This is what the third Live
Speaker 1: tournament is gonna look like. These are the players are
Speaker 1: gonna be played and and I guarantee you go. There's
Speaker 1: no there's no chance and help, there's no way this
Speaker 1: happens right. And I think it's it's interesting that for
Speaker 1: all the yes, there's a ton of negative stuff, but
Speaker 1: I think we are at a really interesting time, not
Speaker 1: only engulf but I think we are in a really
Speaker 1: interesting time in in sports, um, you know, with what's happening.
Speaker 1: I mean I've gone to all the live events and
Speaker 1: three of them, and people ask me what they're like,
Speaker 1: and I say, um, either feel like I'm part of
Speaker 1: we work and this is there are times where you're
Speaker 1: like you're listening to all the extraneous people talk and say,
Speaker 1: there's no way this can work. There's no way this
Speaker 1: can work. It won't last, it won't last. So as
Speaker 1: someone who has you know, been a part of the
Speaker 1: live experience and had had spent you know, the majority
Speaker 1: of my you know, professional life working on the PGA Tour,
Speaker 1: it's a completely different thing. And I constantly am saying
Speaker 1: to myself, am I part of a dot com startup
Speaker 1: that won't work? Or am I at the start of Google?
Speaker 1: And this is going to turn into something that nobody
Speaker 1: could envision? And I think it is a fascinating time
Speaker 1: for for all of us that are involved in professional golf,
Speaker 1: regardless of what side you're on. Um. You know, my
Speaker 1: dad on my podcast recently and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's live in the PGA Tour like our politics, right,
Speaker 1: they just keep getting further and further apart as opposing
Speaker 1: to try and come to the middle and say, okay,
Speaker 1: let's figure out a way to work this out. Because
Speaker 1: I can tell you that hera as much animosity as
Speaker 1: there there seems to be. When we all went to
Speaker 1: the Open Championship, I saw all the same people and
Speaker 1: I didn't see anybody get treated any different. I mean,
Speaker 1: Rory rocked up next to DJ, put his balls right
Speaker 1: now next to him on Tuesday and today, what are
Speaker 1: you guys up to? We talked him for twenty minutes
Speaker 1: and he said, hey, what are you doing? And he
Speaker 1: said him going to play practice found and Roy said hey,
Speaker 1: can I join you? And we went yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: what we always do. I mean DJ probably plays twenty
Speaker 1: twenty times a year in practice rounds of Roy. Yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I think the Open Championship is also before a lot
Speaker 1: of the UM. Not to say that that Rory and
Speaker 1: DJ wouldn't still have that interaction, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you I'm not I'm not them, um.
Speaker 1: But as far as a vibe check, I GA, you
Speaker 1: can say on the PGA tour, UM, I have noticed
Speaker 1: a ton more. You know, this has gone from like
Speaker 1: hush hush whispers to like everybody's talking about the random
Speaker 1: breaking news or whatever the story of the day is. Um.
Speaker 1: And it also seems, you know, just based on all
Speaker 1: the changes that have been announced, people have gone from
Speaker 1: really thinking about golf. This is just my impression that
Speaker 1: you know, people think about golf is a very individual sport.
Speaker 1: I just put my head down and play. That's what
Speaker 1: I need to focus on. And it's changed from like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now we need to be advocates of our sport, and
Speaker 1: how are we going to pull our power and all
Speaker 1: come together and bring our influence into one thing so
Speaker 1: that we can create this product to be what we
Speaker 1: what we envisioned it to be, and to make all
Speaker 1: these changes and make them quickly. UM. And I don't
Speaker 1: know that that's ever really happened. And I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess in the sixties it did with with Arnie and Check,
Speaker 1: but not to this level. So that has been fascinating. Um.
Speaker 1: There's probably guys that have sat in meetings and had
Speaker 1: conversations that they've never ever thought that they would ever
Speaker 1: do things like that because all all they've ever done
Speaker 1: is hig golf ball. Um. So it's it's interesting to
Speaker 1: see that evolve UM and see people take more more
Speaker 1: agency over the league that they play in or the
Speaker 1: future that they want to have. UM. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you sit in a I mean I sat in
Speaker 1: player dining at one point at BMW and there's like
Speaker 1: all these little groups and everybody's chatting away, and like
Speaker 1: it's just you know, that fascinating to you know. Care.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I can do find interesting though,
Speaker 1: is I've been you know, my dad played the PGA
Speaker 1: Tour of my grandfather won the Masters, So I've been
Speaker 1: around professional golf literally my entire life. I was told
Speaker 1: that two weeks after I was born, my dad was
Speaker 1: still playing the tour. So I was in the back
Speaker 1: of a station wagon and I was on tour. So
Speaker 1: it's really been the majority of my my adult certainly
Speaker 1: you know more about this world. And but what I
Speaker 1: find really interesting is just for all of the supposed
Speaker 1: negativity that this whole thing has happened since lives come in,
Speaker 1: it is galvanized people to act and band together. The
Speaker 1: live people of galvanized and feel like they're part of
Speaker 1: something that they're all going to band together, that there's
Speaker 1: a brotherhood on the Live Tour now and out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're getting the best players on
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour to say, Okay, we're going to commit
Speaker 1: to playing these tournaments. You know, these guys are all individuals.
Speaker 1: They practice when they want, they play when they want,
Speaker 1: they play which tournaments they want to play. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the positives to come out of it
Speaker 1: is as as many negatives that have come out of it,
Speaker 1: is somehow, some way through all of this turmoil, a
Speaker 1: bunch of individuals on both sides are saying, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: let's get together and talk, as opposed to just doing
Speaker 1: our own things. Because when I when I grew up,
Speaker 1: co chain on the European Tour, the European Tour was
Speaker 1: like that. Everybody got on the same planes, everybody got
Speaker 1: in the same cars, everybody stayed at the same hotels.
Speaker 1: We all ate together, we all traveled together, we all
Speaker 1: went to the course together. And then you would go
Speaker 1: to the PGA Tour and the joke was Phil's getting
Speaker 1: on his jet, bj is getting on his jet, Um
Speaker 1: Tiger is getting on his jet, nobody's sharing jets, nobody's
Speaker 1: doing anything, and everything was really, really individual. And I
Speaker 1: think it's been fascinating to watch not only the guys
Speaker 1: on the Live band together, but as a result, you're
Speaker 1: getting guys on the PGA tour now to say, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: what can we all do for the greater good of
Speaker 1: our tour? And I think this would have never happened.
Speaker 1: Something like this wouldn't have come along. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: see them sharing jets anytime soon still cloud, but but um,
Speaker 1: it is interesting to see them come together and build
Speaker 1: a better product because there there were things that that
Speaker 1: needed to change and that we're lacking in the product,
Speaker 1: and and things that you know, just from a lifestyle,
Speaker 1: lifestyle perspective for them, from a length of season or
Speaker 1: feeling that you're if you're not playing certain fall events
Speaker 1: that you're then way behind infedex cut points or you know,
Speaker 1: all the minutia of all those little things. So and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be better for the for the golf fan,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be better for the viewer to
Speaker 1: be able to see these guys come together a lot
Speaker 1: more often. Um. I wish that there's a world in which,
Speaker 1: you know, I could see some of the guys that
Speaker 1: have gone to Live play against the guys that are
Speaker 1: on the PGA Tour on a more consistent basis, because
Speaker 1: I love those storylines. I love the kind of clashes
Speaker 1: that come with that as a golf fan. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know that we are going to see that outside
Speaker 1: of majors and depending on you know how all these
Speaker 1: the world ranking points, everything shakes out and la la
Speaker 1: la um. So that is a bummer for the fan. However, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I new storylines will emerge, whatever it ends
Speaker 1: up looking like, and I'm very curious to see how
Speaker 1: it all ends up. Is like the bridge to all
Speaker 1: these new things really go into effect from the PGA
Speaker 1: Tour side. Um, it's fascinating. Well, I think, Um, the
Speaker 1: good news for you is I think you'll continue to
Speaker 1: have a lot of amazing things to talk about. Um,
Speaker 1: it's been great to talk to you. So it's hard
Speaker 1: to kind of watch kind of where you started a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. Get now, the last question I
Speaker 1: have to ask you, because I know everybody listening wants
Speaker 1: to know how many times a year do you wear
Speaker 1: the Miss America set? How many times a year do
Speaker 1: you put it on? And so I don't wear this,
Speaker 1: I really don't ever but I just realized I'm sitting
Speaker 1: at my desk and what I have here as a
Speaker 1: decorative item. But I'm going to show you, oh the crown.
Speaker 1: Look at that. There is the crown that is so
Speaker 1: good just just lying around decorative items. This is actually
Speaker 1: an extra. The real real one is upstairs in a
Speaker 1: glass box in my living room. But this is my
Speaker 1: decorative desk paperweight. So this is like me giving an
Speaker 1: interview to somebody, go, you know what, you know what
Speaker 1: I just happened to have here? It's I just got
Speaker 1: the green jacket. It just happened. It happens to be
Speaker 1: hanging around when the other this one it's got, it's
Speaker 1: broken a little bit right here. This was the one
Speaker 1: that was like if the other one wasn't cleaning, this
Speaker 1: is the one I would there. All right. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously no one's going to see this because the podcast,
Speaker 1: but can you go ahead and put it on for
Speaker 1: for us? Okay? How do I look? What do you think?
Speaker 1: I mean? I mean, I know everybody listening can't see it,
Speaker 1: but I mean you look like you look like a
Speaker 1: Miss American winner debate. Yeah, I always have my invisible
Speaker 1: crown on these days. But Yep, there it is. You're
Speaker 1: great to talk to you. Hopefully, UM, you can all
Speaker 1: come together and we'll get to see um all you
Speaker 1: peeps on the PGA Tour more often, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're in the same boat. Sure there's players, caddies,
Speaker 1: other people, and you're like, I don't get to see
Speaker 1: those people anymore. They're gone. Because I feel like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many people on the PGA Tour, caddies, players,
Speaker 1: coaches that were such a we you know, part of
Speaker 1: the tour championships. The first tour championship in Atlanta that
Speaker 1: I've missed in over a decade. It's it's it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's definitely players that that I no longer see in
Speaker 1: a regular basis, And I'm like, man, that was a bumber,
Speaker 1: especially because you're you know, I just getting to this
Speaker 1: point where like we've got a good thing going here,
Speaker 1: Like I know I can go to you for good information.
Speaker 1: A lot another gone. Um, So yeah, that part is sucks, um,
Speaker 1: And I like the animosity and things like that are
Speaker 1: also not not nice. So I hope that everything works
Speaker 1: out and everyone will keep happy and there will be
Speaker 1: world peace. We look forward and we'll look forward to you,
Speaker 1: Kira bringing us all of the break Yes, we'll do.
Speaker 1: Please tune in. Thanks for talking to Terry, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So that was a really cool interview with Kire Dixon.
Speaker 1: And listen you if you're a golfer and you're watching
Speaker 1: golf on TV, you're going to see her interviewing players,
Speaker 1: UM at all the big events, and uh, I think
Speaker 1: she's doing a hell of a job and really cool
Speaker 1: to see her and make that jump from um, you know,
Speaker 1: probably an industry that you would never think would mix
Speaker 1: with golf, but UM, I really enjoyed talking to her,
Speaker 1: and she's somebody that you know, when I'm on the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour and I see her, you know, we talk
Speaker 1: and it's always fun to see what she's doing. So
Speaker 1: good stuff from her. So questions, let's see what's the
Speaker 1: difference between a corn ferry player and a p G
Speaker 1: A tour player? UM, I mean, I think the gist
Speaker 1: of that question is what is the difference between people
Speaker 1: playing on tours um that aren't where they want to be?
Speaker 1: And then you know, the holy grail of making it
Speaker 1: to the p G A tour. Um. You know, I
Speaker 1: was lucky enough this summer to go to Wimbledon and
Speaker 1: got to watch Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals. Lost the
Speaker 1: first set, and um it got tight in the second set,
Speaker 1: and every big point afterwards that Novac needed to win,
Speaker 1: he won that point. And the player that he was playing.
Speaker 1: UM is as talented as he is, hits it as
Speaker 1: hard as he is, has the shots that he has.
Speaker 1: But when it comes down to it being able to
Speaker 1: execute the right shot at the right time, not only
Speaker 1: in tennis, not only in football, not only in basketball. UM.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things I think because
Speaker 1: the playing field and golf is so much different than
Speaker 1: other sports. UM from a talent level. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: when you watch basketball, UM, you're sitting even if you
Speaker 1: played basketball, you know, not many people are lebron Not
Speaker 1: many people have the physical size of other sports. So
Speaker 1: it's easy to think that the playing field is very,
Speaker 1: very on what level in golf because a lot of
Speaker 1: golfers look the same, a lot of golfers have a
Speaker 1: lot of the same skills. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, when you have to make shots, when you
Speaker 1: have to hit the right shot at the right time,
Speaker 1: when you need to make a downhill left or right
Speaker 1: put for six ft for par on the fifte hole
Speaker 1: with a one shot lead. Um. In my experience in
Speaker 1: watching and again I've been so lucky in my career
Speaker 1: to be around some of the best players in the world.
Speaker 1: They have the ability at the right time to execute
Speaker 1: the right shot. And I think when you watch golf
Speaker 1: on TV, we see it every year. You will see
Speaker 1: a player that isn't necessarily a household name has an
Speaker 1: opportunity to win a golf golf to a great example
Speaker 1: this year, um Mito Pereira mean, I mean Mito. He's
Speaker 1: playing unbelievable golf. He was on the podcast. Um, he
Speaker 1: has a chance to win the p GA. He's on
Speaker 1: the last hole. All he needs to do is hit
Speaker 1: the fairway and he hits the ball in the water
Speaker 1: and doesn't get in of the playoff. Um. You have
Speaker 1: to be able to execute. And I think, UM, once
Speaker 1: you get to the PGA tour, Um, everybody is talented, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody is a great player. Um, if you
Speaker 1: make it to the corn Ferry Tour, Um, that's a
Speaker 1: hell of an achievement. But being able to execute, and
Speaker 1: also I think, um, one of the big differences is um,
Speaker 1: not making dumb mistakes. And again, to use a tennis analogy,
Speaker 1: unforced airs and tennis. I think a lot of players,
Speaker 1: when they're trying to get to that next level, they
Speaker 1: make dumb mistakes. Um. You've heard me talk about on
Speaker 1: the podcast before, making double boghies, triple bogies at the
Speaker 1: wrong time. So, UM, I think executing is what separates
Speaker 1: the good from the great. Let's see one of the
Speaker 1: top three things teenage kids should be working on most
Speaker 1: likely in the game and um, and likely don't UM,
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, I think there's a lot out of things. UM.
Speaker 1: I think junior golfers You've heard me talking about it
Speaker 1: on the pod before. UM. I think junior golfers tend
Speaker 1: to practice what they're good at. UM. I go, you
Speaker 1: know when I watch junior tournaments, when I work with
Speaker 1: junior golfers, if they're a good driver of the golf
Speaker 1: ball and they're warming up, UM, they're gonna be hitting
Speaker 1: a ton of drivers. UM. If they're a great putter,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be on the putting green. If they're great
Speaker 1: in the short game, they're going to be in the
Speaker 1: short game. So I think, UM, again, it's I say
Speaker 1: this all the time, UM, practicing what you're not good at.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, juniors and teenagers specifically tend
Speaker 1: to gravitate towards the things that they're proficient at. UM
Speaker 1: it's they're comfortable with. It's it's kind of a comfort level. UH.
Speaker 1: They don't like to practice things that they're they're not
Speaker 1: good at, that they're not proficient at. So UM, practicing
Speaker 1: your weakness is more than your strengths, I think is huge. UM.
Speaker 1: I think most junior golfers UM spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time on the drive being range and need to spend
Speaker 1: more time playing golf. So to me, the number one
Speaker 1: thing that I would tell you a teenager is play
Speaker 1: more than you practice. UM. I think you've got to
Speaker 1: learn how to play. There is an art to playing golf. UM.
Speaker 1: And just so everybody thinks that I don't make these
Speaker 1: UM questions up, we have a question from my dad
Speaker 1: b Charman. He says, who will be the next UM
Speaker 1: Jump to Live Which player? UM? Dad? If I knew
Speaker 1: that answer, UM, I'd be making money on that. I
Speaker 1: do think that in the off season UM Lives the
Speaker 1: Live Tour is going to end in three weeks UM
Speaker 1: and doesn't restart until kind of February. Maybe. UM, I
Speaker 1: do think that you're going to say, I don't know this. UM.
Speaker 1: I hear the same kind of rumors that everybody hears. UM,
Speaker 1: But I do think that you're going to see um
Speaker 1: more players go. UM just fact to life. I think
Speaker 1: anybody that thinks that Live is going to fold anytime
Speaker 1: soon is UM. They either want that to happen and
Speaker 1: that's the narrative they're trying to push, or UM their
Speaker 1: naive because they just aren't aware of what's actually happening.
Speaker 1: And UM, I think you are going to see players go.
Speaker 1: I think you UM, I think we will be surprised,
Speaker 1: as as as fans and as people that watch golf.
Speaker 1: I think you'll be surprised. Maybe it's someone that does go,
Speaker 1: but UM, I think players are going to go. And UM,
Speaker 1: I think Live is going to continue to UM do
Speaker 1: what it does. And I think the PGA Tour is
Speaker 1: going to continue to do what it does. And I
Speaker 1: might be in the minority, but UM, I think they
Speaker 1: can both be true at the same time. And UM, listen,
Speaker 1: if you're a fan of the p g A Tour
Speaker 1: and you're a fan of the players that play on
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour, and that's what you want to watch.
Speaker 1: Watch that. If you like what the product it lives,
Speaker 1: and you like the players playing at that, watch that.
Speaker 1: I I believe there's an audience for both. And I
Speaker 1: just don't. I fundamentally just don't get all this animosity
Speaker 1: as to what's going on. So Dad, I wish I
Speaker 1: knew the answer that question. Sadly I do not. UM listen.
Speaker 1: I really want to thank everybody for listening. UM. We
Speaker 1: shut down the pod in the summer, came back with
Speaker 1: my heart radio and really excited to be back doing it.
Speaker 1: And UM, I can't thank everybody enough for listening. UM rate, review, subscribe.
Speaker 1: But wherever you get your podcasts, and if you've got
Speaker 1: people that you know love golf and our interested in golf,
Speaker 1: UM tell them about the pod and we'll keep getting
Speaker 1: good guests. And I'm working on some UM some guests
Speaker 1: which I think we're going to be able to get
Speaker 1: the next month, which I think everybody is going to
Speaker 1: enjoy listening to and will definitely be UM thought provoking.
Speaker 1: Son of a bisch comes to you every Wednesday. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to everybody and We will see you next week.
Speaker 1: He