Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: On some level, Jay Monahan showed the ultimate leadership. He
Speaker 2: jumped on the grenade and they'd come to the end
Speaker 2: of the road. They could no longer try and compete
Speaker 2: with the Saudis. The only thing to do is to
Speaker 2: forge a compromise, and by doing so he secured the
Speaker 2: long term health of the PG Tour. Potentially he's going
Speaker 2: to bring fabulous new riches to all his players, and
Speaker 2: the tour didn't have to give up anything all the all.
Speaker 2: The only cost was Jay Monahan's reputation and maybe his soul.
Speaker 1: That God thoughts in my head. Can't get him out, JH.
Speaker 1: Not to think what I'm thinking about. I'm counts can't
Speaker 1: get him out, JH. Not to think what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 2: Hello, Welcome back from their Fire Drill podcast. This is
Speaker 2: Alan Shipnik. I am joined by frequent wingman Michael Bamberger.
Speaker 2: That song you just heard was by Griffin House, very
Speaker 2: talented musician. He's gonna He's going to factor in an
Speaker 2: upcoming Fire Drill podcast. Shout out to Griffin for supplying
Speaker 2: our theme music and dormy workshop and Link Soul for
Speaker 2: all their sponsorship and support and helping us keep the
Speaker 2: lights on here at the fire pit, but this is
Speaker 2: kind of a special fire drill. We're talking about my
Speaker 2: new book Live and let Die. I'll show it on
Speaker 2: the screen for those who are watching on YouTube. I
Speaker 2: don't know why you'd be doing that. It's a little
Speaker 2: terrifying that people actually watch this, Michael, But anyway, thanks
Speaker 2: for being I.
Speaker 3: Showered in anticipation of that viewer.
Speaker 2: I shaved and you can see my hair still wet.
Speaker 2: I was coming in hot. But we've been having these
Speaker 2: conversations about our respective books going back a decade now.
Speaker 2: I think it began with Men and Green. And there's
Speaker 2: no one I'd rather talk about than about this stuff
Speaker 2: than with you, a man of letters, a lover of
Speaker 2: the written word, a discerning reader. So here we are.
Speaker 2: I'm turning this over to you. Now we're changing hosts. Okay, well.
Speaker 3: That's a delight and an honor. And you know, just
Speaker 3: before we I A'm going to have a little preamble here,
Speaker 3: but I don't want people to be nervous. When this
Speaker 3: is over. Shipnook will have done ninety four percent of
Speaker 3: the talking, but I'm going to set the I'm going
Speaker 3: to do a little mood lighting here and let me
Speaker 3: say this at the onset so I might.
Speaker 2: Beat other people to it.
Speaker 3: Alan and I have been close friends and colleagues going
Speaker 3: back to the mid nineties. Our checks have been signed
Speaker 3: by the same quote people and corporations going back to
Speaker 3: the mid nineties, going after Sports Illustrated and Golf Magazine
Speaker 3: and Firepit Collective. We have the same editor, Joe fie
Speaker 3: ferrari Adler at Simon and Schuster, a division of Simon
Speaker 3: Schuster now called Avid Reader Press. Our interest we've written
Speaker 3: a book together. Our interests are very much aligned. But
Speaker 3: we're going to have a very truthful conversation about this
Speaker 3: inredibly interesting and well done book. I read the book
Speaker 3: as On was writing it. I've just read the new
Speaker 3: last chapter of it for anybody who cares. You know,
Speaker 3: Ben Bradley famously said Ben Bradley was the longtime editor
Speaker 3: to the Washington Post. Maybe others have said I'm sure
Speaker 3: others have said it. You know that newspaper work is
Speaker 3: the first draft of history.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I think it's a beautiful phrase. But what Alan has
Speaker 3: done here is hot on the wake of the actual events,
Speaker 3: has actually given context and history to an incredible upheaval
Speaker 3: in professional golf. But the real value of it for
Speaker 3: me as a reader, and I think for many many
Speaker 3: people who will read and devour this book, is that
Speaker 3: it's not really just about golf. It's about the modern condition,
Speaker 3: about more is more read, it's never enough, global interests
Speaker 3: in a narrow thing, and how you buy status through
Speaker 3: the use of money. So it's an absolutely incredible and
Speaker 3: interesting book. As someone who's been a lifelong reporter, I
Speaker 3: can imagine I would say I know how difficult this
Speaker 3: book was to report and write Alan, So the first
Speaker 3: thing I want to say is congratulations on an extremely
Speaker 3: well done book. Nobody will read this book and say
Speaker 3: it's boring. Alan and I had a colleague and a friend,
Speaker 3: Rick Riley, years ago, and Alan wrote a book called Bud,
Speaker 3: Sweat and Teas, and riley blurb forer and Riley's blurb
Speaker 3: for it was somebody forgot to tell Alan Schipneck that
Speaker 3: golf books are supposed to be boring. That effect, this
Speaker 3: book is so interesting and so captivating because it has
Speaker 3: so much a play, so many different types of personalities.
Speaker 3: So with that long preamble, we're going to get into
Speaker 3: the book. But Al, I want to start where the
Speaker 3: book stops, and that is because I know people will
Speaker 3: be interested to know on your extremely informed opinion about
Speaker 3: this question. I think we all have a sense of
Speaker 3: what the various tours will look like in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Give us your best guess for what the world golf
Speaker 3: will look like in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, thank you for all those kind words,
Speaker 2: and we could make this just this podcast of monologue.
Speaker 2: That's fine if you want to keep going, Mike, I
Speaker 2: don't mind at all. I enjoyed that deeply. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's obvious that twenty twenty four is going
Speaker 2: to look very much like twenty three and twenty two
Speaker 2: for that matter, Live a play a schedule, the European
Speaker 2: Tour will hab it schedule and sold, the PGA Tour
Speaker 2: with some tweaks along the way for each of them.
Speaker 2: But twenty five is the big question. As I've continued
Speaker 2: to report this book even after it was mostly done.
Speaker 2: You know, I was at the US Women's Amateur at
Speaker 2: bal air walking with some golf power brokers and they
Speaker 2: were talking. Some of them were seminole members, some of
Speaker 2: them are buddies with Jimmy Dunn. You know, they were
Speaker 2: close to the nexus of power, and they were talking
Speaker 2: about all of the private equity money from American corporations
Speaker 2: that are now circling this deal. And I think it's it,
Speaker 2: and it sounds like it's it's close to Doune where
Speaker 2: the Saudis role will be somewhat diluted and they will
Speaker 2: bring in institutional investor money for the United States, and
Speaker 2: that becomes a much easier sell to Congress, even to
Speaker 2: the tour members and say, listen, the Saudis are an investor,
Speaker 2: but so is you know, Rain Capital, so is Black Rock,
Speaker 2: so are some of these other big firms that have
Speaker 2: been trying to get into golf, maybe Endeavor, you know,
Speaker 2: all those all those firms have been trying to get
Speaker 2: in professional golf going back years now, and so I
Speaker 2: think that becomes more palatable from the standpoint of it's
Speaker 2: not controlled by the Saudis. And even though the tour
Speaker 2: folks have hung their hat on this for a long
Speaker 2: time that we have a majority seat on the board
Speaker 2: of directors were in charge, no one's really believe that
Speaker 2: because the money is in charge, and you see her
Speaker 2: had all the money. And so if you if you
Speaker 2: bring in the one or two or maybe even three,
Speaker 2: you know, American based private equity firms. Then then you
Speaker 2: can say, well, the PGA Tours in charge, and we
Speaker 2: have a variety of investors, one of them being the
Speaker 2: public investment fund in the Saudist. I think that still
Speaker 2: works for yas sir. They have the proverbial seat at
Speaker 2: the table. They have a way forward for live from
Speaker 2: a legitimacy standpoint. They've been embraced by the the golf
Speaker 2: establishment and the corporate They've gotten the okay from corporate
Speaker 2: America and it's kind of a win win win. So
Speaker 2: I think that's what's going to happen. I think there
Speaker 2: will be a global schedule that has you know, say
Speaker 2: call it twenty events, that combination of the best European
Speaker 2: Tour events, the best PGA Tour events, and a handful
Speaker 2: of live events and players will flow back and forth,
Speaker 2: and I think that'll make everyone happy. And then they'll
Speaker 2: still European Tour will still have its normal schedule, There'll
Speaker 2: still be a variety of live events that are not
Speaker 2: part of this umbrella organization, and of course there'll still
Speaker 2: be another forty plus PGA Tour events that operate kind
Speaker 2: of business as usual. So it's been a challenging period
Speaker 2: for golf fans. There's been a lot of acrimony. There's
Speaker 2: been a lot of name calling and uncertainty. But we
Speaker 2: may land on the best case scenario, which is a
Speaker 2: true global schedule where all the best players show up
Speaker 2: and play every tournament, and it will have been it
Speaker 2: will have taken some strife to get there, but I
Speaker 2: think that's the direction this is all heading.
Speaker 3: Well, Alan, what does that mean in terms of a
Speaker 3: live schedule, because the live model is, you know, better
Speaker 3: than anybody as well as anybody is team play in
Speaker 3: addition to individual play. How would that work in the
Speaker 3: context of people coming and going? Would it still be
Speaker 3: the limited field, three round thing with teams that they
Speaker 3: have now?
Speaker 2: So let's say there's there's fourteen of live events. Now,
Speaker 2: maybe ten of them are just how they've always been,
Speaker 2: and maybe four of them get subsumed into this larger
Speaker 2: schedule and they would probably be tweaked. So now you
Speaker 2: have you have a team element where maybe there's the
Speaker 2: six best live teams they you know, they sort of
Speaker 2: have earned the right to play in these events. And
Speaker 2: then you have let's say six teams of top tour
Speaker 2: players with some sort of criteria, and then you have
Speaker 2: three teams of European Tour and they play play off
Speaker 2: in this team event with an individual component, and you know,
Speaker 2: I think it's it's very doable. It becomes kind of
Speaker 2: a prize you have to qualify for the live teams
Speaker 2: that miss out on these events. Then they're just kind
Speaker 2: of sol but they can make it up to another ways.
Speaker 2: They can give them exemptions into Asian Tour events if
Speaker 2: they guys want to want to fill out their schedules.
Speaker 2: So that's why this framework agreement is so complex, is
Speaker 2: trying to try to make something that works for all
Speaker 2: the different constituencies. And that's why there's been no movement
Speaker 2: publicly because there's so much to sort out. But all
Speaker 2: these things are solvable with money. And now there's the
Speaker 2: new CO as they call it, has access to a
Speaker 2: lot of money, not just from the Soudias, but also
Speaker 2: from this notion of bringing in other investors. So I
Speaker 2: think they can. I think they can figure this out.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of smart people who are working on it,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of political will to get it done.
Speaker 2: But it's probably gonna go down to the wire. I mean,
Speaker 2: they have till December thirty first, and they might they
Speaker 2: might be they might be negotiating this over Christmas holiday,
Speaker 2: but I think it'll get done.
Speaker 3: So a golfer who's you know, still, you would think
Speaker 3: in theory and his prime, like an Patrick Reid who's
Speaker 3: been banned from the PHA Tour, would he now come
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, would he be able to come and go? Well,
Speaker 3: Patrick Reid's the least example. You know, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they would. They would have access to this
Speaker 2: this series of say twenty elite events, of which ten
Speaker 2: of them are tour traditional PGA Tour event, So they
Speaker 2: could play the LA Open, they could play Bay Hill,
Speaker 2: they could play Memorial. You have to have it both ways.
Speaker 2: If you're going to try and bring the game back together,
Speaker 2: then you got to bring these live guys back into
Speaker 2: the fold. It's only thing that makes sense. And it's
Speaker 2: certainly if you are a Master Card or a American
Speaker 2: Express or whomever, a car company and you're you're being
Speaker 2: asked to put in twenty million dollars for a PG
Speaker 2: Tour event. You want Dustin, you want you want Bryson,
Speaker 2: who's playing incredible golf. I mean, he just won his
Speaker 2: second live event in three starts, and well, it's hard
Speaker 2: for all of us to know the meaning of a
Speaker 2: live victory. But the guys shooting incredible scores, including a
Speaker 2: fifty eight, so you know, obviously Brooks Koepka's return to
Speaker 2: the front ranks of the game. You have the anti
Speaker 2: heroes like the Phils, the Patrick Reids, the Sergio Garcias,
Speaker 2: who people may not love, but they inspire emotion and passion.
Speaker 2: And I mean there's a reason that the Master's ratings
Speaker 2: were the highest they've been in five years this year.
Speaker 2: It was the live guys. I mean, it was Phil
Speaker 2: tearing up the leader board. You know, John Rahm winning
Speaker 2: by four strokes was boring, but the energy that that
Speaker 2: that Phil put into it, the Brooks put into it,
Speaker 2: you know, even and even read you finished fourth. Like
Speaker 2: these guys inspire emotion and so you have to have
Speaker 2: them back in the big tournaments to really make it
Speaker 2: all all makes sense.
Speaker 3: And let's get you the book for a minute. Let's
Speaker 3: get to the title. I remember very well when the
Speaker 3: James Bond movie came out with Living Lit Dies it's
Speaker 3: theme song. Did you ever find yourself playing at a
Speaker 3: loud volume with those terrifying deep bass notes. Just a great,
Speaker 3: great rocker. That shows you that Pumpcarty's genius extended way
Speaker 3: beyond the Beatles, even though it definitely, definitely definitely peaked
Speaker 3: in the Beatles. Did you ever find yourself listening to
Speaker 3: that song?
Speaker 2: No, I think we're straying into you, into your life
Speaker 2: more than mine and Michael, but yeah, I definitely have
Speaker 2: cued it up, and yeah, it's it's just a fun title.
Speaker 2: It's a Beatles song. It's a Bond movie, not to
Speaker 2: like McCarney song. It's a Bond movie. It's and it
Speaker 2: just kind of worked because of the the There is
Speaker 2: this sense that the tours were fighting for their survival,
Speaker 2: the games survival was at stake. You know, there's it
Speaker 2: wasn't quite zero some but there was times throughout this
Speaker 2: controversy it felt like it. And you know, the reputation
Speaker 2: of Jay Monahan, the there was there's just been a
Speaker 2: lot at stake. I mean that that's this story has
Speaker 2: consumed so many people, and the cast of characters is phenomenal.
Speaker 2: And of course you have Rory, and you have Tiger,
Speaker 2: and you have Phil and you have Brooks, and you
Speaker 2: have Bryson, you have DJ and Patrick Reid, but you
Speaker 2: also have Mohammed bin Salman. You have you have his
Speaker 2: excellency yes he all Ramaian, you have Jay Monahan, you
Speaker 2: have you know, Keith Pelly, You've got Jimmy Dunn, Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: There's just a lot of box office here. And some
Speaker 2: people were elevated, some people were diminished, you know, fortunes
Speaker 2: were won and lost. It's it's it was just high
Speaker 2: stakes for what was otherwise just a kind of potentially
Speaker 2: a boring golf story, you know, in a little boutique sport.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean then the title might be a
Speaker 2: little hyperbolic, but it just seemed to fit the energy
Speaker 2: of the story.
Speaker 3: Well, where do you think we're actually going? Do you
Speaker 3: think we are Do you think we are heading towards
Speaker 3: the live lit dire? Do you think we're heading towards living,
Speaker 3: let thrive or some other word?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that Live is going to endure. I
Speaker 2: think it's too important to Yes Year and the Public
Speaker 2: Investment Fund. They put a lot of money and a
Speaker 2: lot of time into it, and they want to return
Speaker 2: on their investment. I mean, there's a quote from a
Speaker 2: guy who worked a lot with the Saudi's on launching
Speaker 2: live and he said, you know it's in the book.
Speaker 2: He's anonymous because of his NDAs and other reasons, but
Speaker 2: he said, there's the narrative that these guys have an
Speaker 2: endless amount of money and they're happy to throw it away.
Speaker 2: He's like, it could be further from the truth. Like
Speaker 2: they are laser focused and there's always a place, and
Speaker 2: they will not stop until they've executed a plan. And
Speaker 2: so they've already spent say three billion dollars on live golf.
Speaker 2: They want to get that money back. You know that
Speaker 2: ya here has a very demanding boss, and that's that's MBS,
Speaker 2: and he has a mandate to grow the piffs into
Speaker 2: a into a trillion dollar fund by twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: You don't do that by losing money. And that's not
Speaker 2: a guy you want to have mad at you. You know,
Speaker 2: if we all want to please our boss, when when
Speaker 2: your boss is a scary motherfucker like MBS, you really
Speaker 2: want to you want to hit your mark. So they're
Speaker 2: they're they're trying to get their money back and they're
Speaker 2: trying to make money, and there's there's other things. You're
Speaker 2: willing to pay for the reputational boost of being aligned
Speaker 2: with Corporate America and the PGA tour and the notion
Speaker 2: that you see it could become a member of the
Speaker 2: RNA and Augusta National well fanciful it, you know that
Speaker 2: was It's a window into their soul. I mean, let's
Speaker 2: just say that that worked out. He would have access
Speaker 2: to the American ruling class in a way that no
Speaker 2: Saudi king or crown prince or ambassador ever has had.
Speaker 2: And so they're certainly willing to pay a premium for
Speaker 2: that kind of access. But their their bottom line, very
Speaker 2: cold blooded businessman, and they want to get the money back.
Speaker 2: So shuddering live now ends that possibility. If they can
Speaker 2: keep it going and turn it into something, then then
Speaker 2: then that's a path forward.
Speaker 3: Traditionally, a book has a hero that you can root for.
Speaker 3: Your first book, which you know how much I loved it,
Speaker 3: Bud Sweat and Teas has an unlikely hero, acadey named
Speaker 3: Steve Duplantis, who caddies for rich Beham, and you're rooting
Speaker 3: for this guy and he's hanging on by a thread.
Speaker 2: This book is.
Speaker 3: Very, very compulsively readable. But let me I'll turn into
Speaker 3: a question in your mind, is there a hero in
Speaker 3: the telling of this story?
Speaker 2: It's It's what I think makes it so compelling is
Speaker 2: that every protagonist UH has complicated motives and and complicated behavior.
Speaker 2: Like j Monahan is fighting for the PGA Tour. He's
Speaker 2: a true believer. He has no other agenda than trying
Speaker 2: to do what's best for the tour and his players
Speaker 2: and his organization and you. But he's made he made
Speaker 2: some fatal missteps out of pride or out of out
Speaker 2: out of bad advice, or out of having this old
Speaker 2: hockey j mentality that's his nickname, the tour headquarters. When
Speaker 2: when he went the dark side of his personality because
Speaker 2: he was an old defenseman in college hockey team. So
Speaker 2: you know, he could have been the hero, but he
Speaker 2: kind of he kind of fell on his sword. You know,
Speaker 2: Rory thought he was fighting the good fight, and in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways he was. But you know, there's
Speaker 2: there's an interesting bit in here from you know, the
Speaker 2: live guys roll their eyes so hard at Rory as
Speaker 2: this as this white knight of this tail, because he
Speaker 2: has tremendous financial interests through the PGA Tour all the
Speaker 2: deals they've steered through to him. This new TGL Golf League,
Speaker 2: the tour has supported and has a financial interest in.
Speaker 2: So and in the end, you know, he he got
Speaker 2: out fox by the money guys. And he might be
Speaker 2: the tragic hero Tiger, you know, he's he's he's been
Speaker 2: this this shadow with influence throughout. Like on one hand, yes,
Speaker 2: it's very selfless for him to get involved and to
Speaker 2: the Delaware twenty three meeting that he led that really
Speaker 2: turned the tide for the PGA Tour and now taking
Speaker 2: this seat on the board of directors, you could kind
Speaker 2: of say Tiger's the hero, but he hasn't want to
Speaker 2: be out front. He's only really made one, you know,
Speaker 2: very strong statement at the British Open, but he's it
Speaker 2: doesn't feel like his fight. You know, he's not really
Speaker 2: a modern player anymore. He's not going to play in
Speaker 2: these events for the most part. So and he's trying
Speaker 2: to protect his legacy. You know, he has his own
Speaker 2: selfish reasons for wanting the PGA Tour to tour, and
Speaker 2: so there's it's hard to it's hard to find an
Speaker 2: unblemish here. There's a lot of people who were doing
Speaker 2: the right thing. And they were trying their hardest. But
Speaker 2: their motives are a little complex, and that's why I
Speaker 2: think it's so. And like even the Saudis who've been
Speaker 2: cast as the bad guys, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: they're true believers. Like they think that they're doing what's
Speaker 2: best for their economy, for their country. You know, they
Speaker 2: they are fighting the good fight in their minds. Now
Speaker 2: people are going to disagree with that, but on some level,
Speaker 2: their motives are very pure. They just they just want
Speaker 2: to advance their own interests and they care deeply about
Speaker 2: their country, and they're they're doing everything they can to
Speaker 2: advance their wishes, of their of their boss and their organizations.
Speaker 2: So you can, you can impugne their motives, but I think,
Speaker 2: you know, for us here, I think it's pure in
Speaker 2: that he loves golf, and he could there's a lot
Speaker 2: of ways you could invest in his money that would
Speaker 2: be a lot less of a headache, right, you can
Speaker 2: just keep buying stock of Fortune five hundred companies, and
Speaker 2: it's probably an easier way to make money. But he
Speaker 2: loves golf's he wants to be an ambassador for the game.
Speaker 2: He wants to spread the gospel of golf, you know,
Speaker 2: So it's it's it's just one of the most fascinating
Speaker 2: parts of this whole tale is that everyone who gets
Speaker 2: sucked into it, it's they get engulfed in the controversy
Speaker 2: and they become they're just multifaceted and what they're trying
Speaker 2: to accomplish and who they really are at their core.
Speaker 2: You get glimpses of it, you never know for sure,
Speaker 2: and and even even when you do get get that insight,
Speaker 2: you can always debate how how pure their motives are
Speaker 2: or not. So there it's not a simplistic story where
Speaker 2: there's a good guy and a bad guy, and that's
Speaker 2: I think why it's more interesting. Right.
Speaker 3: That's very well said, and I think this would be
Speaker 3: a good time for me to point out, Uh, the
Speaker 3: book is incredibly even handed.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: I think I picked up on the on the idea
Speaker 3: that people think that you're quote pro live, and I
Speaker 3: read the book and I don't think there's anyway someone
Speaker 3: can say your pro live, your anti live, your pro
Speaker 3: PG two or your antipg twour. I think you're really
Speaker 3: trying to tell us a very complicated story with a
Speaker 3: lot of different emotions, and I think it's very powerful
Speaker 3: to hear you say that that that what the what
Speaker 3: these piffbackers, what these Saudi billionaires want. That they believe
Speaker 3: in golf, They believe in the things that golf can
Speaker 3: bring their motivated making by making money, but they have
Speaker 3: other motivations as well. And you know, we don't have
Speaker 3: a stranglehold on that. We we Americans or or Europeans,
Speaker 3: or Asians or any or anybody else. So I think
Speaker 3: what you just said it's kind of important to bear
Speaker 3: in mind. But many people's starting point is this looks
Speaker 3: like a play rooted in greed. You just wrote a
Speaker 3: book about Phil Mickelson. It's amazing that that book only
Speaker 3: came out what about a year and not a year
Speaker 3: and a few months ago now, and here we already
Speaker 3: are talking about your next ninety thousand word one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand word book. That's a you know, for those who
Speaker 3: don't know how much work it is to get a
Speaker 3: book out incorrect and edited and well written, it's staggering.
Speaker 3: But let's talk about a little bit about your experience
Speaker 3: writing Phil, how people responded to your take on Phil,
Speaker 3: and how you use that in this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think for a lot of casual
Speaker 2: fans and even some reporters and people in the game.
Speaker 2: The film book touched off the livier in some ways
Speaker 2: because everything was happening in the shadows and Phil is
Speaker 2: at the center of all of it. He wasn't the
Speaker 2: only one, you know, Dustin and Bryson and others and Kopka,
Speaker 2: they've been talking to Soudiast for over a year. But
Speaker 2: when the excerpt dropped from the Phil book in which
Speaker 2: Phil just gave a very lunt lay of the land
Speaker 2: of what was really happening, that's when people really woke
Speaker 2: up to this. Because live had not been announced yet,
Speaker 2: it was not a sure thing, and it had nothing
Speaker 2: that had been public and so that was kind of
Speaker 2: the beginning of the story, I think for a lot
Speaker 2: of people, and honestly for me too, Like it wasn't
Speaker 2: until I had that phone call Phil that I realized
Speaker 2: how how serious this was. That because the Premier Golf
Speaker 2: League and I traced its entire history early in this
Speaker 2: new book, and it's fascinating that that's what created all
Speaker 2: this was this idea from this one London lawyer on
Speaker 2: how golf professional golf could be a little better and
Speaker 2: a little more interesting. That's what led us to this moment.
Speaker 2: But the Premier Golf League had been knocking around for
Speaker 2: four years and then they'd never been able to get traction,
Speaker 2: and so I think a lot of people thought they
Speaker 2: were confused because the Saudi's at one point were just
Speaker 2: investors in the Premiere Golf League, and so then Live
Speaker 2: Golf was being whispered about. But a lot of people
Speaker 2: in the game still thought that was just the Premier
Speaker 2: Golf leagu. They didn't realize the Saudis had broken away
Speaker 2: and were creating their own standalone thing. I mean, I
Speaker 2: traced all this and Live and Let Die.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 2: So it was easy to dismiss, Oh, well, this soud
Speaker 2: He's have been involved for years. There's been no traction,
Speaker 2: there's been no announcements. It's all just going to go away.
Speaker 2: You know. The Phil book kind of touched off the
Speaker 2: Live era on some level, as this lives are going
Speaker 2: to change and the story of professional golf is going
Speaker 2: to change. But as I was reporting the Live and
Speaker 2: Let Die like, I learned a lot more about Phil's
Speaker 2: role in all of this, and it's unbelievable. He was
Speaker 2: the biggest booster for the Premiere Golf League. And there's
Speaker 2: a hilarious quote from Keith Pelly, the CEO of the
Speaker 2: European Tour, where Pelly's trying to decide should he do
Speaker 2: the strategic alliance with the PGA Tour or should he
Speaker 2: join with the Premiere Golf League and create this new
Speaker 2: super tour. And Phil calls him up out of the
Speaker 2: blue and is advocating for the PGL and he's like, Keith,
Speaker 2: you're a visionary. This is your chance. You can do it.
Speaker 2: You know, you can change golf forever. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: really self referential. Phil's describing himself, and you know, Pelly
Speaker 2: says it was his full pitch. Multimately, the European Tour
Speaker 2: went with a strategic alliance with the PGA Tour. That's
Speaker 2: what forced the Saudis to go at it a loan,
Speaker 2: so then fill through and with the Saudis. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, he took all the sort of intellectual
Speaker 2: property from what they were cooking up and he went
Speaker 2: to some of these New York private equity firms and
Speaker 2: tried to create his own breakaway tour. So Phil was
Speaker 2: in league with the Premier Golf League, with the Saudis,
Speaker 2: and then with his own third rail breakaway tour while
Speaker 2: he was negotiating with the PGA tour and how to
Speaker 2: make things better if he stayed. So he was basically
Speaker 2: working four sides of the street simultaneously. And it's just
Speaker 2: classic Phil. And on some level he succeeded. I mean,
Speaker 2: without him as the chief recruiter and booster, you know,
Speaker 2: Live Golf Pride never launches. But of course he's himself
Speaker 2: on fire in the process. And now if this framework
Speaker 2: agreement is consummated and he's brought back into the fold,
Speaker 2: you know, he can return as the conquering hero who
Speaker 2: doubled the side salary every professional golfer and made the
Speaker 2: game global and it came at a reputational cost. But
Speaker 2: he'll claim vindication whether that again, it's complex, Is that valid?
Speaker 2: Is Phil gonna? Does he deserve the accolades? I mean,
Speaker 2: that's not something we could debate, but there's no doubt
Speaker 2: he was a monumental agent of change and he was
Speaker 2: he was the center of the maze for all of this.
Speaker 2: And so his role is fleshed out a bit more
Speaker 2: and Live and Let Die it's you know, it comes
Speaker 2: in at the end of the Phil biography but I
Speaker 2: don't want to go too deep on philm this next
Speaker 2: book because I don't want to feel like a sequel.
Speaker 2: But he's just incredibly important to all of this, And
Speaker 2: I mean there's so many funny things, like the Premier
Speaker 2: Golf League, they their first their first offers go out
Speaker 2: and Tiger's offered two hundred million dollars and Phil's offered
Speaker 2: fifty And one of the Premier Golf League guys tells me,
Speaker 2: absolutely no one in golf had any problem with how
Speaker 2: much tiger Wood is being offered except Phil. And so
Speaker 2: then the second round of offers, Phil gets a fifty
Speaker 2: million dollar consulting fee and they knocked down what Tiger's offered,
Speaker 2: Like it's just he's just he's always got his thumb
Speaker 2: on the scales, he's always got his finger in the soup,
Speaker 2: whatever metaphor you want, Like he's just always in the
Speaker 2: middle of everything. And so I didn't go too heavy
Speaker 2: on Phil, but his cameos are laugh out loud in
Speaker 2: this book because he's just such a muckraker and a
Speaker 2: rascal and a shitster and he can't help himself.
Speaker 3: Tell the folks who might not know who Deep Throat
Speaker 3: was in real life, and tell us if you had
Speaker 3: any deep throats of your own, because I know how
Speaker 3: difficult a book like this is to report.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, of course, deep Throat was a nineteen eighties porn,
Speaker 2: but that was inspired by a character in All the
Speaker 2: President's Men who was the source for Woodward and Bernstein
Speaker 2: on breaking the whole Watergate story. And his identity was
Speaker 2: not known until he died just somewhat recently, but he
Speaker 2: was He was the guy who knew everything but wanted
Speaker 2: to stay in the shadows, and so he was not
Speaker 2: identified by naming their stories, and they just called him
Speaker 2: deep Throat. And so, yeah, I had a variety of
Speaker 2: people like that in this book, because one of the
Speaker 2: fun and challenging parts of this is everyone wanted to
Speaker 2: spin me right. The legacies were at stake here, and
Speaker 2: as you mentioned in your preamble, this was going to
Speaker 2: be the first draft of history. And there's been a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of people in writing. I've done
Speaker 2: a lot of good journalism about live golf, but this
Speaker 2: was going to collect the whole story in one place.
Speaker 2: And books have a way of enduring in a way
Speaker 2: that maybe a web column does not, And so people
Speaker 2: wanted to talk to me. They wanted they wanted to
Speaker 2: try and impress upon me their point of view, but
Speaker 2: a lot of them wouldn't do it publicly. So I
Speaker 2: tried to keep anonymous sources to a minimum, but they
Speaker 2: were they were inevitable in certain ways. And the funny
Speaker 2: thing was the c and dagger element, where because the
Speaker 2: Department of Justice was snooping around, they had access to
Speaker 2: the phones of a lot of golf's power brokers. So
Speaker 2: a very senior person in the golf world comes up
Speaker 2: to me at a tournament says, stop calling, you know,
Speaker 2: stop texting me because the Department of Justice is reading
Speaker 2: my text He's like, just call me and we can talk,
Speaker 2: but don't text me. Another guy's like, stop emailing me
Speaker 2: because the Securities and Exchange Commission is reading my emails.
Speaker 2: And so I have like burner phone numbers for a
Speaker 2: lot of powerful people in the game. I have a
Speaker 2: couple of wife cell numbers, I have some landlines, I
Speaker 2: have some some faux emails that you know, they have
Speaker 2: their official work email, but then they have their own
Speaker 2: private one. And so yeah, there was documents that people
Speaker 2: wanted me to know about, but they couldn't actually give
Speaker 2: them to me, so they just read them to me
Speaker 2: over the phone. So there, you know, there wouldn't be
Speaker 2: a paper trail, but I would I would know what
Speaker 2: was contained in them. So it was an extremely fun
Speaker 2: reporting aallenge to get the goods. And I mean, you
Speaker 2: know this, Michael, like that's that's one of the best
Speaker 2: parts of the job is when you're chasing something and
Speaker 2: you have a fragment of it and someone's told you
Speaker 2: part of it, and someone else has told you a
Speaker 2: piece of it, but then you get to the person
Speaker 2: who was in the room and they'll actually give it up.
Speaker 2: And there was a lot of aha moments like that
Speaker 2: where I'd been chasing things for a long time and
Speaker 2: I finally wore somebody down or they had to change
Speaker 2: of heart. And there was a lot of people who
Speaker 2: wouldn't talk to me for a long time, and I
Speaker 2: kept going back to them and saying, well, so and
Speaker 2: so told me you were there, and someone else told
Speaker 2: me that you said this, and finally like, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: you know too much. I got to talk to you now,
Speaker 2: and then they would. But initially they blew me off
Speaker 2: because they didn't want to get sucked into it. But
Speaker 2: once I really had the goods, then they felt compelled
Speaker 2: to weigh in with their version of it. So and
Speaker 2: that's I mean, there is a quote in this book.
Speaker 2: It's something I've always thought about. It's this Hollywood producer
Speaker 2: or you know, Robert Evans. There's three sides to every story,
Speaker 2: yours mind and the truth. And I was always hyper
Speaker 2: aware of that in reporting this, that even these people
Speaker 2: who were primary sources, who were part of the negotiations,
Speaker 2: or who were witnesses to the key events, they had
Speaker 2: their own motivations that I had to weigh out. And
Speaker 2: so it was constantly fact checking and constantly getting second
Speaker 2: and third sources to confirm. And sometimes I mean, like
Speaker 2: this is just a small thing, but you know, Jack
Speaker 2: Nicholas got sucked into this whole story. You know, basically
Speaker 2: Jack was suing himself. It was the Nicholas companies suing
Speaker 2: the man himself, and it was about Saudi money. And
Speaker 2: so I talked to some people associated with Live who
Speaker 2: were at this meeting and with Jack, and they told
Speaker 2: one version of the story. And then I talked to
Speaker 2: Jack's people and their version was completely different. I wasn't
Speaker 2: in the room. I don't know what was said, I
Speaker 2: have to take the word of these people who were
Speaker 2: in the room, and there was no way to really
Speaker 2: so then I just quote both of them, and I
Speaker 2: kind of leave it up to the reader to assess
Speaker 2: the person's motives and just kind of lay it out.
Speaker 2: So there were a few times like that where it
Speaker 2: was not possible to determine what really happened, and I
Speaker 2: have these competing views and I just present that, And
Speaker 2: to me, it's almost kind of funny.
Speaker 1: You have, like.
Speaker 2: How much spin is involved because there was only one
Speaker 2: conversation in one room, and for people who are telling
Speaker 2: such different stories, then you know they're not really honest brokers.
Speaker 2: And I'm most of the time I was the judge
Speaker 2: and the jury on that. But in some instance I
Speaker 2: just leave it up to the reader to try and
Speaker 2: make up their own minds, right right.
Speaker 3: One of the one of the quote characters, one of
Speaker 3: the people in the book that goes through the most
Speaker 3: character development over the course of the book would be
Speaker 3: Jay Monahan, who comes up as Fincham's deputy. Is a true,
Speaker 3: true believer. And you know, anybody who follows golf, you know,
Speaker 3: knows what he said to the pub Uh, you know,
Speaker 3: a TV cameras rolling. You know, ask yourself, you know
Speaker 3: you ever have to be embarrassed to be a member
Speaker 3: of the PGA Tour and then does this incredible about
Speaker 3: face at immense personal told him then he takes a
Speaker 3: leave from his job to deal with Really we have
Speaker 3: to guess the mental strain of it all and the
Speaker 3: physical ramifications of that. What's your sense of what it's
Speaker 3: like to what it has been like to be Jay
Speaker 3: Monaghan for these past couple of years.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because he's being pilloried by his own players,
Speaker 2: by senators and congressmen, certainly by the live guys. On
Speaker 2: on some level, Jay Monahan showed the ultimate leadership. He
Speaker 2: jumped on the grenade and he when he realized, okay,
Speaker 2: we can't come. They'd come to the end of the road.
Speaker 2: They could no longer try and compete with the South.
Speaker 2: The only thing to do was to forge a compromise,
Speaker 2: and by doing so he secured the long term health
Speaker 2: of the pg Tour. Potentially he's going to bring fabulous
Speaker 2: new riches to all his players, and the tour didn't
Speaker 2: have to give up anything all the all. The only
Speaker 2: cost was Jay Monhan's reputation and maybe his soul, and
Speaker 2: he did it willingly, and you could hail him for
Speaker 2: the most selfless leadership imaginable. But the problem was along
Speaker 2: the way he's he you know, it's been documented, as
Speaker 2: you said, that he basically villainized the Saudis and he
Speaker 2: made their money dirty, and he he chose to go
Speaker 2: down that road. I mean, that was a tactic he chose.
Speaker 2: And so now when you partner with them and you
Speaker 2: take their money, what does that say about you? And
Speaker 2: so here those were some of the missteps that he made.
Speaker 2: You know, he he he didn't have to make it
Speaker 2: a moral argument. He didn't have to draw the nine
Speaker 2: to eleven families into the conversation, but he chose to.
Speaker 2: And that's where the hypocrisy rings out. But from a
Speaker 2: strictly a business sense, you know, you could you could argue,
Speaker 2: you go cut the greatest deal in golf history. He's
Speaker 2: he's got he's still technically the day to day CEO
Speaker 2: of this new co and now he has this unlimited,
Speaker 2: unlimited amount of capital to do all kinds of cool stuff.
Speaker 2: So but yeah, it that's that's the trag That's what
Speaker 2: part makes Monahan role in this tragic and one of
Speaker 2: some of this some of the fresh information in this
Speaker 2: book goes back to the early days of the Saudi threat,
Speaker 2: like you know, how long Monahan knew about this was coming,
Speaker 2: and you know the number two guy for the Saudis was,
Speaker 2: you know, Migeede al Sor. He writes this letter to Monahan,
Speaker 2: which I reproduced in the book, which no one's seen publicly,
Speaker 2: and this is this is in April of two thousand
Speaker 2: and twenty one, so this is a full more than
Speaker 2: a full year before Lived launches, and he says, we
Speaker 2: want to partner with you, and we want to sit
Speaker 2: down and talk and kind of way to come together
Speaker 2: and support the tour and and have this fresh new
Speaker 2: product and have all this investment. And Monahan's response, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's all in the book is you know in this
Speaker 2: in this board meeting, Charlie Hoffin says, why aren't we
Speaker 2: meeting with these Saudi guys? And Monahan says, we're at war.
Speaker 2: You know, we're at war. We're at war. We're at war.
Speaker 2: And that that was You can argue that the Saudis
Speaker 2: it was a little coy on their part because they
Speaker 2: kind of said, we're going to launch with it without you.
Speaker 2: So it was there was a certain threat that was
Speaker 2: baked into this letter, but they did come advocating for
Speaker 2: compromise and for partnership, and Monahan, with this very militant approach,
Speaker 2: kind of poisoned the waters for all the professional golf
Speaker 2: and he set the tone that would follow that we
Speaker 2: are at war. And so he came around in the end,
Speaker 2: but there was a whole series of missteps that that
Speaker 2: got him to this place where it was easy to
Speaker 2: tar him as a hypocrite, as a liar, and and
Speaker 2: it became easy to diminish the fact that maybe he
Speaker 2: did the best possible for the tour, but it came
Speaker 2: a little too late, and it came after a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of name calling.
Speaker 3: Right the PGA Tour Board, its main obligation is to support,
Speaker 3: of course, the membership numbers about one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: active players. Do you think there's any chance that the
Speaker 3: group the one hundred and fifty or more players will actually
Speaker 3: not want this to happen and therefore the board will
Speaker 3: be compelled to turn it down.
Speaker 2: It's a possibility. But if the framework agreement falls apart,
Speaker 2: then we just resume business as usual, where Live Golf
Speaker 2: is up and running and the PGA Tour is It
Speaker 2: will have been a success for the PGA Tour that
Speaker 2: they got the lawsuits dismissed with prejudice so they can't
Speaker 2: be refiled. So the tour no longer has you know,
Speaker 2: five to ten million dollars a month in legal fees.
Speaker 2: That's a win foreshore, but Live Golf would go back
Speaker 2: to trying to recruit players. And now, what player are
Speaker 2: going to turn down their money after Jay Monahan and
Speaker 2: Jimmy Dunn and everyone else said we love these guys.
Speaker 2: There are partners and they're good for golf. And if
Speaker 2: jay Monhamm was so eager to take the Soudy money,
Speaker 2: why would Patrick Can't Lay or anyone else turn it
Speaker 2: down as they did the first time around. And so
Speaker 2: it's tenuous for the tour. I mean, they could lose
Speaker 2: an entire generation of players to Live Golf if they
Speaker 2: go back to being competitors. Now, maybe that doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: You know, if as a thought exercise, if Can't Lay
Speaker 2: and Xander Softly and Matt Fitzpatrick and Will Zalatours and
Speaker 2: Sam Burns, if all those guys went to Live does
Speaker 2: that change anything I don't know. I mean, they're they're
Speaker 2: all nice players, but they don't really move the needle.
Speaker 2: It would make live golf a more compelling product, but
Speaker 2: is it going to send the masses to the CW.
Speaker 2: Maybe not. And as long as the tour has Rory
Speaker 2: and rom and Speed and Justin Thomas and the occasional
Speaker 2: Tiger Woods cameo perhaps and maybe Charlie Woods, then maybe
Speaker 2: the tour is still in a position of strength. But
Speaker 2: that's the risk for the tour is that if the
Speaker 2: membership votes is down, they lose access to all the
Speaker 2: Saudi capital, they go back to being competitors, they lose
Speaker 2: a lot of their top players. That's a big risk. Now,
Speaker 2: I do think that there's and I know this to
Speaker 2: be a fact, there's a strong faction within the tour
Speaker 2: and even within the board of the players on the
Speaker 2: board like, okay, we've found religion. A not for profit
Speaker 2: PGA tour makes no sense. We were in this outdated model.
Speaker 2: Let's take outside investment, let's privatize, but let's just do
Speaker 2: it without the Saudis. And so the tour could still
Speaker 2: they could still take all this private equity money, and
Speaker 2: they could they could just say no to the public
Speaker 2: investment fund, and they would still be much better capitalized
Speaker 2: than they were, and they'd be able to pay their players.
Speaker 2: But they've promised them these elevated purses. But again in
Speaker 2: that scenarira of the tour stronger financially, but they lose,
Speaker 2: they run the risk of losing a bunch of their players.
Speaker 2: And so I think the way to split the baby,
Speaker 2: that legal term, is that take the outside investment from
Speaker 2: private equity American money, but keep the saud He's in
Speaker 2: the fold so they don't go back to being competitors.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the smartest and the best way
Speaker 2: forward for the tour. But it's complex because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of egos, there's a lot of hurt feelings, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of personalities in play. So you know,
Speaker 2: Patrick Cantley is definitely working to try and he's got
Speaker 2: this end around, going to try and subvert this deal
Speaker 2: and cut the Saudi's out of it. But to see
Speaker 2: how the political capital, I mean, we're going to find out.
Speaker 2: There's there's now twelve votes on the board of directors,
Speaker 2: six players and six outside directors. So the fall lines
Speaker 2: there are interesting. Tiger's there, Rory's there. Then you have
Speaker 2: like the Peter Malnatti's and the Web Simpsons who are
Speaker 2: they're not They're not at the top of the game anymore,
Speaker 2: so they're kind of looking out for the journeyman. They
Speaker 2: still need to fill the seat of Randall Stevenson, the
Speaker 2: AT and T CEO, who resigned in protest. He's one
Speaker 2: of the independent directors. So how the board shakes out
Speaker 2: is a very interesting question.
Speaker 3: Is it a simple majority vote yes? What would they
Speaker 3: do in the sixty sixth.
Speaker 2: Scenario that's the nuclear option. I mean, nobody knows because
Speaker 2: they generally when things get vote on, it's almost always unanimous.
Speaker 2: They negotiated out to a point. They get the players
Speaker 2: on board, and they want the players to vote yes,
Speaker 2: like there's been and even like going back to DO
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one when they the Player Impact Program. James
Speaker 2: Hahn was very much against it, but he didn't in
Speaker 2: the end, he didn't vote against it, he just abstained.
Speaker 2: Because the tour always wants to say it's unanimus, you know,
Speaker 2: it becomes like a linguistic thing. So I don't think
Speaker 2: there's any precedent for a deadlocked vote. And how they
Speaker 2: finesse that that would be spectacular theater.
Speaker 3: So even with something that this major, that absolutely will
Speaker 3: affect the institution forever. It doesn't go to a vote,
Speaker 3: a vote of the whole membership, it's still decided on
Speaker 3: the board level. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: That's correct, Whether whether the board could do a straw pole,
Speaker 2: you know, raise your hand in a meeting, like there's
Speaker 2: there's ways they can build consensus, but it's not a
Speaker 2: true democracy. I mean, it's like it's really they have
Speaker 2: like the electoral college is what it is. And so
Speaker 2: we all know that's a that can be a flawed institution.
Speaker 3: The PGA Tour, the PGA of America, the USGA have all
Speaker 3: run from Trump. Live Golf has not. How would how
Speaker 3: would Trump courses play into the future, uh with in
Speaker 3: a some kind of merger between the PGA Tour Live Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean the Trump organization has a multi year contract
Speaker 2: with Live Golf, and that's they played twice at Trump
Speaker 2: events and the Beta Test season last year. They've got
Speaker 2: three Trump events this year. You know, Trump, this is
Speaker 2: Trump's last foothold in the men's professional game, and he's
Speaker 2: not going to let it go easily. And you know,
Speaker 2: I Ironically, Jerral was a PG Tour event forever, so
Speaker 2: it has has providence like you could you could imagine
Speaker 2: possibly going back there. But certainly the PJ Tour has
Speaker 2: made its stance known. You know, they took away the
Speaker 2: event at Jerral, and but money talks, and I don't
Speaker 2: think I don't they're trying to stay out of lawsuits.
Speaker 2: It's possible they would, they would give Trump one event
Speaker 2: as to help make all this go away. But he's
Speaker 2: certainly very polarizing. I mean, Live Golf needed Trump, you know.
Speaker 2: Sergio Garcia told me we have to play where we're wanted,
Speaker 2: and not many people wanted us, especially in the first year.
Speaker 2: So certainly the tour doesn't need Trump from a venue standpoint.
Speaker 2: But better for better and for worse, he is a
Speaker 2: part of Live Golf and he's been a big part.
Speaker 2: So that's another thing that has to get finessed and negotiated,
Speaker 2: and that remains unknown.
Speaker 3: Well, as you start to wrap up here, let's talk
Speaker 3: about what your personal efforts to get this book up
Speaker 3: and out. You work so hard on that Phil Michelson book.
Speaker 3: The aftermath of that Phil Micholson book, people are coming
Speaker 3: at you every which way, imaginable. You have four children,
Speaker 3: you're working for the Firepit Collective, you're one of its partners,
Speaker 3: and working hard to get that off the ground, to
Speaker 3: make that profitable. Usually there's a long hangover period after
Speaker 3: somebody finishes the book. Sometimes those hangover periods can last
Speaker 3: for the rest of the writer's life, as was the
Speaker 3: case with Harper Lee.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Even on one book we never wrote from her. Well
Speaker 3: she everydent only wrote a.
Speaker 2: Second Ja D. Salinger. There's there's definitely a precedent.
Speaker 3: Yes, how did you get the energy to go back
Speaker 3: at it right on the heels.
Speaker 2: Of the phil book? Yeah, it was I did. There
Speaker 2: was a little lull. I mean, I've told this story before,
Speaker 2: but so in last June, when when the US Open
Speaker 2: was at the country Club in Brookline, I took the
Speaker 2: train down to New York City to have lunch with Joephi,
Speaker 2: Frary Adler, our mutual editor, Michael and then David Black
Speaker 2: has been my career long literary agent, and I hadn't
Speaker 2: seen either one of them in a long time because
Speaker 2: of COVID and other reasons, and so it was built
Speaker 2: as just like a celebratory lunch. At that point. The
Speaker 2: Michelson book had been on the New York Times best
Speaker 2: seller list for like five weeks and all this and that,
Speaker 2: and so we had a great lunch, and somewhat unbeknownst
Speaker 2: to me, Jophie and David had negotiated a contract for
Speaker 2: this live book. And and by the way, I was
Speaker 2: coming in hot from the first live London event where
Speaker 2: I got tossed out of the press conference and that
Speaker 2: became a whole story. I flew from there straight to Boston,
Speaker 2: took straight into New York. So and it was a
Speaker 2: great offer.
Speaker 3: Didn't you go to the US Open for a day
Speaker 3: and then maybe trained down to me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, yeah, correct, yeah, yeah. I went down on
Speaker 2: that Wednesday, and so there was a lot of there
Speaker 2: was a lot of energy in the air, and I
Speaker 2: could really say no, I mean, it's it was just
Speaker 2: already shaping up as like one of the biggest stories
Speaker 2: of our lifetime. I was already at the center of
Speaker 2: it because of the Michelson book and what had just
Speaker 2: happened in London. And I was never not going to
Speaker 2: do it, but I really and I started going to
Speaker 2: the live events, you know, right away. I was at Portland,
Speaker 2: I was at Chicago. Obviously, I was in London, and
Speaker 2: I was also double track and I was at the
Speaker 2: Tour Championship and some other PGA Tour events. So I
Speaker 2: was and I was talking to people, and I was
Speaker 2: doing interviews and I was getting the lay of the land.
Speaker 2: But I didn't really start typing the book until around Christmas,
Speaker 2: so there was a decompression period from just being in
Speaker 2: the chair. But then it was an insane mad dash
Speaker 2: to get it done in seven months and I.
Speaker 3: Pretty much worked changing constantly.
Speaker 2: While constantly, and yeah, reporting it in real time and
Speaker 2: writing about it in real time for the fire Pit.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it definitely took a piece of my soul.
Speaker 2: Like I'm just starting to recover sort of. But I
Speaker 2: pretty much worked on seven days a week and until
Speaker 2: midnight almost every night, and my kids just got used
Speaker 2: to going to bed with you know, me sitting in
Speaker 2: the chair. And you know, at one point, my son Ben,
Speaker 2: you know, he he came, he sat in my lap
Speaker 2: and he's like, I'm sorry you have to work so hard,
Speaker 2: he said, Honestly, I love it, like it's fun. I'm
Speaker 2: having a great time. I wound up seeing a chiropractor
Speaker 2: and I was going to get massages because the physical
Speaker 2: toll was adding up, you know, just of just being
Speaker 2: sitting just sitting there typing but chase the story and
Speaker 2: cracking the code and getting all the secrets. It's very energizing.
Speaker 2: And it went in all kinds of unexpected directions that
Speaker 2: I didn't expect in the writing, and so I actually
Speaker 2: loved it. It's fun to be that immersed in a project.
Speaker 2: And thank god there was a firm deadline actually needed that,
Speaker 2: And there was a point where where Simon Schuster said, okay,
Speaker 2: like is it coming out this year or not? Like,
Speaker 2: because the way it works with the book releases, they
Speaker 2: kind of have to reserve shelf space, They have to
Speaker 2: reserve printing presses, they have to buy the paper and
Speaker 2: the glue. Like this stuff has to get get figured
Speaker 2: out months and months in advance. And so there was
Speaker 2: a point of no return when I had to say
Speaker 2: yes or no. And when I said yes, I actually
Speaker 2: felt great relief because then I knew, Okay, I'm going
Speaker 2: to get this book done one way or another. If
Speaker 2: we'd let it ride for another six or eight or
Speaker 2: ten months, it would have just kept taking over my life.
Speaker 2: So I was actually happy to have that intense deadline
Speaker 2: pressure because it was motivating and carried me along. But
Speaker 2: it was it was ambitious. I'll say that now.
Speaker 3: A lot of male readers, especially of sports Way to
Speaker 3: books especially, give the chance to read the book or
Speaker 3: wait for the TV version, excuse me, the film version.
Speaker 3: They're gonna wait for the film version. What's your advice
Speaker 3: to these people? What do you think there'll be two
Speaker 3: different you think this story will be told in multiple ways?
Speaker 3: Should they wait or should they I have my own
Speaker 3: answer to I love reading, Yeah, and I'm distrustful author
Speaker 3: on the screen. Yeah, what's your advice to those people?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's been definitely been interest from Hollywood types
Speaker 2: about this story, and but who knows like that that's
Speaker 2: that can be a long, complex, frustrating process. You never know.
Speaker 2: I mean, Jeff Perlman's a friend and former colleague for
Speaker 2: both of us, and you know what they did with
Speaker 2: with his Lakers books in Winning Time. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: so fun to watch. It's so stylized. It's like the
Speaker 2: energy of that show is phenomenal. Like, but that's that's rare.
Speaker 2: You just never know what you can get from a
Speaker 2: cinematic treatment. I mean the book. The great thing about
Speaker 2: a book is you just have all the room you
Speaker 2: need to stretch your legs. And you know, I became
Speaker 2: fascinated by the agent's role in the building of Live
Speaker 2: because they were the ones doing the negotiating. This was
Speaker 2: a once in a lifetime windfall for these agents. And
Speaker 2: so I went down this whole rabbit hole with Mark
Speaker 2: McCormick and Arnold Palmer and how the professions changed and
Speaker 2: all the different the infighting between the agencies and Tiger's
Speaker 2: role in as it relates to Mark Steinberg and that
Speaker 2: management company. And you know, I never imagined that I
Speaker 2: would go so deep on the agents, but I found
Speaker 2: it utterly fascinating. And that's the kind of thing that
Speaker 2: might never if there is some sort of cinematic treatment,
Speaker 2: we'll just never show up on the screen. So I
Speaker 2: would say, the book has it's so rich, and it's
Speaker 2: so layered, and it's so complex. I would vote for
Speaker 2: the book every time. But but you know, that's that's
Speaker 2: anyone who writes a book wants people to read the book.
Speaker 2: So but I would say, however people consume the story,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm okay with it. I did. I did read
Speaker 2: the audio version. That was a great challenge and that
Speaker 2: was a lot of fun, as I did with the
Speaker 2: phil one as well.
Speaker 3: And did you do that at your home studio or
Speaker 3: did you have to go someplace for that?
Speaker 2: No, you have to it's it has to be professional grade.
Speaker 2: And while my little living room here works for these podcasts,
Speaker 2: this is a different level of care. And that was
Speaker 2: six days in the studio and I'm wearing a headset
Speaker 2: and there's a producer who's he's just at home actually,
Speaker 2: but he's reading along, and and then there's a studio
Speaker 2: engineer and both of them are weighing in constantly about
Speaker 2: if I mispronounced a word, if I should have given
Speaker 2: that certain sentence a little more energy, if I'm reading
Speaker 2: too fast, and I need to like it's it's a
Speaker 2: whole thing. And but I did enjoy it, And so yeah,
Speaker 2: there's there's any way you come to the story is
Speaker 2: fine with me. But I do think that the book
Speaker 2: is stands on its own in a unique way, and
Speaker 2: it would be it would be amazing, It would be
Speaker 2: super cool if there's a documentary made, or there's even
Speaker 2: a scripted version of this. But I would vote for
Speaker 2: starting with the book. But I'm compromised.
Speaker 3: For those who are interested, I know you would be
Speaker 3: on if you haven't heard about it. Michael Lewis who
Speaker 3: wrote a profile of Tom Wolf that random Vanity Fair
Speaker 3: maybe four or five years ago, and I know I've
Speaker 3: sent the piece to you, Alan to other friends. It's
Speaker 3: just an incredible piece of reporting about how a writer works,
Speaker 3: and that just got turned into a documentary that I
Speaker 3: would really urge you to see. But you know, but
Speaker 3: I Christy and my wife and I just went and
Speaker 3: saw it the other day and I was thinking about
Speaker 3: you when when watching it, because Wolf has a lot
Speaker 3: of the moves that that you have and that we
Speaker 3: would all aspire to have, but you really do have,
Speaker 3: which is get so deep inside the subject that you
Speaker 3: can write about it from the end. So I'm going
Speaker 3: to wrap up with this this last question. But now
Speaker 3: you're going to write about your own life as as
Speaker 3: as a writer of nonfiction. And let's let's look at
Speaker 3: it maybe a third. Let's look at a thirty year
Speaker 3: period cart Boy at Pebble Beach gets on at Sports
Speaker 3: Illustrated at let's call it age twenty. I've been a
Speaker 3: little little slightly later than that. This summer you and
Speaker 3: I went out for dinner to celebrate your fiftieth birthday.
Speaker 3: So this really quite significant arc of a character a
Speaker 3: thirty year period, from an innocent who's hanging on every
Speaker 3: word that Jim Murray writes in the La Times when
Speaker 3: you're at Use La to becoming a person that young
Speaker 3: writers are looking at to see, Wow, this is how
Speaker 3: this is how.
Speaker 2: You do it.
Speaker 3: What's your own sense of your own journey through these
Speaker 3: thirty years. We'll wrap up on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's a it's a fabulous question. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: turning fifty definitely, that happened in May this year. And
Speaker 2: actually I finished the manuscript of this book a few
Speaker 2: weeks later, so there's there's been a little reflective period.
Speaker 2: And I just I just spoke at a Carmel High
Speaker 2: school in their journalism class, and it is funny to
Speaker 2: be this this oracle of advice when I still feel
Speaker 2: like I'm twenty five at heart, and it's been it's
Speaker 2: been a wild ride. I mean, if you told twenty
Speaker 2: year old me this my ninth book, and you know
Speaker 2: the SI cover stories and all the other things that
Speaker 2: have come my way, it's I would be very humbled
Speaker 2: and very you know, definitely beyond my wildest dreams, like
Speaker 2: and Michael Lewis and tomwol for two of my heroes.
Speaker 2: Like it's funny to mention that, you know, when I
Speaker 2: would read Sports Illustrated when I was like ten, eleven, twelve,
Speaker 2: that's when my first came in contact with the magazine.
Speaker 2: And I was playing every sport back then, but I
Speaker 2: was it was the writing that that that captivated me.
Speaker 2: And when I started as an intern, I was and
Speaker 2: funny you mentioned Jim Murray. I was way more starstruck
Speaker 2: by Jim Murray than I was by Jack Nicholas. You know,
Speaker 2: my here, even though I love sports, and even though
Speaker 2: I've I've coached basketball, and I've played sports and all that,
Speaker 2: it's the writers are my gods. You know. They're the
Speaker 2: ones that I that I aspire to be, and they're
Speaker 2: the ones that inspire me. And I have you know,
Speaker 2: I have a bookcase in my in my bedroom. It's
Speaker 2: like all my favorite books. It's all the memoirs of
Speaker 2: all the old sports writers, and it's all the anthologies,
Speaker 2: you know, it's and every now and then I'll just
Speaker 2: just grab one and PLoP up my bed and just
Speaker 2: even though I've prior already read it twice already, Like,
Speaker 2: so I'm not remotely suggesting that I'm in the in
Speaker 2: the pantheon of a Jim Murray and a Michael Lewis
Speaker 2: and uh a Tom Wolf. You know, that's a different universe.
Speaker 2: But it's cool that we you know, you and I
Speaker 2: both have made a life out of this and it's
Speaker 2: not easy to do. I mean, the industry has changed
Speaker 2: so dramatically in our careers. It's gratifying just to still
Speaker 2: be at it. You know, you just you never know
Speaker 2: what's around the bend. We both have had lots of
Speaker 2: colleagues who have gotten out of journalism because they just
Speaker 2: couldn't make it work. So it's like every time you
Speaker 2: get you put a book out into the world, it's like, man,
Speaker 2: you'll fool them again. It's like, just just keep this
Speaker 2: whole gig going because it's it's not easy to do. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's been a wild thirty years when you frame it
Speaker 2: like that, And I was twenty when when it all started,
Speaker 2: when I started my internship, So it's yeah, it's humbling,
Speaker 2: and you know, there's art and there's commerce. Like we
Speaker 2: control the writing of the book and then the selling
Speaker 2: of the book and all that is way beyond the
Speaker 2: control of anyone individual, so I kind of separate the
Speaker 2: two and people will buy the book or they won't,
Speaker 2: and I'm at peace with that because I gave it
Speaker 2: all I had, Like I mean, I really did leave
Speaker 2: it all on the field, you know, and that's all
Speaker 2: you can do. I think people will pick up on
Speaker 2: the energy of it and the care that went into it,
Speaker 2: and I hope they love it, and I hope they
Speaker 2: enjoy it. But I love and I enjoyed it, and
Speaker 2: I think I think that's probably enough.
Speaker 3: That is beautifully said. Thank you Allan, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to turn it back over to you.
Speaker 2: You should just you should just.
Speaker 3: Close this and these things you have a nobody that
Speaker 3: you have always think how to end it.
Speaker 2: But it's always a pleasure. I wish you a lot
Speaker 2: of luck with the book.
Speaker 3: And uh, it was a total pleasure to read. Uh
Speaker 3: it's a weird kind of pleasure because it's not like
Speaker 3: to me as a you know, very much traditionalist. It's
Speaker 3: not a happy subject, you know. I see everything through
Speaker 3: the prism of greed, basically in this fight in particular,
Speaker 3: and often in modern life, but it's deeply, deeply uh
Speaker 3: instructive and way beyond and it goes way beyond golf,
Speaker 3: as they tried to say in the beginning. But so, Alan,
Speaker 3: congratulations on this year ninth book, and you say goodbye.
Speaker 2: To the people. I will well and Mike, I appreciate
Speaker 2: you doing this. I mean, this is a long standing tradition.
Speaker 2: I'm sure twenty years from now, when we're both you know,
Speaker 2: God knows where in the media universe, we'll still be.
Speaker 2: We'll still be doing these podcasts for somebody somewhere because
Speaker 2: it's one of the one of the joys of writing
Speaker 2: books is talking about them with someone who cares. And
Speaker 2: so thanks for doing this. This was another fire drilled
Speaker 2: podcast that was Michael Bamber with so many insightful questions.
Speaker 2: This is Alan Schipnak. Thank you for listening. And that's
Speaker 2: the end.
Speaker 1: I'm Ben Big and I played the wind, made a fortune.
Speaker 4: When my ship came in, I ran the table and
Speaker 4: never thought I could fall down the wind a time
Speaker 4: hit me lack a can in the ball, and now
Speaker 4: I can't shake this losing stream. Every road I take
Speaker 4: is a dead end stream. I got thoughts in my head,
Speaker 4: can't get them.
Speaker 1: Try and not the thing what I'm thinking about, kind
Speaker 1: of thoughts in my head. I can't get them out.
Speaker 4: Trying not to think what I'm thinking about,