Shownotes
The podcast episode delves into the current state of professional golf, emphasizing the recent evolution of the FedEx Cup and the implications of the PGA Tour's modifications. The hosts, Jeff Tracy and Gary Van Sickle, engage in a thoughtful dialogue regarding the perceived diminishing relevance of the FedEx Cup in the eyes of the average golf enthusiast. They articulate concerns that the tournament's structure has become overly convoluted, detracting from its excitement and accessibility. The duo further explores the broader ramifications of the PGA Tour's shift towards elevated events and its impact on traditional tournaments, posing critical questions about the sustainability of these changes in the long term.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- LPGA
- Weston Kia
- Birdie Ball
- Snell Golf
- Kathy Bissell
- Costa Rica
- Liv
- FedEx
- PGA Tour
- Corn Ferry
- Painted Hills
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcripts
It's time for Grilling at the Green.
Speaker A:Join Jeff Tracy as he explores the golfing lifestyle and tries to keep it in the short grass for the hackers, dew sweepers and turf spankers.
Speaker A:Here's Jeff,.
Speaker B:Everybody.
Speaker B:Welcome to Grilling at the Green.
Speaker B:I've been away for a while, if you haven't noticed.
Speaker B:I was covering the LPGA in Portland.
Speaker B:We did some live shows from there, and I've been tootling around with the North Valley Challenge.
Speaker B:But I'm back now.
Speaker B:Who better to catch up with the end of summer in pro golf than my friend Gary Van Sickle?
Speaker B:You know, Gary has the pulse.
Speaker B:Not just his pulse, but he has the pulse on golf.
Speaker B:And also he does the co host the golf show podcast with Kathy Bissell.
Speaker B:I want to get that out there right away.
Speaker B:Anyway, welcome back, buddy.
Speaker C:It's great to be back wherever we are.
Speaker B:Wherever we are, we're out there somewhere.
Speaker C:Where the entire world is out of focus.
Speaker C:I don't know what happened behind me, Jeff.
Speaker C:It's a blur.
Speaker B:It's a blur.
Speaker B:Kind of like my summer.
Speaker B:So let's kind of start at the top.
Speaker B:And we just finished the FedEx Cup.
Speaker B:I'll give you my real quick thumbnail.
Speaker B:It almost turns into a yawn at times with the FedEx cup because it builds and builds and builds.
Speaker B:And the last few years, there's never been a really tight race in the FedEx cup going into it.
Speaker B:There's such a gap there.
Speaker B:Like, you know, scheffler, who won 100 million this year or whatever the hell he won.
Speaker B:But, I mean, they're fun to watch.
Speaker B:But the relevancy to the common man is gone.
Speaker B:So I want to get your take.
Speaker C:Well, I've met in the entire history of the FedEx cup, I never heard anybody bring up, oh, who do you think is going to get up to third in the points race?
Speaker C:Nobody has ever talked about the FedEx cup points except the people on TV who were forced to.
Speaker C: ng the whole thing up into in: Speaker C:And to me, one of the of the many flaws, one of them is when you only have 30 guys, it's very easy for one guy to have a hot day and.
Speaker C:And break away.
Speaker C:And maybe you don't have an exciting tournament now.
Speaker C:They've done pretty well overall.
Speaker C:The three tournaments are used to be four FedExCup events.
Speaker A:Mm.
Speaker C:They've all been good tournaments on their own.
Speaker C:But in correlation to the FedEx cup, they've.
Speaker C:It's utterly meaningless.
Speaker C:And now you're down to the final 30 guys.
Speaker C:Only 29 this year because Spawn dropped out.
Speaker C:But your odds of having a close race with only 29 guys are a lot less than when you have 144 guys.
Speaker C:You know, when you have a full field, there's six or eight or 12 guys who light it up.
Speaker C:On a given day, sure, you got 30, there might only be two.
Speaker C:So you're at risk to have it be boring.
Speaker C:And, you know they're going to turn it into a round robin match play thing.
Speaker C:And we can talk about match play later.
Speaker C:It's pretty overrated, and I can't believe TV is going to agree to it.
Speaker C:But because it's.
Speaker C:TV has always hated match play because they don't know when it's going to finish.
Speaker C:But.
Speaker C:Right, it needs to be blown up.
Speaker C:Apparently, they're still going to use points of some kind to determine which 90 guys go.
Speaker C:Like, why do we have to have points?
Speaker C:Why don't you just use the money list?
Speaker C:You already got that.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:I don't know.
Speaker C:It's never.
Speaker C:The FedEx cup has been a big diet.
Speaker C:It's not a grand climax.
Speaker C:And honestly, at this point in the world, Scotty Scheffler won 10 million.
Speaker C:Does $10 million even seem like that much now?
Speaker C:It doesn't anymore.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's lost its luster, if you will.
Speaker B:As far as the.
Speaker C:I mean, if they made it $100 million, I still wouldn't go, wow, I'd go, whatever.
Speaker B:Well, yeah, because the, you know, the net worth of the five top players there, for the most part, is bigger than the net worth of Costa Rica.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:It's just, It's.
Speaker B:I'm not, believe me, I, I'm a capitalist through and through, and I.
Speaker B:And I've been known to gamble once in a while in my life.
Speaker B:But for some reason, like you said, the luster on that is.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's complicated.
Speaker B:There's too.
Speaker B:It's kind of like watching political commentary at times when they're trying to explain mid season what's going on in the FedEx Cup.
Speaker B:Because if this happens and then this happens and this guy buys a Coke and this guy buys a Pepsi, this could be the result.
Speaker B:But over here, and there's too many what ifs and variables and I.
Speaker C:You can't play along at home.
Speaker C:No, they quit telling you the points this year.
Speaker C:They just said he's gonna, he's.
Speaker C:He fell to 34th or 27th or whatever.
Speaker C:Yeah, they just gave you the number.
Speaker C:They got rid of the points, but I'm sure they're using the points because they want to find a new sponsor.
Speaker C:Because I'm assuming FedEx is out.
Speaker C:The big czar, the old man behind FedEx, passed away a year or two ago.
Speaker C:So, I mean, how much money has FedEx spent on this thing?
Speaker C:Over its history, this company has probably spent more than a billion dollars sponsoring golf.
Speaker C:At some point, if you're a shareholder, wouldn't you be going, what are you doing, everybody?
Speaker C:You're already one of the main brands in the world.
Speaker C:You can't get your brand exposure any higher.
Speaker C:Why are you spending this money anyways?
Speaker C:They'll find somebody else to.
Speaker C:It'll be the Corn Fairy points.
Speaker C:I'll find somebody to sell the points thing to because it's a moneymaker.
Speaker C:But money doesn't make a tournament great.
Speaker C:And money's so big in all sports that these amounts are meaningless.
Speaker C:It doesn't get your, your adrenaline juices.
Speaker B:Going to see it.
Speaker C:$10 Million, 15 million.
Speaker C:So what?
Speaker C:You probably signed a contract with Nike or whoever for four times that.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, back in the, back in the turn, as I'll call it, the turn of the century when, when the purses started going up and Tiger, there was the Tiger, Phil stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker B:But then when the first million dollar check went to a winner, that was a big deal.
Speaker B:That was a. I remember that stuff.
Speaker B:And that was.
Speaker C:We're so old that we remember the.
Speaker C:When the first guy won $100,000 in a season.
Speaker C:Oh, my gosh, that was incredible.
Speaker B:You, you can't even play two tournaments for 100,000 anymore.
Speaker C:So you can't even hire one of these guys for nine holes for 100 grand.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So anyway, it's, it's pretty crazy.
Speaker B:Let's talk about the changes.
Speaker B:Gary, coming up on the Tour with, You know, you and I talked about it many times, the elevated events, and now you were talking about, you got match play coming up and some different TV rights.
Speaker B:To me, it kind of looks like the Tour is saying if you have any type of electronic media and have any standing at all, we'll work with you, we'll grant you some license to do something, and maybe that's a good thing.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I mean, I've been around my side of the business for a long time, but it also seems to kind of maybe dilute stuff a little bit.
Speaker B:I just want to get your take on that.
Speaker C:Well, the whole thinking behind the Tour, the Tour's purpose has completely changed now.
Speaker C:It was an organization to benefit the players and playing opportunities and all the members of the PGA Tour.
Speaker C:Dean beaming, built this empire based on a meritocracy.
Speaker C:You played your way up and you had a chance and this and that.
Speaker C:Well, Liv caused Jay Monahan to panic and jack the purses up to unsustainable levels to where they had to go and invite the fox into the hen house.
Speaker C:And by that I mean venture capitalists.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker C:So now the PGA Tour is being run to make a profit and they're doing everything they can now to make money off this, whether it's good for the Tour or not.
Speaker C:Now I'm sure that in three or four years the PGA Tour will be making will be very lucrative.
Speaker C:They'll be making money.
Speaker C:Will it be a better golf tour?
Speaker C:I doubt it, but we don't know that yet.
Speaker C:But there's so many things that.
Speaker C:Here's what they're doing.
Speaker C:I mean, as far as the schedule goes, if you think back to when Coke brought out Diet Coke, all Diet Coke did was steal away a lot of the Coke's own drinkers.
Speaker C:So they didn't gain that much.
Speaker C:Well, the Tour right now has 45 tournaments are all pretty good in their communities.
Speaker C:They're all successful in different levels.
Speaker C:They don't all get great fields, but they're all pretty good.
Speaker C:So what they're going to do now.
Speaker C:But you know, the players had the right to play wherever they want.
Speaker C:Well, in order to get to big money, the players sold out.
Speaker C:And now Brian Rolaps got.
Speaker C:Well, Instead of having 45 pretty good events, we're going to have 20 great events with only the top 120 guys.
Speaker C:And those other 25 events, they're going to be crap.
Speaker C:They're going to.
Speaker C:I mean, because.
Speaker C:Because these guys are not allowed to play in the other 25, the top 120 guys like Scotty Scheffler.
Speaker C:If the Byron Nelson's tournament in Dallas is not a signature event, Scotty Scheffler can't play there in his hometown.
Speaker C:So you have guaranteed the other 25 events that were PGA Tour events last year, they aren't going to have any moan in the top 20, as Rory called it.
Speaker C:These are Korn Ferry Tour events.
Speaker C:That's true.
Speaker C:And the problem is you've already.
Speaker C:You've also already got a Corn Fairy Tour.
Speaker C:So who's in?
Speaker C:What are those?
Speaker C:Those are like mini tour events now.
Speaker C:So you're destroying 25 pretty good tour events.
Speaker C:So you can have 20 events where you make the top players in the world show up and play each other.
Speaker C:It's the NASCAR model where everybody's got to play.
Speaker C:When we say, yeah, those 20 events will probably be pretty good and they'll probably make a ton of Money.
Speaker C:The other 25 events have been kicked to the curb.
Speaker C:Excuse me, I had a sneeze there and I don't think that's good for golf.
Speaker C:And honestly, if I'm in one of these communities, like let's say the John Deere, that's been a great event in.
Speaker B:For a long time, Illinois, Iowa border,.
Speaker C:For a long time.
Speaker C:People love it.
Speaker C:It's been supported.
Speaker C:I know John Deere as a company is not doing so great and they probably had to bail out.
Speaker C:But if my, if wherever you are, if you had a PGA tournament, PGA tournament and it's now relegated to Challenger Series or whatever they're calling it, I'd be pretty mad.
Speaker C:And not only that, what about all that money the tour poured into our charities in our community when they had a big tour event there?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:The amount of money you're going to get now is going to be a lot less.
Speaker C:I mean, honestly, I'd be alienated.
Speaker C:I'd kind of go, I'm never following the PGA Tour again.
Speaker C:And if the tour ever did come back to that community, you'd go, no, not interested.
Speaker C:Yeah, they risk alienated, alienating a lot of people in a lot of communities with this.
Speaker C:And I don't think the other shoe is truly dropped on this.
Speaker C:That's why they're kind of slowly but surely, oh, the Memorial is going to be a signature event.
Speaker C:The news of who's going to be one of the haves and one of the have nots is just dribbling out.
Speaker C:And because it's going to be 25 tournaments are going to be unhappy.
Speaker C:So we'll see where that goes.
Speaker C:But I'm not, I'm not in favor of this is not how the PGA Tour became successful.
Speaker C:And it's becoming almost a version of the world tour that Greg Norman tried to start in the 90s.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:We're going to take a break.
Speaker B:Gary and I'll be back here on grilling at the Green in just a minute.
Speaker B:Stay with us.
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Speaker B:Welcome back to Grilling at 3 9, JT.
Speaker B:Today we've got Gary Van Sickle, world famous, world famous journalist.
Speaker B:How's that?
Speaker B:He said it may be in his own mind, but in my mind, too.
Speaker B:How's that?
Speaker B:I want to talk to you real quick about Snell Golf.
Speaker B:They got their new PR3, PR4.
Speaker B:I've played with them.
Speaker B:I'm playing with the PR3s right now.
Speaker B:I really like them.
Speaker B:And their MTB Black Limited Edition is out.
Speaker B:Go to sneldoffgolf.com we've got speaking of live, we'll talk about live for a minute.
Speaker B:That is.
Speaker B:I'm not tooting my own horn, Gary, but when Liv came out, I, when I had a Twitter account back in those days, I said this will, whether I liked it or not didn't matter.
Speaker B:I said, it'll be around until the Saudis get bored with it or lose interest in it.
Speaker B:And I put that in writing out there.
Speaker B:And when all this started to blow up in the last few months, I, one of the people that follow me on Twitter said Tracy called that four years ago or whenever it was.
Speaker B:And, and it's true.
Speaker B:I mean, if you knew anything about world affairs and money in sports in the history of the Saudis, it was that day was coming.
Speaker B:So now stories out there about unpaid vendors.
Speaker B:I saw a story this morning that said they're probably going to file for bankruptcy protection next week, which will void a lot of the contracts and make them equity partners.
Speaker B:Some of the players, some of those guys aren't going to go for that.
Speaker B:Some of those guys probably can't even spell that.
Speaker B:So I wanted to get your take on this whole thing.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:How many K's are there in the word equity?
Speaker C:I can't remember.
Speaker B:Yeah, seven, I think the.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker C:You know, the best thing I've read on Live, I think was in Golf Digest they had an interview with William, was it William Friedkin?
Speaker C:He was New York Times writer, really smart.
Speaker C:And he's been over to Saudi Arabia.
Speaker C:He's talked to the prince and all this.
Speaker C:And their conversation went along the lines of the reason he really started, Liv, was he wanted to get More golf tourism in the Middle East.
Speaker C:And William, and I've got William's names wrong.
Speaker C:I'm sorry, I just drew a senior moment.
Speaker C:But William said, well, if you wanted to do that, why don't you just get Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coor come over and build some golf courses along the ocean.
Speaker C:That would have increased golf tourism.
Speaker C:This live thing was such an ill conceived idea by somebody who knew nothing about golf.
Speaker C:He thought he could run.
Speaker C:They thought they could have their own Masters tournament because, you know, they've been to Augusta and seen the Masters and all that.
Speaker C:So it was completely ill conceived.
Speaker C:And you know, the Saudis have dabbled in other sports, but exactly what you said.
Speaker C:They come in, they mess around for six or eight or 10 years and they get out.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:So it's not a surprise.
Speaker C:They never had a business plan.
Speaker C:This was just, how much money can we spend?
Speaker C:They had no.
Speaker C:How did they generate money?
Speaker C:They didn't have sponsors, they didn't do anything.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:If they were going to be different, they could have just made it a team league like a baseball where here's eight franchises.
Speaker C:And you know, then you could have trades and drafts and stuff like that.
Speaker C:But.
Speaker C:And if you wanted to be interesting, I mean, the makeup of the teams made no sense.
Speaker C:It's like they shuffled cards.
Speaker C:You would have, if you would have gotten that patriotism factor in there, like the Ryder cup or the President's Cup.
Speaker C:You have one team with four or five guys from South Africa.
Speaker C:You have a one team, four or five guys from Australia, Japan, South Korea.
Speaker C:That would have been more interesting than when they did.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker C:And give them credit.
Speaker C:I mean, the events, a lot of the events overseas were drew crowds because Australia and South Africa, they don't get to see the top names in the world.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:Golf very often they're underserved.
Speaker C:So I think their market was the rest of the world, not the U.S. but you know, Greg Norman wanted to stick it to the PGA Tour and they, they played too many tournaments here.
Speaker C:And I think it revealed one of the things that people don't think about, the PGA Tour.
Speaker C:One of the stars of every PGA Tour event is the course.
Speaker C:These events have been in the same place, most of them, for decades.
Speaker C:We know the courses, we know the tournament.
Speaker C:I mean, sponsors come and go, but we know Torrey Pines, we know Riviera.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:These guys couldn't even go back to the same course two years in a row.
Speaker C:Most of the time the tournaments didn't even have names.
Speaker C:I mean, I don't Know, it was like, it was like they were trying to undercut themselves.
Speaker C:And to have an individual event going on the same time as a team event, all you have to do is look at the side of the screen.
Speaker C:The leaderboard on TV is so confusing.
Speaker C:You're like, all right, I'm not interested.
Speaker C:But it still was golf.
Speaker C:You could watch it and see some golf.
Speaker C:They had some innovations that worked.
Speaker C:The shotgun start actually was a pretty good innovation.
Speaker C:It looked terrible when they started.
Speaker C:But if you're there in person, sitting in the 18th green 10 minutes after they start, here comes some.
Speaker C:Here comes some golf.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:I thought that was pretty good.
Speaker C:And the, the music, the background, the white noise for around the greens where people are always disturbing the players.
Speaker C:That was actually pretty too.
Speaker C:But I don't know, it's.
Speaker C:It was never destined to be a long term property, I don't think.
Speaker C:And you know, you were, you were right.
Speaker C:But I think the way they ran, it was never, it was never going to sustain itself.
Speaker C:They never, they never sold anything.
Speaker B:Well, when they came here, they did out at Pumpkin.
Speaker B:And I think it was their second or third event.
Speaker B:When they, because they opened in London way back, they, they kind of ticked off a lot of the members of Pumpkin.
Speaker B:Some of it was their own personal beliefs in that and I respect that.
Speaker B:But also that they made these changes to.
Speaker B:And they were, they used parts of both courses.
Speaker B:Pumpkin has a. Pumpkin Ridge folks, has a private side and a, and public side.
Speaker B:And they, they're congruent, right.
Speaker B:And so, but they were kind of hopscotching back and forth and so they were changing tee boxes, they were doing all this stuff.
Speaker B:And Pumpkin spent a lot of money.
Speaker B:They got some money from live is my understanding.
Speaker B:But they also thought that they were going to, this was going to be an ongoing event, right.
Speaker B:And they got here and of course there were protests.
Speaker B:It's Oregon, so we have a lot of protests.
Speaker B:And they were protesting about the Saudis and the blood money and blah, blah.
Speaker B:They never came back.
Speaker B:They packed up their stuff, said thank you, left, never heard another word from them.
Speaker B:And so it caused that kind of consternation within the golf community there at Pumpkin also that.
Speaker B:And there's people that could tell you a lot more in depth than I can about that, but they, they did that and they did it at more than one venue.
Speaker B:And so like you said, you know where Colonial is going to be, you know where the Masters is going to be, you know, you know where.
Speaker C:That.
Speaker B:They're going to play in Riviera.
Speaker B:They're going to.
Speaker B:At Riviera.
Speaker B:They're going to do all these things and that it was always kind of up in the air like juggling balls.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:It was no continuity whatsoever.
Speaker C:And if they really wanted to be successful, you should have.
Speaker C:They should have been trying to avoid the PGA Tour.
Speaker C:There was room for another golf league in the world.
Speaker C:There probably still is the best time now the Tour is given up January.
Speaker C:So you've got the main season.
Speaker C:You've got September, October, November, December, and January now where the PGA Tours not having official significant events.
Speaker C:That's what I would have put live in the fall.
Speaker C:And we're going to go to the Southern hemisphere where it's summertime and we'll play then.
Speaker C:That would have been another better idea than what they did.
Speaker B:Kind of like arena football, you know?
Speaker C:Yes, exactly.
Speaker C:Canadian.
Speaker C:Canadian football, too.
Speaker C:I mean.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Play when the other guys aren't playing because now you've got TV to yourself and maybe, maybe a network will get interested.
Speaker C:What are they going to do now when they've got signature events, they've got Challenger events, they've got Korn Fairy.
Speaker C:Are these other events going to be in the same weekends?
Speaker C:Who's going to show.
Speaker C:Who's going to want to show these Challenger Series things?
Speaker C:Yeah, that are Corn ferry events, basically.
Speaker C:Nope.
Speaker C:I don't know how they're going to sell those to people.
Speaker C:And they'll figure out a way.
Speaker C:And, you know, I think they.
Speaker C:You know the hazard of having a guy from the NFL come in.
Speaker C:He knows how powerful the NFL is, but it's almost like he's trying to help them out and get out of their way.
Speaker C:And I. I don't know.
Speaker C:I. I will say I like roll up when he talks because he kind of.
Speaker C:He doesn't do the lawyer speak and run dodge around a question.
Speaker C:He just kind of says stuff bluntly and if you don't like it, too bad.
Speaker C:Yeah, so I. I respect him.
Speaker C:And yeah, like I said, I hate to say it, but I'm starting to like him.
Speaker C:I. I'm getting worried.
Speaker B:Oh, geez.
Speaker B:Okay, careful there.
Speaker B:All right, we're going to take another break, Gary and I'll be back right after this.
Speaker B:Don't go away.
Speaker E:Hey, everybody, it's J.T.
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Speaker B:Welcome back to Grilling It Green mjt.
Speaker B:Don't forget we are a large part of Golf Newsnet and you can find us Fridays and Sundays on Golf Newsnet.
Speaker B:Back there.
Speaker B:Got Gary Van Sickle today.
Speaker B:Gary has covered 4,222 majors.
Speaker B:No, actually over 200 majors, including Ryder cup players, LPGA events, USAMs, few hundred PGA tournaments.
Speaker B:Written for the morning Read, Sports Illustrated, Golf World, Milwaukee Journal.
Speaker B: He has played: Speaker B:He's gotten seven aces.
Speaker B:And he says he's been.
Speaker C:I've got eight now, Jeff, but you got another one.
Speaker C:I've got eight now, but nobody's counting.
Speaker B:I'm counting, I'm counting.
Speaker C:Well, the last one I was playing by myself, so I count it.
Speaker C:Nobody else has to.
Speaker C:I'm not.
Speaker C:You know, it would be tough if you playing by yourself and you make your first ace.
Speaker C:You know, it's unofficial because you don't have any witnesses.
Speaker C:That would be upsetting.
Speaker C:But I've already had more than my share, so I just thought it was funny.
Speaker C:I could tell it was going to go in.
Speaker C:I had.
Speaker C:It was one of those rare things where you, you hit one perfectly.
Speaker C:It's going right in the line.
Speaker C:It lands.
Speaker C:It's kind of a.
Speaker C:You couldn't see the bottom pin, but I, it bounced right toward the flag stick.
Speaker C:And I had to walk up there and I thought that had a pretty good chance of going in.
Speaker C:And it was in, but nobody else was around, so.
Speaker B:I believe you.
Speaker B:I believe you.
Speaker B:I've.
Speaker B:I've never made an ace.
Speaker B:I've come close a few times.
Speaker B:I mean, I've come within couple inches, but always a little short there.
Speaker B:Okay, we've got the President's come coming up in what, two, three weeks, whatever here.
Speaker B:And I gotta tell you, I've always liked the President's Cup.
Speaker B:I know you know, the golf community is rah, rah for the Ryder Cup.
Speaker B:I get that.
Speaker B:I like watching the Ryder cup, too, unless we're getting our ass kicked.
Speaker B:But I kind of like the President's cup because like you were saying earlier, you're not limited to just the US And Europe.
Speaker B:You've got players from other parts of the world that can come in and play.
Speaker B:And that's one of the things I've always liked about it.
Speaker B:And I saw Snedeker's picks, and he picked the kid Koivan I thought, you know what?
Speaker B:That makes sense to me.
Speaker B:What do you think?
Speaker C:Well, some Ryder cup captains should have been doing similar things.
Speaker C:They picked the same old war horses.
Speaker C:And then after eight or 10 years, you got no young blood with any experience.
Speaker C:But you know, they're not here to take care of the President's cup isn't here to service the Ryder Cup.
Speaker C:But anyways, you're.
Speaker C:I'll tell you that I've probably told you this story on your show before, but I'll tell it one more time.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker C:I was at the Ryder cup in Ireland.
Speaker C:My chair, my seat was in the back of the media center.
Speaker C:Sort of, there's a little like retainer wall that's just about, you know, not even chest high.
Speaker C:It was near the door.
Speaker C:I'm sitting there typing.
Speaker C:A couple guys come in.
Speaker C:They're standing, they're kind of leaning on the wall right by me.
Speaker C:I happen to look up, it's Tim Fincham, the commissioner of the Tour.
Speaker C:And unfortunately, he happens to look at me at the same time.
Speaker C:Our eyes meet.
Speaker C:It's like, oh, no, now we have to make awkward conversation.
Speaker C:So I go, hey, Commissioner Tim.
Speaker C:I probably called him Tim.
Speaker C:I said, you know, like, hey, what do you think of this idea?
Speaker C:So I gave him my idea that this is what, how many years.
Speaker C:This is almost 20 years ago, President's cup still was getting ripped completely.
Speaker C:I said, what if you made.
Speaker C:What if the.
Speaker C:What if you include the.
Speaker C:Make the Ryder Cup a three way thing.
Speaker C:So the winner of the President's cup would qualify to play the defending champ of the Ryder cup the next year.
Speaker C:So basically be a qualifier for the Ryder Cup.
Speaker C:What it would do is it would make the President's cup do or die.
Speaker C:Because if you lose, you're not in the Ryder cup the next year.
Speaker C:And it would make the Ryder cup go global.
Speaker C:Because as soon as the international team gets in the Ryder cup now the Ryder cup, people in Japan and Africa and countries that probably don't care that much about it, it's going to go global.
Speaker C:So the PGA of America is going to make a ton of money.
Speaker C:The tour, their event will be raised up even though it's in a supporting role.
Speaker C:But compared to what they had then, and I just went through the thing and I get done and he looks at me and goes, we wouldn't be opposed to that.
Speaker C:I almost fell off my chair.
Speaker C:Now, they probably wouldn't do it now because they'd have to share money with the PG of America.
Speaker C:And sharing is not a.
Speaker C:Sharing is Great for that fundraising stuff, charity they do, but not their own money.
Speaker C:So I'm with you.
Speaker C:You know, why do you like the press, the Ryder Cup?
Speaker C:Because the team thing is fun.
Speaker C:It's exciting whether it's close or not.
Speaker C:It's just, you know, every shot matters one way or the other.
Speaker C:Maybe you want the other guy's shot to be bad.
Speaker C:If you can look past the irrelevancy of the President's cup, it's the same thing.
Speaker C:These guys have shots, they got them.
Speaker C:I mean, it's amazing how much better they play when they're trying to hole out every shot.
Speaker C:Whereas in stroke play golf, you're just, you know, you try to play it safe and this and that.
Speaker C:It shows how good these guys are.
Speaker C:So I like the President's Cup.
Speaker C:I don't.
Speaker C:Not going to live or die by who wins or by how.
Speaker C:Yeah, I wish they were a little closer.
Speaker C:But that match play stuff, match play is great because it always gets personal.
Speaker C:Somebody doesn't give you concede you a putt that you think they should have, your nose gets out of joint, words are exchanged.
Speaker C:I mean, is there ever been a Ryder cup in the last 30 years where these, these two teams haven't gotten somebody.
Speaker C:Hasn't gotten somebody else's face?
Speaker C:Rory's mad about Joe La Cava waving a hat.
Speaker C:I mean, it's intense.
Speaker C:That's what's great about it.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:No, I agree.
Speaker B:I agree.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:Like I said, I think it's fun and,.
Speaker C:You know, it's better because they're on a team and you're rooting for a team.
Speaker C:US Amateur is great, but you don't necessarily have a rooting interest in anybody.
Speaker C:But the team thing is what makes it watchable.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Telling.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:No, I think so.
Speaker B:And I think.
Speaker B:And like you said, you've got.
Speaker B:You got Scheffler and you've got Schoffley and you've got, you know, got her up now and.
Speaker B:And you've got kind of the war horses and.
Speaker B:And the one thing that we talked about earlier, just briefly, was I think that President's cup is kind of a training ground, if you will, for the Ryder cup, in a way.
Speaker C:Hasn't really helped the US Though.
Speaker B:No, it doesn't.
Speaker B:It hasn't.
Speaker B:But it is, in my mind, kind of a.
Speaker B:Because the Europeans, to me, take the Ryder cup so much more seriously.
Speaker C:Yes, they count winning it like winning a major individually, it's a major to them, and it's never been a major to the Us.
Speaker C:And you go back to the old days when the last putt dropped at the PGA Championship in August.
Speaker C:For Tiger and Phil, that was officially the end of the year when the Ryder cup came around.
Speaker C:All right, they might have got their clubs out Sunday before the Ryder cup, and they showed up and played as hard as they could, but they didn't prepare for it.
Speaker C:And, you know, that kind of rubbed off on the team.
Speaker C: is Azinger is the captain in: Speaker C:What were you?
Speaker C:Louisville.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And he does this whole pod system thing, and it works great because he did not have the best team of the two teams.
Speaker C:I didn't think he had boo weekly on his team.
Speaker C:I mean, really.
Speaker C:And this pod thing worked great.
Speaker C:So what did the PGA of America do?
Speaker C:They made sure they never used it again.
Speaker C:Good job.
Speaker C:Good job.
Speaker C:I'll be in later.
Speaker C:We got a.
Speaker C:We got a board that's going to, you know, look into, like, why don't you do the pod thing?
Speaker C:It works.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:No.
Speaker C:The Europeans are bonded in their dislike of the US Their jealousy of the US We've got so much over here, and I don't mean the players individually.
Speaker C:I mean, as a country, we've got so much land, so much, so many minerals and everything.
Speaker C:Our yards are big.
Speaker C:They're all squeezed into little towns, you know, and going back to the way back, I mean, we.
Speaker C:Us team flies over in the Concorde, and they were coming over in coach, so there's a lot of resentment.
Speaker C:I mean, a lot of that's gone.
Speaker C:But they're still united in their desire to beat us.
Speaker C:And we're never united in anything.
Speaker B:Well, you just look at the.
Speaker B:The passion of.
Speaker B:And you just go online, go on YouTube, and you can see, like, when Shane Lowry or.
Speaker B:Or Rory or one of those guys makes a big putt and.
Speaker B:And they win or they win a point or wherever it's at in the match.
Speaker B:They are very visceral.
Speaker B:Our guys are, like, wanting to rev up the crowd and all that, and the other team does it, too.
Speaker B:But you can just tell by looking at them.
Speaker B:They're.
Speaker B:What it means to them.
Speaker C:Patrick Cantlade and want to wear a hat because he's not getting paid for that.
Speaker C:That's our team.
Speaker C:Where's my money?
Speaker C:I'm not getting paid enough for this.
Speaker C:Where's my money?
Speaker C:So that, you know, that's.
Speaker C:It's just another.
Speaker C:It's a week where they're forced and I'm not.
Speaker C:Everybody guys love the Ryder cup, but there's always a couple of guys on the team is like, yeah, I'm gonna bring money into it.
Speaker C:This is not, not their passion.
Speaker C:I mean, you said it.
Speaker C:Passion's the right word.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:We're gonna take one quick break, come back and wrap up.
Speaker B:And I got some very special questions for Gary in after hours today.
Speaker B:We'll be right back.
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Speaker B:If you need something to practice with.
Speaker E:In the inclement weather, try birdie ball.
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Speaker B:Welco Back to grilling at the green.
Speaker B:We want to thank everybody that supports this show.
Speaker B:Don't forget Gary's got his own podcast, the Golf show with Kathy Bissell.
Speaker B:And he's got a substack.
Speaker C:Now.
Speaker B:I signed up for the free version, but I haven't sent you any money yet, so I'll do that.
Speaker C:I don't blame you.
Speaker B:But, yeah, and he's a very storied and writer.
Speaker B:If you've never listened to this show before and you don't know who Gary is, which I can't imagine that.
Speaker B:But anyway, okay, what's up with Phil?
Speaker B:I mean, just bizarre stuff.
Speaker C:I don't know what happened to him.
Speaker C:He said some kind of family issue and, and I've heard rumors, but I'm not going to repeat him because I don't know if anything's true.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:But I did think it was odd when he won the PGA and became the oldest guy to win a major down in Kiowa.
Speaker C:You know, Amy was usually there with the kids to get on tv and she wasn't there that week.
Speaker C:So that week I thought, I wonder what's going on?
Speaker C:So I don't know.
Speaker C:He's.
Speaker C:He's a complicated guy.
Speaker C:I guess he had the gambling and I don't know, I'd love to have an answer because I always got along with him.
Speaker C:Well, he was fun to talk to.
Speaker C:You know, he loved talking about stuff.
Speaker C:He loved imparting his knowledge.
Speaker C:But I don't know, I don't know what became of him and I don't know where he got off Course.
Speaker C:So I don't have an answer for you.
Speaker C:I'm not inside Phil's camp, and anything I say is just.
Speaker C:I wouldn't even qualify to speculation.
Speaker C:I just.
Speaker B:Sure, it's sad to me in a.
Speaker C:Way, he could have made the Senior Tour so, so exciting these last five years.
Speaker C:He would have won so many tournaments.
Speaker C:Probably, maybe not, but he would have been a star on the Senior Tour.
Speaker C:But, you know, he wouldn't have got one tenth of the money he got from Liv.
Speaker C:You know, I hate to bring Liv back, but just for a second, all those guys who took the big money, every one of them made a smart business decision for the most part.
Speaker C:John Rahm.
Speaker C:No, Brooks Koepka in the last six years made more money than Scotty Scheffler winning 19 times.
Speaker C:So I don't know how you criticize anybody for taking that money, but there was a.
Speaker C:You know, you gave up your legacy on the PGA Tour to get that money.
Speaker C:Like John Rom, he's not happy, but he got his 300 million, so it's a trade off.
Speaker C:But Phil took the money.
Speaker C:He knew he was pretty much cooked as a player.
Speaker C:But it's too bad because he could have really given the Senior Tour a shot in the arm that it much needs.
Speaker B:Do you think I saw where Tiger made a plea deal this morning?
Speaker B:Whenever the appearance was yesterday or something.
Speaker B:But I, like.
Speaker B:I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and I said if Tiger ever went on the Senior Tour, they would.
Speaker B:For some of the smaller regular tour events, the crowds would be comparable if he actually went out there and played.
Speaker B:Maybe not for a long time, but just for people to go see him.
Speaker B:Because they play in places that the regular tour doesn't.
Speaker B:You know, they play in Seattle, for example, at the Boeing out there, and they play in Hawaii and some of those places, or they used to.
Speaker B:I just think that same thing if, If Phil and Tiger had been competing at the same time on the Senior Tour.
Speaker C:You think about that.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker B:You'd have had some, some big television audiences there, honestly.
Speaker C:So, yeah, you'd be able to find those telecasts on your cable system instead of.
Speaker C:Where are they?
Speaker C:Are they on?
Speaker C:I can't find it.
Speaker C:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker C:Is Tiger even going to compete in anything again?
Speaker C:I don't know.
Speaker C:Is he even going to do tgl?
Speaker C:I don't know.
Speaker C:I don't know if we'll ever see him on a golf course in a serious competition.
Speaker B:I. I don't have any idea.
Speaker C:The longer it goes until he plays, the less likely it is that he's ever going to play.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, no, that, that's very true.
Speaker B:So what are you working on right now?
Speaker B:Anything special?
Speaker C:I'm just finished.
Speaker C:I started writing equipment stories for the Met Golfer, which is the digital magazine for the Met Golf association in the New York area.
Speaker C:And they publish it online every other month.
Speaker C:I think anybody can access it.
Speaker C:Just called the Met Golfer.
Speaker C:I did one on Rangefinders last month.
Speaker C:I've already forgot.
Speaker C:I did one on the, the data collecting websites, which were interesting early in the year.
Speaker C:Then I, I did launch monitors last month.
Speaker C:That was really, that was really fun.
Speaker C:And this, this one I just sent in was range finders that do more than just shoot yardages.
Speaker C:So I basically just pick three or four things in a category of equipment somewhere and, you know, kind of highlight them.
Speaker C:I don't go into super depth.
Speaker C:The catch is they have it.
Speaker C:The Met Golfer.
Speaker C:Met association has an equipment deal with Callaway, so my equipment stories can't be about clubs or balls.
Speaker C:So that, that kind of limits your equipment stories.
Speaker C:Yeah, but that's, it's been fun.
Speaker C:I put a little humor in them.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker C:You know, they actually, they actually pay me to do it, so it's hard to find anybody who wants to pay for content anymore.
Speaker C:So it's fun.
Speaker C:I, I, there's one called this Milesy.
Speaker C:It's a combination and it's four and a half inches, four and a quarter inches.
Speaker C:It fits in your pocket.
Speaker C:It's a great range finder.
Speaker C:And on the side of it, it's got a 2 inch color panel, it's got a GPS screen.
Speaker C:So it's got both GPS and laser.
Speaker C:And you might think, well, what do I need both for?
Speaker C:How many times have all of us thought we shot a yardage to a flagstick?
Speaker C:Didn't know we missed it, and hit a tree behind the green and hit a seven iron right at the flag.
Speaker C:And it flies the green by 20 yards and we're like, what happened?
Speaker C:Yeah, you missed the flag.
Speaker C:Stick.
Speaker C:My son was in the Pennsylvania Open on the last hole the second day, and the kid he was playing with, it's a drive on par four.
Speaker C:The yardage was 283 to the middle of the green.
Speaker C:My son hit three, went up around the green.
Speaker C:The kid, his caddy tells him it's 311.
Speaker C:And my son almost said something to him, but he didn't.
Speaker C:And the kid hits driver, misses the green left, bounce, bounce, sidewalk into the flowers by the clubhouse, out of bounds and Then he.
Speaker C:Then he's lays up and hits a bad shot.
Speaker C:Now he's blocked by a tree.
Speaker C:He makes an eight.
Speaker C:And he goes from being on the edge of maybe contending to barely making the cut.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:So you don't know when you miss with the, with the laser.
Speaker C:And, you know, I do it probably at least once a year.
Speaker C:And also I live in Pittsburgh.
Speaker C:There's.
Speaker C:There's blind landing areas, there's blind greens or blind shots.
Speaker C:The laser doesn't work on blind holes.
Speaker C:So you.
Speaker C:The GPS comes in handy.
Speaker C:And it's a nice little combination package.
Speaker C:And it's only like 499.
Speaker C:Using the word only in the wrong way, but right.
Speaker C:That milesy one is really nice.
Speaker C:There's a lot of good ones, but that one, that one is the one that I like the best.
Speaker B:I'll have to check that out.
Speaker B:Gary Van Sickle.
Speaker B:Don't forget his show with Kathy Bissell, the Golf show, Originally Golf Show 2.0.
Speaker B:Actually, 2.0.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker C:Kathy invented the original golf.
Speaker C:The Golf show, which was a syndicated TV show in the 80s and early 90s, long before the Golf Channel started.
Speaker C:And they kind of copied the format for this inside the PGA Tour.
Speaker C:She started something that on her own.
Speaker C:She had Jay Randolph as a host, and they would.
Speaker C:They would talk to players, they would get a swing tip, and then they would, you know, foolishly talk to media hacks like me, which is how I met her years ago.
Speaker C:But, yeah, we just.
Speaker C:And those are.
Speaker C:Those are all on some different kind of format tape.
Speaker C:Kathy's got them all somewhere in.
Speaker C:She lives in Ponte Vedra.
Speaker C:She's got them stashed somewhere in a vault, keeping them cool.
Speaker C:The Golf Channel ought to show those, but somebody's going to have to transfer.
Speaker C:Transfer them to a different format, and probably nobody's going to want to spend the money on that.
Speaker B:Tell her I have a company that I work with that will.
Speaker B:I can help her with that.
Speaker B:And they're pretty inexpensive.
Speaker B:Anyway, Gary says stick around for after hours.
Speaker B:We're going to get out of here.
Speaker B:Don't forget, you can hear us radio podcasts on all the platforms and Golf NewsNet.
Speaker B:Until then, for Gary and myself, go out, play some golf, be kind, have some fun, and we'll be back next week.
Speaker B:Take care, everybody.
Speaker A:Grilling at the Green is produced by JTSD Productions, LLC in association with Salem Media Group.
Speaker A:All rights reserve.
