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