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 brid egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg Friday fridagg Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course. Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today I'm joined by Joseph Lamania.
Joseph and I discussed what the PGA Tour should do to combat Live a few weeks ago, and I figured with the PGA Tour news with the meeting last week with Roy mclroy and Tiger Woods kind of heading that up, and then the PGA Tour swift implementation of said plan for the twenty twenty three season, Uh, it would be a great time to talk to Joseph again and see really evaluate how they did and where it goes from here. Obviously a ton of details have yet to be sorted out.
Next year will be a truncated version of the full plan, but figured it would be good to discuss, you know, the finer points of where where it needs to go as they continue to sort out all the little details.
With Joseph all.
Right, big changes on the PGA Tour with that mind brought back Joseph Leamangna, Joseph, thanks for coming on. We obviously talked before the tour had really made any moves about how it should combat live, and now they've made some moves. So excited to discuss and see where we stand with these changes and if it's enough, you know, significant chain to really you know, restructure the tour in a way that's sustainable moving forward.
Joseph, how are you.
I'm great, Thanks for having me. Kind of a historic day on the PGA Tour. I feel like this is a bit of a victory lap compared to where we were a couple of weeks ago when we last talked.
Yeah, I think, you know, the tour seems to be heading in a direction, and I think it's the correct direction. Whether or not, you know, they get all the way to where they need to be, I think it remains to be seen. But for those that missed it, for those that are tuning in and don't really know what happened. J Monahan and Rory macleroy did a press conference at the tour Championship on Wednesday morning, and they announced the
addition of twelve elevated events. So the big thing that is the big change is that you will know when the quote unquote top players and we'll get into what
the players are will be playing. So they have committed to play in sixteen events in addition to three other events, and they are they include so they are the FedEx Cup Playoffs, which is three events, the Genesis, the API, that Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Memorial, the WGC Dell Matchplay, the Century Tournament of Champions, and then there will be four other events that will be elevated. They have yet to be determined, so four of the existing PGA tour
stops will be elevated. We could speculate on those and it sounds like moving forward, they are going to the idea of rotating those four. I like that idea if you're going to have to work in the existing structure. But then along with those are the players, the Masters, the PGA, the US Open, in the Open, so the majors, the players and those other events, and then top players
will be required to play an additional three events. And these top players will be based off of the PIP, so the Player Impact Program, the much valueed Player Impact program that became effectively what Live picked off for their player selection in the last year will be expanded. It will go from ten to twenty players. The PIP will go from fifty to one hundred million, and it will have some changes. It will remove the Q score in
the social media score. It sounds like there will be a PIP rating for like almost every player on tour. It sounds like that will be something that is tracked. It's unclear whether it will be a public facing, you know, ranking, which is interesting. Along with that, they a couple things for like kind of the rank and file members were
announced a earnings assurance program. Upfront, players will get five hundred thousand dollars which will be go against their earnings, so it's effectively a hey, this is a league minimum salary, and as players earn money, it will go against it. But it will be paid upfront to players and non exempt players. So like guys that just missed out on being top one twenty five will get a five k travel stipend for each of for miscut so to kind
of ease some of those concerned. I think these were just kind of bones thrown to the rank and file as they completely overhauled the system at the top. So this is going into effect in twenty twenty three. It's important the schedule is already announced, so their hands were a little bit tied as to what they could do in twenty twenty three. I think it would look a little bit differently. I believe these will be full field events in twenty twenty four. They will cut down to
smaller fields for these special top tier events. But in twenty twenty three, with the field, with the schedule already announced, there is really just a limited amount they could do. But this is I think significant that they got this done so quickly after the players only meeting last week. The fact that this has been pushed through in less than a week's time is significant, and I think twenty
twenty four schedule will look significantly different than this year's. So, Joseph off the top, what do you think of the changes?
Yeah, I think you put it well, that it's directionally correct. That is, I will say that for it, and it could end up being very good. There are some tbds and we're have to see how some of that shakes out. I think the easiest way to frame my perspective on
the whole our conversation last time. What we're going to talk about today with the schedule is there's a business quote I really like from Jeff Bezos which is stubborn on the vision, flexible on the details, and there are certain things that I will be stubborn about that they need to accomplish these high level goals or else this still isn't in a good place. How you get there.
Flexible on some of that, So I think we'll get into that today, But overall it was a huge positive step for the tour yesterday.
Yeah.
I think obviously for anybody that's been following the PGA Tour Live debate and anybody that's been in the PGA Tour camp, the last six months have been painful. Like anybody that is like, Okay, I do not want the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund really owning and making decisions on professional golf, behalf, you know, whole, like them being the de facto effective dictator of men's professional golf.
You know, anybody that didn't want that to happen.
This has been a very bleak six months, and finally it feels like there is some action, and I think I think, you know, when I look at what happened yesterday. I think there were two leaders of the PGA Tour that stood up and one was somewhat confused, gave wishy, washed answers, and one stood up there very clear. It
was very clear, concise and powerful with his messaging. And Jay Monahan was the one that was seemed almost befuddled and confused by what was going on, whereas Rory McElroy stood up there and what stuck out to me And I think what I would center on Rory's quote of we're trying to build a tour for you young ambitious players who want to be the best player in the world.
That needs to be the mission statement of the PGA Tour, and that needs to be what every decision they make and every single little thing they do from here out with this kind of restructure needs to be centered.
Around that thesis statement.
And my concern centers around, all right, we've got the big vision, right, who is executing the little details that is going to make or break this idea? I think like this, I think the big complaint from golf fans will be like, Okay, you're just creating a bunch of WGCs that weren't really executed.
Well in the first place.
And I think my big concern is that the players have gotten together, they said this needs to change, this is what we want to do, and they're handing it back to the same people that screwed up the WGCs, and we're going to effectively get the same thing.
Sure, yeah, I mean a lot of directions we could go where A point that I wanted to make I think is a natural follow up from what you just said. So I think the goal is to get the best players playing meaningful golf, right, get the best players together playing meaningful golf, And you're kind of suggesting with the WGCs, like maybe the golf still isn't meaningful. You get the
best players together, but it's not necessarily meaningful. The point I would make is we have to reform the playoff system and how the FedEx Cup points work, and that will inform whether or not the golf is meaningful. So if that is accomplished, I think we're there. I think they've done the stuff that I will be stubborn about.
They've nailed it. If they don't fix that, if it's still thirty players playing in the finals, and you know, too many players go into the playoffs and too many events getting points, then we haven't accomplished that, and you will end up with events that feel like wgc's. But if they reform the playoff structure and how the points work, then these events they are much easier to interpret for
the fan. You have the best players together and you understand, hey, this guy's got to step up and play well at Memorial, at Genesis, at the Majors for them to qualify for the playoffs. So if they do that, I'm bolldy on board. What happened this week?
Yeah, I think that's the biggest question.
And I think obviously I do not envy Jay Monahan and his team that have sold sponsorships through for you know, a number of years forward based off of one thing and going back to the sponsors and being like, hey, I know, we told you that this was like the greatest thing since slice spread, Like especially in the case of I know, we told you that we've figured out
we've nailed this playoff system. You've I think they poured in a billion dollars and you know you've put your financial commitment behind this, but we need to change it. I think the biggest question and you just hit on is after twenty twenty three, knowing that, hey, in twenty twenty three, there's limited things they can do after twenty twenty three.
What does the playoffs look like?
Because that's going to inform what these events look like, as you said, and you know now that they've got this in place. I think this is a big part of it. You know, what do the playoffs look like? If there's going to be three events? How does that get trimmed down? How do you go how do you go from let's just say, let's take a number out of the air, seventy players are in a typical elevated event. How do you go from those seventy players down in
the playoffs? How does that look? And I think that's the biggest question, And these are the little details that are going to make or break this for the tour.
Agree on the point of I don't envy him for having to go back to FedEx and say we're changing things. The part I disagree with that keeps getting thrown around is that like FedEx is going to be so upset that we're dramatically improving the playoffs like this should be.
But I'm saying they sold the deal like you sell a billion dollar deal under the pretense of these playoffs suck like they effectively. And I think this is one of the big issues with like the leadership staying intact like and one of the things I wonder about long term is like, how does the entire leadership team. I mean, you can't teach an old dog nutrix. That is a adage that is pretty set in stone. And the entire leadership of the PGA Tour has operated under an old
system that has been outdated and ripe for disruption. We have this disruption, We have a two year window where they do nothing and the players have to put this all together for them, and then you're going to hand it right back to that same leadership group. You know, this is not just same on hand, it's everybody around him. You know, these people have been operating what they know the business as can no longer be the business.
It has to change.
So you know, the reality is this is where my general lukewarm feel centers around. It's like, can these business leaders adapt and understand where it's going? And you know this is the first the first challenge is going to be getting FedEx on board.
Sure, and again flexible on some of the details here, but I do know that it needs to be somewhere around eight players playing for the championship, and the criteria there, whether it's eight, whether it's twelve, it needs to be that if any one of those players wins, you feel like they were the champion for the season. That is a non negotiable. How you move back and decide, Okay, it's gonna be thirty six players in the first round.
However you decide to do that. I think there's some flexibility around, but you need to have a special championship, and you cannot give FedEx Cup playoff points for every event. I think that's my biggest concern from seeing this new schedule is that, Okay, sure the top players are committing to playing twenty times, but is the incentive still for them to play twenty nine times thirty times to give
themselves the best chance of qualifying for the playoffs. If that exists, you've diminished the value of the schedule in a lot of ways, and the playoffs at the end of the year still don't have the appeal that they should have for a season ending championship. Is that do you agree with that?
Yeah?
Yeah, so like, just to I think, to make your point a little bit clearer, let's just use this year as an example to jump off of with the FedEx Cup. And I'm gonna just run down the list as we head into this week. It's Wednesday, it's Thursday morning. Here is the FedEx Cup standings heading into East Lake. And you tell me when we get to a player that you would feel does not deserve to be in the final event and have a opportunity to win the FedEx Cup.
All right, Scheffler can't lay Xalatorus, shawfle A, Burns, Cam Smith, Rory, Tony Finow Uh, Sepstraca playoff anomenaly obviously.
Yet do I have the button here and say stop?
So Sepstraca, I think, like I think there are names below him that deserve it. But this is obviously one of the issues, like Sepstraca probably shouldn't have been in the playoffs in the first place.
Play part of the issue. We're talking about a full schedule that they gave points to every event, right, so so if you were to pare down the number of events that actually pay out playoff points, somebody like Matt Fitzpatrick would show up higher because he won the US Open and it wasn't because he right right, it's not getting your points through the RSM Classic, through Bermuda like those issues go away. So yeah, it needs to happen.
So we get to like Stepstraca out, Does Sung Jay deserve to be there? Probably not right.
Right, I'd want to pull up his schedule, but I'm I know Sung Jay he's a perfect person to talk about because his strategy from the beginning has been play as many events as possible, because he understands qualifying for the playoffs isn't based on like your average points per event, it's just your total. So the incentive is to play
as much as possible. And that's a significant problem. I kind of want to we'll get there, but I kind of want to talk about how that's a similar problem to to what the NBA is facing, and they're they're doing something about it, So you have to remove that incentive for players and some Jay's the perfect talking point.
John Rahm maybe not.
I mean he hasn't had a great year.
Yeah, Scott Stallings definitely not. He's played really good golf.
He probably should have been in some sort of thing, you know, recently, he's played really good golf, but you know one T two doesn't vault you into the finals. J T definitely right with the PGA win, right.
Right, And and again we we'd want to look at how did he do in a subset of events. So I'm sure under our revised criteria, like he'd probably be qualifying because we'd reward the majors heavily. Cam Young probably yeah, And he had a good year.
Matt Fitzpatrick in as we talked about, I mean, he was leading strokes, gained total for a long time and then and then you get into like Max Ooma, Hideki, Jordan Speeds, Jauq Neeman, and I think at that point you're like, no, none of these players. So if you take out Sepstraw, Sung, JM John, Rom, Scott Stallings right there, you're at twelve eleven players. So we're right where you talked about eight to twelve players.
And I think what's so promising about what the PGA Tour did this week is having this schedule of fourteen events that you know all the best players in the
world are going to play. Those are the perfect events to give the FedEx cut playoff points too, and stop there like that's the fourteen you know, all the top players are going to be there, and and that's all We're giving points to everything After that, we're gonna have to incentivize in a different way, but we're not gonna set the system up to have bad incentives.
And I think, like, so the big question telling FedEx like, hey, this is how it's gonna work right at that point?
Don't you like that? Don't you say, like, yeah, hey, if FedEx cup points are coveted, they're they aren't just handed out like they are now.
FedEx cup points means something, and they are. They are the they are the currency of elite golf on tour.
Right, and maybe this is a natural I think some of the counter argument here will be, Okay, if that's how you do things, then how do you end up doing status on tour if only those fourteen events are paying out? Like what do the other events represent? And I think the best solution that I can come up with is you maintain basically two lists. You have your FedEx cup points list and you have an eligibility list, which could sort of be similar to like the official
World Golf rankings, but internal to the PGA Tour. You just have a point system that when you're playing outside of one of those fourteen events and in those fourteen events you're accruing points. They just aren't. They don't translate into qualification for the playoffs. They translate into status. And I think what the PGA Tour will love about that is I think I came up with another list that they can brand and sell. So that should be music to their ears.
Maybe it could be the business to our top ten right sure. Now for a quick word from our sponsor, Rio Mar.
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Now back to Joseph Lemanna. So how do you feel about the PIP being the decider of the first twenty spots in these events? And then how do you think the rest of the spots should be filled? Right?
I need to get some clarifying information on my understanding is that you're only that the PIP qualification does not qualify you for all of those events that but instead if you that if you are in the top twenty and PIP, you must play in as many events as you qualify for. Basically, but broader point, I am not a fan of the expansion of the PIP, and I think that's my biggest concern in seeing what they did this week. I have a lot of reasons for why
I don't like the pit being expanded. I think, for one, having a black boxed formula that spits out one hundred million dollars a year is a concern. And I also think you have to consider what in what it incentivizes there. Do you want contrived drama and players trying to make a splash online because that's what ultimately they're incentivized by. I mean, do you some of this stuff gets really like part of the criteria's Internet searches. Yeah, there's enough
money in this. Do you do you want to player figuring out how to set up bots to go search his name all year? Like that's that might sound crazy, but this is incentivizing things in a way that I don't think is necessarily healthy for the tour. And the point that I would make would be, I think players are already incentivized to have awareness, right there are business
opportunities that are available to you. There are sponsorships that come to you when you have strong brand awareness, Like, is it really necessary that the tour is allocating money to those players and providing that incentive on top of what they already are incentivized to do. I think this could lead to some behavior from players that you just
don't want to see. And more importantly, I don't think a player should have to worry about their PIP if they're trying to be the best golfer in the world. Just let them play golf and things should take care of themselves.
I think this is You're probably gonna hear me say this multiple times on this podcast, but I'm going to go right back to the Rory quote. What should be the general thesis of this entire tour and every decision should center around does this work towards this? We are trying to build a tour for young, ambitious players who want to be the best player in the world. Nowhere in there does it say the most popular player in the world.
This is you know, the PIP. If that hundred million dollars a year was allocated in a different way, you know, maybe one like I think the biggest shortcoming of the PIP, without a doubt, is that there is nothing in the PIP formula that has to do with how you play on the golf course. Imagine if that NBA would operate this way, it would like would we have somebody that was like a you know, like can we allow like influencers into the pip Like does uh you know the
best trick shot artists? Like does he he have a chance at pit money because of this? Like it's just silly. It It then becomes like, you.
Know, it should be there should be a significant aspect of this that is based off of en course play at the bare minimum, if not all of it should be based off like why don't you just have another one hundred million dollars that you can throw at your top players that that can go to ward off the live to or money. And that's the other thing that I wanted to talk about maybe later is like how's
liv going to respond to this? Because there is going to be a response, And to think like the tour has already made the mistake of at Riviera thinking it was over when the film comments came out, We're moving on.
This is not over.
It's it's going to be a five to five year battle here, Like everybody's dug in the tour has made a counter move back, and there's going to be something that comes back from Live.
Yeah, and to go back to the to the Pip and I think a whole part the continuity between the last time we talked and now, like my message is going to be the same. This is an incentive issue. So if you are a top let's say you're an aspiring professional, you're you're twenty five years old, you just get your PGA tour card.
Say you're Pearson Cootie.
Sure, or even even take a step further, say you have like a language barrier or something, you're from a different part of the country, a different part of the world. Why why do you have to worry about how the player Impact program works? Like I think you should be worried about your game, Like is my wedge game up to snuff? Like do I know these golf courses? Can I put on poa? Like why do I need to worry about Or my agent has to worry about how I can grow my brand awareness because some of our
tours funds are being allocated towards this season end. Like I just don't think it puts players. It's a there's a level of overhead there that I don't think players should have to be dealing with. And you have to have a system of good incentives for a full blown schedule to work correctly.
Yeah, and just on that pip, the issues with the PIP right. So last year is a perfect example. Hideki Hideki Matsuyama wins the Masters. It's estimated that that win is a billion dollar win for Hideki Japan. And I think majority of people listening to this podcast are Americans, And if you're just a golf fan, you know, you might not understand like Japan is a golf craze country.
Japan is a vital you know, when you talk about the tour and their growth, like you know a company, their values a lot of times predicated on how much bigger can your game get. Japan is a big piece of this puzzle. It is a wealthy country that has a lot of golf fans. Hideki Matsuyama is Japan's Michael Jordan in a way. You know, you go to an event and Hideki made the cut on the number. You know, you go to a major, Hideki made the cut on the number. For most American players, those who made the
cut on the number, nobody is watching. Not one press is watching you know that player. If it's you know, Jordan Speed, Nobody went out and watched Jordan Speth right after he made the cut. You go out to Hedki, there will be a ce of twenty plus Japanese media outlets. So Hideki wins the mass and wins his home Countries PGA Tour event, which he said he felt more pressure
at than the than the Masters. You know these this is like sportsman of the Year in Japan without a doubt home run, Like you know, he is the biggest thing in sports in Japan, this huge economic country for golf.
He Bubba Watson's ten. Hideki can't even get it beat Bubba Watson in this contrived whatever you know, cash pot handout that you've you've put together and like I know they've updated this, but this is going to be like an inexact thing, like this is the pitfalls of it, and Hideki didn't get that because it was an American bias. System is always going to be American biased because it's put together by Americans.
Right, That's that's the part. I think the Tour would come back and say, look, we agree we messed up. Hideki should have been in there, but we've revised the system. Now we've removed social media, which I think they just couldn't figure out I was laughing because it said social media is always changing, so it's hard to captures, like they probably couldn't figure out how to handle TikTok, Like
that's probably what that means. But to your point, like the it's always going to be a biased system in some direction, And why is the tour? Are you signing up for maintaining that? Like that's the part. Do you want to deal with the complexities of internet searches? And if somebody searches Hdeki golf, is that Hideki Matsuyama or not? Like, why do you want to sign yourselves up for maintaining that kind of logic and then putting it behind a black box or putting it in a black box where
people can't see how the calculation is working. I think if they're going to do this and lean into it, it has to be public and the methodology has to be transparent.
Would it be just better served with one hundred million dollars?
And this is like a question I would ask a Rory McElroy if I talk to him, I would ask Jmonhan, if I talk to him, would the hundred Can you tell me with a straight face if one hundred million dollars would just be better served if you just said, if you finished in the top ten, we'll distribute the one hundred you know, top ten of the season long race, assuming that gets cleaned up, we're going to distribute a hundred extra million dollars in that.
I'd be fine with that, but I think what they would say is, no, we want to get some of these players who are really marketable, like a Tiger Woods who may not play and may not be able to compete, like, let's still reward them, or even potentially somebody like Ricky Fowler. There are I still think there are other solutions to that.
I know the one I'd thrown out, people may not love it, But if you did, like an all Star weekend or some exhibition where fans could vote on who participated, that's actually a cleaner, more direct way of funneling money to some of the players that are most marketable. So I think broader point PIP is I can sort I can even maybe get behind the goal of PIP, but I cannot get behind implementation and some of the incentives that it creates, and I think those are that's enough to nix the program.
Yeah, and I mean to me, having this be a a big part of your overhaul is a big mistake, because it was. This was legitimately one of the least effective things that was done to attempt to counteract Live last year. This was put in place to counteract Live. You know, this was supposed to appease people like Phil Mickelson. Five of the ten players that got the PIP are now on Live, you know.
But overall, Andy, I don't want to be too negative, Like I agree this this is a problem. I don't think it's overly significant. Like I still think the bulk of what they did yesterday like we're we're good, Like that was it was good, it was smart. We're on the right path, and it could end up being really good, especially if they reformed the playoffs and the point structure. The PIP is a minor setback, but overall, we're moving in the right direction.
I agree, completely agree. I As I said at the top, this was a very refreshing day. My next question would be, how do you go about filling these fields?
Right? I think what I do? I think I go with the two points lists. So if there's one hundred and twenty spots, let's say the first seventy could be filled from players from the previous year who got their eligibility right. They're exempt, fully exempt into the next year, so one hundred and twenty spots. However, many of those first seventy players decide to sign up for that event,
they're registered. After that, you got fifty spots, and I'm filling them with the highest ranking in this secondary list, which basically is a ranking system of previous year Korn Fairy Tour. It's the weakest events on the PGA Tour potentially plus some of the strongest events on the Corn Fairy Tour. And you have that eligibility list constantly updating, so that you know you have a playoff list, eligibility list constantly in flux, constantly bringing up the youngest talent.
I think that's the way I would probably go about it. The only other way I can think of as doing it with like OWGR. But I think that introduces some complexity and potentially some antitrust. I'm not a lawyer, but maybe you don't want to get more involved with OWGR.
That is a way to do it, though, I mean, I think this is actually like kind of brilliant in the sense of like they have this opportunity to distance themselves from the owgr and potential like legal ramifications of that as well. I think this is like an unbelievable opportunity. This might be the biggest opportunity outside of just we aren't going to just hemorrhage our top players, is that you finally have the excuse to really reform how the Corn Fairy Tour and.
The PGA Tour interact.
With this moment, you know, we have been stuck and this is like the thing that probably worries me the most about handing back the keys to the leadership that has their entire lives have been around appeasing player one hundred on the PGA Tour.
That's literally what their incentives are.
If I am the standout collegiate player, if I just Sam Sam Bennett, I just won the USAM how do we create a system that Sam Bennett can be up in these big events if he plays well. If he plays well, he can be up in these big events as fast as we possibly can get him up there. And the biggest opportunity to me with this whole thing centers around reforming how the Corn Faery Tour and the bottom tier of the PGA Tour interact and how these players get up to the top exactly.
And I think that the system that I'd be advocating for here would be pretty simple. So you know, maybe a win in a corn Fairy Tour event gives you, like whatever, twenty five points, which might be equivalent to a T ten, and some PGA Tour events which would be twenty five points, So you're kind of comparing apples
to apples. And then at any given point, you could look at the eligibility list and it's the top's going to mostly be the top players on the PGA Tour, right, But once you start to get to seventy two, one hundred and twenty five, you're in that range that's going to be updating pretty often. And then a player gets into it, a Memorial gets into Genesis, plays well and
earns playoff points. Like there would be a way to configure the system so that it's influx constantly elevating talent, and I think the cleanest way to do that is to separate the idea of playoff qualification criteria and eligibility criteria. It does not have to be that all seventy players who make it to the postseason are fully exempt for the next year. That's a concept that doesn't have to stay. It shouldn't be relegation or postseason. There could be a middle ground.
Yeah, I agree with that, and I think the biggest thing, like as of right now, and I would even extend it down to Canada and Latin America, these points all need to have some value and relate to each other. Maybe the point the FedEx Cup points don't relate in any way, and I'm fine, and I think that is fine.
Those are your you know, your top tier that are only earned in specific events, as we've talked about.
But every other point on a tour that you run, maybe not Champions Tour that should be just gone in general, but every other point that you earn on Latin America, Canada corn Ferry or this bottom tier of tour events, they need to relate.
They should all be the same currency.
Yes, And I would double down really hard on this concept that they should be separate, because, for example, you do not want to get in a situation where a top player like Rory McElroy plays those seventeen regular season events and then feels like, you know what, I need to keep playing to have my best chance of qualifying for the playoffs. You want to have that. The incentives have to be set up properly for the stars, So
by keeping those separate, you're not mixing up. You aren't incentivizing the top players in the world to just play in as many events as possible. That waters down the product. Again, I think the clear example here is the NBA, who's dealing with the same thing, Like, how do you get the stars playing in all of the regular season?
Explain that a little bit.
There are a lot of analogies you can make for what the PGA Tour is facing. I think the NBA is actually probably the best one. It's a little different, like there's guaranteed money to the players, contracts are guaranteed and stuff. But overall, they have an eighty two game regular season and then a postseason. And a problem that the NBA has had is that some of the stars sit out a lot of the games, and it's not always the star's decision, like sometimes that's based on medical
advice and that you should be resting your body. Point is, it's really hard to play all eighty two games if you're an NBA player, and it's probably hard to make the sell to those guys that those games are that impactful. So the NBA is getting out in front of it. You know, there's not even a Saudi backed irrational actor, as Jay Monahan would put it, and they're considering how to make their product better. They've done many things to
actually move towards creating a better system of incentives. One of those things was performing how the lottery system works for draft picks. To incentivize teams to continue to compete, They've changed their playoff structure so that they are now two additional play in spots, so if you're the ninth or the tenth seed in your conference, you're still incentivized to keep playing. You don't want to be the seven or the eight seed now, so you're incentivized to get
up into the sixth or the fifth seed. Like broader point, they have evaluated how can we make the system of incentives proper And they're even considering shrinking their schedule. From what I hear that that's not a leading contender for what they're going to do, but they may put in like a tournament in the middle of the season to substitute some games to make all of the games more elevated and for every game to have meaning. So I think again broader point here, you have to constantly be
evaluating how you make all of your games meaningful. And if that system gets out of whack, then you got to rebuild it.
Yeah.
And it's such an important point because this is not over once, this is instituted. This is not we've we've beaten live and even if liv goes away to borrow. The goal of the organization should never, should always be centered around how do we field the very best product, how do we make everything mean the most we possibly can, as opposed to the mentality of the last forty years has been how do we make number one hundred on the on the money list happy?
Right? It just it just can't work that way. The system has to be set up so that every player understands how do I get to the best to be in the best player on the PGA Tour, and what are the incentives that are laid out in front of me?
All right?
So with this, you know, obviously we've talked a great deal about the structure, Uh do you have You've talked about the All Star game, and uh, one of the one of the things that reminded me of your topic of All Star game is Tiger and Rory, the tm RW, the Tomorrow Group and their TGL which will be This was announced yesterday to kind of odd that it was announced the same day as this widespread sweeping reform of the PGA Tour. But there will be effectively all star
competition all Star like competitions. It will be a screen golf league played on Monday nights of tour events and they will feature people like Roy McElroy and Tiger Woods.
They will be a team event. Uh you know. This will be set up in partnership with the PGA Tour.
I think this is a obviously this was created by Rory and Tiger another avenue for top players to make more money and also opens the door. I think this is like, you know, just from a business side of things, a landmark thing opens the door for joint ventures effectively with the PGA Tour and for profit profit ventures backed by players. Really, you know, like this is you have an idea, bring it to the tour and you can
do it in partnership. This has always been a closed shop and this is a landmark, you know, in terms of where the tour goes and the things that are attached to the tour. I think it's a landmark, you know, situation.
Oh it's great. Finally some innovation, right, like get get creative with it, get nuts, Like if they're hitting crazy shots in these stadium like structures and crazy shots we've never seen before. Fine, like put something on Prime Time They're they're gonna. I think they're gonna do well. I don't know all the details here, but I think they're gonna do very well on this concept. And it's creative. Finally, like this is excellent by Rory and Tiger. Yeah.
I mean you think about like a lot of companies, like the one of the ways Salesforce became a really big company. It was an open platform right where, which means that other entrepreneurs, other innovators could build things on their platform. Not all the innovation has to come from within the moat at Mpanavidra.
And this is a great example.
Allow innovation to happen outside of your bubble and then bring it in and profit from it. You know, not may that are nonprofit, right, but allow this to continue growth, Like all the growth ideas don't have to be your own, right if you allow for open you know, collaboration with other organizations. This is a really healthy way for the tour to grow their revenue, build loyalty with their top players, but also innovate, which is something that they've really struggled with and.
I hate going there. But also a way to get money to the most marketable players on your tour like this, This is how you do it, not through some contrived thing like the PIP so go this direction, like put those players in the marketable players in a position to profit off of their awareness. You don't have to calculate some kind of awareness score.
All right.
So now with the a as JMI hand, like say, irrational actor the live tour, do you how do you anticipate their response? So do you do you foresee you know, anything that they are going to do to attempt to kind of what would be their next chest move.
I think it's just increasing the amount of money they're paying to some of these players and trying to pull them over. But now it's harder to pull some of those top guys off. And I do think what's important for the PGA Tour is to be involving all these stars and the decisions like to be having those players only meetings and for Hedeki Matsuyama to feel valued, your opinion, you are wanted here. So it's it's gonna be harder.
But I think Live just has to keep throwing money at these guys and figure out a way that they're kicking off some of these players who have bad contracts. I mean, yeah, you cannot have a closed off system, so they need to figure out some way, which kind of goes against their business model to have players flowing between tours, whether it's like just the Asian Tour and Live Tour. You can't have a closed off system. All
their world rankings are going to tank. So you can sign those guys up, but they'd have to be committing to never playing in majors unless they qualify another way. That's that's the decision that players are making at this point.
It's why the tour's most you know, I think the thing where you can be the most bullish on is if they continue to push on this idea of the most competitive tour. That was their best chip to play against a organization with more money than them, like the ability to financially reward players. You know, they can't compete
with Live. There and that's why it's so smart and why every decision they make has to center around does this fit with Rory's We are trying to build the tour for the young, ambitious players who want to be the best player in the world, because Live's system can't compete with that, right and the only way they could,
I think is through the Asian Tour. But like you said, that would go against a lot of players contracts, Like how are they What are they going to say to Henrik Stinton, who obviously he won, but the guy's washed, He's not a not a top fight player anymore. What are they going to say to Lee Westwood? What are they going to say to James Piatt, you know, who signed a contract, like isn't one of the better players in the world. Like that's the that's the way they can fight back is through this.
Yeah, but again I'm agreeing with you that the PGA Tour what they can do offer the best competition, and we're really close to it. We're not there yet, though, and that you the point I want to make. We have to reform the playoffs like this Without that, I'm out on what happened this week. If they do that,
I'm fully in, Like, you can't. We can't call this a success until you've figured out the whole schedule which has to culminate in a special championship with only a limited number of players, like eight to twelve.
So I'm with you.
That's the PGA Tour's best. That's the hand that they can play. They haven't they they've moved towards playing it, but they haven't fully played it. We have to see that.
Yeah, And I mean, I will say this, like the big ideas are easy. The easiest thing is the big ideas, And what concerns me is really the small details, the little things like what and I think the Veedex Cup playoffs are really a big part of it, but like the the minutia of how guys get into fields, how people qualify, like all these little d tails are the
things that are going to make or break this. And I think there's a lot of celebrating and I think that it is important because you know, it's there is a right to celebrate, but it's not over yet. This is we have you know, if you use another sports analogy, we've won the we've won the division, and now we're
going to the playoffs. There's a celebration after winning the division, but this is not done yet, and they need to do a lot of work, a lot of hard work on these minute details in order to make sure that this is the smashing success that it could be.
Yeah, so real quickly on that. If we were talking to Jamian right now or the commissioner Rory McIlroy. Part of I think their hang up is tying a lot of this playoff criteria to eligibility, Like they also announced now that if you qualify for the Tour Championship, you're gonna have a two year exemption. Like I think we need to get away from this necessity to tie eligibility and playoff criteria together. Like this is what concerns me
right now. You're saying thirty players are going to be exempt for two years and you're also going to be playing in the Tour Championship. That is worrisome. I think we're potentially going to keep doing a Tour Championship that doesn't make sense and that doesn't have a lot of juice. How excited are people for the Tour Championship this weekend?
Like, I bet it should be a snochal think about any other golf league or any other professional sports league that's last game of the season is like the one that gets the most poked fun.
Of Imagine imagine waking up in whatever, checking Twitter, checking the newspaper and seeing, oh, Patrick Cantley is playing Rory today, Like that would be fun. Let's have an eight person match play, that'd be awesome. So, again, huge win for the PGA Tour this week. They're moving the right direction. We need this final piece to be checked off for me to be fully on board with everything that they're doing. So I'm steven on that vision, flexible in some of the details.
Exemptions should be the most coveted thing that you can get win.
Exemptions shouldn't exist.
Shouldn't get an exemption for winning Bermuda, shouldn't get an exemption for winning John Deere, shouldn't get an exemption for.
Winning The Travelers.
In my opinion, shouldn't get an exemption for making the Tour Championship. We've seen friend of the Pod Roberto Castro, make the Tour Championship not retain his card the next year two times. This is not You know, seasons are aberrations, right, you know, so many times a player has a down year and then a great year right after you know, you know, great years can pop up. You can string together eight hot weeks. You can string together one good week and make the Tour championship if that one good
week comes at the right time. You cannot give out exemptions like giving out a two year exemption should be the most like valued currency on the PGA Tour. And once again, exemptions, the idea of exemptions go completely against the vision of we are trying to build a tour for young, ambitious players who want to be the best players in the world, because that those exemptions block the
young players coming up and having spots to play. It blocks the free flow that you need in order to get young players that are the Cameron Youngs of tomorrow up as quickly as possible.
Right and I think again, to build on that, we're there. The infrastructure is now laid that you don't have to do that. If you have these fourteen events that are the only ones giving out playoff points, you're not going to have some of these names get filtered through to
the Tour championship because they picked off weak fields. Like now we're in a place where we can eliminate that let's implement it only playoff points for those fourteen events, revised playoff structure, and now you have a season that makes sense and you have the best players in the world coming together to play meaningful golf.
All right, I think that's a great spot to stop. Joseph, thank you again. People can find your writing at on substack Finding the Edge. You also do analytics consulting for high end golfers, so anybody that's interested in that can contact you.
What how do they contact you for that?
You can reach out to me on Twitter at Joseph Lamanya l A m A g NA, my emails on my substack as well. But I think the yeah, schedule optimization maybe has ventured into the PGA Tour hopefully taken some of the ideas. So Andy, if you want to co own a little schedule optimization business for the PGA Tour, I'm in all right.
Well, you know we'll see the optimization will be limited if if they if they don't give up playoff points for everything, but if they do, if they continue to do that, optimization will give give a big edge to anybody that's looking to get it. You know, I didn't ever think about Sugjay as a manipulator.
But he is Oh no, that's not my message.
So all right, Jesseph, thank you so much for coming on and we'll talk to you soon and have a Hopefully this goes to the right direction and you really I hope you really enjoy.
The Tour Championship this weekend.
I can't wait.
Thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Today's episode was edited by the great Meg Atkins.
Thank you Meg.
A quick reminder, our pro shop is fully stocked and loaded. Next week we will be having a Labor Day sale, so starting kind of early next week, I think we'll probably do an automatic discount, So visit proshop dot thefridagg dot com and keep an eye out.
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