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 bride egg, Friday Egg, the dread and Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg.
Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump.
Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we're talking about the past, present and future of the President's Cup. So the twenty twenty two President's Cup starts at Quail Hollow today with the US team facing off against the international squad, and it sort of feels like this is a fork in the road for this
team matchplay event. Overall, the defections to live golf have weakened both teams really, but especially the international side, and the fear is that the President's Cup will become even less competitive, even more lopsided than it has been historically. So we figured it was a good time to talk about where this event came from, what it is now, and whether it's ultimately worth fighting for. To discuss all of that, I'm joined by Andy Johnson. Andy, how's it going.
Garrett, It's going great. I'm excited to dig into the President's Cup. I I made a proclamation on the shotgun start maybe last year that I thought that one of my you know takes, was that the President's Cup would would overtake the Ryder Cup in terms of competitiveness over
the next thirty years. Then Live came and pretty much snatched away all of us great players, and here we are at Really, I think you put it correctly acrossroads because you know, with the the international flavor of the Live Tour that they've created and coached you know, a lot of the big name your international players, this event really has been has been weakened, and I feel bad for it because I think, you know, we're going to get into the history of this event, but I think
one of the things is that it got off to a little bit of a slow start because it didn't have a real imaginative creation. It was really kind of
a copy of the Ryder Cup. But it was showing promise, especially, you know, I think one of the recent high high water moments for it was obviously Royal Melbourne, where it was in a very competitive match between you know teams and you could start to see this young talent that the international side had, and if you look at the world rankings, if the internationals were able to, you know, have the players that should be available to them, And
if you give some players some additional world ranking points, you're also looking at like seven or eight top thirty players, which would all of a sudden create a very formidable matchup. And I think that's the thing about it is that this event was really trending into becoming something that was going to be better than it had been the last twenty years significantly, and I think something that could have been pretty good, and now you're kind of back of the drawing board.
Yeah, it was really a big blow to the President's Cup to lose Cameron Smith, to lose Abe answer, who are some other players that were pretty significant losses recently.
Louis Usasan. You go down the list and there's just there's a lot of guys that, you know, if you look at the best players on the effectively the best players on on live, a lot of them. Joaquin Neeman obviously comes to mind, top twenty player. So you know, between answer Usasan, Cam Smith and Neeman, that's for top thirty players that are that are gone and and really when you look at the captives picks, they're being a replaced by guys that are borderline top one hundred players.
So the issue for the international team has always been depth. The format, which is which is more golf illuminates this issue with the international team, and the second that they were building depth, they've had kind of the chair pulled out from under them with live golf.
Yeah, it's a it's a real shame. We'll talk more later in the pod about the future of the President's Cup and we'll talk about some ideas about where it could go next, but I wanted to get a little bit into the history. So first of all, what have you made of the President's Cup in your life of golf fandom? Have you enjoyed the President's Cup in general?
H Yeah, I mean at times there's moments of where it's been great. I think you know when it goes when it goes to Royal Melbourne and it's on in December and it's on at night. You know, that's an example of a great event, right because it's it's you're seeing a world class course. You're seeing a course that has like a distinct home advantage for the Australian players, right, so that gives that makes it a little bit more even.
And you saw, like the last time, you know, the US was kind of perplexed by the golf course, but they figured it out as it went and they got better and better on the golf course as the event went on. So you know, it's had these great moments. You obviously, the els Woods playoff into Darkness was was an iconic President's Cup moment and the moment that everybody remembers.
But then it also has like, just like sheer skippability, irrelevant moments like Liberty National blowout comes to mind, where you're playing a pretty pretty bland golf course that obviously has great views of the New York skyline, but just a complete lopsided victory. And you know that we play sports for these these upsets that could happen this week.
But right now, you know, I think the average world rank of the Mayorricans is eleven, and you know, the the international team is grasping at straws here in terms of a talent disparity. You know, they're plus almost seven hundred and betting odds, which is which is like a top five college football team, losing to a you know, a non Power five school, so like you're talking about
that's unranked. You're talking about like a monumental upset here, and hopefully we get some sort of hopefully just Sunday has some semblance of competition, but in terms of you know, it's just been a hit or miss event, right, Whereas the Ryder Cup is musty TV every year, the the Majors are musty TV every year, this is an event where you're kind of like, well, we'll see what happens.
Yeah. Well, one thing I will say for the President's Cup is that it has one big thing going to its benefit, and that is that it is team match play, and this format is magical, Like it just produces fun moments, even in the midst of blowouts. I would say, I don't think there's really such a thing as a completely
dull team match play event. For one thing, because when you get down to the singles matches, unless it's a historic blowout that we haven't really seen before, there's always a sliver of a chance that the team that's behind will catch up in the singles matches on Sunday, and that gives you a reason to watch to the very end, and then beyond that, just the match play dynamics between players.
It always creates something that's worth paying attention to. I think, something that's at least funny, even if it isn't dramatic in terms of the play. So I will say that because there's all kinds of things that you could say by way of critique of the President's Cup, like you know, and we will say them in this podcast. You know, it's just this created event. It doesn't really have that
grade of a history. It was just created to kind of make money and to stave off competition, and so there are all those things that you can say about it. But when it comes to the matches itself, when the President's Cup actually starts, I find that every time I just put all that other stuff out of my mind and I end up enjoying the tournament. I just do. And so I will say that for it, I'm glad that it's around. It's certainly better than whatever it would
have been replaced by this fall. Right if we were getting another Fortinet on the PGA Tour or another live Chicago or something like that, this would be a completely boring week and we would be doing a podcast about something else. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, I would. And I think this is the thing, is like we crave different formats just because we see the same format so often, and this is an intoxicating format, like it creates cool like se Wo Kim with the shushing, you know, it's a moment that you'll remember from Liberty National, even though he was just getting as ass kicked that the team was all week, right, I think it was it like three down when he did that.
I mean, it's just stuff like that. It's silly stuff that you don't see at other events. That's what the team match play environment creates.
So I think that's a fair assessment. It's better than a regular event. But is it the rider? It does it deliver with the consistent of the Ryder Cup, you know? And I think that's where I would say that from the start this event was maligned for being a copy of the Ryder Cup.
Absolutely, So why don't we go back into some of that history and talk about where the President's Cup came from? So I did some research here. I was expecting when I started this research that I would just be talking to you about what happened in the early nineties and how the President's Cup was created in that moment. But as I dug into the research, I kept going farther
and farther back in time. Eventually I just had to stop myself because I was going to like go back to the nineteenth century and talk about how the beginnings of golf eventually led to the President's Cup. But I eventually just stopped in the late sixties, and that's where I want to start from in talking about where the President's Cup came from. And what happened in the late sixties was that the PGA of America split from what
would become the PGA Tour. Okay, so the PGA of America for decades ran what was then the PGA Tour. But in the fifties and sixties, tournament players started to become richer and more famous, and they wanted to have their own tour, independent from the club pro or the golf professionals organization. So, Andy, I don't know if you know this, but a golf professional is different from a professional golfer.
Yeah, I heard that before. You know, I could see how they were intervexed a little bit, how confusion could come, you know, given the early origins of the touring pro involved some time at a club because they couldn't, you know, they didn't make enough money on the road to support their family. But yes, I am aware that there is a big difference.
There is a big difference, and that difference really became clear in the nineteen sixties when tournament golf became much more profitable because of the popularity of players like Arnold Palmer particularly, but also Jack Nicholas and others. So in the late sixties, the tournament players wanted to split from the PGA of America, and in the negotiations, the PGA of America got to retain certain tournament properties and the
tournament players took other tournament properties. And one of the properties that the PGA of America got to keep was the Ryder Cup, which at the time was not nearly as profitable, was not nearly as popular, and really was kind of a money loser for many many years. But it was at the time a competition between Great Britain and Ireland and the US. Eventually it would become Team Europe versus the US, but in any case, the PGA
of America got the Ryder Cup. That wasn't that big of a deal the tournament players what would become the PGA Tour got the World Series of Golf, and the World Series of Golf was a competition in late summer or fall between the four major winners from that season, and it was really a pretty big deal. It was a fairly popular event that people looked forward to, that people liked, and so getting this event was kind of
a big deal for the PGA Tour. But what the PGA Tour did is that they almost immediately turned it into a seventy two hole stroke play event. In the nineteen seventies, it was held at Firestone Country Club, and by the nineteen nineties it was just this kind of part of the PGA Tour schedule that wasn't really super distinguishable from the rest of the PGA Tour schedule. It was just another stroke play event. Ultimately, it was replaced in nineteen ninety nine by a WGC, the WGC Invitational
that the Tiger Woods won a number of times. It was the WGC Bridgestone. It moved from Firestone to TPC South Wind in twenty nineteen, and now it kind of no longer exists. So think about how that happened, right, So, the PGA Tour got the World Series of Golf instead of the Ryder Cup. The Ryder Cup goes on to become this very popular event, the World Series of Golf just gets kind of absorbed into the rest of the
PGA Tour schedule. I think that's kind of an amazing illustration of some of the things that the PGA Tour has not done right over the past forty years or so.
I think that they like kind of believed that every event should be in a way the same, and that's what they did with this is they took a unique property and made the same. The one thing I wonder about is then did they bring the World Series of Golf back, because I remember that that event existing, you know, did it go away for a while and they bring it back later?
So the PGA of America started its own kind of World Series of Golf. Now, Oh, I've forgotten what it was called. It might have been called the World Cup of Golf.
I remember that World Series of Golf existing though in the nineties, like the same format, like the player the major winners from years before.
And it was run by the PGA of America.
So the tour got rid of it and the PGA brought it back.
Yes, the PGA brought it back in like the late seventies, and Dean Beaman was royally pissed off about that. He did not like that the PGA of America had basically like given them the World Series of Golf and then the PGA of America went and created its own version of that. I mean, was that was a conflict between the two organizations for sure, But yeah, the pg of
America decided to recreate it once. Of course, the PGA Tour had moved away from the original format of the World Series of Golf that had apparently made it popular. That's kind of I mean, all in all, that's sort of a digression in this history, but I think it was just so representative of how the PGA Tour dealt
with its events that I had to mention it. So the real thing that led directly to the creation of the President's Cup, or one of the main factors, was that the Writer Cup became extremely popular and profitable by nineteen ninety one. So in the eighties the Writer Cup was competitive, but it wasn't yet really truly profitable. In nineteen ninety one, it was the War on the Shore at Kiowa Island. It was televised in a US national
market live on NBC. You know, before it had been kind of pushed to weird times on not as prominent networks, and so this was really the first time that the Writer Cup was beamed into people's living rooms across the US in a major way. And it was this huge success. It was such an exciting tournament the US one that when the Ryder Cup really became the modern Ryder Cup.
And now just imagine Dean Beaman, who knew, of course that the fledgling PGA Tour did not get the Ryder Cup in those initial negotiations with the PGA of America. Just imagine how pissed off Beaman was in that moment when the Ryder Cup really had its moment. He was probably thinking, well, this is not good.
Yeah, missed opportunity.
Exactly, huge missed opportunity. And Dean Beaman tried a number of times to buy the Ryder Cup from the PGA of America, but the PGA of America always refused. So here's Beman, the commissioner of the PGA Tour. He wants his own version of the Ryder Cup. By the early nineties. Now, the other thing that really cleared the way for the President's Cup to be created was the collapse of what was called the Four Tours World Championship. Have you ever
heard of this event, Andy No, I hadn't either. I had no idea that this event existed, but it did. It was originally called the Nissan Cup, then the Kieran Cup, then the Four Tours World Championship. It was a team matchplay event between the PGA Tour, the European Tour, the Australasian Tour, and the Japan Tour. And it was held
between nineteen eighty five in nineteen ninety one. The players who participated in it included Nick Faldo, Greg Norman, Bernhard Langer, Fred Couples, Payne Stewart, but Seviy Biasteros never played in it. Tom Watson never played in it, and so it wasn't really a sensation, right, And ultimately it folded in nineteen ninety one when the sponsor pulled out. But what that did is the created a void and there was suddenly a race to fill that void. This was nineteen ninety two, right.
The nineteen ninety one Ryder Cup has always already happened. People are recognizing that team match play is a formula for making a lot of money. And so there's this race to create a new international team matchplay event. And one of the organizations that wanted to create its own team matchplay event was IMG, right, the agency Mark McCormack. Yeah, And as Beeman put it at the time, he said, this was a vacuum that was going to be filled and we better fill it first, right, We the PGA
Tour need to beat IMG to the punch. Here now, this is an excerpt from Adam Shupac's book Golf's Driving Force. Right. I want to give much credit to this book because it really filled in a lot of history for me. This is how Adam Shuepack describes the race to create
a new international team event. He said on December twenty first, nineteen ninety three, several months in advance of the public and unveiling of the President's Cup, IMG issued a short press release with plans to pit the holder of the Writer Cup, but not restricted to the same team members against a team from the Southern Hemisphere consisting of Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa, South America, and the Pacific Islands
in a biennial major international golf tournament. No date, no site, or formal name for the matches was announced, but it was planned to debut in late nineteen ninety four under the tentative title of the Hemisphere Cup. A two million dollar perse was reported. According to IMG's Alistair Johnston, the concept had the backing of a consortium of international television companies, including ABC Sports in the US, Sky Television in Great Britain,
and Star Television in Hong Kong. So this was IMG's concept, the Hemisphere Cup. And so recognizing that this first Hemisphere Cup was going to take place in late nineteen ninety four, the PGA Tour basically rushed to create the President's Cup, which is the competition that we know now between the US team and an international collection of players who are not from Europe.
That it was eerily similar.
Very similar to the Hemisphere Cup idea, right.
And especially when you fast forward to you know what created some Greg Norman angst and there originally was the WG season his World Tour.
Idea, absolutely, and that becomes relevant in the story after the President's Cup is created because it's at the same time that Greg Norman is trying to form the World Tour. Right, these things are happening concurrently. But one thing to note about the difference between the differences between the Hemisphere Cup pitch and the President's Cup pitch is that the Hemisphere Cup involved the winner of the past year's Ryder Cup. So it could be Team Europe or it could be Team USA.
Wow.
The President's Cup is always Team USA, right, So the President's Cup, the main difference is the US team is always featured. But it's just really interesting, right, the President's Cup. The only reason that the first President's Cup happened in nineteen nine before was that IMG was going to create its own international team match play event to kind of capitalize on the new popularity of the Ryder Cup. That's why the President's Cup came about.
Well, I just think that it just speaks to just the general adage of the tour, which is when they see something they like, they want to do it themselves. And it's not a it's not really a collaborative situation, right, And one of the issues when when something's not your idea, it always lacks an authenticity, It always has an authenticity issue. And I think that at its core, the President's Cup has been plagued by this is clearly something that the
tour is doing to make money. This is a profit versus the Ryder Cup was you know, when you think about the image of the Ryder Cup, the Ryder Cup prints cash now, but it didn't always print cash. And what led to it pretty cash was the establish of a clear identity of history. Like the event was allowed to breathe and it was allowed to be a loser for a while before it became a winner. You know, That's the way a lot of businesses work is that they struggle early on before they become like, you know,
a great event. When when things are overnight sensations, oftentimes they struggle with success. The President's Cup was like, hey, we're gonna set this event up and we're going to make so much money. And like a perfect example is having four days of attendance, four days of TV that is done for money, that is done for TV contracts
and attendance. Right, they have four days of competition. What that four days that money, that added money they get has hampered the international's international team's ability to compete because the longer you play this out, talent wins and the US has always had more talent. So that's a perfect example of like, if you wanted to create a more
compelling competition, you'd want it shorter. Maybe it's a two day thing, and the Internationals would have a really great chance, like they would have won the last President's Cup if it was two or three days. So with this you see how every decision they make is not really theirs. But then also with the President's Cup, and the founding of the President's Cup was really centered around making money, which is a bad intention if you want to create a really compelling golf tournament.
Everything about the President's Cup is kind of artificial, right. The international team is just kind of a random collection of countries that is more determined by the structure of the Ryder Cup than it is by any natural relationship between the players on that team. Now that's not to say that Trevor Immilmann, the captain of this year's President's Cup International team, can't create some kind of identity for
the players, but it just doesn't exist there beforehand. So the President's Cup is this completely artificial money making construction, right, But I think it's a testament to the magic of team match play that it works at all.
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So you did a little bit of research of your own. You were reading some old articles What are some of the highlights there? What were some of the things that stuck out to you?
So, you know, Norman in ninety four was sick, Yeah, and they wound up, and they wound up so he couldn't play his singles match.
I've always found that so weird. I mean, I think that Norman was a big booster of the President's Cup. I think he was jealous of the Writer Cup and the fame that it brought players like Sevy and Nick Faldo. So I think he was in support of the President's Cup. But his his kind of uh staying out of that that first President's Cup is so strange because I'm not even sure what was wrong with him. I guess he had like something like the flu. But then he showed up on the last day.
Yeah, he was in the crowd, Yeah, exactly. So, So I mean here's this is, you know, one of the most high profile players in the world, right, you know, arguably like at the time, the face of golf, right, And I think obviously it under the underlying issue here when he go from ninety four to ninety six is greg Norman has a real issue with any sort of authority.
He had all kinds of issues with sponsors over the years, he had all kinds of issues, like anybody that that he effectively reports to in some way or like you know, he has an issue with So anyways, he he is on this he's sick, and the telcast wants to make
him up and he's game for it. You know what better than playing than the day in the spotlight tell you know, commenting and being a real part of the tournament when you're too ill to play, but you're you're like, I couldn't I think of it if I was felt really bad. The last thing I want to be doing is spectating a golf event. That's just me. So anyways, David Graham the captain of the of the international team.
Great Australian player, I think you know at the time he was the only Australian I believe he was forty eight, so he's still he hadn't transitioned to the senior tour, which was one of the reasons he was the captain. He was in his later forties. He'd won two majors, you know, two different majors too, so he was really
well respected. He said, no, absolutely not. You can't mike him up, and so that made Norman really mad, and Norman held this grudge and staged effectively a coup in before the ninety sixth event two months out, the players voted to dismiss. There was a mutiny, They kicked Graham out as captain, and Peter Tomson eventually took over. You know, they had this player only meeting and David Graham was all for it. All the players are getting together, this
is great. And in this player meeting they end up kicking Graham out and Fincham had no clue this was coming. Graham had no clue this was coming. It was an utter disaster for the event and thus it led to Peter Thompson being the captain and he like let none of the players talk about this. It was considered an utter embarrassment that this was happening. So, just a crazy little tidbit of President's Cup history.
Yeah, so Greg Norman essentially led a mutiny against his captain.
What a surprise that Greg Norman did something divisive.
And what's remarkable about this is that the nineteen ninety six President's Cup is essentially where I'm not sure if this is a historical fact, but it's right around the same time that Tim Fincham announced the World Golf Championships. And so Fincham made this announcement and it took Norman by surprise because earlier he had come up with the idea of a World Golf Tour, but eventually he had been kind of outflanked by Tim Fincham and that idea fell apart. Now here we are at the nineteen ninety
six President's Cup. Tim Fincham has just announced that the World Golf Championships are going to be established in a couple of years. Greg Norman is absolutely livid, and he confronts Tim Fincham in the lobby of the hotel where both President's Cup teams are staying, and they have a bit of an argument. I'm not sure it was a shouting match or anything like that, but it was significant enough so that it was actually reported in the press at the time that Fincham and Norman had a confrontation
in the lobby at the President's Cup. So just think about Greg Norman's story in the lead up to the nineteen ninety six President's Cup. Right, he didn't play in the ninety four President's Cup because of some kind of strange random illness that he had. And then he shows up at the ninety six President's Cup having ousted as captain, and then he gets into it with a PGA tour commissioner in the lobby of the hotel. I mean, is
just a ridiculous sequence of events. And then a couple of decades later he's a President's Cup captain and then he gets kind of pushed out of the captaincy and he doesn't feel good about that either. That was a whole other controversy he has had a Norman has really had a tumultuous relationship with the President's Cup. And guess what.
Now he's the head of a league that is absolutely attacking the President's Cup right now, just picking off players who would be significant parts of the international team.
It's almost as if he had a vendetta against it.
It's almost as if he's motivated a bit by revenge here. It's almost almost like that. All right, So I want to get into where we think the President's Cup is going from here. I mean, we don't have to talk too much about the Quail Hollow matches. I think they're pretty lopsided, right at least that's how it looks going into it.
I think the thing I would say is that the Internationals could very well win. That's why we play the game.
They have world class players too, they just don't have, you know, the kind of like top ten talent that the US team has pretty much across the board.
Upsets happen all the time, but the reality of the situation is whether or not they win or lose. I think the one big thing is in years future, our live player is going to be allowed to be involved. And that's a big question. I you know, I don't have as much of a problem with the President's Cup continuing if in two years live players are playing, because then all of a sudden, the talent differential is not
as great as it was. But assuming live players are not involved, then you know, you have to look and you have to say, hey, what are we doing? And I don't think that this can go on with the talent differential that is in play for this event.
Say that the status quo as the golf world has settled into right now, say that, you know, more or less, within the next couple of years, things kind of stay how they are right now. What would you want to see the President's Cup do? Would you want it to remain the same kind of team matchplay event, or are there other ideas that we can go with.
I've got a few ideas here. Now I'm going to go from like easiest to most difficult to implement for the for the tour. Okay, idea number one easiest to implement is make the international team include Europe, all right, and then all of a sudden, you have it involves the entire tour. Which I've always thought is really weird is that you have this event that doesn't evolve all
of the tour. And I think that's one of the issues with the event is that arguably your most marketable player on tour isn't involved with it, which is weird to me. And obviously that's because of the Ryder Cup. They probably didn't want to feel like, you know, early on that they were stepping on their toes. But at this point, you know, this isn't a this isn't a competition, really, this is this is a early week Alabama scheduling game
against a really inferior opponent. And that's the quickest way, the easiest way to make this more competitive given the current landscape, and arguably then you you have a claim that you have the most competitive matches. Now, I don't know if there's some sort of clause that they can't include Europe Like, it wouldn't surprise me. I mean the PGA. If I were the PGA, I would be absolutely irate if they did that.
Right.
So, so that's the easiest option to relevance. And if you think about this week, if John Rahm and Rory were playing this, this would be completely different story.
Yeah, I guess so. But but the problem would be then the President's Cup would be even harder to differentiate from the Ryder Cup. Right then it would be even closer in its concept.
It would. But I don't think that really worries the tour. They have a long history of copying, you know.
Okay, you think you think they don't really care about the current identity.
They're pretty ShaSS.
Yeah, that relies on this random concept of an international team. No, I see that. I think that maybe they would be a little bit worried that eventually you'd have a situation where the players who would qualify for the non US team would be all the same players who were just in the Ryder Cup.
Right, I don't think that is that is an issue though, because you've got the South Koreans that you know, the South Korean golf contingent I think is only going to grow, and.
The Australians continue to be strong though though a lot of them have gone to live.
I think the European if you look at it right now, and obviously the way you know, I don't think Europe's Ryder Cup hopes look very good. And obviously it's been a long time since the US is won Ryder Cup in Europe, you can say that, but like the strength of the team is not what it used to be. You know, the golden age of European golf I don't think is necessarily right now. You know, they have some good high end talent, but I think they're running into
the same issue that the internationals. The other thing is just the rise of the of the talent of American golf is at an unfor never before seen depth of talent. Right this is less so about Europe getting weaker and more so about how good American golf has gotten. So with that, I would say that's the number one. Number two. This is this is the social media darling is let the women, let the women play, have it be a co ed event international men and women against American men
and women. Obviously, I think from from number one, creates like probably the most marketable event on the golf calendar. I think it's it's just like a no brainer, slammed unk marketable golf event. It would be exciting, people would be super into it. It would be a home run from the PR department. Now, the issue and everybody this is like, everybody flows this out there. Why aren't they
doing this? The best international women players are the best players in women's golf, or international players the best players in men's golf a American players. When you put the two teams together, all of a sudden, they look very equal because you've got kind of, you know, lesser talent on the American women's side, you've got greater talent on the international women's side, and you kind of you blend those teams together, they look really formidable, like they kind
of are mirror opposites of each other. Now, the issue, why wouldn't they do this? That would require the PGA Tour to share some of that money, which is why they started the event in the first place. And it always comes back to this money thing with the tour, and they do not want to share money. It's why
a lot of great ideas haven't happened. Is it the tour to collaborate now, maybe they'd be more open to doing this with Live around, you know, like if I were running Live, I might look into trying to do this event on my own because I've got their ramp Go series already. Like there's there's all kinds of natural fits. But for the tour, this is a This is a no brainer in terms of competition, is going to be enhanced. I think the general interest for the event is enhanced.
The global interest. I think that just imagine South Korea, right, how how excited the South Korean market would be about their exceptional women golfers being involved in this event exactly.
And and then you've got like the corporate interests. I think there'll be a ton of corporate partner you know, they already have great corporate partners for this. But like any losses that you're sharing with the LPGA Tour in terms of giving them money, probably is going to be offset by corporate sponsors that want in and want to support this event, But that would require them conceding some money. Like the fear of losing out of some of this
money would be an issue. So that's option two. Option three, which is kind of you know, if you if you don't do that. This is my other favorite one is make it an Olympics style, what the Olympics should be.
You know, I think this event would be really great if they just said, Hey, what we're going to do is we're going to take the top three ranked players from every country that's got three players in the top one thousand in the world rankings, and these these teams are going to compete in two days of stroke play where the top eight teams qualify for the match play component and its team match play with three players. Anything could happen in this format.
You know.
It would just be about getting into that round of eight or round of sixteen, whatever you think. And people will be like, oh, there aren't there aren't enough teams. There aren't enough teams. I think you could you could field twenty five to thirty teams off of that criteria
at a minimum, and obviously you'd have your powerhouses. You have USA, England, Ireland, South Korea, Australia, South Africa would be you know, Spain would be a good team Italy would have a good team, like you'd have those traditional powers. But like, isn't crazy to think that Austria with Stepstraca, burn vs. Rigger and Mattia Schwab could pull an upset and get into the finals or something. It's not crazy.
Stepstraca almost won the FedEx Cup. You know. It would be a tournament that would create like a March Madness type atmosphere because on a given day, in a single
elimination knockout, USA isn't necessarily going to win. The one or two of those players could have a bad day, shoot seventy two, and they could get upset by a country like Chile or Belgium or you know, like Mexico and all of a sudden, Then I think what what it would do is it would involve the entire tour, a which I think is a big problem with the
President's Cup, as I said in the first part. But b it would also involve the entire world, which I think is what the goal of the event is if you tried to get past the money, is that this is a global event. You know, my favorite term grow the game. Let me tell you what would grow the game is if if Chile is watching Joaquin Neeman and Meto Pereira and I don't have who the next highest ranked Chile employee. It might be Hugo Leon. So those
guys upset America. I mean, you're talking about like a type of Americal on ice situation, right, And it's not inconceivable that Meto Pereira and Joaquin Neeman go out and beat Justin Thomas and Scotti Scheffler on a given day. Right, So this is this would genuinely, I think, be a great tournament and give it a whole different identity, completely unique to the Ryder.
Cup, to the President's Cup, to the Ryder Cup.
It would be way different.
Oh oh oh in contrast to the Ryder Cup.
Yeah, yeah, you can still call it the President's Cup. You could keep all the mouney. If you're the tour, you don't have to cut anybody in, and you create the event that the Olympics should have been.
Yeah, this is definitely what the Olympics should have been. By the way, and I'm not sure why it is and it doesn't make any sense, but an idea that's kind of based on that idea that you just laid out would be the Continent's Cup, and yeah, you'd have to rename the tournament, and maybe that wouldn't be the greatest thing in the world for the PGA Tour because it likes having those presidents, you know, or the prime ministers or wherever they are kind of be involved in
the tournament in some capacity. But I don't think that the President's Cup relies on that anymore. You could turn it into the Continent's Cup and have teams from North America, South America, Australia, Europe, Asia and Africa, right, and Antarctica if they want to, If they want to field team out of the scientists down there.
It would be great if that team played every year just shot like ye shot a hundred. Poor guys out there shooting hundreds.
It would be It would be like the Olympics, where where, you know, like the swimmers from the countries that don't have super strong swim programs or are like jumping in the pool and barely making it at one hundred meters.
But in any case, I like this idea of a Continence Cup because you know, it kind of levels the playing field a little bit, Like, yeah, the North American team would be really really strong, but if you had like a four or five person team, then Europe would have a super strong team, Asia would have a super strong team South America. I mean, go down the list. You would have a real competition there and you would have like a limited number of teams. I think that would be.
That when do you have so when you condense the number of players on the team, you're going to have more variability. And that's where the you U dominates his depth. When you have a twelve person team, nobody can compete with the US with twelve people right now.
Yeah, the US is eight through twelve players right now are just gonna absolutely wipe the floor with with most other with with most with a Team Europe and with Team International right now.
But when you limit it to three or if you're doing continence, you could do five, like, that's where you get variability and it becomes a real competition. The other thing I think that it does is this there's this weird thing with the President's Cup where it's like, you know, it's not the Ryder Cup and it's kind of the same team with America, and I think there's some fatigue there is that this is like the Ryder Cup Select team like this is like the Kreme de la crem.
Right, differentiating this event more from the Ryder Cup and trying to lean into a new identity for it. I think is a great idea, you know, to me, out of the ideas that you laid out, involving women in the event would be the obvious one that I would be most enthusiastic about. But as you said, the reason this wouldn't happen right now is that the PGA Tour would not want to share the spoils with the LPGA Tour. Is that basically what it comes down to.
I believe that's what it comes down to.
Which sucks because the LPGA Tour is supposedly a strategic ally of the PGA Tour.
And think about what it would do. This is an all boats rise situation, right, and I think it would create a more compelling event for the PGA Tour. You would have a better event without a doubt, absolutely, and b you'd greatly increase the popularity of the women's game tenfold.
You know.
I think one of the things that having been to women's tournaments and you know men's tournaments, is like the thing that jumps out to me immediately when I'm when I'm at a women's event, is just how much more friendly and how much more personal the players are. And I think one of the things that would happen when they're on the stage together is that the women's personalities and characters would really come to the forefront, and I
think it would they would retain fans and viewers. And the more popular all of golf is, the better it is for the PGA Tour, whether or not they see it initially, but like the more popular women's golf is, the better it is for men's golf.
And from the PGA tourist perspective, there are a couple of markets right now where the PGA Tour doesn't have nearly as big of a presence as it could have, And I'm thinking of South Korea and Japan, and guess where women's golf is really popular right now, South Korea and Japan. You would think that that would be kind of a motivational factor for the PGA Tour. But I mean, I don't know how the finances would break down, but you would hope that something like this would be capable
of happening, because it would be great. I'm just thinking of you know how fun, Like the mixed pairs would be, right, men, men and women pairs alternate shot, That would be so fun.
Yeah, I mean it would be even interesting down to like what what type of ball are they playing and why? You know, like there'd be all kinds of cool stuff like who's teeing off evens and odds? Like there's all kinds of strategy there, like what if one team goes even to one team goes odds. Just I mean that that format, you'd get the juxtaposition of styles, which I think is like the thing that's that makes golf really interesting. You know, on each tour it's always fascinating when a
shorter hitter is playing with a longer hitter. It would be even more fascinating with men and women intermix playing against each other on teams, Like you would just see such different styles and and you know, there'd just be so much that you could build up going into these matches, and there'd be so much for the broadcast to chew on during the match, and it's just be so different than anything you have, right, And I think that's the big thing at the at the core of what plays
the President's Cup is it's just not different, and this is an option for it to be way drastically different. The other the Continent Cup different, The idea of being what the Olympics should be would be way different. You know, all these offer them a opportunity to create something unique, and excitement comes when something's unique.
All right, I think that's a good place to wrap up.
Oh one other thing, God had one other idea. Given the tour's success with TPC Sawgrass and the players, how have they not built a President's Cup course like we see you know, whether or not you believe in matchplay courses and the idea of matchplay courses, you know, they're kind of like a little bit of a rage and golf course design, Like, why not build a stadium matchplay course? Even TPC Sagress would be a fascinating golf course to
watch match play on. It would they would? I think people would play a lot differently than we see him play in the players.
Yeah. Yeah. The trick would be finding an international course that could host every kind of international home game. But also, you know, keep in mind the first two President's Cups and like four out of the first maybe six or seven President's Cups were held at one course Robert tren Jones Golf Club, which I think was chosen partly because it's close enough to Washington, d C. So that the presidents could make it out there and kind of be
an honorary part of the festivities. But you know, there is precedent for the President's Cup kind of being held two years in a row one course. Now I don't know if it was that good for it to be held at Robert tren Jones Golf Club two years in a row, But if there were some kind of consistent venue for these events, whether it's in America or abroad, I think that would be really good. Now, the issue, Andy is who do you think the PGA Tour at
this point would get to build this course? It would It wouldn't be Pete Dye, right, I mean, obviously Pete Dye has passed away, but it wouldn't be What I'm.
Saying is that they got their own house deciety exactly.
They would be like Steve Wentslough and in that crew. Looking at some of the work that they've done on the twelfth hole at TPC Sawgrass in the past few years, I'm not totally confident that they would execute this course that well, so that that might be an issue. If Pete Dye were still with us, and if the PGA Tour still were still relying on him for design services, or if there were somebody of similar talent and stature that the PGA Tour had a good relationship with, then
this idea would be a bit more compelling. But I'm just not sure what PGA Tour architecture would produce for this at this point in the in the PGA Tour's existence. So that would be cool. In practice, you know, we might get like Liberty National type situation and that wouldn't be that fun.
I think Medina Post renovation could be exciting.
That would be amazing, but it's not owned by the PGA Tour, so they wouldn't want to go there every single year. Would Medina want to hold it every every other year?
I don't know. Yeah, I don't, I don't maybe.
Probably, I mean it will be super super cool. I mean it's.
Uh, well, that's the other thing about if they did the Olympic style one, there's no reason they couldn't do it every year if they did, If they did the men's and women's one, I could see him doing it every year. Like you know, there are ways they could make more money from it. In the way you make more money from it is creating something that has a clearly different identity than the Ryder Cup. Then you can do it more frequently. Then you're not competing with the Ryder Cup.
Right well, And this logic that you're talking about creating a home for an event, something that is a is a big swing and it could pay off big time, or it could be a disaster. This was the exact kind of move that Dean Beeman made in the late seventies with TPC Sawgrass in the Players Championship. This is what the PGA Tour did then. But I don't think the PGA Tour is in a place any longer where it's taking these big swings and taking these big chances.
Seems like the Rory's taking a big swing for r He's.
Taking a big swing. Four well, but just consider how the last year has gone with the PGA Tour that the organization has had every reason to take a big swing. If this was if there were any set of circumstances that would require some kind of huge risk to be taken by the PGA Tour, this would be it. But the PGA Tour really didn't do anything. Rory McElroy and Tiger Woods did something, and so are they going to
reinvent the President's Cup? I don't think so. In the end, I think you probably agree with me about that.
Yeah, it'll just continue you on the mediocrity path that has been on since its start.
It'll kind of linger. But at least we'll get team match play. As I've said several times, I always look forward to team match play, So at least we will get a taste of that this week, and I hope it is a close match. It would be a real bummer if it were hugely lopsided and we got to Sunday singles and there was just no chance that would be. That would be a big blow and it would start a discussion about live and about the future of the event.
If the US somehow somehow loses, then it'll just be you know, a year of this is a dire situation for the Ryder Cup. What went wrong at quil Hollow could haunt the Ryder Cup for decades.
I swear to God, the US losing this President's Cup would be the best possible scenario. I really, really do hope the US loses. And that's not because I'm unpatriotic or something. I think it would just it would be by far the most interesting situation, all right. I think I think we've Unless there's anything else you wanted to get.
Into, I got nothing else.
We've covered a lot of territory, all right. So I hope everybody enjoys the President's Cup this this coming week. We'll see how it goes. Andy, thank you so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon. This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was edited by Meg Atkins. Thank you, Meg. So one quick shout out to the Frida Egg pro shop. We would recommend that you go to pro shop dot Thefrida Egg dot com and check out our new fall line of merchandise. We've got all
sorts of stuff up there. We've got vests, we've got long sleeve t shirts, we've got performance sweatshirts, we've got new winter hats, drinkwaar tumblers, hoodies, quarter zips, and lots lots more So. If any of that sounds interesting, then go to pro shop dot the Frida Egg dot com and check out all of our new stuff. All right. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again next week.