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 dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, frid Egg, brigg Frida Egg, bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the the.
Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, and today we are talking about designated events on the PGA Tour, formerly known as elevated events. Frankly, elevated makes more sense in terms of nomenclature, but we're talking about the new series events of events on the PGA Tour that you know, it's kind of concentrating the schedule around certain big tournaments that all the top players are going to be at.
It's a major chain on tour that's really going to come into focus next season, but we're kind of rolling into it this season. And the occasion for this, of course, is that the Waste Management Phoenix opened. The first full field designated event of twenty twenty three is happening right now this week. Here to talk about all of the interesting issues around this with me is Andy Johnson. Andy, How's it going.
It's going great, Garrett. I'm super excited about this. You know, as this came to fruition, I think there are some qualms about how it was rolled out this year, and you know, it goes back to kind of the response to live that the tour had last year, right, But I think the exciting thing about it is the is what's happening where we know when the best players are all going to be together, and then the future of it,
what it looks like next year. Obviously it sounds like it's a pretty clean slate and next year is going to look a lot different than this year's elevated events look.
So this year's elevated events, just to list them off for you, are the Century Tournament of Champions, which happened obviously early January at Kapalua. It didn't really feel like a full elevated event because it was kind of its normal self, right. It was the winners and some more you know, players from the past season. Rory McElroy wasn't there. The Tournament of Mostly Champions. It's the identity of that event is a little bit up in the air right now.
But it wasn't full field, right, It was just Kapalalua. The Phoenix Open this year is going to be a little different. That's the first kind of real designated event. Then we have another one next week at the Genesis Invitational Riviera, then another one two weeks after that, the Arnold Palmer Invitational bay Hill. Players and the Majors are
of course designated events. But the other ones that are not the players or the Majors would be the Dell Technology's Match Play Rip after this year, by the way way, the RBC Heritage at Harbortown, the Wells Fargo Championship, the Memorial Tournament, Jack's Tournament, the Travelers Championship, TPC River Highlands. One of my favorite kind of little PGA Tour events that the little tournament that could. That's going to be a designated.
Event this year, just a little tournament that could. Given Bubba's comments about potential appearance fees, the table appearance fees, don't I don't know if we can we can label the Travelers as that. It seems like the crooked PGA Tour events.
Is big insurance open. Uh yeah, well, I I like the Travelers Championship. I lived in Connecticut for a few years and went to a couple way back in the day. I think that's an outstanding venue. But yeah, it's no mystery why it would occasionally just get Roy McElroy, you know, showing up at the at the Travelers. There was maybe a little bit of money involved. Then the other designated events that I haven't mentioned yet are the FedEx Cup playoff events at the end of the season in August,
so that's the Desert schedule. Majors too, Yeah, I mentioned that earlier. The Majors and the players those are yeah, I mean, those are pre designated, like the PGA Tour didn't have to give it give it stamp of approval to those events in order for them to feel really elevated. But the rest of these events that I mentioned, these kind of normal PGA Tour events, some of which were bigger before and some of which didn't have that big status now have bigger purses, And that's basically what it
is this year. Bigger purses and a guarantee that the top players are going to show up to them.
Yeah, I mean, I think, as you alluded to, the Kapalua event was not really like it's not what indicative of what a designated event is going to be and I think this week with the Waste Management, we're going
to get our first look. It's it's pretty incredible place to have it roll out, obviously with the super Bowl in town this week, but I think there's a lot of questions about about what, you know, the future of these are going to look like and how different it will be from this week's elevated event at Waste Management that had a full field, had Monday qualifiers, had sponsor exemptions, and had you know, effectively a you know, top one twenty five plus extras. Feel so like, is that going
to be the criteria going forward? And then you know, the most important, you know, one of the I don't think the most important question, but one big, really big question I have, what is Kapalua next year? Are they effectively like being held hostage to be a designated event because and you know, does it.
Because of the concept of the tournament? Right, because because they have to have the winners there for it to be the tournament that it.
Is exactly in the expansion of it's the top thirty now in the FedEx Cup is a is a going forward rule, right, So anybody that makes it to East Lake is there so this If it's not, it's another event that is kind of required, you know, by by the PGA Tour, but not maybe not required. If it's not required, how many guys are showing up if they have to play all these other events? Like I think, if it's not required, you run the risk of any European that it has Ryder Cup fantasies is not going
to show up. You know, they will go to Dubai instead, you know, So, like do you want to lose John Ram who's obviously fallen in love with the event, who's shown up played extremely well the last two years at this event, like you know, and obviously so that that is a big conversation. Is that event going to expand out? Is it going to be bigger? Are these elevated events going to have different fuel sizes or are they going to be standardized?
Yeah, I mean those are all really legitimate questions about the designated events, as you've been indicating. You know, it gets so complicated once you start thinking about actually executing this idea and all that. All the stakeholders who are involved, the players, the sponsors, you know, they're all going to have their own opinions about what this should look like, their own feelings about whether the old way was better than this new way, and so we'll get into all
of that. But I think that you and I might agree that the Waste Management Phoenix Open is a really good event to designate, Like this feels like a one that should be designated maybe every year. Maybe it doesn't even need it every year, but this is a fantastic event. Has turned into an event that really kind of penetrates the general public consciousness in a way that most PGA Tour events don't. And a lot of that has to do with the crowds there and all the content that
you get out of that the sixteenth hole scene. But also I think that this is a legit PGA Tour golf course. TPC Scottsdale is a well designed course. It's not you know, it's not Riviera. It's it's not maybe it's not Kapalua, you know. The architecture is esthetically just fine, But strategically, I feel like this is a pretty good golf course, especially on the back nine. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, I think the front nine is quite forgetable, and I think but the back nine really culminates and the close of it is what you kind of want. And obviously, I think something that has to be talked about is the eighteenth hole. What it was ten years ago, even compared to what it is today. You know, it was
a very difficult closing hole. And what technico you know, just the advancement of having one hundred guys on tour that hit the ball over three hundred yards versus you know, ten years ago there was maybe fifteen like that has really changed the dynamic of the clothes. But fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, we see this at a variety of courses. I you know, honestly, I think that the clothes at at PGA West is really good. I like, I have always been fascinated with
the clothes at PGA West and it's simple. Yeah, So that that is the same recipe in a way PGA West, TPC Sawgrass has a similar recipe with a late, scorable par five, a shortish, shortish par three, and then a you know, a tough part four. Now TPC Scottsdale throws in a drivable par four into that mix, so you have you know, you know, what was once eighteen, you know, is not what it was because of just distance. Sheer
like how far these guys are hitting it. But it once was a tough part four, But the recipe of two three really three really scorable holes coming down the stretch makes just theater. And I think sixteen obviously doesn't have the the trouble that PGA West or Scott or Sagress has around it, but it has the atmosphere.
Yeah, it has a stadium. It doesn't need to be architecturally interesting. I kind of wish it were. But at the same time, because it's such a simple hole, it kind of allows the stadium atmosphere to be the star there. But fortunately the holes around it, fifteen seventeen I think are really well designed tournament golf holes. On fifteen, you have players laying up on that hole a little, you know, a little less than half of the time. Right it's
an island green par five. Not everybody's going for that, especially if they don't drive it well. And so you know, that's a fun hole to kind of watch and see how the players approach it strategically. And then of course seventeen, the driveable par four. You know, it's not just unique because it's drivable. It's not just exciting for that reason.
I think the reason that it's that it's fun to watch is that it combines a really wide way and a huge green with a lot of trouble right water all around, and so there's this huge range of outcomes. You know, you can be in a lot of different places on that hole because it's wide, because there's a lot of short grass, because the green is huge, you
can be in a lot of different places. You can have a tricky chip from short grass, you can have a huge long putt, or you can be in the water off the tee, And just that range of potential outcomes is really what I'm looking for in a short part.
For Yeah, I agree, especially when they get the pin. Everybody thinks, oh, the pins over on the left side
by the water are super cool. When the pins are over right on the right side of the green and they and because that right side of the green, what it does is it really penalizes the bailout, and that I think is a is a general little bit of misconception is the cool pins, like if somebody's setting up the course that oh, we got to push it up against the water, that'll be really neat, But really, what
when the pin's over on the right, it eliminates. It doesn't eliminate, but it it dissuades the bailout, which it you know, when the pins on the left, that bailout's very friendly because you have a lot of green to work with. But when the pin's either back or on the right side, that becomes a much more difficult shot. And you know, your percentages of the chance of making
birdie from the bailout position gets much much smaller. And I think we've seen some really cool like one of the things that happens on that hole in particular is we see the ball on the ground a lot. You know, if you think about last year, Sahithagala is in, I think it was tied for the lead and he hit what looked like a great shot and it just got
a bad bounce, it rolled down into the water. Ricky Fowler a few years ago hit it right through the green over the back what looked like a great shot and it got a hard bounce, you know, and everybody's, oh, did he take too much club. It's like, well, if he doesn't get that chasing bounce, if he give us a soft bounce that you know, we're talking about an iconic shot in his career. So I think that is
one of the magical things about seventeen. And you know, I think it goes a little bit under the radar. You know, it's become it's risen in popularity. But one of the great things is is the penalty for bailout with those right pins in the backpin, but also the magic of the ball on the ground and that little bunker is placed perfectly where you know, you need to just barely carry that bunker in order run it up on the green, and you know, if you carry it
too far you run the risk of running through. And thank god the PGA Tour hasn't put a grand stand behind the green yet, you.
Know, because.
That would really ruin the brilliant One other thing I wanted to talk about with the course, and what I like about the golf course as a whole, is that it rewards distance a great in great degree. It is very advantageous to be long, but it's also almost equally, if not more, advantageous, to be accurate. You know, you look at the variety of winners of this at this place. You have Kevin Staler, not a long guy. You know, you have Phil pretty you know, long hitter, but you
know can be crooked but the desert. But then you have Hideki twice. You have Web Simpson who won and lost in a playoff to Hideki, who's a very short, straight hitter. Hideki, I would say when he's playing well is a is a longer player, but very precise. Brooks Kepka's won it twice. Brooks Keopka. One of the things that's gone wrong with brooks Kepka in this kind of demise is he isn't as accurate as he was off
the tee. He was kind of reached this unicorn status of a player because of the distance combined with the relative accuracy of that distance. You know, it's always important to when you're talking about like people will look at oh, this guy hits it really far and he's not straight based off his accuracy percentage, But that accuracy percentage needs to be considered with the distance that they're hitting it right,
So it's not in apples. A two to eighty hitter who's sixty percent in the fairway is not in apples to apples as a three hundred hitter who's sixty percent in the fairway, that three hundred hitter who's who's sixty percent is far far more accurate, because the further you hit it, the less accurate you become.
And this was the real secret of Beef Bryson. Right Bryson for what the height of his BFY era, Yeah, I'm talking about not now, but at the you know, at his US Open winning height, he was combining distance with accuracy in basically an unprecedented combination, except if you're talking about maybe brooks Kepka in twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen at brooks Kepka's height, and so that that is an underrated thing.
And that's the thing that makes DJ and Rory such impressive drivers over the totality of their career. You know, they hit it extraordinarily long distances, but they're very, very accurate for their length. That's what makes these unicorns of driving the golf ball. But the cool thing about this venue is you get such a wide range of winners because that accuracy is really important. So a shorter hitter like we saw chees Reeve in a long playoff with
Gary Woodland, you get that contrast of playing style. Obviously Woodland very long rev short Web Simpson in a playoff with Tony Fenw you get that long short right, it's uh and that and that, I think is what makes this venue extra, you know cool like on the periphery. It doesn't have like that glitzy stuff the like the Bunkers,
the aesthetic. The Front nine is about as forgettable as you can get on the PGA Tour, but it does it provides a wide variety of play, which which I think is you know, the biggest recipe for success on the PGA Tour is venues that don't just emphasize a singular skill and you know, almost pre require a singular skill like a Tory Pines.
And I think part of the reason for that at Waste Management is that you have room to play off the tee, but you have a lot of tricky tea shots where you have to decide, Okay, am I going to hit it three twenty five here? If I'm a PGA too or player, right, that's the reality that they're dealing with. Now, am I going to hit it three fifty or should I throttle back a little bit hit at two eighty. There are options like that on a lot of the holes, and there's usually quite a bit
of risk in going with the long option. There's water or there's desert, right, and so there's there's a real calculation to be done off the tee, and as a result, sometimes big long hitters who don't quite have it under control get punished at the Phoenix Open, whereas accurate hitters kind of are able to position themselves well and they do well.
I think one of the things is that the in Joseph Lamanna, who obviously is on this podcast fairly regularly, he wrote in his newsletter about Tory, is that the the really wide miss at Scottsdale is penalized heavily with the desert.
Absolutely yes, and water in a lot of cases.
The smaller miss, you know, missing the fairway five yards is not heavily penalized, right, So the big miss is what is what really gets you at at Scottsdale, and obviously those that's what big hitters do, right, But there is a huge advantage. There are bunkers that big hitters can carry. So it's if that big hitter has the driver going, they have a huge advantage, which is the way it should be.
M hmm. Absolutely. So, you know, in a lot of ways, the Phoenix Open represents what a designated event should be. Right. There's a good golf course here with real strategic options, and that allows many different types of players to thrive, and so you get interesting competition year after year. You have a rate local culture, you have a committed sponsor, and you just have a unique product. Right, this is what a designated event should look like. This is a
true elevated PGA Tour event. And you know, I think that that's part of what is exciting about the Designated Event series. If we want to get into some of the positives here, what does this new program bring to the PGA Tour. I think it, you know, identifies what those special events are and it confirms that in the eyes of the fans, in the eyes of the tour, in the eyes of the players, so that we really
know this is a week to get excited. This is a week to see the best players face off against each other at a good venue, in a good atmosphere. And that's why I'm so pumped up about this event. I mean, it's not just because the Super Bowls in town that that adds a little something to it. You know, I'm genuinely excited about the Phoenix Open in a way that I haven't been before for this event. Now, I'm usually pretty excited about it, but not to this degree.
And I think that that's one big, big positive for designated events. Would you agree with that?
Yeah? I think that the biggest positive for designated event centers around expectations with the fans. All Right, we know, unless you follow the tour with a very very fine tooth comb, you aren't going to know weekend week out, like who exactly is at the event. With these designated tags, it emphasizes two fans that these are the events that you have to watch these, These are the ones that you can plan for that on hey, on on Thursday, you're making plans for the weekend. You know, hey, I
kind of want to watch this event. Right. It's like when you when your favorite team the schedule comes out, right, you know, if you're a sports fan, if you're a golf fan, when the schedule comes out, you can circle, hey, these are the events that I want to plan my weekends around if I'm interested in watching live golf on TV.
And I think that's really important versus the old kind of like you knew certain events were big, but like you know, the regular the run of the mill PGA Tour event not really knowing who's going to be there when you turn the TV on. So I think the biggest thing is that it gives the tour a it. It gives fans a real expectation. They understand when they turn on the TV that all the big players are
going to be there. And for the most part, the only times that that was the case in the last twenty five years or whatever it may be, when really, since you know, the tour expanded added events and players started to contract their schedule, which started with Tiger, it created this wide golf of there are way more events
than players are playing way less. So since that occurrence, you know, when guys used to play thirty when big players used to play thirty events a year and there were thirty five forty events, you knew big guys were in every field. But now it's like, big guys play twenty events, twenty five events and there's forty five events. You know, that gap got bigger. So that's the biggest thing is that as fans, you know what to expect with designated events, the best players all at the same spot.
And that's really big because it creates you know, and effectively it creates, like you know, for the tour twelve other players Championships, which is their most competitive event. And I would argue, like the thing we talked about this a little bit of the waste management, like it's up in the air whether like who's going to be designated next year and it's on the sponsor to pay up?
Right, Yes, right, because the PGA Tour just sort of chose chose the events this year said you're designated. But next year it's going to be different in the sense that sponsors will be asked to essentially it'll go to the highest bidder.
Yes, So you know these these sponsors are going to have to pay up for designated events, and you know, waste Management didn't have to this year. The big question is who's going to pay up for those events? You know what what events are going to I think it's really important that waste Management is one of those events because it falls on Super Bowl Sunday. You have a captive audience of people that are watching TV that day, that have Sunday set aside as a day that I'm
going to be watching sports. And I think the way that this event has infiltrated the greater sports world. It's really important that this one is a elevated event. And the question is is the sponsor going to want to pay for that? And that's you know, that's a tricky thing. And I think one of the compelling things about these designated events going forward is what are they going to be going forward? How people are going to qualify and
and so forth. But you know, it's important these designated events, as we've seen with like the diminishment of other events, that the schedule cadence works. You know, like what if four sponsors all want to pay up in their four events in a row, you know, leading into a big tournament, you know what happens there? You know, So this is it's a super fascinating aspect and I think you know, there's they obviously are trying to figure out how to
flip the twenty million dollar per spill. And that's that's why they need these sponsors to pay up, because in an ideal world, you would almost hand pick these events and structure your schedule around it so that you don't you can ensure good fields across the board.
Well you need to for the sake of the players partly, right, because if you have four designated events in a row, and the players need to go the top players need to go to all of them, Then what are you gonna do? You know that that creates a really tricky situation, And it's an example of all the different constituencies that the PGA Tour needs to serve here, the sponsors, the tournament organizers, the players. You know, they are really caught
between here. I mean the fans are also part of this, but will usually last not a good fan situation.
If you have four four of these really big events, it starts to wear thin. Yeah, they become less important the more you have of them. The scarcity of these is actually super valuable to the tour.
Yes, And I would say also, and this might be just sort of a niche golf media take and call me out if that is the case, but personally designated events. Having designated events helps me enjoy the lesser events the non designated more. It helps me receive those in the way that I think they should be received, which is, I shouldn't expect this to be a big time event.
I should feel that there's something lacking. If there is a quote unquote weak field here, I should understand it as an event that's an opportunity for players to get to the next level, And I'm watching this event in order to kind of scalp those players in order to see who's next, who's going to be next on the designated stage, who are going to be the players who are really up and coming, who are some of the
veterans who are having a revival. Those are the story lines that I'm going to start to attend to with the non designated events in a different way, because I know what they are. I know that they're not supposed to be big events, and I'm not disappointed if they don't turn out to feel like big events. I can just sort of understand them in that way. Do you think that's a take that the normal fan would have or is that just me as somebody who watches golf every week covers golf is saying.
I think one of the things that the tour had suffered from really the last thirty years is an identity crisis with the events. So, you know, what's what every you know, the idea was that every event is the same. That's what the goal of the tour was was the homogenize the events. Every sponsor pays the same amount of money. You're getting the great greatest players in the world because
we're the greatest tour in the world. But the reality was they weren't, and it created I think where it clarifies it and makes it a little bit easier is the way fans experienced the golf is through the broadcast. And if you feel that way, I guarantee the broadcasters feel that way. Tommy Roy feels that way, Seller Shy feels that way, and they are able to craft their
broadcasts around these very concrete identities. It creates identities with events on tour, and I think that's super important, and I think that creates a more coherent storytelling throughout the year. I think one of the fascinating things, honestly with smaller events is when you have fields that are weak, like the American Express this year, right, the ability for John Rahm to go out and win that is a bonafide great player, Like great players go to small events when
they're expected to win and win. You know, that is a quality that we see with great players. And I think that along with giving younger players the opportunity to take down great players, because there are almost always going to be because of the way the sponsorships work. And one of the things that the tour is pushed with sponsorships. If you sponsor an event, you need to spend a
considerable amount sponsoring a players also. So that's one of the things that the tour is doing in response to live, to attempt to leverage, you know, to make up that wage gap. Really, like when you talk about the money gap that lives offering, one of them is, hey, we're gonna lean on these sponsors of tour events who also sponsor players. So when a tour event sponsor, when of a sponsor sponsors a tour event, usually what that also yields is those players they're sponsoring show up. You saw
it last week with Pebble Jordan Spiece playing. Another sponsor of that event in Cisco. Victor Hovlin is a Cisco player, you know, Keith Mitchell is a Cisco player, Brendan Todd is a Cisco player. They were all on the leader board, right. Maverick McNeely is a Cisco and AT and T player. He was at the event. So you start to see, like with that caveat and the way the tour is
pushing these sponsors to do to spend with players. That is going to ensure that some of these smaller events have top flight players because of the players that they sponsor.
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it from here. You know, one thought I had when you were talking, you know, about the relationships between different kinds of events, right between the non designated and designated events, is that having some of this clarity is going to help things like a documentary about a PGA tour season, right, Because I've been thinking about this recently with with Full
Swing coming out and we have it. We have a whole separate podcast feed Full Swing Thoughts with you Brendan and Joseph Lamania talking about each episode of the series that's going to be coming out next week. When the Netflix documentary.
Is Describe Double ad Here Go Subscribe, I think, you know, to be honest, like, I think the episodes, having recorded them would be compelling whether or not you watch the show they are. You know, each of these episodes really focuses on players, and these podcasts are going to be really deep dive discussions on those on those subjects perfect.
So yeah, it's going to be really fun to talk about the Netflix series as it is. But I think that the documentary makers would have had a lot easier of a time. First of all, if liv hadn't hadn't happened this past season, because that that was probably a
tricky thing for them to deal with. But also if the PGA Tour season itself just had a little bit more structure, because one of the things that Drive to Survive really benefited from is the extreme structure of the F one season, where every driver shows up every week, every team is always there, everybody cares about the season long championship, In fact, cares so much about the season long championship that they care about whether they get fourth
or fifth, not just first, right, and that structure gives
the documentary series something to hang on to. Right, Those are the dramatic stakes of the season, and right now, the PGA Tour season doesn't really have coherent dramatic stakes that you can follow from beginning to end, partly because nobody cares about the FedEx Cup, but also partly because the schedule doesn't differentiate between events, doesn't clarify which events are the big ones, and as a result, events very rarely have all the best players at them, So you
don't have players going head to head. You don't have Rory and Ram going ahead to head. I mean, Rory and Ram have not appeared in the same event yet this year, but they're going to in Scottsdale. And that's really helpful for understanding the PGA Tour season as a story. Now, that's not to say that Full Swing won't be really good, but it focuses on players, right, Each episode focuses on
a player. It's not a documentary really about the PGA Tour season as a season in the way that the Drive to Survive episodes are those episodes are about that season of F one And maybe this new structure for the PGA Tour season will allow people like us, people like Netflix, you know, or just normal fans to understand the PGA Tour season in terms of storytelling. And I think that that's going to be really helpful.
Yeah, And I think that's why it's so fascinating to see how this shakes out in twenty twenty four. I think that when you think about if you do the backwards math here, there's seventeen of these designated events there are you know, from what the players have really harped on, they want the season to be done in August when the fed Ex Cup is done. That's what they want,
and that's I think believe the plan is. So you've got eight months of golf and you've got seventeen designated events, three of which are the FedEx Cup playoffs, which will be August. So you're down to fourteen events in seven months. So really it shakes out you need to have two of these a month, you really want. What they need to avoid is this run that they have coming up right here where there's four events in five weeks, four
elevated events in five weeks. That doesn't. What it does is it kills the other events around it, and it creates a situation where players have to play a great deal of golf that might not be on their terms. So with that in mind, when you start to lay out the schedule, that's how you need to think, right
And obviously this is the clash. Here is the sponsorship and who's paying up, and this is not They are not going about this in a process that would be ideal, you know, ideally they would just create the event and then let the schedule fall from there, you know, and that's not going to be the case. So thinking about that through, like, what's vitally important for the PGA Tour is to you know, is to structure this properly so
that the players are really happy. Because some players, like I think this is one of the big drawbacks and something they can hit on with live. Some players like to play before majors. Other players don't. There should never be an elevated event the week before, you know, and there shouldn't be a run of elevated events leading into the week before because every you know, every major, the players should get who really like the we're talking about the top players they should get to want to prepare
the way they want to for these big tournaments. That's what matters the most to them. Like, you know, this is obviously the long term battle with Live. Like it's not over. It is going to be a long term battle unless something monumental happens with Live that they just fall apart completely. I wouldn't bet on that. They've already invested a lot of money. I don't see them quitting
anytime soon. So if you're talking about your long term battle with Live, this is such a very important aspect of it is how these elevated events work, How the schedule, you know, really caters to the way a player wants to prepare for these major championships, because you know, you hear like you've heard. I think one of the things I've listened to a couple of the recent nollying up
podcasts they've had John Rahm Will's l Tourus. The thing I've been fascinating about hearing these players talk about, you know things, Wills l Tourus obviously a PGA tour loyalist. He talked about, I'm not going to to do anything that takes away my opportunity to play in major championships. Right, that is a big carrot that the PGA Tour has managed to hold on to who knows how long. But you also should with that in mind, not only playing, but preparing exactly the way I want to prepare for
a major championship. And that's where Live has some really wacky things like one one major they're playing the week before another major they aren't playing the week before. Where if I'm you know, Phil is obviously one of their big players who's had you know, he is historically in his career like to play the week before. So all of a sudden, he's in his fifties, he's got only a few major championship. I'm not counting him out after that PGA when you know it's as crazy as that was.
He's not like a real threat, but you know he went out one one in the last two years, and so you have to But if I'm Phil and I only have a few bullets left in majors, like what if I can't prepare exactly the way I want to prepare? Like and this goes for other players, right, you know it is it is vitally important to create a schedule that's player friendly, that makes sense, and that's the hard thing for the tour is going to be doing that where you know it's up to the sponsor to pay up for this.
So does that mean that they really shouldn't rotate designated events because that would just create a new kind of chaos every season, right? I mean, how can that be avoided if they're really planning to rotate designated events because it's just going to change every year.
You can rotate a dates, right, so you can move event dates around if you want to rotate. So maybe it's the set date is this is an elevated week and an event slides in and out. I think that one of the things that they it's ironic, right, Like with the LPGA, they have done a horrible job with setting up convenient travel for their players. That matters because if you're a bottom tier LPGA player, you're not making enough money in order to have this crazy travel schedule.
It will with the PGA Tour that shouldn't be a concern and that might end up Like a good example is this Pebble Beach event. Pebble Beach is in its current construct where it is in the schedule is because of the history of the West Coast Swing, you can drive. Like we had a podcasts with Zach Blair a couple of weeks ago. He talked about how he's driving the entire West Coast Swing. That's super convenient, super cool, But like that's not something that you have to keep in mind.
Like it's important probably for caddies of lower tier players, but maybe you could make a tweak that makes life a little bit easier for caddies, you know, maybe there's a travel stipend or something. But the idea like the AT and T Pebble Beach pro Am, to me, feels like an event that's a that's a sponsor that sponsors two events. You've got the super to this. You know, we talk about what makes waste management. It's it's kind of like transcended just the golf crowd and gotten into
the greater sports crowd thanks to its atmosphere. At State Pebble Beach Pro Am is one of those events that has the ability to transcend the golf crowd. So to me, that makes sense for an elevated event. Now, like what goes against it is the pro am aspect of it. But it's Pebble freaking Beach, Like you want to see this is one of the best courses in the world.
You want to see the best players in the world playing at Pebble Beach year in, year out, and it's an opportunity to draw in a bigger bucket of fans. So does that event make sense on the West Coast swing in this current date? The weather's not great. It's right around Riviera, it's right around Waste Management, it's close to Century, it's close to Torry Pines. These are all events that I feel like could have a pretty good claim at a designated tag. So maybe we look at
it and say, hey, let's move Pebble back. What does Pebble look like in June or July or maybe even later in the year. You know what is has a playoff as a playoff event, how about Pebble Beach is a playoff event? Now that would run counter with the pro am, which is not something they're gonna budge on. So maybe we look at a March date or an
April date. All you're only getting better and better weather on the Monterey Peninsula as you move away from February, and travel shouldn't be a concern as you're going to see with the Netflix show, all the top guys fly private, like we should not be like traveling.
Designated events specifically, the travel is not a huge part of the equation.
Yes, exactly, so thinking about it that way, right, like what are your strongest events. The other thing that the West Coast events really create a great appeal about is there time that they are telecasted. You know, it is super advantageous to get later in that coverage window because all of a sudden, your demo which is like middle aged people golf, Like, I know they want to be younger,
but the demo is middle aged people. You know, what gets easier and easier the later and later things are on is for people to watch golf on the weekend
because they have less and less child activities. You know, like the majority of golf fans either have children or are like past the age of children, make it easier for them to watch have it on later, you know, West Coast events Like I don't know, I think that Florida portion should maybe go a little bit earlier into this end of the year because in the winter people are more at home, and that West Coast swing should push later so you can take advantage of later telecast times.
Yes, yeah, I mean, you know, there's gonna be some musical chairs with these events, moving them around, finding new places, and we'll probably see some of that in the twenty twenty four season. You know, there was a quote in the Joel Beal article about the Pebble Beach pro Am, which everybody should read and Golf Digest it was excellent that the thing about the twenty twenty three season is
that it gets us to twenty twenty four. So the players, PGA Tour executives, sponsors are all expecting things to change next season, and maybe some of this shifting around of events in the schedule can be a feature of next season, or as you're mentioning, it could potentially be just a reality of the PGA Tour schedule going forward, because you know, if you want to find specific weeks for designated events, but you also want to rotate sponsors in and out
of designation, then you're really going to have to move things around on a year to year basis, which would be enormously complicated, I'm sure, but it would also solve some of the potential problems with the cadence of the PGA Tour schedule that you've outlined here. So I think we've talked about that well enough people have an idea of what the large a scheduling ramifications of designated events
could be. Basically, it's going to introduce some chaos, some uncertainty, and some difficulty into the schedule for PGA Tour executives especially and potentially for players. You have one more point.
One more thing on that is if you listen to no laying up interview with John Rahm, obviously a very influential player, he really talked about the his his him pushing for more international elevated events, so that would also throw just another wrinkle and you know difficult. I mean, this is the top thing about these events. He was talking about how he really wants an elevated event in Spain, right, you know.
Are you going to do that just for John ram? I mean maybe he might be important enough.
And so you're talking about like can you you know, if you think about it, like the balance of Hey, these a lot of our top flight international players probably would like to see three or four events played internationally, and how do you do that within the construct of like when you take out the majors and the players, you're down to twelve and then how do you fit
it into the fields? Right? So that's just another it's going this is I'm not envious of the tour here with the situation, it's it's going to be extraordinarily challenging. And it does, like to my earlier point, like if this is not the ideal construct with the with the sponsors, it adds like a whole new layer of of having of hoops and hurdles to jump through. The ideal situation would honestly be if you just started from scratch brand new events.
Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of sponsors are going to be unhappy, uncomfortable, not only sponsors of non designated events who don't want to pay up, but even sponsors of designated events who maybe feel like they're paying too much or feel like they don't want their event to be designated in style. And that sort of opens up the other question, the other big question I have about designated events, which is format, field size, qualification, criteria,
Monday qualification. What do these events look like? What can these events look like? What should they look like? Should there be cuts? So you know, maybe we just start with the field size question. What do you think would be the ideal field size for a designated event, because it's certainly not going to be one hundred and.
Forty, right, yeah, I think in that like one hundred and twenty as we've seen with the world ranking formula, you know, I think there needs to be a critical amount of players. But what I don't like I do not like the idea of the top one twenty five in the FedEx Cup allowing you a I don't think finishing one twenty in the FedEx Cup should grant you a spot in every elevated event.
It's not a designated style of compress.
If you look at what a resume of a player that's from one hundred to one hundred and twenty five, I don't think they are people that should like. I don't think that should qualify being a admittance into the great events of golf. I think, you know, when you look at when you start to get to about seventy in the FedEx Cup, you start to look at players like season and you say, you know what, they had
a good season. When you get to the top forty, you start to look at it and you think about some guys that had narrow misses, Like you have a guy like Denny McCarthy who narrowly missed making it to Eastlake last year. You look at his year and you're like, you know, he was a good, good PGA Tour player for years before this, and this was a great year
for him. So you start to think, like, I think the right numbers is fifty, but you need to get You probably want to get to about one hundred and twenty one hundred person fee at the minimum, right.
Yeah, I think so. But you know, you've just gone through a logic of why when you start to admit players who are more in that one hundred to one twenty range, you begin to dilute the strength or the not the strength of the field in an owgr sense, but the eliteness of the field. When you begin to let in that many players, you have to start going to players who I don't know. You kind of look at their resumes and you're like, well, should they be
playing in this designated event? Should they have a shot to win this? Because anything can happen on any given week in golf. That's one of the problems with the entertainment product is that it's such a high variance sport that there's no guarantee that it's going to come down
to John Rahm and Roy McElroy in the end. So the more players you have an event in an event, the more chances you have that you get a finish that just doesn't feel like a designated event finish because you have numbers one hundred and seven and one twenty one in the FedEx Cup going head to head down the stretch. I mean, So that's the issue, I think.
And also the issue is that the top top players, the ones who are trying to be who are trying to pacify here that the PGA Tour is trying to keep in the fold, the top players want these fields to be probably as small as possible, right, and so they're pushing for probably like sixty seventy like WGC style. And so how do you you know, is one twenty the compromise or does it need to be lower than that.
I feel like one hundred when I think about it, is the number I like. I like one hundred with a cut to the top sixty. Yeah, you know, I don't think it makes any sense to have people hanging around that are you know, the spread is so amusing when you have the note cut events and you see the highest the highest score to the lowest score. It's always it's an amusing thing. But I don't think that
I think that should go. Now, Like, what if we say, if we're going to do one hundred, what if we have sixty exempt spots for the top six players on the PGA Tour. I think another exemption should go to the Corn Faery Tour Player of the year, so you have sixty one exemptions. From there, you start to build out qualifications that are based on the current year. So I think maybe there are ten spots that go to the top ten in the FedEx Cup. And obviously with all of this, I mean a whole nother pod is
FedEx Cup reform. What should a designated event get versus a non designated event and FedEx Cup points and it should not be very close. Right now, it's fifty points different, which is laughable.
I wonder if that's going to change. I mean, I love that right, like it really does have to change. That's like a big thing. But man, you know, it just seems like that's going to be so hard to change because the motivation to make all these events to fool people, not only sponsors but fans into thinking that all the events are more or less the same kind of significance. The impulse toward that is so strong. But we'll see, we'll see, But I agree that that needs to happen.
So we're at seventy one spots with the top ten of the existing year's FedEx Cup all right from there, like so we have twenty nine more spots. One idea I think is getting informed players into the event. Really obviously you're accomplishing that with the FedEx Cup exemption. But also I think one of the really I think great
aspects of golf. One of the things I really enjoy is that Open qualifying series leading into the Open Championship, where an event has you know, this guy's gonna win, But there's also that caret of you know, the top three guys that aren't exempt into the Open in this event are getting in something similar. Maybe it's the top five guys not otherwise exempt are getting a spot in this designated event. Let this could be a life changing opportunity for somebody. You know, if you go last week
that wouldn't be exempt to get in. You know that Brent Grant for example, a rookie who's playing the week of He's playing the week of his life at Pebble and he and he's going into the final round with a real chance to play his way into a designated event in the near future while he's in form. That's the important thing is golf is fickle. Players come in and out of form. How do we get the most
informed guys into this event. So there's let's just say that there's ten spots that are given out in that space of time between designated events to inform players. Now we're at eighty one spots of one hundred, all right. I think a Monday qualifier would be extraordinary when you limit the field to the top the only exempt players are the top sixty and last year's FedEx Cup, you know,
and then like players that are really informed. Like an example of a player really informed that probably would get in that played a Monday qualifier for the Waste Management, Ben Griffin, a rookie who is I think he was top thirty in FedEx Cup points going into the Waste Management, has had a great, great start to his professional career. Like Taylor Montgomery, would be another example of a guy
that would be automatically in this in this thing. But then you have this, like you have guys that are legitimate tour pros that are playing a Monday Qualifier, and maybe you make it thirty six holes. You make the Monday Qualifier only available to corn Faery Tour players or PGA Tour players, and if there's an excess, you have a you know, a pre qualifier. Right. Don't schedule corn Faery events opposite these events. Make this the you know, like the players the only event that matters this week.
Don't have opposite events. Have this this Monday Qualifier be really something. And guess what, It's another television product that you could sell. It could be part of your rights package. Is a Monday qualifier. Who doesn't want to come off a weekend of golf with like, hey, there's another event on Monday. It's enjoyable to have it on in the background. Golf is one of the few sports that you can kind of keep a passing interest of it, you know,
depending on what your occupation is in the background. People do it every year with the Masters, Right, So Monday qualify are four spots that it has more of like a US Open, like one of the most fascinating aspects of the US Open is final qualifying. This would have this would give this thing a final qualifying feel. So have ten spots through that. So now we're up to ninety one, right, if my mask's right?
Are we doing sponsor exemptions?
I this is a tricky question. I think it should be spot There should be a few sponsors exemptions, but it should be limited to the one whatever your one twenty five PGA Tour player.
Okay, that way, So there needs to be restrictions. Are sponsor is going to be happy about that? Because we're already worried about sponsors being unhappy with the PGA Tour.
Listen, the the job of the PGA Tour here. An unhappy sponsor is one thing. This is their response to an existential threat. That has to be priority number one with every decision that they make. It cannot be Is the sponsor going to be happy? Obviously if the sponsor's mass exodus. But there's a balancing act. We're delivering you the best players in the world. Your sponsor exemption, it just doesn't matter in comparison to us delivering you Rory
ram Speith, you know, justin Thomas to your event. That that is the thing, right.
Yeah, we are giving you a semi major has to be the message, right, Yes, you're paying more. Yes, there might be some differences in how the event feels on site, what concessions are doing, and sponsor exemption exemptions will be different. But you're getting like a really really premium product here that a lot of people are going to care about and be excited about. I guess that that really does have to be the message. But but I love that
what you just laid out there sounds really exciting. And there's a mix.
Of I've got a few more spots.
You've got a few more spots. You didn't fill up the sponsor exemptions.
Now you've got some sponsor exemption.
One sponsor exemption.
One sponsor exemption ninety.
Okay, I don't think that's realistic, but whatever, We'll got.
Word to ninety two. And now I'm pulling from two other places. Okay, European Tour, Yeah, DP World Tour six spots, and then the top two players on the Corn Faery Tour are in. Oh, you don't have an opposite corn faery event. You're giving people legitimate like you're investing in your corn fairy tour. By having these spots, you're building exposure. What if, you know, what if Pearson Couty is in the mix. And I don't think anyone would disagree that Pearson Couty could play in this event and can.
I was literally just gonna call it Andy's Pearson Cuty exemption when you when you brought this idea up. But I think that's great. And you know, we've been looking for ways to get Corn Fairy Tour players involved more quickly on the PGA Tour. You know, first of all, there is a value to players proving themselves over the course of a season on the Corn Fairy Tour. I
don't think we need to get rid of that. But I also think that winning three events in you know, in one season is a is a particularly I don't know, I just don't think that's a useful way. The only kind of you know, immediate elevation opportunity that there should be these designated events, you know, given opportunity for the PGA Tour to get some players who maybe belong on the tour. Just give them a chance, and they might they might not take advantage of it, and that's okay.
But you know, I think that's that's really nice. But you know who's going to be really, you know, not stoked about everything that you just laid.
Out sixty one on the fat X Cup.
Yeah, so you know, what are you going to do about those guys or are we not worried about them anymore? Because we've been worried about these sort of mid tier PGA Tour players who just sort of stick around, keep their cards year after year, but don't really bring much of value in terms of entertainment to the fans. And you know, they've been kind of determining policy for a long time. That's the reason why we have the schedule
that we have. Partly, you know, the sponsors are also a factor, but the players pushing for the rank and file players, pushing for events not to be demoted that they rely on is a big reason why the PGA Tour schedule is what it is now. In the Live era, it seems like the power of the rank and file PGA Tour player is snding and the decisions are being made that don't really serve them directly because of the
threat that Live has presented. And so I wonder if you think that in creating the designated events that the PGA Tour is going to continue to be able to kind of push past these players sixty to one to twenty in the FedEx Cup who have been determining so much policy in the past.
Again, what what does the core thesis of these elevated
events have to focus on? Preventing your existential threat? So from that standpoint, you cannot be worried about you know, we're seeing it with live the high profile player defections have slowed down since really since the Delaware meeting, and as those have slowed down, the defections have become Meto Perreira, great young player that I'd be excited about, but about playing, like see going and seeing play, but not somebody who's going to make a huge difference if he stays or leaves.
Don't forget about Bassie Munios.
Yeah, same same bucket, right, So creating this for the big players, and the other message to players sixty through one twenty is we're providing you a number of opportunities to elevate yourself. Like these other smaller events are going to have less stars in them, they give you more opportunity to play your way into these big events every week, every week, you play, you have the opportunity to play your way into an elevated event.
But that's exactly what they don't want to do, right, They don't want to have to play their way in. They want they want the exemptocracy. Yeah, I know, but that's I mean, it's it's not what they want though that the meritocracy is not what FedEx sixty through one to twenty really want. I mean, I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush here. I'm sure that there are some guys in that range who, you know, want to see these changes that seem to be underway.
But you know, those have been pretty comfortable spots in the past, with a lot of exemptions into very high dollar events, and they're going to lose quite a bit of that in this new PGA tour schedule. Now, are they going to lose all of it? No? I think their lives are still going to be pretty comfy if they're in that range, and maybe they deserve that, because being sixty through one twenty in the FedEx Cup is nothing to turn your nose up at. That is a
major accomplishment for a golfer. These guys are amazingly good, but should they be getting, you know, these kind of automatic exemptions into any event that they want on the PGA Tour. I don't know about that, and so it might be a tough sell though, I think. I mean, do you agree that it'll be a tough sell or do you think that this is going to, you know, resolve itself a little more easily than I think it is.
I think that the power has shifted on the PGA Tour to the point of where it is a you know, it matters less. To be completely honest, I think.
The Delaware delegation is ascendant for sure. Yeah, the thirty players who were in Delaware meeting the top players, it seems like that was a big moment where that group of players was sort of announcing we are the new power source on the PGA Tour.
I'm reidoff players sixty to seventy in the FedEx Cup last year, and just to give you an idea of what they were, I just got to find where I had it pulled up here, So all right, sixty to seventy sixty or sixty one to seventy, say top sixty, so sixty one Alex Smalley, Mark Leishman, a Nierbonn Lahiri, Troy Barrett, Taylor Moore, Cam Davis, John had And Todd Lanto Griffin, Trey moll Nax.
Okay, yep, right, we were talking about yeah.
About about these guys not do you you know based off of their relevance last year, are any of these guys Like are you crying because they're not in there? Like that's that's the reality is that these are the players that you know. They're nice players. I'm not trying
to demean them. They they had good years, but they don't feel like you're missing out And and really like if you start to scroll through the the first guy from last year that I feel like, okay, if we if we missed here, it would be a big miss is when we get into the forties and in the forties. At that back into the forties, you got Fleetwood at forty seven, see wook Him at forty eight, Turtle Hatton
at forty nine, and Adam Hadwin at fifty. Like to me, that's where you get at like forty seven through forty nine, Y're where you have Hatton in Fleetwood. That's feels like, okay, like those are guys that be at elevate events.
Yeah, and this is a big, you know, a long running disjunction between fans and the PGA Tour, where fans those names that you read off in the sixties, with the exception of maybe Mark Leishman who went to Live last year, right, fans really don't follow those players in general. Casual fans don't know who they are. We know who they are, but they're not bringing value to most fans watching at home. But the PGA Tour and the way it was run valued those opinions of those players just
as much as anybody else's on the PGA Tour. And so I guess the hope is recently that that dynamic has shifted a little bit and that the weight of the word of John rom Roy, McElroy, Justin Thomas, et cetera is starting to take on something more like it's true weight that it has with fans, right, that the importance of what they want to do with the PGA Tour is more in line with what the fans want
to see from the PGA Tour. At least, that is the hope here, and that's what a lot of these speculations that we're going through about what the designated events could be are based on that these top players can start to make some decisions that would be more aligned with what the fans want.
I think the important thing to remember, too, is that players who finished like sixty sixty fifth, they likely have played well enough at periods of time that they would have played their way into designated events a handful in a given year. And that's the important thing is that they aren't being excluded like the example here, Like you've got Alex Smalley and Taylor Moore, who I think I think Smalley was a rookie too, Taylor Moore was a rookie.
Those guys had sensational years as rookies, right, and those guys are getting the opportunity to effectively play many major championships, right. That's the thing. The majors are even more closed off than these elevated events would be, Like the majors are harder to get into, like you need to be top fifty in the world rankings or you know one of these qualifications, like they aren't available to rookies. And this might be what the PGA tour veterans hate to hear.
But these these elevated event, these designated events. These many major championships effectively would be so wide open to anyone with a PGA Tour card because all you have to do is play well in a week in a week leading up to the PGA Tour event, and you are in. You know, if there are three spots in effectively each event leading in for the top three non exempt, all you have to do really is finish in the top
top seven, top eight in a given week. You have to play exceptionally one time, you know, in a year to play in one of these events. And what I really like is it rewards a Hothand maybe I'm just thinking about this now, there's a also you could cut back a certain exempt number. Maybe you cut back to what did we start with, fifty or sixty sixty sixty, So maybe we cut back to fifty. And there's a ten top ten non exempt from the last elevated event
to next elevated event. So if you get hot in these elevated events, those designated events, sorry, these designated events, if you top ten, that would be pretty cool that you earn your way into the next one.
Okay, I think that's a good place to wrap up. We got the phoenix open come out this week for hours first full field designated event. Yeah, it's a really interesting subject. It sort of intersects with a lot of different topics that we've been talking about for years now, and we'll see how they turn out. But my feeling is that this week's waste management is going to be a fun watch. We'll see. I don't think I remember
seeing Rory McElroy at this event before. I'm not sure if I'm right about that or wrong about that, but just the fact that he's there along with John Rahm and all of the other top players on the PGA Tour is very very exciting to me. And so in general, you know, we're not always the most positive about the PGA Tour. We are the furthest thing from PGA Tour, yes men, But this has us, I think, legitimately excited
about the future of the tour schedule. I think that we're going to see some real improvements and that kind of starts this week. This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was edited by Matt Ruschius. Thank you, Matt. So A big new way to support the Frida Egg is to become a Club TFE member. Club TFE is our membership program. It's a wide ranging offering from content every day.
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