Don't, don't you think that was one of his arguments?

Yeah.

Well, Phil's was he wanted to burn the tour down, tear the house down because he thought he was entitled to his media rights, which no athlete in any sport is entitled to their media rights.

Otherwise, the television contracts and the media, they all fall apart.

If you can just go play and then take your media and put it on your site, people will go watch your site and not watch the game, or to some degree will not watch the game.

Uh, that's the reason they're called media rights.

That's the reason media pays for the right to put these things on.

Do you think Phil Mickelson's legacy is tarnished forever?

Yeah

... all that's running simultaneously.

And, um, anyway, you get a call.

Uh, yeah, I mean, you, you know, you can come get your son.

He's good.

Everything's good.

So, you know, I get in the car to drive to go get Brayden, and by the time I get there, I walk in, and the, the f- the looks on the faces are all not the looks you would expect when they're handing your, your son.

Right.

No

... take but a few hundred to turn it sour for everybody.

And then there really weren't large crowds out at Shinnecock, but those that were there, they were so for Scottie Scheffler, or really for anybody.

Because, you know, every time a ball would roll off the green, they would cheer.

If he made a 10-footer, it would almost be silent.

Uh, I've actually never, again, I've never seen anything like that.

Uh, I don't, you know, I- hopefully it's just localized to Long Island.

And hats off to the USGA for, you know, be- a- allowing them to do that.

Ooh.

But it's gonna be somebody who's got it all, the elite player.

Nobody can fluke it around here.

You're just not gonna see that.

So you're looking at people with elite short games.

Again, the average number of greens that were hit by the four previous winners here en route to winning was right around 42.

You're talking about 30 different times players have missed greens around here who eventually won.

Why? What's going on with Scottie?

[laughs]

This is about the top 20 US Opens in the last 125 US Opens.

It started with Neil, DJ, Soly with the third pick, Randy, TC with the fifth pick, and then TC, Randy, Soly, DJ, Neil, right? I got that right.

All right.

So the top five US Opens of all time, 1913, 1960, those are interchangeable.

1950, I don't think there's any debate that's the top three.

2000, I don't think there's any debate that's in the top four.

God, I feel so vindicated

Do you think it kind of, it did hold people sufficiently accountable off the tee when you look at where Cam Smith or Rory McIlroy was hitting the ball for most of those last few days?

Well, if you hit ...

If you missed the fairway by a wide margin, obviously you got a, a, a better lie.

So you know, Pot Jeter was up there early on missing by wide margins.

McIlroy was tied for dead last in driving accuracy.

Uh, but he hits it so far, he averaged almost 350 yards off the tee.

He was still able to get on a fair number of greens and still be pretty good with his stroke scan approach.

Do you have concerns about how Shinnecock will be set up and how it will play next month?

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Mm-hmm

... and, and have no legacy.

How do you feel at this point with everything going on?

Well, everything you said, uh, there, and, and in particular, proved that loyalty can be bought, uh, I would have to agree with.

It was certainly disruptive.

Uh, it did throw the golf world into turmoil.

Um, yeah, it did result in raised purses.

That's what competition generally does.

But I would think, um, more importantly, um, and more egregiously, uh, and more, far more of a concern is it tilted the game towards greed, and perhaps irreparably so.

And so I don't think the PGA Tour [laughs] schedule's working either.

Why was Greg Norman so hell-bent on taking down the PGA Tour?

I don't know.

I guess he just had an ax to grind.

I mean, early on, he had, uh, propped up the idea of an elite tour of players, and famously Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus stood up and said, uh, "No.

Look, we had the chance to do something similar back in our heyday in the '60s and '70s and early '80s, and we said no because it wasn't good for golf."But Greg just, it seemed to me, was only interested in what was good for Greg.

Let's get a small group of guys together and let's just play week after week after week.

Now, something like that came along called the WGCs.

Am I oversimplifying?

Why was Greg Norman so hell-bent on taking down the PGA Tour?

I don't know.

I guess he just had an ax to grind.

I mean, early on he had, uh, propped up the idea of an elite tour of players, and famously Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus stood up and said, uh, "No.

Look, we had the chance to do something similar back in our heyday in the '60s and '70s and early '80s, and we said no because it wasn't good for golf." But Greg just, it seemed to me, was only interested in what was good for Greg.

Let's get a small group of guys together and let's just play week after week after week.

Now, something like that came along called the WGCs.

Am I oversimplifying?

Now, I know they change it, they tweak it, but is that why Cinderella stories don't usually happen at Augusta?

Augusta?I think that's part of it.

I think, you know, Augusta's such ...

It's a unique golf course.

Uh, you don't play a hillary, a hillier golf course on the PGA Tour.

Every lie is either above your feet or below your feet.

So you've gotta have, for the most part, an upright golf swing to pick it off those weird lies, and you gotta hit the ball so high to get it to stop below the hole on those, uh, devilish greens.

If Tiger never started lifting weights, finish that sentence

What's his future as a golfer?

You know, I just don't think he should play anymore, personally.

I mean, I, I, you know...

I mean, obviously he's a golfer.

He wants to get out there.

And he can play the Champions Tour and get in a cart and go play with his best buddies, Fred Couples and Steve Stricker, who, that sounds really fun.

But he's...

If Tiger never started lifting weights, finish that sentence.

I, I can't work out, is Tiger happy? Is he unhappy? Is he somewhere in between? Is he content? Is he horrified that golf is over? Is he okay with it? Um, where do you, where do you think he is? Who do you think he is?

It's an interesting, uh, question to delve into.

You know, troubled genius is so, um, prevalent, it's almost cliché, isn't it? You know, he's so freakishly genius.

Everybody needs a family member or a good friend in their life to say, you know, "You're stepping out of line." And no, everybody needs that.

You know, and everybody is dealing with something in life at some point.

You don't go through life unscathed.

Um, I, Joe, look at his friends from Steve Stricker.

I mean, have, have you watched enough of them to have a feel for how they're playing or no?

Like, are, are we at large, is the media at large, um, open to severe criticism on this front or, or, or, or do you, I suppose, appreciate it? It's quite a difficult subject matter to raise either with him or from afar without detailed concrete knowledge.

I think what you just said at the end there is, is, is sums it up.

You know, without detailed concrete knowledge, you know, I think...

Look, he wasn't charged with anything in that crash in California.

They said there was no evidence of impairment other than the fact that he was going ninety and hadn't hit the brake before he hit the curb.

Uh, to your point about the media, are they, do they deserve criticism for not? Maybe a little.

But, you know, he's not a politician dealing with journalistic sharks who are, you know, biased to their opinion and go after him every week.

I mean, have, have you watched enough of them to have a feel for how they're playing or no?

Isn't something lost if we get rid of cuts? You

took the words right out of my mouth.

I mean, would we have cared if he made that putt if there was no cut? Not at all.

And it ended up being this fantastic moment.

That day, I think I did Golf Central that night, and there was this young Kenyan by the name of Kabugu who eagled the last hole to make the cut at the Kenyan event.

And then there was Scottie Scheffler who air punched to make the cut at the Genesis.

And I just juxtaposed the two.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that the modern player is overcoached?

You guys are invited"?

Yeah, they'll figure out a way to do that.

If, in fact, they do make it a major, which they have the power to do.

Uh, you know, they could just say it's a major championship.

Nobody...

Yes, of course, there would be some, some, you know, arguing and, and, and, and bitter discussions going back and forth.

But in time it would elevate that tournament to the status of a major championship, which would add another phenomenal week to, uh, the PGA Tour.

Any idea why r- Riviera has, has, like, had this vexing effect on the best players of our generation?

Yeah.

I don't even look at the official world golf ranking.

I do, but if you really wanna know who has the best chance to play golf the very next week, it's Data Golf.

It's not the official world golf rankings.

There are many, many problems with the official world golf rankings.

They artificially give points to tournaments based upon their perceived prestige.

Again, they shouldn't be in the business of governance or, um, allocating prestige to events.

Yeah

All right,

so I mean, we could go in great detail there, but just real quickly, I think, them not giving world ranking points to live.

And look, early on, I would have probably fell on the side of them not giving them world ranking points.

But the more you think about it, the more you dive into it, the more you try to understand what the official world golf rankings are meant to be.

And it became more and more clear to me that they were confusing governments with measurements.

And that's a category error.

By not giving live points, they were in effect They were policing format differences.

Does that seem like an equitable number of points to start with, starting with this first event in Riyadh?

I- is it still that? Um, because, y- you know, you do have the LIV Tour involved in this and, and maybe it's not as close-knit as it has been in the past which was a big benefit for them?

Yeah, I think it's, uh, a little misleading to assume that the European teams have always just been, you know, chummy.

Uh, there's always been a little bit of friction within the European team room, uh, and I think they've used that friction to their advantage.

Uh, but there's also been tremendous buy-in.

You know, you've got players over there that just say, you know, "I'll play wherever you want me to play." And I don't know that you get that kind of buy-in from the US side.

I'm gleaning what I can glean from, uh, the interviews I've heard and the stories I've heard.

Um, uh, and, and you get tremendous buy-in on the European side and, and o- one of the things I say, and I think that underscores just how much more buy-in you get on the European side than you get on the US side is that, uh, Sergio Garcia had to pay a couple million dollars in fines just to even be eligible for this team, and he willfully paid a couple million dollars just to be eligible.

Should they get paid?

Should they get paid?

I don't think so.

I, I don't think it's asking too much.

Well, first of all, they are getting paid.

So, uh, the PGA Tour gets about $30 million a year that the, every year they play the Ryder Cup.

About $30 million a year that they take and put into the pension fund of the PGA Tour players, which grows tax free for decade, for decade, for decade, for decade.

So, when you're talking about getting paid, they, they're getting paid large sums of money.

Uh, can a, can a crowd gallery go too far at the Ryder Cup?

So, enlighten our audience on what you said last night.

Yeah, I don't think that Rory's necessarily lost his form as he's lost his focus, and there is some precedent for that.

You know, Ben Hogan, mind you, he was 40 when he did it, and Rory's in his mid-30s.

But Ro- uh, Ben Hogan, uh, in 1953, had never played the Open Championship, went over and played the Open.

Now, he won it, and completed the Career Grand Slam and had the best year in the history of golf, to that point, in major championships.

And, uh, and the idea was, "That's it, he's gonna go on a torrent for the next, you know, four or five years." And he had won 25% of his golf tournaments at that point in his career, and he would play 53 times after that on the PGA Tour, and win just one other golf tournament, and that was six years later, 1959.

He won one time after completing the Career Grand Slam.

A- is this calculated?

So, enlighten our audience on what you said last night.

Yeah.

I don't think that Rory's necessarily lost his form as he's lost his focus, and there is some precedent for that.

You know, Ben Hogan, mind you, he was 40 when he did it, and Rory's in his mid-30s.

But Ro- uh, Ben Hogan, uh, in 1953, had never played the Open Championship, went over and played the Open.

Now, he won it and completed the Career Grand Slam and had the best year in the history of golf to that point in major championships.

And, uh, and the idea was, "That's it.

Uh, is this calculated?

Take me through that hole and, and what happened there.

Well, you know, the green is really firm.

It's a new green, so i- it's, it's a lot firmer than it has been in the past.

And we saw a number of players, uh, knock it over the back of that green yesterday.

A couple of them, just a couple of them, chipped it over, back over the green and into the water in, in front of this, uh, hole location.

Most of them managed to play pretty conservatively, leave it 20 feet.

You know, this is a maddening thing if you're a Rory McIlroy fan, and there's a lot of them, that he just, he just does these things that you can't believe in major championships.

Might get a bad break this afternoon with the wind picking up, but obviously, you gotta like what you seen from Scottie so far.

So why do you think Rory is still in this thing?

'Cause he's playing great.

I mean, right up until the blunder at 15, he could've been seven under par pretty easily, and he was four under par, and he had really kinda gotten nothing out of the round.

He'd hit so many good shots and not capitalized on them.

He played great coming in here.

Uh, and Rory tends to play his best golf when he's kinda out of it, and, and he's not out of it.

I, I maintain that the lead is really Scottie Scheffler, you know? That's the person you gotta beat.

Like if you miss a fairway (laughs) my... (laughs) That's saying a lot about your driving ability or lack thereof, but what does Augusta do, continue to do to keep it in a certain number, if that's important to them?

So why do you think Rory is still in this thing?

'Cause he's playing great.

I mean, right up until the blunder at 15 he could've been seven under par pretty easily and he was four under par and he had really kind of gotten nothing out of the round.

He'd hit so many good shots and not capitalized, uh, on them.

He played great coming in here, uh, and Rory tends to play his best golf when he's kind of out of it.

And, and he's not out of it.

I, I maintain that the lead is really Scottie Scheffler, you know? That's the person you gotta beat, no disrespect to Justin Rose.

... that's saying a lot about your driving ability or lack thereof, but what does Augusta do, continue to do to keep it in a certain number if that's important to them?