Yeah.

And I'll bring it to you.

And so like the first thing I should say is that, you know, I, I was following this, you know, like I said, I was watching it in the afternoons, their, their time in the afternoons.

And so, you know, I just think the thing I wanted to focus on, yeah.

Like you'll leave me know, like, why are you saving your best player for, it looks like the seven spot there, right.

Or one of your best players.

Um, I'll just give you the basic theory behind this.

When players on your team are worse, how does that impact the most important roles of a captain?

Is that a recency bias, or is it hopping over people like Akshay Bhatia, another young player that's playing great, and he's won this year as well? Where do you stand?

Yeah, I stand on the fact that, I mean, this guy is one of the best amateurs we've ever seen, had one of the greatest amateur careers, and obviously you have to prove that once you get to the PGA Tour.

We've all seen plenty of great amateurs kinda fizzle out.

He proved it within three tournaments.

I mean, you're dealing with a guy who probably is gonna be one of the great players for the next 20 years.

Uh, I, I completely buy into him.

I think he's different from a lot of other young phenoms we've seen.

Mm-hmm.

Um, do you think that his omission or choice to not play in some of these signature events have as much to do with a global schedule or is there a message to a degree being sent here?

Yeah, it, it's a great question and I think it's hard to know exactly.

So the first thing we have to say is Rory's in a very privileged position as a golfer where, you know, he has all the money he probably ever needs.

He doesn't need to go play these signature events or elevated events.

But the problem is it sets up this really big conflict with the PGA Tour because everything that Brian Rolapp is selling is we're gonna have this championship series where we have the best players competing all the time against each other.

And Rory, you know, by not going to the Travelers, by skipping the Heritage, all these events that he skips, and particularly with the Travelers, he shows up with Nick Faldo at Birkdale preparing for the major.

It, it's setting up this conflict where are you gonna have all the stars, or are people like Rory McIlroy who command a huge audience and have a lot of influence, are they gonna skip them if they want to, really? Like, what compels somebody like Rory to come play in these events? And that is a big problem, right? Because again, everything that you're selling is they're all gonna be here, and here's Rory going, "Not me.

Oh, sure.

Thank you.

And he had Neil scrambling, just with a word.

I mean, just masterful stuff by Randy.

Neil was trying to defend himself.

He didn't really have the weaponry for it.

Um, you know, he called Payne Stewart, uh, uh, an alpha when in fact DJ said, no, he's an outcast.

DJ's right.

Damn.

in terms of how you analyze this one?

Yeah, well, you know, I keep going back to the Garrick Higgo thing, and it, it should've been something so small, somebody kind of accidentally showing up late for their tee time.

But when they got into the time discussion, as in tee time says 7:18, it doesn't say 7:18 colon zero zero.

So if you show up at 7:18:45, are you still on time? I thought we got very existential.

We got very into the nature of time and everything.

Uh, and so I couldn't stop thinking about that, and I just thought, um, some of Higgo's interviews, um, like, with Marty Smith and, and then in front of the press were, were so funny on, on this very, you know, stupid little thing.

So yeah, like, things like that.

[laughs]

See, it's naming up here

... thank you so much for creating this book, and thank you so much for including the Westall story in it.

You know, ever since I've been a kid, I've been in love with maps and atlases and, and UFOs too, actually.

And so the bringing together of those two great things, uh, things that interest me, and I know probably interest a lot of other people as well, was a real, uh, joy for me to find out about and to actually receive in the mail recently and to start reading.

So thank you so much for that.

And yes, it's hard for me to believe that it's now a couple of weeks past the 60th anniversary of the Westall incident.

Um, I'm grateful to still be alive, and I'm grateful that so many of the witnesses are still with us as well.

Mm-hmm

when you, when you say this captain deserves a lot of credit or when, you know, this guy got unlucky.

Well, I think the captain has by far the most influence on the pairs sessions, and so I judge them more on that.

There are things you can do in the singles sessions.

Davis Love admits he made a mistake not frontloading, and Europe did frontload and it gave them a ton of momentum, so it's not like he was blameless.

But, uh, when the bulk of the strategy happens is in the pairs sessions, and Davis Love did a really good job.

They were up 10-6 in Medinah.

Then, of course, he did another good job in Hazeltine, and they finished the job.

What do you think about this?

Mm-hmm.

And that becomes really relevant to the story at Westall because the rules were well known at Westall.

The headmaster at the time of the high school, at least, Mr. Frank Samblebe, was quite a, a taskmaster.

He was, uh, generally fairly feared by his chargage- charges, the, the kids, which was pretty common in schools at the time.

And the idea of going against the wishes of your teachers or the school rules and jumping fences and running across roads and running through market gardens and chasing after these flying saucers in the air and trying to follow them and trying to go to the place where you had seen them come down and land, well, to do such a thing, of course, was completely anathema at that time.

But dozens, possibly more than dozens, maybe 100 or so kids did exactly that.

So that just gives us a little insight into the effect that this incident had on the kids who were there that day.

But was there any reports of men in black type situations, you know, people turning up in suits, questioning, speaking to, to various folks, and then disappearing just as quickly?

Is it healthy? Is it just still disjointed, but we're still entertained? What's your view on the landscape right now?

I thought the most interesting thing I've heard about the men's landscape came from Brian Rolap, who was talking about really that there's a static chunk of pie or a static pie of money for sports in general, and that the NFL, which obviously commands the most money of any sport, is about to maybe double.

what they have from 12 billion to 24 billion or whatever it is.

And that I think is sort of a red alarm for other sports, but especially golf.

And I think right now, when you look at golf's television contract, you know, $7 billion, it was possibly, or maybe definitely overvalued.

And so I think, everything that happens in the next year is going to be geared toward what happens when the next TV contract comes up.

It seems like they're almost accepting or at least laying the groundwork for the possibility that it's going to be less.

And is he thinking he can do this as it relates to the DP World Tour and the Ryder Cup, that he can be the change agent that you don't think you can go forward without me? Is this just early posturing that then when the 11th hour arrives, there's resolution?

Like, what made you originally decide, 'cause there's so much on the Ryder Cup, what made you originally decide, "I'm gonna write a book on the Ryder Cup?"

Yeah, I think it's like, when I was a kid, I loved the Ryder Cup, right? And I wasn't a big golfer as a kid or anything like that, but any time the Ryder Cup came around, just hearing the bagpipes on the theme song just kind of got me really into it.

And so it was always something that was in my head.

And then Medinah was the very first golf tournament I ever covered, and that was when I worked for Grantland, an old ESPN site.

Uh, just kind of begged them to send me there.

And I still wasn't really a golf guy.

I didn't even play golf at that time, uh, and now I'm, you know, a huge obsessive, like, like everyone else.

(laughs)