Editor’s Note: We’ve heard a lot in recent years about how much middle-aged sportswriters are infatuated with Bruce Springsteen, so when our own middle-aged sportswriter KVV (something of a Springsteen agnostic) joined Casey Landman and her husband Jon for one of Springsteen’s performances in Philadelphia, we sent him to the show with an assignment. Write about what Bruce means to you, and explain why so many weirdos of your generation (and so many Big-Js in your profession) adore this man, even if you’re not exactly one of them.

I can’t say why, exactly, just that he’s never been a mythic figure to me. Yes, I’m familiar with the standards. I vaguely remember Ronald Reagan’s campaign misusing “Born In The USA,” thinking (like many who weren’t listening to the lyrics) that it was uplifting and patriotic instead of a broken man’s wail; a lament about feeling left behind. I laughed when The Sopranos slipped in a line from “Born to Run” and made Stevie Van Zandt sit there stone-faced. I have, when I was a cosmic kid in full costume dress, left a bar at 2 am with friends and walked the streets while belting out some mangled, not-sober version of “Thunder Road.” But I can’t name most of the albums. I have never 

pulled over to the side of the road and cried during the saxophone solo in “Jungleland.”

 I know sportswriters of a certain age are supposed to treat Springsteen’s songs the way orthodox scholars treat the study of the Talmud. It has become one of those cliches that is grounded in a lot of truth, but it has never fit in my case. I have friends who write (brilliantly) to his music, who would skip their kid’s birthday party to see him play in a football stadium. I’ve had bosses who have spent more time in the front row of Bruce’s shows than some of his roadies. It’s just never been my thing.

I am not indifferent — I enjoy The Boss for all the reasons you are supposed to enjoy him — but I have a theory that we only love the artists who find us at the right time, the right age, the midst of the right angst or heartbreak. For whatever reason, Bruce Springsteen missed me when I probably needed him the most.

I became a Jason Isbell person, which is a little like saying you prefer Max Homa to Tiger Woods. The whole world knows who Bruce and Tiger are. They are important pieces of Americana, icons to even casual observers of culture. Isbell and Homa are the artists you feel like you discovered when no one was there, and now you still feel a little protective of them, proud they climbed the ladder to find mainstream success, but deep down you’re a little annoyed you have to share them with the world. You were there when shit was bleak, but it still felt like they were speaking to you.

Some people may have that connection with Bruce, but I take a contrarian pride in the fact that I’m not one of them.

2. When my friend Jon texted me to say he had an extra ticket to Bruce’s show in Philadelphia, I couldn’t resist saying yes, despite all the words I typed in the previous section.

It was not a cheap ticket, even with Jon acquiring it at face value through his work in the industry. But there is something to be said, I think, about choosing to spend your money on experiences instead of items. Someday Bruce Springsteen will be gone, much like Tom Petty. I never understood how much I missed Tom Petty until I no longer had the chance to have him in my life. In my basement, there are thousands of dollars worth of golf clubs I no longer play, and books I’ll never get around to reading. There are piles of things I once cherished but no longer remember why I purchased them, and one day my children will throw them in a dumpster when I’m gone, or give them to Goodwill if they don’t smell like mildew.


There is something about the perniciousness of STUFF that is slowly suffocating. I don’t have many philosophical tenets, but one I do try to remind myself of is that experiences require zero storage.


3. He looks like an incredibly fit grandfather.

This was what struck me most of all when he burst onto the stage to sing “No Surrender,” the opening number. It’s not that he doesn’t look 73. He does. In recent years, he’s grown less vain, apparently accepting that there is a dignity to letting (much of) his hair go gray. He jogs and fist pumps and zooms around stage like he’s trying to inhale every last bit of whatever time he has left, but you’re also left with the unshakeable truth. He doesn’t have many of these left. This is the winter of his performing life. A finite number of shows remain. How many? No one wants to speculate. Why ruin the illusion that it can go on forever?

When you’re a massive Springsteen fan, I suspect you see him so frequently — in interviews, concerts, political campaigns, album covers — that the gradually aging process that every last one of us is tethered to doesn’t shock you. He is a part of your life, always. The coolest uncle. He ages, sure, but he’s immortal.

But if you’re like me, and he’s this nebulous concept that you don’t obsess over but still appreciate, he was frozen in the amber of your mind at a younger age. He is forever That Dude, wearing jeans that look like they were painted on, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up like he’s a Jet in West Side Story, 

yanking Courtney Cox (and her bob haircut)

 up on stage so he can sashay back and forth, two beautiful people radiating youth, possibility, energy.

It makes no sense, but I did not expect to see a man on the stage in Philadelphia who could benefit from scheduling regular colonoscopies. This is the curse of being beautiful once, of epitomizing youth and possibility. You are not allowed to be mortal. You’re supposed to be a photograph, a Greek god, eternal. Instead, he is the same age as my dad, I realize now. When each of them was born, Harry Truman was President.

4. The people in the audience at the Wells Fargo Arena are not broken heroes on a last chance power drive.

They are not the working class characters that populate Springsteen’s songs. They are mostly white, mostly upper middle class, mostly in their 50s and 60s. They drive nice cars and have 401ks. I was, I can say this confidently, one of the younger members of the audience. (Not the youngest, but certainly in the youngest third.)


None of that is any kind of revelatory observation, nor is it a particularly new critique. It’s easy to poke fun at the tone-deaf privilege of Springsteen audiences these days, to point out the hypocrisy of paying thousands of dollars for a ticket to a show so you can cosplay in the lives of characters who exist on the fringe of society, who are one busted engine or factory layoff from permanent misery. A lot of fans in recent years have been understandably pissed that Springsteen gave in to the allure of Ticketmaster’s predatory dynamic pricing model, meaning you essentially have to fork over a mortgage payment to see him perform these days. (The fact that we allow Ticketmaster to operate like a mob boss remains one of the most baffling choices in American life.) Backstreets, the fan magazine that has been covering The Boss for 43 years, 

announced in February that it was shutting down

, at least in part because so many hardcore Springsteen fans feel they’ve been priced out of his shows.


I have a hard time, however, blaming the fans who can afford to go to his shows, regardless of whether or not they’ve been gouged. To call them hypocritical kind of misses the mark. What is the dream, after all, of every working class stiff but to escape the gravitational pull of their broken hometowns, and will themselves into a better life somewhere else? These are the people who got out. (Or, just as likely, their parents got out.) A part of them never wants to forget that it could have gone another way.


They used to be cool and now they are not. But in the arena, they still get to feel cool. This is what Bruce reminds them of, a time when they weren’t rich and didn’t have to think about doing yard work on the weekends or saving up to make college tuition payments. They are IT managers and lawyers, dentists and software developers (and sportswriters!) and they have kids that roll their eyes when they sing along to “Hungry Heart” as they wipe down their fancy kitchen countertops.

(Those kids will understand one day, I promise, when they’re humming Taylor Swift songs or Kendrick Lamar songs in an underground climate-safe bunker, or in a colony on Mars, and their own kids feel a mixture of love and embarrassment.)

The people in the audience at Bruce shows used to be the kind of romantics who would tuck a cigarette behind their ear in a smoke-filled bar and make eyes at a person standing near the jukebox. They are the Marys and Wendys, the Bobbys and Eddies from Bruce’s songs who had the audacity to grow up. To keep living. It happens to a lot of us.


We ain’t a beauty — at least not anymore — but yeah we’re alright.

To a Bruce fan, this must feel like one of the most obvious sentences ever written. 

Wait, you’re telling me one of the best-selling artists of all time has many, many songs that are great? What a brave take.

But I was struck, in the arena, by how many songs I have absorbed into my bloodstream over time and can hum along to, even if I don’t know the lyrics. How ridiculously good is your catalog if 

 is maybe your 10th best song? Why was I, someone who would previously have described his Bruce Springsteen fandom as residing somewhere between admiration and polite indifference, playing an imaginary air piano during 

6. There are so many members of the E Street Band!

I know, technically, everyone on stage isn’t an official member. I will leave it to actual Springsteen fans — Bruce Tramps, I see they are sometimes called — to educate me on who is worthy of the designation and who is an interchangeable part. I’m not sure what I expected, other than Van Zandt dressing like an aging musketeer, but it wasn’t 

 on stage. “I think E Street is more like an avenue or a parkway these days,” my friend Jon quipped. Between back-up singers, roadies, keyboard players, a drummer, horn players and his wife (also a singer and guitarist, but absent for the Philly show), he has to be close to the 50-employee threshold where the law requires you to offer health insurance. (Just kidding! I’m sure various loopholes and shell companies have been invented to prevent this very thing.)

I couldn’t help but feel a little mesmerized by Jake Clemmons, the saxophone player of the E Street Band and also the nephew of Clarence Clemmons, the man who had that role from 1972 until his death in 2011. What a blessing and a burden it must be to live with the ghost of a family member on your shoulder every night.

It’s like Hamlet, except every night you have to nail the solo in Thunder Road.

7. Speaking of Thunder Road, I think it’s bombastic, embarrassingly earnest, a bit too operatic and also goddamn perfect.

I know “Born To Run” is supposed to be the better song, the American anthem that Springsteen wrote as a young man when he was trying to change his fate and also go down in history. It’s going to be the first line of his obituary, and it deserves to be. Rolling Stone named it 21st on their list of all-time greatest songs. But I love “Thunder Road” more, and for all the reasons I listed above.

I love it because even though you shouldn’t use the word “redemption” in a song about redemption, Bruce does. It perfectly captures the angst and longing of wanting to be SOMEBODY and be loved by SOMEONE but having no idea how to get there other than driving your car very fast toward the edge of town, hoping there is adventure beyond the swamps of New Jersey. (Or in my case, the mountains of Montana.)


I can remember listening to “Thunder Road” late in college, getting ready to leave my hometown. I was going to drive across the country and make it in the big city. Unlike the main character in “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” the record company had not given me a big advance, but a newspaper in Baltimore had given me an internship, which in my eyes might as well have been the same thing. So I was going to roll down the window and let the wind blow back my hair. This is, I think, the enduring power of Springsteen. Most of us have these earnest, operatic moments at some point, moments where we’re trying to bust free of invisible chains we can feel but can’t properly describe. I didn’t feel like my town was full of losers but needed to escape to figure out who I was.


Twenty-three years have come and gone since that moment. There are lines in “Thunder Road” that hit differently now, like being scared and thinking that maybe I ain’t that young anymore. These days, I like the 

acoustic version of the song where it’s just Bruce and piano

. The same lines that felt like a youthful howl of defiance can also read like a sad lament if you slow everything down and let your hair go a little gray, which is another reason the song rules.

But the operatic version is still magic. When Bruce sang “Thunder Road” late into his encore, nobody felt old. We were all belting out the lines of the song like idiot kids, trying to remind ourselves that, hey, we know it’s late, but we could still make it if we run.

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up. Email him at kvv@nolayingup.com.

7 Thoughts From A Sportswriter Upon Seeing Springsteen For The First Time At Age 45

Last week, the USGA and R&A proposed a Model Local Rule (MLR) that gives competition organizers the option to require the use of golf balls that are tested under modified launch conditions to address the impacts of hitting distance in golf.

In simplified terms: a rolled-back golf ball for elite competitions.

The reaction from professional golfers was almost universally negative. They didn't like the idea of bifurcation. They didn’t want to see long hitters reigned in. They didn’t want to lose the connection with the amateur game. In dozens of interviews around the world, they expressed frustration, disappointment, even confusion.


Rory McIlroy, however, was not among them.


The reason? He is in favor of the proposal. All of it.

In an exclusive interview with No Laying Up on Tuesday, McIlroy said he thinks the potential changes, which are proposed to take effect in 2026, would be good for the overall health of the sport and potentially reintroduce skills into the professional game that have been diminished over the past few decades. McIlroy said he was not in favor of a full rollback that included amateurs, but a rollback at the elite level is a workable compromise.

“I’ve been pretty adamant that I don’t really want the governing bodies to touch the recreational golfer because we need to make this game as not intimidating and as much fun as possible, just to try to keep the participation levels at an all-time high,” McIlroy said. “So, I’m glad in this new proposal that they haven’t touched the recreational golfer. But for elite level play, I really like it. I really do. I know that’s a really unpopular opinion amongst my peers, but I think it’s going to help identify who the best players are a bit easier. Especially in this era of parity that we’ve been living in these past couple of decades. You guys [at No Laying Up] use the term ‘golf has been dumbed down a little bit at the elite level,’ and I completely agree. I think you’re gonna see people with more well-rounded games succeed easier than what the game has become, which is a bit bomb and gouge over these last few years.”

The proposal — which would limit the distance a ball can fly to 320 yards when struck with a 127 mph swing speed during testing — would likely result in driver distances decreasing by 15 to 20 yards for elite players. It would also, in theory, make players like McIlroy hit more mid-irons and fewer wedges and short irons. McIlroy believes that would be good for the sport. It might also separate the best players from the pack more often.


“Selfishly, I think it helps me,” McIlroy said. “I think this is only gonna help the better player. You know, it might help the longer player too, in some ways. But I think it's going to help the overall professional game. I think making guys hit some long irons again, and some mid irons, and being able to hit every club in your bag in a round of golf. … I can't remember the last time when I've had to do that. I don't know if this change in the ball will make us do that, but it certainly is a step closer to that.”

McIlroy conceded that, over time, his views on the issue have evolved. When the USGA released its long-awaited Distance Insights Report in 2021, he famously called it “a huge waste of time and a huge waste of money.” But when the governing bodies chose to limit their proposal to elite competitions and elite players, he felt he could support it. The sustainability aspect is an important part of his reasoning as well.

“It has evolved, yeah,” McIlroy said. “I was once of the opinion that, you know, they don't try to make Formula One cars go slower. Innovation is a part of every sport. It's a part of every industry. But whenever that innovation outgrows the footprint of the game, that's when I think we have a problem.”


It was actually tennis that planted some seeds in McIlroy’s brain to help him change his mind.

“I had a really good chat with the chairman of the All England Lawn and Tennis Club when I was at Wimbledon a few years ago,” McIlroy said. “We were just talking about a few things and he said, ‘Rory, back in the early 2000s, when men's tennis was predominantly serve and volley, it wasn't very good for the entertainment aspect of the game. Rallies wouldn't last more than three shots. We can't make the court any bigger. So what we did do is we slowed the ball down and we changed the grass on the court to make it a little stickier.’ And then you fast forward from that change three years later and you've got Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal playing, probably one of the best finals of Wimbledon ever.”


Instead of fighting tooth and nail against the changes, arguing that the big servers were losing their biggest weapon, tennis mostly embraced them. And the sport thrived.

“They didn't make a big deal of it,” McIlroy said. “They didn't have to go through all the things that the R&A and the USGA have to, but it's another example of another sport slowing the ball down and making some changes that I think has certainly benefited that sport. People can talk about, in this country, about going from an aluminum baseball bat in college to going to a wooden bat in the pros. This isn't unique to golf, this happens in other sports as well.”

McIlroy said he realizes he’s likely going to be among a minority of PGA Tour players who are in favor of the changes.

“I think my opinion differs from my peers, and probably the PGA Tour as a whole,” McIlroy said. “And obviously, look, this is just my opinion and I'm only one voice. But honestly, if I'm taking my PGA Tour hat off here, the major championships are already such a big deal in the game of golf, and if the major championships somehow adopt this ball change, and the PGA Tour doesn't, I think it widens that gap between PGA Tour golf and major championship golf. Which, if anything, the PGA Tour is trying to make up some sort of market share, or trying to get a little closer to the major championships in terms of the interest that we create within our tournaments.”

If the PGA Tour doesn’t adopt the Model Local Rule, McIlroy said he may still play the rolled back ball in PGA Tour events.

“Honestly, for me, the major championships are the biggest deal, so if the PGA Tour doesn't implement it, I might still play the Model Local Rule ball, because I know that that'll give me the best chance and the best preparation leading into the major championships,” McIlroy said. “And again, this is personal preference and personal opinion at this stage of my career. I know that I'm gonna be defined by the amount of major championships that I hopefully will win from now until the end of my career. And that's the most important thing for me.

“If that gives me the best chance to succeed at the major championships and feel as prepared as I possibly can be, then that's what I would do.”


Chris Solomon is the co-founder of No Laying Up and head of podcast content.

Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up.

McIlroy Supports Governing Bodies' Distance Proposal

The distance debate is so addictive because it’s so complicated.

Every proposed solution presents countless consequences for countless stakeholders in the game, impacting everyone from the everyday player to billion-dollar corporations. It’s incredibly easy to throw out fixes and impossibly complicated to implement solutions. And that’s assuming you can even get everyone to agree there’s a problem to be solved, which seems more difficult than ever.

It’s boring, but I think there are legitimate pros and cons on both sides of the argument around reducing hitting distances for the best players in the game. Personally speaking, I have long thought there are more pros than cons on the side of some sort of bifurcation between the recreational game and the professional game and it seems the USGA and R&A feel the same way. You may violently disagree for any number of reasons, which is fine.

But on some level, I think this all becomes a pretty good Rorschach test for how you feel about the role of governance in the world of golf.

Maybe this is too simplistic, but it seems like two reminders are in order for many around the game. The first is that the purpose of the USGA and R&A is to be the governing bodies of the sport and to ensure the healthy future of the game. Full stop. Right? Agree or disagree? Because it’s hard to move forward without being on the same page there.

The second is that they’ve been working on this distance study (and been transparent about it) for a very long time. The Distance Insights project has been underway for about 5 years and they’ve surely been keeping an eye on the topic for decades before that. Let me stop you at, “Why didn’t they look at––” because I promise they did. Just go read about it.

You can, and should, disagree with parts of their thinking and question specifics. (I literally don’t know what else Twitter is for these days.) And PGA Tour players have every right to hate something that could potentially affect their livelihood and #product. That’s what this comment period is for.

But when those two Very Serious Organizations spend the better part of a decade researching a topic and come back with the headline: “Predictable, continued (distance) increases will become a significant issue for the next generation if not addressed soon,” it’s not something that’s done flippantly.

Policy making is a lot harder than tweeting, which is a lesson learned from way too much tweeting. Is the proposed solution going to make everyone happy?

Probably not. But nothing ever does. So instead, the only people who have been looking seriously at this issue as more and more land is gobbled up for tee boxes will be painted as the 10-handicaps trying their best to ruin the game. Which is part of the job.

If you think the best people to make the rules for PGA Tour players are PGA Tour players, that’s an interesting conversation. It’s just a totally different conversation than we’ve ever had in golf. And judging by how much more boring the weekly PGA Tour setups are than those done by outside parties at the majors, I’m quite pessimistic about going down that road.

Likewise, if you think it should be left up to the fans and entertainment value, that’s fine. If you think the people cheering as Bryson DeChambeau pulverizes a golf ball over the lake at Bay Hill have given more thought to the best long-term interests of the game than the USGA, then, again, we’re probably just going to have to disagree.

(Side note: That Bryson drive was great and one of my favorite golf memories of the past few years. And it would have been just as good from one tee box up. It’s not the specific number that makes Bryson’s drives fascinating. It’s the fact that he was the only one who could do it. It’s all relative.)

We can keep going. What does Justin Thomas think? What does Jack Nicklaus think? (Cautiously) What does Charley Hoffman think? What do equipment manufacturers think? What do TV networks think? What do sponsors think? What do agronomists think? What do biomechanists think? What does Augusta National think?

All of these parties have valid thoughts on one of the biggest decisions that will be made in pro golf this decade. Some of those arguments are better than others. Some are understandably biased and self-interested. Some are flat-out wrong. Some are brilliant. What makes the discussion so overwhelming is when all the information and takes are flying around, in and out of context, at 127 miles per hour and 11 degrees of launch.

The unenviable task that faces the USGA and the R&A is to listen to all of them, along with all of their own research, and make an unbiased and unemotional decision about what to do. It’s pretty clear they’ve done that, and they’ve probably given it a lot more thought than the guy on Twitter who says “why don’t we ban golf tees?”

We’ve just spent two years discussing how the PGA Tour should have looked around the corner and been more proactive in making the changes necessary to keep their stars from jumping to a rival league. It’s easy to see some parallels in the decision faced by the USGA and the R&A. Look at how pissed off some of the PGA Tour rank-and-file is today about changing their structure 

AS they’re facing an actual existential threat

!!! If the PGA Tour had tried 5 years ago to get ahead of LIV’s rise, it would have been fighting the same inertia the governing bodies are facing in trying to curb the distance issue.


Things in golf are going great. And the easiest thing to do in a boom time for the game would be nothing. But if the USGA and R&A have identified that golf (at least golf at an elite level) is headed in the wrong direction, it’s very clearly their job to take action. And that action only gets tougher to take with every day that goes by.

The Loudest Voice in the Conversation

Welcome back to the No Laying Up bi-weekly mailbag! In this space, we’ll address topics big and small, smart and dumb, irreverent and serious. You need to be a member of The Nest to submit a question to the mailbag, but the mailbag itself will be free to read (as long as you behave yourselves). Most of our questions are submitted via our message board, The Refuge, but if you’re not a message board person, please send me an email at kvv@nolayingup.com with your Nest handle and your question. As a bonus, if your question gets picked, we’ll send you a free NLU towel.

Dflock24: Realistically what would you like to see in regards to a ball/equipment rollback? Obviously most of the talk is around a more spinny ball to exaggerate mishits; do you think this or other suggestions would be enough to truly make a difference in the professional game? Could changes such as a spinner ball or reduced legal driver head actually have a lasting impact, or would the players eventually figure it out and get back to overpowering courses in 5-10 years?

Realistically, what I would like to see is professional golfers step back and realize that their interests do not always align with the greater good of the game. Professional golfers are really good at picking apart the challenge a golf course presents. Some of them see it as art, and some of them see it as a math equation they are trying to solve, but the goal is the same: Shoot the lowest score. The goal of the governing bodies is different. They have a responsibility to strike a balance between professional golfers, amateur golfers, golf course owners and architects, the environment, superintendents and history. Professional golfers have the biggest megaphone, but they also have selfish motivations. They don’t want their jobs to get harder and they don’t want the equipment companies who pay them to have to rethink a marketing strategy that has benefitted them. I wish they could realize they could step outside themselves and understand there is a value in preserving the historical connection we have to the game. Do I need to see them hitting a 1-iron into the 13th hole at Augusta National like Jack Nicklaus did? No, I’m not that extreme, but it would be nice to see more 4 irons instead of 8 irons. They could have participated in sensible reform, and worked with the USGA and R&A, but they’ve resisted ANY reform. I think if Mike Whan had announced that a new tournament ball was going to spin more or punish mishits severely, they would have howled in protest to that as well. So I don’t know what the answer is. But I do know the framing of the issue is frequently dishonest. Professional golfers are still going to be really good at golf no matter what ball they play. And if the ball doesn’t fly (quite) as far, maybe we don’t have to make greens STIMP at 13 or 14 in every major, which would benefit the game in a lot of ways, not just at the professional level but in a way that cascades down.

: Aside from the larger audience, what has your experience been using Twitter threads as a means of reporting? Does the 280 character bullet point have any significant impact on your approach? If so, is there any reason why this approach couldn't be incorporated into your NLU website posts?

One thing I’m enjoying about this mailbag is it feels like people like a peek into how the sausage of journalism is made. If you haven’t followed along, I’ve written multiple “columns” on Twitter from the Genesis and The Players instead of incorporating them into the NLU website, a decision that has baffled some of my friends but delighted some readers. The reasons behind it, I think, is fairly simple: The shelf life for a Thursday or Friday column from a golf tournament is very short. By the time I get it written, edited, built and posted, it might live on our website for what … five or six hours before play begins again?

There is an immediacy to writing in Twitter threads and also a discipline to it. I kind of enjoy trying to write well in small boxes. In truth, I think digital media companies have sometimes made a mistake in trying to monetize the written word. How likely are you to click on a digital banner ad on NoLayingUp.com when you’re interested in one of my stories? I think you’re more likely to be annoyed than you are willing to buy a product from one of those ads.


I want people to read those Twitter threads and feel something about the NLU universe. If you like my insights, hopefully, you’ll stick around and read the Sunday wrap-up or you’ll listen to the podcast or join the Nest. My friend Kyle Porter and I had a conversation about this recently. Writing is a great way to bring people under your umbrella. It’s not a great way to make money. Do Twitter threads feel like a waste if they just disappear? Maybe. And I think there will be moments when we could make them into actual columns. 

, I knew when I saw that I wanted it to be more than a series of tweets. So I wrote a column. I think my honest answer is, we’re figuring this stuff out as we go along. I like the freedom to do whatever the moment calls for.


Dmmcgaha: KVV, I really need your help. As I’m perusing the lineups for some music festivals this summer, I see that the foo fighters are headlining a lot of festivals. My question is: Who’s favorite band is the Foo Fighters? Aren’t they just Creed with a lead singer who was in Nirvana instead of the CIA? Foo Fighters is a heavier version of Maroon 5: Tons of accolades, but no one admits they like them. Can you help?

This topic came up recently in a group chat I’m in and I’m kind of surprised at how polarizing the Foo Fighters are among my friends. Often when these kinds of questions come up, I’m reminded of the anecdote about New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, who was alleged to have quipped when Richard Nixon was elected president that she didn’t know how that was possible because she didn’t know anyone who had voted for him. (The anecdote is almost 

, but has bandied about for 50 some years as a way of poking fun at someone who seems out of touch and living in a bubble. In truth, Kael was almost certainly admitting her own provincialism.)

Do I know anyone who is a passionate fan of the Foo Fighters? Admittedly I do not. But that might be an indictment of me, not the Foo Fighters. I think the comparison to Creed and Maroon 5 is unfair because Creed stinks (

 and Randy) and Maroon 5 is not a rock band, they’re a pop band.

Here is what I will say about the Foo Fighters: They have two videos I can watch and I immediately get choked up. The time they played “

 with Taylor Hawkins’ son on the kit, and the time they closed down Dave Letterman’s run as a late night host 

 the song Letterman listened to repeatedly in the hospital when he needed a quintuple bypass.

I like snarking about art and music as much as anyone, but I don’t see how you can watch the Shane Hawkins video and not be moved by the power of music. There is a moment at the 3:45 mark where Dave Grohl looks back at Shane with a mixture of pride and wonderment that just guts me. Imagine losing your dad and then getting up on stage, sitting in the exact seat where he sat, and just mashing the drums with everything you’ve got in front of thousands of people. Grieving takes on different forms, and that one moves me every time.

The second video is more about my own shit, but it’s loosely connected to the theme of dads. When I was a kid, watching David Letterman on Friday nights was one of best bonding experiences I had with my dad, and it spanned such an important period of my life (from when I was a teenager to when I was a father myself) that when Letterman brought out the Foo Fighters to say goodbye and they started ripping through Everlong, it felt like a slideshow of the last 25 years for me. Nothing has ever made me bawl out of nowhere like that did, sitting alone in the dark, thinking about being a teenager and my dad setting up the television on our back deck during the summer so we could watch Letterman under the stars.

I couldn’t tell you what a single Foo Fighters song means if I’m being honest. But emotionally, they’re a pretty good soundtrack to some big themes in my life.

RunOfTheDill: Simple question. Rank The Wire top 5 non-police characters and why Bodie is your favorite.

In the last mailbag, I declared (perhaps foolishly) that I don’t love ranking stuff because comparison is a thief of joy. So instead of ranking them, I’m going to just list five characters and why I love them and people can rank them as they see fit. I’m also not going to pick Omar simply because that’s too easy, everyone loves Omar and he’d make every list so I’m going to create a special exemption for him, like the PGA Tour did to make sure Tiger Woods could get in any designated event he wants.

Bubbles: One of the best things about Bubs is the way he functions as the Greek Chorus throughout the series. He works with the cops but he’s not of the cops, and he is part of the street but not part of either the Barksdale crew or the Stanfield crew. It is his job to serve as the moral arbiter between the two worlds, and Andre Royo’s acting might be the best on the whole show. I often think about the quote “It’s a thin line between heaven and here” because it takes a cliche and tweaks it just enough to make you stop and realize what it means to be Bubbles. Lastly, is there a better scene in the entire show than Bubbles climbing the stairs to eat dinner with his sister’s family during the final montage? The scene has equals, but nothing in the show felt as earned as that one.

Frank Sobotka: Anytime anyone says to me that they don’t like Season 2 of The Wire, I immediately write them off as someone who doesn’t actually get the message the show is trying to convey. Season 2 is what makes you understand this isn’t a conflict between cops and drug dealers, it’s the story of an American city ripped apart because institutions are more powerful than individuals. Frank’s choices are the same as D’Angelo’s choices, but David Simon and Ed Burns were some of the first people to help people understand how similarly fated each character was. “We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just stick our hands in someone else’s pockets” is as good a line of dialog as there is in the series, and I love Chris Bauer’s long walk toward The Greek and Spiros when they know he’s met with the FBI but he doesn’t know they know. Such a sad, powerful moment.


Prop Joe: When you re-watch the series, I don’t think anyone makes me smile more than Robert Chew. His delivery of dry one-liners is so perfect. Prop Joe survives with cunning wit more than muscle, and the only person who is truly his equal in that department is Omar. My favorite tidbit about Chew is he was a real life theater coach and a teacher in Baltimore city schools and he helped coach all the kids in Season 4 feel comfortable and confident in their performances, as well as Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, who had never acted before. There are a dozen Prop Joe lines that I love, but I chuckle every time I think about him saying he’s “Irving Pepper from the law firm Pepper, Pepper and Bay Leaf.”

Wee-Bey: One of my favorite moments in the series involves Wee-Bey, when Bunny Colvin visits him in prison to ask if he can adopt Namond. Wee-Bey hasn’t really been featured as a character much since Season 1, but when the moment calls for it, he delivers such an unexpected powerful transformation as he realizes his son doesn’t have to meet the same fate he did. Hassan Johnson barely has any lines in the scene with Robert Wisdom, but his face is so good at conveying the angst and torment. It’s weird to say that one of your favorite characters is probably the show’s most ruthless killer, but the way he’s humanized late in the series as someone who could swallow his pride when his kid is offered a chance at a better life is quite moving.

Stringer Bell: I know you kicked this off by assuming that Bodie should be the top draft pick, but after mulling it, I had to leave him off. I love his character, but I love others just a little bit more. My friend Bomani Jones 

that Stringer is actually the worst, and he’s not wrong, but all the reasons he lists are actually the reasons I Iove his character. He thought he was smarter than everyone. He thought he could run a drug empire like a legitimate business. He betrayed his friends, he got them killed, he ended up looking like a fool several times. He was a terrible boss! But those are the reasons he’s fascinating. His scene on the balcony where he and Avon know they’ve each betrayed one another, but are still feeling nostalgic about the young punks they used to be, is one of my favorite scenes in the whole series. People overuse the term Shakespearean, but that’s about as close as you can get to Shakespeare in modern television.


Greebs: Is there a golfer whose story you love that would make him winning a non-elevated event so good you’d be rooting for him?

The easy answer to this is Harry Higgs, a win that would maybe go down as the most delightful day in the history of Golf Twitter. Obviously, we are light years apart when it comes to golf talent, but I see a lot of myself in Higgs, both in our frame and in how we tend to get down on ourselves on the golf course. 

 is a good window into why he’s such a vulnerable, interesting person.

Ztlumak:  As a journalist, how do you go about planning questions for a subject ahead of an interview or prior to a press conference (a la The Players where you may only get one shot) and how has that skill evolved over the course of your career?

Press conferences are such a strange dance between reporter and subject. If you ask a great question, you’re essentially giving the answer to everyone else in the room to use for their own stuff. So your reward is uplifting everyone’s story, not just your own. I usually try to get a specific detail out of someone that I know is going to be interesting to my story. Sometimes it turns out to be a whiff. It seemed like, from social media reports, Scottie Scheffler had spent considerable time on the range Saturday night after shooting 65, and I wondered if it might have reflected some larger anxiety about his swing so I asked him why he was beating balls until the sunset. “I hit like 10 balls,” Scheffler said, and I think he assumed I was trying to make a sophomoric joke. 

 I really needed a Jim Halpert in that moment behind me to whisper: ‘Phrasing, Kevin.’ ”

I think there are also moments when it’s important for the press to ask questions that speak to broader issues, particularly if readers or viewers have made it clear they want the answer and they feel like no one has asked the question. I actually would have liked to have asked Jay Monahan about 

 but I didn’t see it before Monahan’s press conference last Tuesday. (Phil! @ me next time.)

mschriver3: I can’t remember where I put it - but please expound on your “no-drop tournament” concept. Where is it hosted - realistically and for most carnage (e.g. St Andrews versus Bay Hill). Does OB not exist? Is a water ball or any unplayable lie an auto-DQ?

In case you’re not a regular podcast listener, I have joked recently that I’d love to see the PGA Tour hold a tournament where there was no TIO relief. If you hit the ball behind a Port-A-John, you have to play it around, over, or off the toilet. (Sometimes I like to imagine the look on a Hollywood director’s face if a golf consultant tried to bring up TIO relief during 

.) There are obvious safety issues and insurance issues that would come into play, but shouldn’t you be able to avoid hitting the ball 

into a parking lot as a professional golfer

? Why should you get a free drop in that scenario? You hit it into a parking lot! There ought to be a reward for keeping the ball in the field of play. Consider the potential recovery shots as well. What would be more thrilling than watching Jordan Spieth make pars from a salad bar in a hospitality tent?

I think we could embrace that glorious madness for one tournament. Obviously, if you hit the ball in the water, that’s a natural hazard and you take your penalty stroke and plan on. But hit it behind the scoreboard? Tough break, figure it out.

KVV Mailbag: The Rollback, Modern Journalism and The Wire

It's been a while since we've gone around the horn with a team-wide Q&A. I'll kick things off. 

What has been your “NLU highlight” of 2023?

I'm very excited about what's going on behind the scenes at NLU. We are growing as a business, and with that growth, things get more complicated. I'm very proud of the way the team has responded to that complexity and the continued focus on creating content that entertains and informs avid golfers. That focus allows a wily veteran like KVV to jump in and make an immediate impact, something that may not have been possible even a year ago. I'm very grateful he decided to join the team.  

Best piece of content you’ve consumed in 2023?

It's a two horse race for me between the movie Tár and the 

SNL skit featuring the animatronic Cologuard box

by Tim O'Brien per KVV recommendation, and it was just as good 10 years later. Since it was a re-consumption, it has to be an honorable mention!

What do you think Patrick Cantlay’s favorite tool is and why?

Of course, Patty Vise has a tool for every job, but he keeps his boxcutter/carpet knife clipped to his belt at all times. It's a versatile tool, and as a Treadstone operative, it can also be lethal.

Cam Smith shows up with bad intentions and wrecks the Rory block party on Sunday, April 9th. 

Caption a random picture on your phone from over a year ago.

Wayward in the Wild

The Pro 4.0 aka Max Homa calling into the pod on January 29th the morning after his win at Torrey. It’s our favorite tradition and become a regular occurrence, and yet somehow I’m happier for him each and every time. Knowing both the work that he puts in, and the fact that he’s the exact same person as the day we met him, makes his success that much sweeter to witness.

 performed the national anthem at the week 18 Titans-Jaguars game and burned the place down. Peak Florida Man.

Patty Vise is a huge tape measure guy. Extremely deliberate. Truly a measure twice, cut once type.

Amateur/Vanderbilt Sophomore Gordon Sargent finishes in the top 20 at Augusta.

It's been the hottest start to any year that we've ever had, so this one was tough. I'm gonna go TC and list off a few: 

Shooting one of our best pieces of content ever with JT and Spieth

, bringing Kevin Van Valkenburg aboard, the Jon Rahm/Max Homa podcast heater, reheating the No Laying Up website, launching a new LPGA podcast....I could keep going. But one of the highlight moments of my life, much less an NLU highlight, was walking up 18 with my dad on the bag at the Pebble Pro-Am. He had just lost his dad a few weeks prior, and it was a needed break for the both of us and I'll always remember that week.

It's been the busiest start to a year I've had, and I don't think I've logged into Netflix other than to watch Full Swing. But I'll say, Bill Simmons' NFL playoff preview podcasts were fantastic and really got me back into football. Particularly, Peter Schrager and Benjamin Solak both broke down exactly what to look for in each matchup and it greatly contributed to my enjoyment of the NFL playoffs.


What do you think Patrick Cantlay’s favorite tool is and why?

A hammer? Or would he call it "the poundy thing"?


The LIV Masters winners will be (politely) not invited to the Champions Dinner.

Getting back to Pinehurst for the Donnybrook has been the highlight of 2023 for me so far. Was very nice to enjoy some sunshine and early spring weather in North Carolina while knocking some rust off the golf game and hanging out with a great crew.

I have just started the book, “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. This July, Christopher Nolan is releasing his movie, “Oppenheimer”, which I’m so stoked to see. I think reading the book beforehand will make the movie even more enjoyable.

Favorite tool is a leveler. Has to make sure he’s even-keeled!

Randy and I took a trip to LA earlier this year to record our 

, which was as fun of a trip as I've had in a while. We don't get to do many podcasts in person anymore, so being in the same room and trying to make each other laugh was really energizing and refreshing. Sorry for how long it turned out.

, you know that Mr. 400 is trying to run down 100 birdies, 100 workouts, 100 movies and, perhaps the biggest challenge, finding and listening to 100 new albums that I've never heard. I've found some great recommendation sources and one of the albums that's stuck out to me the most is 

 from an English psych band called Andromeda. Always a treat when you find something that's existed for more than 50 years that you had no idea was Absolutely Your Shit.

Tape measure. Based on his pace of play, The Toolman is clearly a measure twice, cut once kind of guy.

I think the three horsemen (Rory, Scottie, Rahm) are going to be gassed, paving the way for our beautiful boy Jordan Spieth to win his fourth Green Jacket.

” We had talked a big game about bringing writing back to NLU regularly but talk doesn’t mean much until you produce. DJ and I came up with the idea mid-week that we wanted to give readers something they couldn’t get from television, and that only unique reporting and insight would justify going to events, and so I stayed up all night trying to craft these little scenes we thought of as mini-movies. The reception was great and I think it was the kind of tent pole we wanted to plant the announced to the golf world: Guess what? We do this now too.

" by Spencer Hall. I’m cheating a little here because Hall’s send-off to Mike Leach came out in mid-December, but I’ve read it a few times since joining NLU and it delivers every time. I can’t link it because Spencer and Holly Anderson, friends to rogue media everywhere, run a paid newsletter called Channel 6 that’s some of the best $10 I spend a month. But Spencer writes with the kind of wit, humor and clarity I aspire to even one day scratch. Great obits aren’t hagiography. They’re honest and sad and funny and smart. The ending of the piece — “he walks and talks to no one but the stirring parrots about the endless sea, and all its glories a man can behold, simply by having the will to set sail” will stick with me forever.

I’m going to go with a reciprocating saw. It’s like the paintbrush of demolition work. I don’t think Cantlay would use a sledgehammer or crowbar. He’s too finicky. He would want the finesse and speed of a reciprocating saw, plus the adaptability. He’d wield it like a surgeon.

Rory will have a real chance this year on the back 9. Doesn’t mean he’ll get it done, but he will be in the mix thanks to some smart wedge play.

"This is a picture of my daughter Keegan and NLU young hitter Lauren Coughlin. About a year ago, Lauren and her husband John drove up to Baltimore because John had found a great deal on a grill. Lauren asked if Keegan and I wanted to play golf with them. Keegan was really nervous — an LPGA player on her home course! — but Lauren was the absolute best. She and Keegan drubbed me and John 4&3 and Keegan made a par to close out the match when Lauren hit her only bad drive of the day. It was such a great moment with great people. Lauren told me she used to play matches with her dad and his friends, and that’s how she fell in love with golf, and I can already see that happening with my daughter. She has one of Lauren’s gloves from that day hanging in her room, almost like it’s a holy object."

This may be recency bias, but the one-two punch of the Donnybrook in Pinehurst with a bunch of great Refugees followed up with a marathon day of Film Room filming in Jax with Ben, Soly, KVV, and Hueber has to top the list right now.

, has been on constant rotation since it came out in February.

I'm thinking of the 2021 BMW where he outlasted Bryson in the 6 hole playoff - gotta be the 20V MAX* XR® 10.0Ah Lithium Ion Battery keeping him charged up to keep getting through the job.

Until it comes true, my standing Masters prediction is for Jon Rahm to win it!! Is it bold? Not really, but I'm committed to it for the 4th Masters in a row now.

My highlight so far of 2023 was my solo morning at TPC Sawgrass leading up to Tron and Huebers Film Room shoot. I had a perfect morning without a soul on the course - 

. I muttered to myself a lot that morning about how lucky I am to have an opportunity to see Sawgrass like that.

I really enjoyed the first part of Break Point on Netflix. Tennis has always been a sport I like to play but know very little about the professional game outside of the #hitters. Big fan of the lad Nick Kyrigos after his ep.

Cantlay's favorite tool has to be the electric sander. I can see him getting deep into perfecting his wood prep before lathering on a nice finish.

JT and Rory battle on Sunday and JT dons the green jacket.

. With young kids now, I find it extremely difficult to take time away and go to the theatre. But it used to be a go-to weekly activity for Yari and me. What I have always loved about movies is that I see the story for what it is. Big, Deej, and specifically Tim can break down movies into something I have always thought of but never could. I appreciate their passion for the craft and art of filmmaking and in a weird way makes me better at my job.

. This book is written by Dan Schilling and Lori Chapman Longfritz about John Chapman. John was a combat controller in the 24th Special Tactics Squadron at Fort Bragg. He died in March 2002 during Operation Anaconda after risking his life to save his teammates. He is a hero, and the book is a great look back on the 20th anniversary of our involvement in Afghanistan.

DEWALT Thickness Planer, Two Speed, 13-Inch. Like Patrick, this is a high-powered piece of machinery. It's built for speed and precision. Its only goal is to have a smooth finish. However, it does not like depth. Struggles when things get rough. And is not the most prized piece in the shop. It just gets its job done.

Max Homa wins. DJ finishes second. Rory makes the cut and somehow backdoors a top 10.

What's burning at the Kill House: March 2023

PONTE VEDRA — When Scottie Scheffler was a boy, he spent innumerable hours hanging around the chipping green at Royal Oaks Country Club in Dallas. It was the only place, according to his coach Randy Smith, Scheffler would let his body and his brain slow down. He was constantly talking, running, buzzing with energy. Although the Legend of Scheffler often references his childhood humility, obnoxious would be a more honest description.

“As a little kid, he would get a little red and hot,” Smith said. “I said you’d better quit it now because there are some people who will really give you crap the older you get. He was outgoing, chirpy, zoom zooming everywhere. He was like the Energizer Bunny, into everything.”

It was exhausting. But when it came to chipping contests, Scheffler was fearless. He would stare down anyone who would take him on, whether it was kids his own age or the club’s PGA Tour regulars like Justin Leonard and Colt Knost.

“If you took all those contests when he was little, every single one of them, he’d be batting 70 percent from about age nine against the pros,” Smith said. “Now he’s got a couple kids doing to him what he did to them. I’ve seen [Scheffler get beat] once. He did not take it well.”

There are a few ways to look at Scheffler, who continued to make his case on Sunday that he is the best golfer in the world with a five-stroke win at The Players Championship, a win that returned him to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings and earned him $4.5 million.

You can view him as brilliant but bland, a little too corporate and too genial of a player in which to emotionally invest your fandom.

Or you can grow to appreciate him for what he is, an artist with irons and wedges who — despite projecting a friendly and humble persona — burns with a quiet, competitive rage that he’s learned to channel into the biggest moments.

“Every once in a while he’ll have a bit of an explosion,” Smith said while Scheffler was inside scoring, putting his signature on a final round 69, his sixth career win. “But he’s kind of figured out that there is nothing [good about] burning up the energy inside you that you need to create the best stuff. You watch great basketball players. They get mad. Oh god, do they get mad. But it’s amazing how fast they’re right back into the heat of the action. That’s what he does. He doesn’t burn up a lot of mental energy on getting mad. Now, he may completely go off at the range. But he doesn’t do it out here.”

The Players is decidedly not a major championship (sorry Mr. Monahan). But it does always serve as a good spot to assess where pro golf stands with majors just beyond the horizon. A few storylines took shape early in the week. The absence of the players who defected for LIV was clearly felt, none more than defending champion Cam Smith. Jon Rahm even fielded a question asking if Smith should have been granted an exemption, a delightful bit of theater considering he was answering it in the PGA Tour’s Media Center surrounded by PGA Tour employees.

“I mean, yes and no,” Rahm said. “I feel like as defending champion you've earned a right. But we're talking about a very unique circumstance in the world of golf. Some players made a choice of going to a different golf league knowing that they weren't going to be allowed to play here. And yes, this is a massive event. It is very close to a major quality event, but it's still a PGA Tour event. So with that regard, no. I don't think just him should be allowed to be here.”

It also became clear that Rory McIlroy remains the game’s most interesting golfer, especially if you factor in how much he means to the sport and the ways he’s chosen to take the lead in re-shaping the PGA Tour. He spent his Tuesday morning in a 2-hour player meeting helping the Tour present the plan for 2024, a plan that creates eight designated events (all of them likely to be held without a cut) for the Top 70 players in the FedExCup standings.

“I'm not going to sit here and lie, I think the emergence of LIV or the emergence of a competitor to the PGA Tour has benefited everyone that plays elite professional golf,” McIlroy said. “I think when you've been the biggest golf league in the biggest market in the world for the last 60 years, there's not a lot of incentive to innovate. This has caused a ton of innovation at the PGA Tour, and what was quite, I would say, an antiquated system is being revamped to try to mirror where we're at in the world in the 21st century with the media landscape.”

If McIlroy holds the title as the most compelling golfer for reasons beyond the course, then Rahm continues to be the most intimidating and relentless golfer, the man you least want to see charging up the leaderboard or standing across the tee box. But neither man was able to stick around for the weekend, Rahm suffering from a stomach ailment that forced him to withdraw Friday morning, and McIlroy suffering from a driver that, of late, has made him feel similarly queasy every time it drifts offline.

“I’m ready to get back to being purely a golfer,” McIlroy admitted after 76-73 left him outside the cutline. “It’s been a busy couple weeks. Honestly, it’s been a busy six to eight months.”

Rahm and McIlroy’s early exit created an opening for some of the game’s understudies to make their case that they deserve (particularly next season) to be chasing the same rapidly-expanding purses that the superstars have earmarked for themselves. There was a lot of talk early in the week that Sawgrass was the kind of democratic test that might throw a wrench in the narrative that the Tour should be built around its stars, particularly when journeymen like Chad Ramey, Ben Griffin, and David Lingmerth surged into contention. Griffin — who quit golf and became a mortgage broker several years ago, only to return to the game — found himself playfully answering questions about interest rates while in contention at the Tour’s $25 million flagship event after he opened with a 67.

“They’re too high if you're trying to buy a house,” Griffin said. “A $500,000 house two years ago was a little bit more affordable and it's probably double the cost now on a monthly payment. I picked a good time to get out of the mortgage industry, and I don't know how, but people think I'm a wizard for timing it so perfectly.”

Even 56-year-old Jerry Kelly turned a few heads by becoming the oldest player in the history of The Players to make the cut.

“Basically I took another two or three years off my life,” Kelly said. “I’m happy where I’m at on the Champions Tour.”

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