What went down: Viral sensation KVV joins the pod after his SCATHING column where he threw his hands up in the air and questioned the sanity of anyone who continues to call themselves a golf fan!
JK, but it was a great column and you should check it out.
News broke out just as the guys hit record that the PGA Tour Player Advisory Board has selected an outside investment group, SSG (Strategic Sports Group) – a Boston-heavy contingent of private equity.
Soly declares none of it means anything to him if it doesn’t involve the best players in the world playing together on a regular basis. What could it mean for golf, globally? How will the interests of ALL of these investors, plus PIF, align? How much closer is Yasir to his Augusta National membership?
(19:00) Jason Day and Lydia Ko take the Grant Thornton Invitational title at 26-under par…in an event that should have probably gotten a lot more buzz. Probably doesn’t help that it’s the second LPGA event at the same course in the past two weeks, says Tron. But there’s probably a lot more that could be done to boost the profile of the event – such as a better time of year, a more accessible location, an exciting course, etc.
(24:40) Rory is officially back on Twitter and dishing out clapbacks, strays, things of that nature.
The LIV Golf Promotions ended with Kalle Samooja, Kieran Vincent and Jinichiro Kozuma earning LIV membership. Some additional reactions to the Jon Rahm to LIV announcement, but the crew took a dive last week when the news broke that you can check out here.
Soly asks: What is stopping a wave of guys from going to LIV for one year?
(36:00) KVV suggests the extremely depressing possibility that all of the charities the PGA Tour works with will arguably suffer the most, prompting a larger discussion about how the PGA Tour’s tournament sponsors might be feeling right now.
Best take: (32:20) I think it’s safe to say we rooted for Ohtani’s deal – whatever it looked like – because he is someone who sincerely plays for the love of their respective sport. He is asking his employer to withhold most of his paycheck for the betterment of the company. Who does that?
Also, Shohei Ohtani, who has the makings of a GOAT, is justifiably worth $700M. If an alien invasion took place and said invaders specifically asked for an explainer on major sports contracts, Jon Rahm to LIV would have them stumped – who, BTW, had quite the grin on his face talking about how “nice” the money was on McAfee! Just a lot of two-faced behavior here.
Worst take: Seasons greetings: I will spare everyone a bad take nomination this week.
KVV jumping in to say: Apologies to the mules who might be appalled Tron won’t be taken to task for saying we should consider mercifully euthanizing mules.
Quotables:
"I'm sure Twitter will be sending me a check any moment now for the eleven cents I have generated for the platform." -KVV
(34:00) “Having Rory acting like a real human being again on Twitter, that’s why I liked Rory in the first place.” -TC
(39:16) KVV: If you wanna win that money, play better.
Tron: Nate Lashley’s gonna show up at your doorstep tonight.
Featured guest(s): (44:30) Halfway through there’s an interview with Martin Slumbers and Mike Whan, discussing the rollback and how the two governing bodies arrived at the decision.
Here’s a sneak peek at their conversation… (answers edited for clarity and conciseness).
Soly: I'll start with this one with you Martin. You guys are two different people. You represent two different bodies. I'm curious if we could get a little insight into your guys' process. Are there examples you can give us of areas where maybe you two have disagreed or your teams have disagreed? How have you worked out internally? I struggle to believe that you guys have been a hundred percent aligned in every step of the process. But I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit of an insight into how your guys' internal processes worked on that front.
Slumbers: You're absolutely right. We've not agreed on everything, but we have agreed on the final outcome. We both have some very talented scientists and engineers who work in our equipment standards who have been doing it this for a long, long time. The way it's really worked between Mike and I is we knew what we were trying to get to, which is: Do we make a change in regulation around golf balls? And if we don't make a change, what are our options? And he and I would talk a lot – I would talk less than Mike – but we would talk a lot around kind of the, the sort of the, the higher level things and then work with us, our teams to answer specific questions.
And we went back to the engineers, the clever guys. They joke around equipment regulation isn't rocket science, but it does help. But our head of regulation, equipment regulation used to work for NASA. These guys, they go back and they come back to us and say, Martin, you're wrong. You need to go and tell Mike he's on the wrong path. And he would call me and say, my guys are telling me that you are wrong, Martin. We looked at hundreds and hundreds of different options. It's been an incredibly challenging period of time and we've iteratively worked from our thinking and then using our scientists and engineers come to a logical, sensible, simple answer.
(1:42:10) Lastly, listen to a reading of KVV’s column, “Jon Rahm, The Rollback and an Entire Reevaluation.”
Referenced works:
PGA Tour: PGA Tour Policy Board picks SSG
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