2025 predictions! Tour/LIV war, major winners, players to watch
30:00 Share

If your small business is booming, you might say, cha-choo, but you should say, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there, and we'll help your growing business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Terms and conditions apply!

Welcome to this edition of the Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and Lab. Happy 2025. We appreciate you being with us as we usher in a new year of golf. And Rex, we handed out superlatives for the 2024 season, but now we're going to make some bold predictions for the new year that, if we're right, will undoubtedly be celebrated. But if we're wrong...

It will be forgotten and hopefully scrubbed from the internet forever. Are you ready to go viral with all of your bad takes like you've done in the past? You never have any accountability because we're going to start with who do you think is going to be the player of the year? And I even scribble down Xander only because it's going to make him laugh, Matt, because he's going to pick Xander again for player of the year. And Xander won't win. He'll be close again. But I know the way this is going to play out. You don't worry about your bad takes. You just circle back around to the ones you get right.

Yep. That's how this works on this podcast. That's why I'm hosting and you are merely co-hosting. Let's first, we're not going to start with player of the year. We're going to start with sort of the overarching question, which is the same question we've been asking since basically the middle of 2022 is will golf's silver war ever end? Yes or no. Do you think it ends in 2025?

It does end with an asterisk because by every measure, by my understanding, by your understanding, by most people who cover the game, it seems to me they're at least on the doorstep of the financial terms of what a deal would look like between the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. It's taken a year and a half plus.

to get here. But my understanding is we're somewhere close. Now, that being said, I was told all along that the financial version part of this deal was going to be the easier part. So that's not very encouraging. We won't come. We won't have whatever the Frentis product is going to look like in 2025. They won't sit down at some point this year and lay out exactly how the two tours and how the players are going to come back

together, but there will be, I hate to use this term because we've worn it out. There will be some sort of framework for how we can go forward. I will say this. I was texting just last week before the new year with a player from live golf who, uh,

was not in a very good mood at all. And I sort of texted them what I just said to you. And this player's response was, I don't know how we get there. And that is difficult for everyone to sort of wrap their mind around right now. And I get it. Look, we seem to have reached a point where we're just banging heads against the walls, but it is encouraging if we can reach the financial terms of this. It seems to me that both sides, just not the PGA Tour, but both sides decide that

Probably need some sort of new leadership. We need fresh ideas. We need someone sitting at the table, maybe grownups at the table, for lack of a better word. Jay Monahan will no longer be CEO of the PGA Tour, although he's listed as commissioner. He'll serve on both boards. Greg Norman stepping down as CEO is Liv Goff. I think all of that is encouraging, but how long it takes to get there, it's going to be a minute.

Yeah, I'm going to go with yes. And I'm going to be slightly more encouraging because once the financial component of the deal is announced, you have nothing else on the table except for figuring out a way that you can bring the live players back into the fold. Keep in mind, they announced the PGA Tour did some pretty radical changes to the membership as late in the year as November. It really doesn't affect anything.

pj tour players if you come up with a with a way say giving sponsor exemptions to live players in the signature events or you're cutting some of the schedule or you're going to have a you know a rotating pj tour team in live events i don't think with 10 or 11 months to sort of map out exactly how it could and should look that that's not totally unrealistic i i want to get to a point where 2026

is sort of ushering a new era in golf where the schedule looks dramatically different, where all the best players are playing together again, where it's fun, it's innovative, it's inventive. It's sort of reinvigorating what has been a pretty stale product for a long time. I'm optimistic we'll get there. I'm hoping that's 2026, that there's sort of the big unveiling. But I sort of understand your skepticism as well, that it could take even longer.

And look, I feel like I'm being as optimistic as I can be. I'm not trying to be the Debbie Downer here, but to the point that you just made the financial terms, again, that was supposed to be the easiest part of the deal. Now the difficulty is not so much finding some sort of way to weave the fabric of professional golf back together again. It's to try to do that with hurt feelings on both sides.

Now this is personalities. This is no longer just a numbers deal where we're trying to figure out, okay, is 10.8% investment okay or 6% investment okay? This is about hurt feelings and friendships that are no longer friendships and one side looking at the other side being like, no, they took their cake. They can't have it too. That's difficult to overcome.

bitterness, resentment, jealousy, those are not good positions from which to negotiate. How about player of the year, Rex? You mentioned Xander Shoffley at the top of the podcast. I did not pick Xander Shoffley because I am not

Look, I think Zandershov is going to play well. I think he's by far and away the second best player in the world right now. But I don't think, barring some continued injury from Scottie Scheffler, or if somehow that broken glass that he suffered, the hand injury on Christmas Day that knocked him out of the century, if somehow that lingers for a couple months and he loses all of his magical powers, this is going to be Scottie Scheffler player of the year in 2025. Once again, he's irrepressible.

He's inevitable. When you strike the ball as well as he does, you just give yourself so many more chances to win golf tournaments than his peers. That will continue in 2025.

Yes. And you pointed out the obvious. He's not playing in the century because of some sort of hand injury where he cut himself over the holidays. We're assuming we're both sort of assuming that this is just a one-off. Apparently he's all set to play two weeks after that, the American express, I'm sure he'll be fine. So as long as nothing factors in, because again, injuries are sort of hard to account for when you do this Scotty Scheffler now. And for the next however many years, simply because of the reasons you pointed out, you're right. When he is, when you're that head and shoulders, uh,

above everyone else on the PGA Tour when it comes to ball striking. And we always have this conversation about, well, he's a bad putter. Well, no, if you're on the PGA Tour, you're not a bad putter. This is all relative to the best putters in the world. So you need to be fair about it. But when it comes to being the best ball striker among the best ball strikers on the planet, it gives you an idea. You're right. He's just going to give himself so many opportunities. And if he just continues to make those incremental steps, 1%, 1%,

with Phil Kenyon every single day, just trying to get better with the putting, whatever the call grip was, he showed up with in the Bahamas. If, if he can just be middle of the pack, he's going to win more times than not. If he picks up two and a half strokes, like he did in the Bahamas, he's going to win by six and be player of the year again. Yeah. I mean, if, if the switch to the claw grip, which he debuted at the hero world challenge somehow translates to him making more putts inside 15 feet, which was sort of the impetus for the change to begin with. I mean, he's going to win five, six, seven times.

And there's not a whole lot anyone else can do about it. How about newcomer of the year, Rex? This is different than breakout star. This is different than breakthrough star. How about a newcomer who is going to splash on the PGA Tour in a big way in the coming year? You're going to roll your eyes and fall back on your college roots, just like you always do whenever you ask me one of these questions. But I had a chance...

to interview him at the RSM Classic. Had a chance to meet him a little bit, get to know Matt McCarty. I think he's a very, very special player. When you look at how dominant he was on the Corn Fairy Tour to finish last season, and then he shows up on the PGA Tour and wins pretty much immediately at the Black Desert in Utah. It's very impressive. I just love the way he carried himself. It seems to me we're getting to this point now

where if you make the jump very, very quickly from college to the PGA Tour, which you can kind of make the argument that Matt did, as well as everyone else, that there is no more learning curve, that we don't have to sit around and wait for these guys to learn how to win anymore or learn how to be comfortable or learn the golf courses. They hit the ground running, and there's no reason to think that they can't continue on that success. We saw it this year from Nick Dunlap.

I mean, it's really hard to get the battlefield exemption, the automatic exemption from the Corn Furry Tour to the PGA Tour. It's even harder then to then translate that to the PGA Tour. And he did win in the fall. He's 27 years old too, right? So it's not like he's like immediately out of college and having this learning curve. Like he's a seasoned pro at this point. I think of him as like Michael Penix for the Atlanta Falcons QB. He's like, he's 24 years old. He's seen everything. Matt McCarty is that player as well. I like that pick. I think a pretty obvious.

obvious one for me. I'm going Carl Phillips. He was a mega stud and,

as a junior out of Australia. And he was overshadowed a little bit in college at Stanford, had some injuries. He was overshadowed by Michael Thornton, who was the more Ballyhooed recruit and was number one in the PGA tour university standings. All Carl Phillips did with conditional status on the corn fairy tour in the summer of 2024 was win, have a couple of other top three finishes as well to punch his ticket to the PGA tour for 2025. I think Carl Phillips has a lot of,

of game a young star who it wouldn't surprise me at all if he wins and makes a push to get on that president's cup team in 2026 i think there's a lot of people who are very optimistic about his talent and exactly what he can do on the pga tour how about surprise of the year this could be either a news development or a player who surprises i guess in a good or bad way in 20 uh

Well, I scribbled on my notepad just trying to come up with an idea that there will be a deal between the Public Confessment Fund and the PGA Tour. Now, I don't know how much of a surprise that will be, but I think it will at least lay out some sort of groundwork that we can build from. And after a year and a half plus,

of everyone sitting around waiting, wondering how we're going to make this work. It will be a bit of a surprise, I think, when the actual final product comes rolling through. As I mentioned, I don't think we'll have exactly what the blueprint's going to look like going forward of how we reunite the game, but at least you have a pathway. There is a roadway for players to come back to the PGA Tour if they want to.

I mean, I think that's a whole different conversation. There is going to be a pathway of how the two sides can come together, or maybe they just stay on parallel tracks and you figure out a way to get them to play more often against each other. So I think that will be the surprise of the year, so to speak.

I'll go in a player direction for my surprise of the year. I think we're going to see some bounce backs. We already start. We've already started to see a bounce back from Justin Thomas, uh, who was sort of flashed the, uh, the iron play that made him one of the preeminent players of his generation in the mid 2010s. I had the birth of his child, uh,

The last couple of months of 2024, that quote unquote distraction, or I guess it's a good distraction, but sort of that turbulence that he's experienced in his personal life will be behind him if he can address his putting. If he can have someone added to his circle that can really address what has been a severe deficiency over these past couple of years, a la Scottie Scheffler.

If he could just become an average putter, once again, there's no reason to think that Justin Thomas is not capable of duplicating his 2017 season. I'll go with Will Zalatorrez as well. He was sort of rediscovering the type of player he is now, post-back surgery in the microdiscectomy procedure that he has. He's packed on some pounds. He showed up in South Africa and looked good as well. I'll even go further off the radar, Rex, with Thomas Dietry and Maverick McNeely making a push

for their respective European and U.S. Ryder Cup teams. These are two players who are coming into their own and are now in the prime of their careers. The reason why, Rex, people listen to this podcast, this 2025 Prediction podcast, is to hear exactly who we think are going to win the major championships in 2025. In a lot of ways, this should be the easiest thing to predict, and yet...

I think our success rate on these is about 4%. So let's start with the Masters, the year's first major, the major we can't wait to get to. And then by the time it ends, we're also a little bit frustrated as well. Who is going to win the Masters in 2025 and why? I have three names written down, and none of them are Scotty. You can only have one. There can only be one player who slips into the green jacket.

I have. I initially wrote down Colin Morikawa, played well last year at the Masters. His ball striking obviously is the weapon that he would use on that particular golf course, second shot golf course, all the things we can sit and talk about it. And then I took to my black Sharpie and crossed out that name very quickly as you were talking about Xander, because Xander also played well there. And you look at what he's done just to become more consistent off the tee and with his iron play. And when he is playing well, he

I'm not sure there's a golf course that doesn't fit him. And then I fell back to, I'm not quite sure how I got here. I went back to Bryson DeChambeau because he's played well there in the past. You look at what he could do. No, he hasn't.

Bryce has played terrible at the Augusta National. No, no, no, no. He played well as an amateur there. I covered that. I mean, he finished in the top 10, I think, that first year. He hasn't been great there since then. So of those three names, I think I'm going to fall back on Xander for the reasons I pointed out. I just think he's much more of a complete player now, much more of a 5'2 kind of guy. I really like Xander there.

I mean, Scottie's going to win the Masters, but for the sake of argument, I won't pick another name. I actually think Xander Salfa is going to win the Masters as well. It would be the third leg of the career Grand Slam. It gave me a little bit of pause in that just six – I was surprised by this – just six of Xander's 26 career rounds at Augusta National have been in the 60s. But I think you could make the argument now that he's a different player, not just physically. Yeah.

And from a skill standpoint, but also mentally taking off the two major championships that he did in 2024, iron play is by far and away the most important asset at Augusta National. And Xander Shoffley has improved that significantly over the years, was sixth in that category in 2024. He's just so complete of a player. If Sky does not win the Masters for the third time in four years, I do think Xander Shoffley will get his first green jacket.

How about the PGA Championship, which in 2025, Rex, will be played at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte?

You brought up JT. I like JT there. He won the PGA Championship there just a few years ago. You talk about what he does well. And I mean, it's interesting if you look at his stats now, he is not nearly as long or as powerful off the tee as he used to be. And look, I think that's part of the game, sort of trending younger and younger. And even though JT is still on the youngest side, he's not part of that generation. I just feel like there's a comfort level on that golf course. And I'll go back to what you touched on. I think there was...

an epiphany that if he's willing to accept it, if he's willing to read the, the, the sort of the, the, how the stars are aligning. If you look at what happened in the Bahamas for pretty much the entire week, he led the field off the tee. He led the field strokes, game tee to green.

He was dead last in that field when it came to strokes game putting. He has to understand, and all you got to do is look to Scottie as a paradigm of hope here, that, man, I've got to do something. Doing the same thing over and over again, definition of insanity. I'm not quite sure if you go to Phil Kenyon or if you find someone else. You've got to figure out a way to be average when it comes to putting at that level. And I think if he makes that epiphany, that breakthrough, I love him at Quail Hollow.

Completely agree with you. You mentioned the driving distance. It was sort of a drop off. It could have been mechanical. It also he had that weird diet.

where I wasn't eating gluten or something, but he was losing weight. He was losing distance. That was a failed experiment. Justin Thomas is now feeling better. He implemented that longer driver. You remember at the Hero World Challenge, led the field in driving that week. He said he would sort of use that on a spot start basis. You could certainly see him using that at Quail Hollow, which is going to be stretched out to 76, 77, 7,800 yards. I'm going to go, if he's driving it on a string, it's Roy McIlroy.

like Quail Hollow Club has set up perfectly for him in the past. He has two wins there. Like if he's putting the ball in play, hitting it 330 off the tee, he is going to win there. However, I don't think that's actually going to happen. Roy McIlroy and the major championships still a little bit of a curse scenario. So I'm going to go to different direction, Rex, with Ludwig Oberg. I was shocked that Ludwig, the big Swede, did not win

In 2024, I think it sort of remains to be seen just how much the knee issue that he had that sort of popped up in April and May affected him for the remainder of that season. But if he can improve, if Ludwig can improve his short game and putting, which are the only weaknesses that he has in his game, like this is a guy who is built to last for the long haul. I mean, he's just such a proficient player.

Ball striker, great driver of the golf ball. So solid, unflappable. Yes, I'd love to see him win more before he sort of makes that leap to a major champion in 2025. But hey, you got four months to get there before you get to the PGA Championship.

How about the U S open Rex, which again will be played at Oakmont in 2025, the biggest beastliest golf course you could possibly imagine. Goldie. I'm going to help you out. It was the 16 Oh three mark that lab picked Rory just for a brief moment to win a major championship, just so we can circle back around and clip that for social media. This is where I, it all comes home for me. It's Scotty at Oakmont. You look at how hard that golf course, you look at the,

sort of the legacy of that course about just being a brutal test. I'm not quite sure there's anyone in the game that when every aspect of that game is on, he can make even Oakmont look easy. And I would expect after what happened last year at Pinehurst, and we've talked about a lot about it, where he clearly showed up at Pinehurst, not prepared for what that test was asking him to do. He spent a lot of time. And what do you want to call those? Those wild areas and just wasn't prepared to play those shots. And I think it frustrated him.

And in his mind, that was a wasted opportunity when I'm at the peak of my powers and I need to make the most of this window, however long it's going to be. And I wasted that opportunity. Now, there were a lot of other things going on in Scotty's life, to be fair. Not only did he spend a morning in jail in Kentucky, but he also had a baby and the family and everything else that goes into it. But I think he comes into this year's U.S. Open very, very hungry and ready to play that particular golf course.

Yeah, I think that's a great point that you make. And so he, and Scotty mentioned after the U S open, how he had a, a really difficult time identifying sort of his, his sight lines and his target lines off the tee, because you have the native areas and you have like the dusty, uh,

undulating fairways that he had just a really difficult time. Oakmont is not that like, you're not, you're, you know, exactly where we need to go. The rough is going to be thick. It's going to be very well defined. Scotty has the, the, the, the capability of dialing back off the tee and hitting that fairway finder that will prove very successful. The only question you have, that's going to be the ultimate stress test for

for scotty's revamp putting stroke because you know those greens are going to be absolutely lightning fast uh tons of slope to them it'll be very interesting to see how scotty plays there i'm going to go in a different direction a live player finally will win a major it will be john rom for me a quieter 2024 i believe you called him the biggest disappointment

in our superlatives podcast, for which you also went viral for that. But John Rahm is still very much in the prime of his career. 30 years old. He is best suited for this major championship. As we saw a few years ago at Torrey Pines, he is a driving machine that is going to be of paramount importance at Oakmont. And although he, he sort of had the reputation earlier in his career of being a hothead to me, he's actually one of the most mentally strong players is able to sort of, uh,

channel that energy that he feels, the anger, and sort of put it in a positive direction. Four top 12 finishes in the last five years at the U.S. Open. How about Royal Portrush? A return there after just a couple years ago. We were just there in 2019 with Shane Lowry, who will win the Open Championship this time around in 2025.

Goldie, 1958 timestamp. Rory McIlroy wins the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. We all remember how it started last time at Royal Portrush. Look, this was going to be an emotional week going to Northern Ireland to try to win the Open Championship with Rory. And he somehow found a sliver of out of bounds right off the first tee. So it didn't start all that well for him. And look, this is going to be a tough argument. And just like you always seem to lean back on Xander Schauffele as the player of the year, I always seem to lean back.

on Rory finally winning a major championship.

I have less confidence that eventually I'm going to be right. And eventually you're going to be right when it comes to Xander, simply because there is a window when it comes to Rory. Like he does not have an unlimited window of opportunity to keep winning major championships. And I think when it comes to this particular one, there is going to be a lot of pressure and there is going to be a lot of eyeballs and he's going to be asked questions pretty much starting at the beginning of the year about is his focus on that particular event. I think it will be. And again,

If you look at what he has done with his game, certainly towards the end of last season, you have to like, at least from the start, what we've seen in a very limited sample size, that I'm going to focus just on how my body moves. I'm going to keep worrying about the aesthetics and exactly where the ball goes. He's going to try to figure out the best way for him to execute under pressure like he did not do at Pinehurst. I'm picking Roy. Roy will be 36 years old.

by the time the Open Championship rolls around at Royal Portrush. This is his last best chance to win a major championship at home. There's going to be so much pressure. There's going to be so much attention. We saw how he handled that in 2019. The thing that I like, to your point, Rex, is sort of the changes that Roy's made in the late stages of 2024. He is trying to essentially make his golf swing more efficient, less reliant on timing. He's trying to make it so he's basically on autopilot where there's less thinking involved.

The positions are better and he can just go out and play a la Scotty Scheffler. That's sort of the model for efficiency and steadiness. So that way, when you get into an emotional situation like Roy found himself in at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst this year, there's there's fewer moving parts and you can just sort of plodge away around the golf course instead of not really knowing how your body is going to stack up.

He's got, what, eight months to bet in those changes that he's making to sort of bring that efficiency to his game and to sort of take out some of the emotional elements and sort of the fragility that he has in crunch time. I do think he'll handle it better than 2019 because it couldn't have gotten much worse. But I also don't think he's going to stack up to the moment. I'm going to go a little bit.

Off the beaten path here, Rex. With another live player. I'm going Terrell Hatton as my open champion in 2025. He was fourth in live standings in 2024. He closed out the year, Rex, going 1-2-6-5 in official World Golf Ranking events, playing some of the best golf of his career. And although his major championship record is not great...

The Open actually represents one of his best chances to win a couple of top 20s in this major in the last three years. Terrell Hatton still very much been the prime of his career. I don't see any reason why he would have a drop in form of the sort of settled in to what his new normal is on live. The biggest event of the year is not the Masters. It's not the return to World Port Rush Championship.

or Oakmont, or certainly not the PGA, at Quail Hollow. It is the Ryder Cup, which is going to be the biggest event we have ever seen in the bionic clash between the United States and Europe. Bethpage Black is going to be rocking in late September. Bethpage Black, try and say that three times fast. Who is going to win, Rex, and why? Struggle bus. That was a struggle bus for you. You're right. You want to try it again? Yes, not great. Bethpage Black.

I'm going to go with the Europeans for reasons we have talked about a lot. Look, the American team, you look at that U.S. team. The Europeans! Yes. Look at the...

Look at the U.S. President's Cup team last year. That is a dominant group. Like that seems to me the core of a team that could win a lot of different matches, both President's Cup and Ryder Cup. But this is entirely different. And Luke Donald, as he proved in Rome just a few years ago, is a genius when it comes to finding ways to motivate his team. When we go back and revisit all of those little things that Luke did to get his team to play the way they did in Rome, I mean, it's a masterclass in how to motivate people, how to coach, how to be a captain, whatever the case is.

may be. And now he's got the built-in idea that not only can he find ways to motivate him, he doesn't have to go far because the US players are getting paid. His players aren't getting paid. And he's going to play that up like it's nobody's business. He's going to make sure that the world knows, my guys, we do it for pride.

They do it because they're greedy. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean greedy because they want to get paid. That's what he meant to say. He's going to play this to the hilt. It's going to be so much fun to sit and watch. I was talking with an official from the PGA of America about this a few weeks ago. And he was asking me, how long do you think this Ryder Cup players getting paid is going to be a story? And I said, well, given the holidays, given everything that's going on, it's only going to be a week or two. And then we'll move on to whatever the next headline is. And I go, but.

it'll crop back up. My guess is about a month before the matches and it'll come from the European side and it'll be Luke and the rest of the Europeans and it'll be in posters and they'll be talking about it for at least a month beforehand and they will just hammer it home and they'll do it to the point that I predict this as well. Forget about the Europeans winning. This is the prediction that you're going to circle back around. Goldie, make sure you mark this on the timestamp. The Americans will be booed at

at some point during those matches. Not necessarily because of their play, but because the New Yorkers won't like the fact that not only are you getting paid, but I'm paying $750 for this ticket for you to be paid. It's not going to go well for them. I'm not going to go so far as to say that the Europeans are going to win this. You keep in mind, we have not had a close Ryder Cup

Since 2012. And even that was a miracle. It's called the miracle of Medina for a reason. That was a 10, six lead heading into the final day before the collapse or the miracle come back. However you want to sort of pin that one. I am going to go Rex with the United States winning the Ryder cup, but barely in a lot of ways, this is going to be a turnover year for,

For the Americans, I think there's only like four locks on this team. Scotty Scheffler is a lock. Xander Shoffley is a lock. Kyle Murakawa is a lock. And I think Patrick Cantlay, not just based on his play, but his performances in the last couple of team events as a match play ninja, to me, are locks. Then I think you have some serious question marks.

Which Wyndham Clark are we going to see? The one that won the U.S. Open or the one who is sort of inconsistent throughout 2024? Sahith Tagala. This is going to be a big, beefy golf course with really wide fairways and light rough, but he is not one of the best drivers of the golf ball. How does he stand up to the pressure in 2025 to make his way on that team? You look at Tony Finau, Russell Henley, Keegan Bradley,

Brian Harmon, Max Homa, all the players who are on the 2024 President's Cup team, all of those players are 33 years of age or older. Do they run it back? Do they fall off? Are there other pieces of this U.S. team that then become implemented and have to sort of get into the usual core of that Americans? And I think Keegan Bradley is also a big-time question mark. I think the quotes of the year –

which gave me a lot of pause for Bethpage with Keegan Bradley saying on the morning of Sunday's singles at the President's Cup that he felt like he was going to puke.

And Keegan Bradley was inside the ropes. How is he going to feel, Rex, with a narrow U.S. lead heading into Sunday singles? Will he make some poor decisions? Will he be swayed a certain way? Will he trust his gut? Will he be even keeled? That's not Keegan Bradley, who's already pretty antsy, pretty agitated, pretty fidgety. I'm fascinated to see how Keegan Bradley is going to handle this.

the cauldron of a home Ryder Cup, particularly if it's as close as I think it is going to be. I think that's the big question mark for 2025. That's the tournament I can't wait to cover the most. Yeah, I mean, look, we're going to be talking about it for months leading up to it and talking about it. I mean, it's the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to content. And you didn't even mention, right?

Bryson DeChambeau or Brooks Koepka or how the writer, how the live players slot in on both sides. Sergio Garcia potentially going to be Sergio Garcia. So I think those would probably be the wild cards and this conversation. And I do tend to agree. I think it's going to be a very, very close match. Like I don't think we'll be sitting around Sunday afternoon watching, you know, a,

a sad march around that golf course because I think both teams are very very good I just think that when it comes to to your point as a captain and I've made this argument numerous times the idea that there's good captains or bad captains are kind of silly to me because I think the best a captain can do maybe a half a point when it comes to pulling the right strings putting the right pairings together sending the right lineup out on Sunday I think that half point no disrespect to Keegan

But Luke has proven that he can do that. He did it in Rome, and I fully expect him to do it again this time around because he has the ammunition coming in. Yeah, I mean, if the captains are worth half point, I would argue I think they're probably worth a little bit more because I think the bad decisions can backfire so spectacularly. The home crowd has got to be worth at least half.

a point and a half. And you're assuming the home crowd is going to be on the U S side, which is a safe assumption, but I don't know if it's a hundred percent proud gangs. Certainly if things don't go well, I have, but they also desperately want the Americans to win. I think one thing Rex said is guaranteed.

is that you and I are going to have weekly podcasts, professional podcasts, Rex and Lab. We're going to have mini podcasts for the majors and the biggest events. We're going to have emergency podcasts when breaking news happens. And hopefully we have some exciting news to share about what's going to happen in 2025 as well. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the support. 2025, we're coming for you. If your small business is booming, you might say, cha-ching!

But you should say, Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And we'll help your growing business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Where can you kick off the new year with big savings on gig speed? Only with Xfinity. Now through January 16th, get gig internet for $25 a month for one year when you add an unlimited mobile line. Plus hurry and get a free 5G phone with trade-in. Go to Xfinity.com slash gig savings to learn more. Requires paperless billing and auto pay with stored bank account. Restrictions apply. Equipment tax and fees extra.

$40 internet discount applied to mobile bill. After promo, regular rates apply. Xfinity internet required. Reduce speeds up to 30 gigabits of data usage per line. Data thresholds and actual speeds vary.