Did Scottie Scheffler ... just get even better?!
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Hello and welcome to this edition of the Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and I. Scottie Sheffler closed out his 2024 in much the same fashion that he did throughout the year. This time wins the Hero Bowl Challenge. A final round 63 gave Scottie a six-shot victory in the 20-man exhibition. Rex, you were there in the Bahamas. You have returned safely. If not your luggage, you talked to him. What stood out from the week in the islands?

I was trying to figure out on Sunday, like I kind of have a small window when it comes to those winners interviews that we end up running on Golf Central and Golf Today. And as many things as Scottie does well, he doesn't have perspective when it comes to these types of things. And I don't blame him because it would be difficult for any normal human being to try to sit down and

sort of rationalized. I've won nine times this year. I like the only person I'm going to be compared to now is Tiger Woods. Like that's a pretty tough thing to wrap your mind around. But the question was, what does it mean to end this year this way? And I think there was something to his answer because it wasn't just that he was dominant TD Green because he's been doing that now for a couple of years. Like we're used to seeing that. It's the idea that

Our argument, my argument all along was if he can just putt average, if he can just zero it across the boards when it comes to strokes game putting, just don't give strokes away on the greens, that he's going to win more times than not. When he finishes fourth in the field and picks up almost four and a half strokes,

That's when you know he's going to be dominant and he's going to win by six shots. I think the interviews I enjoyed the most were with JT and Tom Kim because there is a grudging sort of respect now. And don't get me wrong, they all like each other. Certainly Tom Kim is a huge fan of Scotty Scheffler. But when guys come off the golf course and their eyes are wide and even they have to acknowledge that, man, that dude played really, really well, it gives you an idea of how far he's come. And he shows up this week sort of

He tries to break the internet with the new putting grip, the call putting grip. And it's the first time he's put it in play and he really doesn't know what to do. He made 63 out of 65 plus from 10 feet. And that's essentially what this is like. So outside of 10, 15 feet, he's staying with the conventional grip feels like his speed is fine. It's inside that 10 to 15 foot range. That is dominant. I mean, this guy is, is utterly ridiculous. Yeah.

Here you have a silly season event where guys are rusty, guys are testing equipment, and

Some guys are treating us as a family vacation. And yet Scotty Sheffler, who has not played since the President's Cup in late September, comes out and he's as razor sharp as ever. Like he's just so consistently excellent. He never takes tournaments off. He's always prepared. He's always ready to go. He's always ready to compete. And when you are, Rex, as consistently excellent with his ball striking –

as Scotty Scheffler is, like your range of outcomes is reduced, right? Like your scores, your rounds, it's more predictable. There's fewer variables. Like he's never going to shoot a 78 because it's just his ball striking does not allow him to do so. And you mentioned the putting, and I was struck by this because on Wednesday in Scotty Scheffler's pre-tournament press conference,

He was asked a range of questions. He was asked like the Ryder Cup stuff. He was asked, you know, what he did with his off time. But he was asked specifically, Rex, he was asked specifically, quote, what are you working on? And Scotty Scheffler's response to that was perfect. It was, quote,

Just the same stuff I've always kind of been working on. Not true. That's false. I don't know if he was trying to hide it. I don't know if he was trying to be coy. I don't know if he wasn't even thinking about his putting at that time because I was struck by this. I was watching on Thursday and Todd Lewis, the man that you replaced in the Bahamas doing the Golf Central reporting. Sorry, bunk.

belatedly for missing out on what seemed like a very fun trip. Todd Lewis was in the Bahamas, said that he walked with Scotty Scheffler for about an hour the previous couple days, and now he was on the desk hosting

a golf central pregame with Brando Shambly. And he said he had no indication that he was working on his putting. In fact, the putts that he was, he was making on those greens, which again, were probably from longer range or with his conventional putting grip. And then bam, all of a sudden they, they, they turned to Scotty on the first hole who hits it to four feet and whoa, he's using this claw technique.

This saw putting grip. It took everyone by surprise. I don't think Scotty was necessarily trying to like pull a fast one on us. Like obviously we were going to find out eventually that this is something that it turns out he had been tinkering with for a while, certainly been thinking about for a while. And then because of the PG towards dedicated off season for the superstars, he could actually put in the practice with putting coach Phil Kenyon and feel confident enough in that method.

to use in competition at the Hero World Challenge. It just seemed crazy. Like, Scotty, what are you working on? Nothing. Just keep on keeping on doing the same thing. Why mess with anything after you've won eight times in 2024?

Well, and to pull back the curtain, because I know our fans love it when you do this. Not only did Todd and Todd probably walked, I think he told me three or four holes with him on Tuesday before he left the Bahamas to go back up to Connecticut. And there was a joke on the pregame show because we picked up on it immediately in the pregame show. And even in break, Brando turned to Todd and like, didn't you walk three or four holes with him? You didn't see this. And no, how bad, how bad are you at your job that you were with him for an hour? Didn't notice it a different putting group.

And I'm going to take it a step further. I'm on the telecast right after that, and I'm listening in on the telecast during commercials. And one of the very first things they showed when the telecast came up was, oh, Scotty's going with a new putter. And in break, Tommy Rory, the great Tommy Rory producer of NBC Sports, immediately goes after Steve Sands and goes, Steve.

You sat and talked to him on the putting green this morning for 30 minutes. Didn't see it. And Steve was like, nope, didn't even see it. Like in their defense, I was standing right next to the putting green as well. And then it didn't even dawn on me. The funny thing was the next day, Teddy, his caddy, the great caddy that Teddy is, comes up to us laughing because he knows what they've done. They pulled one off and he's like, I don't know what the big deal is. And he's like mocking us with the putting grip as he's kind of doing it.

And to Steve's credit, like in that situation, you're not studying all the nuances. You're just having to have just a casual conversation with a player. But yeah, it is pretty funny how he just let that one go. And he had been working on it for a couple months now. And he said he finally just felt comfortable with something that Phil Kenyon tried to want, wanted him to do starting last year when they started working right around the Ryder Cup time. And it's just a matter of feeling comfortable once you get to this. And it is comfortable.

Fascinating because here is a player that doesn't make changes. He doesn't make changes to a swing. We have – it's a running joke now that he shows up on the range and he grabs that same club with the reminder grip in it and he looks at it. And my take is it's like the first time he's ever touched a golf club.

Like he studies it. Like this is wow. This is neat. He does the exact same thing every single day. The clubs in his bag don't change. If it weren't for Rory McIlroy, he probably wouldn't have gone to that mallet style putter. And here's a guy who decided, you know what? At the Hero World Challenge, I'm going way outside the box and this is the result.

I mean, you make a great point. Like he's been with the same girl since high school. He's been with the same swing coach. Same swing coach. His agent is his swing coach's son. I mean, this is a guy who craves consistency, who craves routine. And here he is, you know, after accomplishing the best statistical season since peak Tiger Woods.

He sort of systematically addressed what one of the few weaknesses that he had in his game. And keep in mind, like, Scottie Scheffler putted well relative to his sort of standards in 2024. He improved his strokes game putting from 162nd on the PGA Tour in 2023 to 77th. Essentially, he was roughly average, right? He wasn't losing. He wasn't gaining either. But when you dig deeper into the stats, Rex,

Scottie Scheffler inside 10 feet was 139th on the PGA Tour. What that means is he is making 87% of his attempts inside 10 feet. Keep in mind, that includes tap-ins. Keep in mind, that includes three-footers, which, you know, that's 97, 98, 99% of tour players make three-footers. Like, Scottie's range that he was really trying to improve was four to eight feet.

There, he was below average on the PGA Tour. And listening to Brando Chambly, who knows a lot more about the putting stroke than I do, he said that this switch to the claw or the saw, however you want to sort of describe what Scottie has gone to here, really helps with the release patterns.

of the putter. So you're not getting sort of jammed up. It helps with the flow. He said, it's, it's basically a magical elixir. If you were starting, if you were learning how to play the game, right now, Shannon, but he said you would probably start with a claw or saw putting grip. Like that's how helpful it can be. And when you look at a lot of Phil Kenyon's other clients, uh,

that he has in his stable, like many of them also putt with a saw grip. It's clearly something that he believes in, and he has sort of the evidence to back that up that is a successful method to do so. So Scottie has made this change, trying to improve from that range. He extends it out a little bit further to about 15 feet, wherever he feels comfortable. All he did, Rex, at the Hero World Challenge was, as you mentioned, missed twice inside 10 feet. He led the field in putting.

From that range. He also led the field in lag putting. Or approach putt performance. With again that conventional grip. So he's going with this two grip method. Kind of feel. Kind of instinct. Kind of the mathematical range that he's doing so. And he's doing so successfully. Had zero three putts. On very big. Very grainy. Very fast greens. Like this. If this was not a warning shot. To the rest of the PGA TOUR.

That a player who is already the best ball striker since Tiger Woods and is improved to be an average putter on the PG Tour, potentially, again, one week sample size, just got even better? Like, whew, that has to scare the living bejesus out of everyone to think that all of a sudden the guy who hits it consistently inside 15 feet is now going to make even more of those birdie chances.

Yeah, talking with Tom Kim and look, Tom Kim and Scotty spent a lot of time together in Dallas, their neighbors. I think Scotty's become something of a mentor when it comes to him. I asked him when you guys are at home and you're playing at playing against each other, how do you beat him? He goes, I don't know. I've never done it. I'll let you know. And he was half joking, but he did say, look, he wins 95 percent of the time.

And that's just what he does. And he makes it look so easy. You're right. It wasn't that long ago when you and I are sitting around having this conversation, like we were probably having this exact same podcast pointing out the fact that his ball striking is so good that if he can find a way to take a step and he not just took one step, he took two big steps. You're right. He'd already,

become, I don't want to say proficient, but that's probably the best way to put it on the greens. Whereas he's not giving strokes away. Now, if you can put yourself in the top third, that echelon of the PGA tour that includes some of the game's best putters, that makes him, I don't want to say unbeatable because the game can still get the best of you sometimes, but it makes them really hard to beat. He won nine times total in

That includes the FedEx Cup. That includes the Olympic gold. An encore performance like that in 2025 would be hard to imagine. Where are you setting the over-under, Rex, for Scottie in 2025 in terms of victories?

An encore is hard because nine wins season, seven official wins. That's, man, I mean, that's rare air. Tiger only did that a handful of times. You've only seen it on the PGA Tour, at least in the last few decades, a handful of times. It's simply not a sustainable model, even if you're the absolute very best. But as you pointed out, it's hard to find...

where the leaks are going to come from. It's hard to point and figure out, okay, that's the dog part of his game that he needs to fix up. I think you made the argument, and it was only half-hearted, that, okay, well, now that he has Bennett, baby Bennett at home, maybe that's going to be a bit of a distraction and maybe we'll see some sort of predictable fallout. No, the distraction phase has already passed. He was supposed to be distracted all spring. He was supposed to be distracted all summer.

If he doesn't get arrested, like we can make jokes about that. If there's no injuries, probably is the one part that I would lean into. And there have been hints of injuries, but nothing serious. Certainly what happened at the Players' Championship is curious. But when I asked him specifically last week, like, where was the focus this weekend? If it wasn't, okay, if you're not working on new things, which apparently he didn't think the claw grip was a new thing, what did you focus on? And he kind of alluded to the idea that I needed to work on some things with my body.

That over the course of the season, I felt some nagging injuries, not nearly enough to cause a problem, but things I needed to get stronger at. So if he turns his focus to the gym and he turns his focus to longevity, again, it's really, really hard to see where the problems are going to come from. It's hard if you're workshopping this thinking, all right, well, he doesn't putt well on POA. Is that what you're hoping for? Because that's your best bet.

I mean, I was essentially going to go there. Like, I would probably put the over-under on Sky Chef for wins. Oh, you asked me a question. Sorry. Maybe five and a half?

I was going to say six, six and a half, but yeah, that's good. So, so like when you're looking at the schedule, he typically does not play well on the West coast. Well, well for Scotty Scheffler, he's going to play the American express. That's always a shootout, a birdie barrage. That's not necessarily Scotty Scheffler's game. That was actually one of his worst finishes this year, finished T 17 at the American express at PGA West pebble. You know how the greens can get a little bit dicey there, even though they've improved in recent years. Uh,

Riviera, he has not quite mastered that gem of a golf course, another signature event on the PGA Tour. But look, when you get to Florida, when you get to Augusta, the dude's going to be absolutely rolling. I think Scottie's 2025 is going to be remembered by how he performs in the major championships. He is by far, in a way,

the prohibitive favorite at the masters, given his ball striking prowess, given how good of a chipper and pitcher he is given how proficient he is at, at now sort of holding putts in that 15 foot range, his score strategy with, with caddy Ted Scott, who was one a number of times around Augusta national, like by far and away, uh,

the prohibitive favorite at Augusta. However, I think you can make a case for other players and you can lean into other players at the rest of the major championships, whether it's a Roy McIlroy at Quail Hollow in the PGA, whether it's a John Rom type, a great driver of the golf ball at an Oakmont. I think, you know, when we return to Port Rush for the open championship, we've seen that style of golf sort of bedevil Scotty Scheffler in the past. If he walks away in 2025, we're,

without a major championship and still picks off four, five, six PGA Tour wins, I wouldn't be surprised. But I think at this point, Scottie is looking to add most importantly, most pointedly to the major championships. Two Masters in three years is nothing to scoff at, obviously. But I think for the legacy that he's trying to leave in this game to be even considered a more well-rounded player, he has to add to his major total as well in the other major championships.

And I felt bad because our producer Volpe sent us an email on Sunday night about some topics for Monday's roundtable on golf today. And he had some written down already. And the one that I suggested was, okay, who could challenge Scottie? Who could take down, you know, King Scottie next year and take over sort of that top role? And my answer when it came up was nobody. Like I didn't, like I felt bad because I didn't. It's not being flippant. Like that's the state of affairs as we sit here on December 10th.

Well, and even Scotty last week when I asked him about this, he gave Xander a huge nod of, yeah, I have some envy because as you pointed out, like two major championships, that's what every player wants. I mean, that's where you make your legacy to your point. So I think Xander would be at the top of the list and certainly Xander's not doing anything wrong. But as Xander himself has said, like,

I still have a long way to go to climb up that hill to catch him. Like he acknowledged it. You pointed out Rory at Quail Hollow. I would lean towards JT. He won the last PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. So I think that's someone. I liked what I saw from JT, not just last week, but certainly at the Zozo Championship and towards the back end of this year. I love the fact

that at the Hero World Challenge, JT was doing his best, let's say 2023 Scotty Scheffler impersonation, where he led the field strokes game off the tee, strokes game tee to green. And for a couple of days was close to dead last and putting. So if JT can make some sort of similar step,

if he finds the same epiphany, maybe he goes to Phil Kenyon, who knows that? Yeah, I could see him in the mix. I love what Rory, we talked a lot about what he's trying to do with his swing and being a little different and trying to be fresh. And you're absolutely right. You can come up with a bunch of names. Like you can keep going down the list, but still it's hard to imagine any of them consistently. Like are they going to beat him one week? Absolutely. Scotty can have a bad putting round. He can end up in a Louisville jail. A lot of things can happen, but,

However, if you look at the course of an entire season, I just don't know how someone could let alone take over number one in the world ranking. That's mathematically going to be really, really tough. But just become the guy at the top of the heap. I don't know how that happens at this point.

Yeah, like Scottie's floor is higher than a lot of guys. That's why you can feel confident in saying that he's going to win three, four, five, six times just because the tournaments he's going to play, the tournaments he's had success at, the ball striking is always going to give him a chance, and now you add to that punt.

When you look at the guys who get threatened, like Xander Shoffley is an obvious one. He proved it at times in 2024 that his good is plenty good enough. You don't win two major championships on those difficult golf courses if your good is not quite good enough. I still like the fact, too,

that he's chasing Scottie. There's no complacency. There's no resting. Like, he is still motivated to sort of hunt him down. And I think, interestingly, if we look at Xander Shoff with the two majors that now he has not won,

in terms of the Masters and the U.S. Open. Historically, traditionally, those are the majors in which Xander has performed the best. And so I think there's actually a viable pathway now for him over the next couple years to potentially tick off the career grand slam. We've talked about the changes that Roy's made to his golf swing that I'm a big fan of. I think, though, when you look down the rest of the world rankings, like,

There's a lot of question marks. Cal Marcao is up to fourth in the world. He had a great 2024, still didn't win a golf tournament. Ludwig Oberg, many players think that he's like the next big thing. Didn't win a golf tournament in 2024. Wyndham Clark,

kind of failed to back up his breakthrough and his breakout in 2023. Yes, he won Pebble, but that was a rain-shortened event. Didn't do much since February. Hideki's order is sort of an injury risk. Victor Hovland had a major setback in 2024. Tommy Fleetwood, not a consistent winner on the worldwide states. Like you go on and on, and it's a shame because you'd love to see what Jon Rahm

could do on the PGA Tour. You'd love to see what Jon Rahm could do against the Scottish staffer more than four times a year, five times if you're including the Ryder Cup. We're just not going to get it. And so for the foreseeable future, like, Scottie's floor is just so high. There's just so many chances for victory. He's so consistent. He's so determined. He's so prepared. And he's so focused. Like, I think...

you'd be hard pressed to pick anyone for player of the year in 2021, 25, not named sky shovel. No one has done that four in a row since the early 2000s with Tiger woods. Yeah, that's a really good point. His floor is higher than anyone else's. And when he's playing his best, his ceiling is higher than anyone else's. So that puts you in a different category. Well put on the idea of a John Rom or any of the players who joined live golf. It's amazing how we've sort of moved on from Brooks. I mean,

Bryson was the most popular player on the planet in the middle of the summertime. So you're right. We have to be careful when it comes to ignoring those guys. But even if they were on tour, and someone asked me this in a radio interview last week, the idea that should there be an asterisk?

not just this season, but maybe the last two seasons. And I don't particularly like that. We're in the middle of the college football thing with the playoffs and everything that happened with the selection. The picture looks great. I have no, I have no. Yeah. Yeah. I figured you'd like that. No qualms whatsoever. That was a, that was a tough Saturday night for you though. I could, I felt your pain all night long. Good, good job on the Bulldogs. You can only play who's in front of you is the cliche. And in this particular case, I don't know how,

things would have played out had live golf not come along. And we still had Brooks and Bryson and John Rahm and, and everyone else on this side of the fence playing against each other. Certainly I don't see Scotty winning nine times because then it becomes just a question of math. Like it's just statistically impossible to imagine that John Rahm is not going to have a good week, the week of the players championship, but he would still be dominant. I still feel like he would be world number one. Yeah, I think that's fair. And I, I wonder that sometimes too, like in, in 10 years, uh,

How are we going to think about this run by Scottie Scheffler? Is Scottie Scheffler a generationally great player, one of the best of all time? Or did he really exploit and take advantage of the current golf landscape with so much talent defecting from live football?

in reducing the PGA tour. Like there is no denying what's guy Scheffler is doing. You look at his win percentage. I think he's the fourth is the fourth highest win percentage of all time in a season behind obviously Tiger woods. The first three, who's somewhere like 37, 38% of his starts like that is utterly ridiculous.

Would that be the same if Jon Rahm was on the PGA Tour in 2024? We don't know. You can only beat the players who are in front of you. It's amazing. But I do wonder in 10 years' time, will this just sort of be a blip on the PGA Tour? Whoa, how about that weird three-year stretch, right? Three years? We're going to be done after three years? Well, three, four, five years.

Who knows? Like, like how are we, how are we going to think about it? That was a strange stretch where, where so many great players left the PGA tour or does it not even matter? And this guy, Shuffler would have beat anybody and everybody who came in front of him for that. That's a question that we're not gonna be able to answer. No. And it's a really good question. And it kind of caught me off guard because I have not spent a lot of time thinking about it, but my comeback to that was you can only beat the people you play. And also these guys are in the major championships.

So in the events that matter, by and large, well, not even by and large, the players we're talking about are in the players. So we do get to see it four times a year. Jon Rahm and Bryson and the rest of them have the opportunity to do it when it matters the most. And to a certain extent, they have. So there is some sort of litmus test that you can apply here and be like, well, yes, he would still be a dominant player. Probably wouldn't win seven slash nine times a year. Yeah, that's probably an unrealistic expectation there.

For Scotty Scheffler. Rex, the podcast last week that we ended, you were in the Hamas, I was in Connecticut. We had sort of a vague or ominous feeling at the end of that podcast. We even referenced Tony Finau, who was the subject of many social media rumors. Some people said he was definitely going. Some people said he was definitely staying. Turns out, in an interview with our pal, Golf Week's Adam Shupak, Tony Finau pledged his fealty

The PGA Tour said it's the only place he wants to be. He is, at least as of now, as of this recording on Tuesday, supposed to tee it up alongside Nelly Korda.

in the Grant Thornton, but we're in the midst, Rex, of Liv's free agency period. And by my count, there are six openings on teams right now, including Jon Rahm's. There's something called the Promotions event that is currently underway in Saudi Arabia, which will award one Liv card for 2025. We did not get a Liv spot from the Asian Tour International Series. That was a bit of an upset.

American John Catlin had led that order of merit for much of the season. Had he been number one at the end of the year, he would have earned an automatic exemption on to live. Instead, Joaquin Neiman took advantage of those last two weeks with increased points and got that top spot. So there was no live player there. So when you're zooming out, 45 players will have earned their PGA Tour cards for 2025 through the DP World Tour in the top 10.

30 from the Corn Fairy Tour and five from Q School as well. Just one on Liv and their two pathways. Does that seem odd to you? It seems like Liv is either just recycling its own players or failing to sort of capture the players that they want to bring onto that circuit and bolster it even more.

This is a line that is applying a lot these days. That is a problem for Liv Goff. It's not the problem for Liv Goff.

Because, yes, I mean, if we get five more years down the road and we're still in this position, it is going to get stale. I actually read a story about Bubba Watson, who missed the cut at that event last week in Asia, as you pointed out. And he is essentially in that relegation zone. He should not keep his tour card, but because he's a captain of his team, he gets to choose. And reading that story, I felt like he's going to keep playing.

And that's probably the biggest problem I see in it where you get no turnover on that tour. Look for, for all the reasons people can criticize what's happened to both products because of this separation, because you get this bleed off going in both directions and,

at least the PGA tour, as you pointed out, has this cycle. They had the churn, quote unquote churn, that they wanted, that you're getting new players inside that top 50. You're getting new players onto the PGA tour each year. And that's the part that makes this so special is you never really know which player, I mean, you and I would not have been talking about Matthew Pavon at this point last year. And he went on to win on the PGA tour and he ended up having a really, really good

good season. You're not going to get that on live golf. And in the short term, it's probably not that big of a deal. But yes, it's a problem when you look at it from 30,000 feet and you realize that

No offense. I don't want to watch Ian Poulter playing golf in five years from now. Like he's not very competitive now. Why do I want to watch him then? I don't want to watch Bubba Watson if he's going to continue to play like this. Give me someone that you can turn into a star. And they don't have the ability to do that because, as you pointed out, they don't have the churn. And the problem, which I'll go back to how I started this conversation.

is they don't have the exposure. And look, I'm not getting into this, is it a good product or a bad product? They just don't have the exposure, at least in the United States, without some sort of media rights deal, a main media rights deal beyond what the CW deal is, that draws attention, not just at the tournaments themselves. I've been to a live golf tournament. It is exciting. They have turned it into a show. I'm talking about something that is a media, a TV product, whether linear or otherwise. They just don't have that right now.

And you're not going to have that until you make that next step.

That's a great point. It's a problem. It's not the problem. And Liv's best assets right now are sort of like the concepts of a team play. It's the concept of relegation. It's the concept of free agency and trading and adding and dropping and building out these franchises. But in reality, in actuality, that's not how it's playing out.

You know, players want long-term security for making a move from the PGA Tour to live golf. And so you're getting in this situation where it's a Bubba Watson, it's a Phil Mickelson, it's a Brendan Steele, it's a Graham McDowell, like it's a Thomas Peters. Your play and your record does not necessarily warrant consideration to be brought back.

But you made this leap of faith. Like it has to be rewarded. And it's sort of insular in that way where there's not much outside influence. Like it's a huge problem for live golf because you want that drama, but you can't have it.

Like you can't have serious relegation because players are making too significant of a financial and sort of a playing status risk by joining the circuit. And so instead, you just get the situation like we're seeing unfolding with the Ironheads. Kevin Na's team, which has been one of the least competitive live teams over the past three years, and they put on social media, you know, the clock's ticking and who are we going to resign? They're doing silhouettes of players and they're just running it back.

Like they're just running it back with a very notable – their one notable addition was a player who got to the promotions event in 2023. Like the concept is good, but the reality of the situation just isn't matching up. And it's getting now where four, five, six openings that Live Golf has are getting filled by players who aren't moving the needle even one iota.

And I think we've talked about this a lot. They are robbing us. They are hurting them, doing a disservice to their own product by taking away the one thing that probably makes them so interesting. And we can talk about the team thing all we want. The really interesting part of this is talk to me about the transaction. I read that Bubba Watson story because I was really kind of curious. He has one hole on his team and then you figure he might go down. So suddenly he has two players. Would he be looking at the PGA Tour? Like where is he going to go with this? He wants to go young. He's going to run it back.

Like, there's no doubt in my mind that he's just, you know what, I'm just going to go ahead and keep playing. Because to your point, they're incentivized to do that. But the one thing that makes this interesting, like every other sport, you and I both are under the same mindset that give me the NFL offseason, man. Like, let's talk about the transaction. Let's talk about how all of this works. We're in the middle of making baseball. Juan Soto for $765 million. Juan Soto.

I mean, I was listening to that for an hour in the airport in Nassau on Monday because I'm fascinated by how do they pull this off? Everything the Dodgers are doing with all of this deferred money. Look, I'm a bit of a sports nerd when it comes to this, but that's the interesting part for most fans. And you were robbing us. Like you sort of hung it out there. Like, okay, yeah, we're going to have this and this is going to be so cool. And then they have it delivered on it. No, like Bubba Watson, he can make a business case. It's written in the...

In the legalese for live golf, he can make a business case to his team GM to run it back, have him as playing captain for 2025. That certainly appears what's going to be like. You're not having a situation where Phil Mickelson is stepping aside and all of a sudden he's vacating his spot and he brings in Xander Shoffley. Like that would be an interesting situation. It's just not how it's actually played out.

And live golf. While we were recording this podcast, Rex, we did have a little bit of news on the Tiger Woods front.

No, he has not outlined his playing schedule for 2025, but he did say that he will be playing in the PNC Championship, a.k.a. the father-son, the parent-child with son Charlie. This is something that you and Todd Lewis had speculated about over the past couple weeks, and Tiger Woods in his press conference on Tuesday, last week in the Bahamas, mentioned, hey, I'm not competitive, quote, at this level,

And then when asked by Dan Hicks on Sunday broadcast at the hero, he said, quote, we'll see regarding his appearance at the PNC. Are you surprised? And how do you think he's going to look?

Not surprised. I'm a little surprised that it was less than 24 hours ago that he told Dan Hicks, like, getting ahead of ourselves here. And I know what Tiger is doing there. He's protecting his sponsor. Hero just re-upped for another five years or six years maybe, I believe is what the deal is going to be. So I see what he was doing there, but still, it seems a little silly that you didn't know yesterday afternoon and less than 24 hours later you've come to the epiphany that, yes,

This is something I want to do. Yeah. Todd and I both speculated. I think both of us, they were educated guesses. We had pretty good indications from camp Tiger Woods that he would be playing in that event. And the difference is to your point, he, his line was, I'm not physically capable of competing with these guys last week at the hero world challenge, even, you know, against a limited field, it's still 72 holes. He's still out there walking. This is entirely different. This is 36 holes. This is riding around in the golf cart and this is your son being able to

play every tee shot. Like I would be very dubious that Tiger play doesn't play any tee shots other than the par three, simply because Charlie hits it further than him now normally. And Charlie will be playing from a forward set of tees. And so it's the best case scenario for us to see Tiger woods in a competitive environment. So not surprised at all. Yeah. It'll still be fun as it is each and every year to see he and Charlie on the golf course. Again, I'm still skeptical. He can be a difference maker in 2025 between the ropes on the PJ tour and the major championships.

But again, this silly season stuff, I'm still all in for. This is one of our last podcasts in the calendar year 2024. We do have some fun stuff coming up, though, the next couple of weeks. Around the holidays, we'll do our end-of-year stuff. We'll do our year-in-review. We'll do awards. We'll pop on with T. Lou again. Next week, you will be at TGL Media Day.

You'll be in the arena. We'll do our podcast from there. We're also supposed to have a player guest, potentially Billy Horsch will join us for his impressions, not just on TGL, but also the year that was on the PGA Tour in 2024.

We'll also recap the showdown, which is going down a week from today in Las Vegas, the PGA tour, a showdown between Scotty Scheffler and Roy McIlroy versus live golf, Spryce DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka. That should be a lot of fun. It should be an action packed Wednesday podcast next week. If you guys have any suggestions on what you want to hear,

For our next couple of podcasts, drop in the comments section below on YouTube or find us on Twitter at RyanLavenderGC and at RexHoggardGC. All right. That is going to do it for this edition. You guys are in the drill. NBCSports.com slash golf for all latest news, notes, and updates. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the support. We'll talk to you next week live from South Florida.

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