Players Championship Friday: Bring on a weekend of wicked winds!
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Hello and welcome to this edition of the Gulf Show Podcast with Rex and Laff. As it always does at the Players' Championship, the cream has risen to the top at TPC Sawgrass. After 36 holes, we have Akshay Bhatia and Min Woo Lee tied for the lead at 11 under par. JJ Spahn is alone in third at 10 under. And Rex, that is where it starts to get really juicy.

Roy McIlroy, Kawamura Kawa among the group that enters the weekend. There's two shots back in. Oh, yeah. They're calling for absolutely hellacious wins on both Saturday and Sunday. How was your Friday at the Players' Championship?

It was glorious. You and I did a hit this morning. It was a perfect spring day. Like it's been all week long. We spent a lot of time walking around the golf course. We had plenty of storylines. Rory played really well. Colin Morikawa impressed us. And then JT did what JT did this afternoon, which is absolutely phenomenal, which we'll get into. But it was a good day. I will say that you are in your happy place because you don't particularly like.

good days. You and Berko, you lean towards the, I think the word you just used was hellacious. That's the kind of weather there's a twisted sort of weatherman inside you that always wants to see some sort of wind or weather pattern or something that's just going to send everything spiraling. You're really an agent of chaos and tomorrow that's what you're going to get.

Well, yeah, because I've been kvetching over the past five days about how soft TBC Sawgrass is playing. You might even say that I've been a little bit surprised, Rex, just how receptive the greens have been. Even if some other players don't want to get into that sort of narrative or storyline, it's not going to be like that on Saturday. And this golf course in particular, TBC Sawgrass has so much trouble. There's so much water. There's so much sand. There's so many trees. There's so much pine straw.

It's like it is tailor-made to have these sort of challenges. When it's soft, when it's benign, when there's relatively little wind like we saw on Friday, when it's just abundant sunshine, like, yeah, you can get after it and it's exciting because the back nine here is as good as any back nine in the world of golf. But now having to flight your trajectory and work on your shot shapes and hit certain windows and worry about all of the water with the crosswinds, I cannot wait.

for Saturday, particularly when you look at this leaderboard. What stands out to you, Rex, through 36 holes? We look at the top of the board.

I mean, certainly you see Minwoo Lee up there, and I thought that was a fascinating story. And one of the things that I kind of wanted to dig in on is he was a guy whose game is predicated on his driver. He hits it a really long ways. He's in the top 10 on the PGA Tour. A lot of speed. Hits it out there. That's his weapon. That's what he wants to take advantage of and how he has leaned into a two iron this week. Now, to be clear, when I sort of asked him about why would you give up your advantage, he sort of looked at me like I hit my two iron 300 yards.

So it's not as though I'm giving up a lot. And like, for example, I thought that number six would be the perfect example of how he's using that three iron to his advantage. And he goes, no, that was a four iron. Well, of course it was a four iron. So nevermind. You're reinventing the game. I thought that was really fascinating. And Rory, I mean, let's get into, I did a column on NBCSports.com slash golf. The idea being that

through two rounds of let's call it the major championship season these are what the big this is what we know about the big three and of those let's say scotty scheffler and xander shawley we'll get into that they're still a little confusing still some unknowns out there but when it comes to rory especially after what happened last week he didn't drive the ball particularly well this is what we've come to expect and this is what he did really well when he won here in 2019 this is what he does really well when he wins at any pla at any place

And I love the idea that he's playing sort of this soft cut because that's what his swing is giving him right now. But he's playing it to the safe side of the fairways. And it's really a fascinating move on his part. I don't want to completely overlook the Gen Zers in terms of Minwoo Lee and Akshay Patel. Like, I think they're plenty compelling. However, with them, I'm kind of in...

wait and see mode. Min Woo Lee was in this position, final group a couple of years ago with Scottie Scheffler got, got the doors blown off him. He said that he's learned a lot from those experiences. We look at the sort of weakness of Min Woo Lee's game. You mentioned all the speed and all the power is very much his iron play and the ability to control his distances, to control his trajectories, iron play, um,

He's losing shots to the field over the course of the PGA Tour season. It is like all this, all the speed, all the things that make him such a great driver of the golf ball is sort of working against him when it comes to hitting his iron. So how will he be able to deal with 30, 35 mile an hour winds on Saturday? I'm fascinated to see Akshay Bhatia. Meanwhile, looking to sort of finally claim a signature title. He's been a, a,

you know, mainstay on the PGA tour over the last couple of years, real curious to see how the long putter, which again, he's, he's absolutely filling it up on the greens. You talk about Lucas Glover, the sustainability of making as many putts as he did on, on Thursday, on Friday did not quite happen. Akshay Bhatia has made more than 110 feet of putts each of the first two days.

fourth in the field in putting. Very curious to see if that stands up. I'm with you with Roy McIlroy. Two bogeys in his last four holes sort of soured what was an otherwise pretty exciting day of golf. What do you think that Rory has to do well on Saturday to sort of position himself to make a run at a second player's title since 2019?

Keep leaning on that shot off the tee ball that I talked about because the idea is, and I think Jordan Speed did a really good job of addressing this yesterday. This golf course almost go to you into being aggressive. This golf course go to you into maybe taking chances that you shouldn't do otherwise. And I'm really taken by the idea that Rory seems content. And again, this is all relative. He's hitting that soft fade 300 plus yards. So it's not as though he's way back on this, but compared to what we normally see.

when he is driving the ball well. And through two rounds, you could say he's driving the ball well. Certainly, statistically, he is. He's not falling for it. He's staying inside his game plan. He's not getting goaded into trying to hit these hero shots. And I think the best example of that, and you and I walked out and walked in with JT this afternoon, was JT kind of did that. And like, look, he was going for something historic with a course record, so it's certainly understandable. But this golf course,

kind of convinces you that, yes, I can pull off this shot. Sure. I mean, it's a hanging lie. It's in the rough. It's 290 yards. There's water all down the right, but why not? I feel like I can do it. And Roy hasn't fallen in that trap yet. You mentioned the driving and he was much improved from Thursday to Friday. We mentioned on yesterday's podcast, like if Roy McIlwain continues to hit four drivers or excuse me, four fairways, the,

Like, it's just not going to happen. Like, he would absolutely not win the golf tournament. Well, he went to the range on Thursday night, ended up hitting 11 fairways, was much better off the tee. For me, what I'm most curious to see, and I think Rory is actually curious to see when you listen to his comments quite closely, is can he control the trajectory with his irons? He went to this softer, spinnier golf ball at the start of the year because he said that he likes the way that he's hitting these, like, three-quarter spinners.

soft iron shots where he's sort of flighting it below the wind. We're so used to Roy McIlroy just launching it as high as possible. And it's, and it's, and it's great and it's fun. That's not going to be conducive to success in these sorts of conditions. He has gotten so much better.

in recent years of playing those sort of sawed off shots. And so I'll be very curious to see if he sticks with it, if he could accomplish it, because if he can, he's got such an advantage over the rest of the top of the leaderboard, just in terms of, of big game experience and playing in sort of less than ideal conditions. You mentioned Justin Thomas, and I think he's an interesting sort of case study Rex, because this is a player who shot a 78 in the opening round, sort of left for dead. He said, it's not like he didn't care about,

in the opening round, but it was spiraling so out of control that he was just trying to get in the house. It was so bad. He said it could have been an 85. Does he still have a chance after that 10 under 62? Because obviously he didn't just make the cut. All of a sudden he's just outside the top 30. He's going to be teeing off early. He's going to be playing when the, the winds are not quite at its most intense and,

who's to say he can't shoot 67 68 post a number on the board and see how it stands up at the end of the day not me we just saw it a few weeks ago on the pga tour joe highsmith makes the cut on the number goes on to win his first pga tour event certainly justin thomas proved today he had the firepower to be able to rebound from that and i did find it fascinating you and i both talked to him after the round worst he's ever hit it that's what he said i talked to his dad mike thomas

Mike Thomas also said that even before Justin did. And I was pretty surprised he said it. Worst he's ever hit it. And that's saying something because Justin has had some wild rounds in his day. And I was interested when I asked Mike, like, what was the pep talk this morning? Like, how did he rebound from that? And he said he texted him and said, you've done this before. And they went back to, he's had 10 birdies on this golf course before. He shot 63 just a few years ago. And there is a mentality there.

that I absolutely love about Justin Thomas. And you wonder how many other PGA Tour players actually have it. I'm not saying that someone else would have shot 78 and just mailed it in, but considering how the scoring was this week, which as you pointed out, it's much lower than you probably would have anticipated given what we've come to expect from this golf course. It would have been easy for JT to come out this morning and just go through the motions and go home after two rounds. But now, to your point, I think he's right there in it. The only thing I will point out

It's not so much how far he is off the lead, as you pointed out right there around the top 30. It's who's between him and the league. You have such accomplished big name players who seem to be hitting the players championship. Rex, everyone in the field is deserving of a title.

Sure. Sure. And I'm talking about players with a pedigree who have done it before. Certainly all 120 players in this field feel like they can win it. And they probably can on any given day. I'm talking about Rory McIlroy and Colin Morikawa. And you got it. I mean, Scotty's a shot ahead of Justin Thomas hitting in the weekend at 500 bar. And you actually gas.

when we were walking in here to do this, when you looked up at a leaderboard and I think you went, Will's on a Taurus. Yes, he's right there. T7 at minus eight, just three strips off the lead. I can keep going on and on down that leaderboard. So it's not so much the real estate. It's who's between him and the lead. Tomorrow will be the separation day. JT loves to play in those conditions. And I think Rory said something interesting when he was talking about it. I have to keep the ball below the trees.

And I love the idea, but I can't wait to get out there and walk with him tomorrow to see if he can actually do it. I mean, Justin Thomas went to the Tiger Woods School of Shot Shaping and Trajectories. Like, he absolutely loves it. Probably the most artistic player ever.

on the PGA tour getting out so much earlier before the heaviest, the winds are supposed to be somewhere in that two to four o'clock range. I think we're expecting the five groups to be somewhere around two 40. Careful. Berko's doing the weather report. Leave that to him. Make sure you guys tune in today. I'm Eastern time on golf. You know, Berko is going to be absolutely hair on fire.

I was just going over Justin Thomas' stats because I didn't quite realize just how bad they were. For some reason, I didn't pay attention to this on Thursday. Rex, he was last in the field off the tee, lost nearly five shots at the field. He hit six fairways. How about this? He hit only five greens, and that wasn't even the worst. That wasn't even the worst in the field. Five greens. Justin Thomas has probably not hit five greens in a tournament since he was eight years old. How many times did he get up and down?

How many times did he get up and down? Let me look real quick. He was 7 of 13. And again, he said, had he not gotten a couple late birdies, he birdied his last two holes just to break 80. That is now looming large as he now didn't just make the cut here at the Players' Championship. He has an outside shot to win, just seven shots behind. One of those players, Rex, who's certainly going to be one of those final groups, is Colin Morikawa bouncing back after the disappointment at the Arnold Palmer invitation when Russell Henley nipped him accidentally.

At the end, interesting sequence of events at the end of his press conference in which, you know, unprompted, unsolicited,

Kyle Morikawa says, I've got one more thing to say. Calls out Brando Chambly. Calls out Paul McGinley. Calls out Rocco Mediate by name. Doubles down on the fact that he does not owe the media anything. And then talks about how the media didn't chase after him at Bay Hill. He still signed for the fans. He loves his fans. He appreciates the support. What did you make of Kyle Morikawa's second attempt to explain his media bypassing on Sunday?

I wanted to wait until after live from tonight because I am curious to see how Brando and Paul handle this. And I can guess, but I'm curious to see which direction they take it because this is not something you want to do. The media does.

does not want to be part of the story. And I'm sure Brando doesn't, and I'm sure Paul doesn't. It is interesting. There's a couple of things I want to point out. If any of our listeners who watch the podcast on Sunday night, I was not there when Morikawa finished up. You actually asked me, what was he like? I was angry when he came off the golf course. I don't know. I ran over here to do the podcast. Bob Herring, our friend from Sports Illustrated, was. And it's an important distinction that we need to make right out of the gates.

that Bob was one of the reporters who requested him after his round. And they were told by a media official that he declined to talk to the media. Happens all the time. We've already established that. Not the first time, not gonna be the last. Absolutely not. And from there, he did go over to sign autographs

Colin pointed out today that no one came up to approach him when he was signing autographs from the media. As a rule, I would never do that. You have declined it once. I'm going to respect your wishes. I'm not going to pester you. I'm not going to be the dogged reporter. Everyone seems to think we all are out here. So that part, I think, needs to be pointed out that.

Is that what you want us to do? You want to tell us no and us to keep chasing you? Because I don't think we want to go down that road either. And I'm going to double down on what I said when we talked about this earlier in the week.

He's right. He doesn't have a responsibility to talk to us at all. I hope he does. And I hope this doesn't become something that we see more and more often from players. What he does have a responsibility to. And I think Brando did a really good job of pointing this out during live from a few nights ago that he does have a responsibility to the fans to maybe open up. He signed for him. He said, I signed from all's good here.

That was essentially his rationale. And certainly when he showed up in the media center a few days later here at TPC Sawgrass, he did open up the door and show us the pain and the difficulty and what he was thinking in the moment. That was great. I think he wrote the column on it and I appreciate what he was doing. I don't know where we're going to go with this because nothing good is going to come from this kind of back and forth from either side. Yeah. I'm a little confused here about two things. One,

What Colin Morikawa said on Tuesday, I really didn't have a problem with. And I tried to explain that, the context of what reporters are trying to do in that scenario, sort of hitting at the how and the why. What I took a little bit of exception, which I thought was slightly disrespectful, was the I don't owe you anything. I think there's just a different way to say that, or I just wouldn't have said it in general. And you still could have made the same point. Colin doubled down on that idea on Friday when speaking to reporters. And it just seems like

like a crisis manager, obviously this is not a crisis, but a crisis manager could have helped in this circumstance. I'll just say like, Hey, I shouldn't, I shouldn't have said that. I could see how that could be construed as, as disrespectful. I would never sort of,

go down that road. I know you guys have a job to do and we're all trying to be professionals here. It's very simple to say that while then saying, you know, but I do feel this way. I'd love a cooling down period. You know, the emotion got the best of me and it's done. You never talk about it again. It's a non-issue. So to like to double down, to dig your heels in on this,

Like, I kind of respect it because he's his own man and this is clearly what he believes. But from like a PR or crisis perspective, I certainly don't understand it at all. Secondly, Rex, and this is a theory that I've been sort of working on for the past couple of days. I want to read you Kamura Kawa's quote here because he said that he was feeling emotional and he was just talking about Brandel McGinley, the rock comedian to the world who roundly ripped him.

but he said quote it hurts to hear people say this and especially you guys

Cause I finished around and I went to go sign for 15, 20 minutes for all the people afterward. I'm not sure if you watch the video, which is now available on the PG tours media hub, it's been circulating on X all day long. He is looking directly in the camera, just as I am doing now on this podcast record, that camera sits in the flash area constantly. You never see a player like address it. Like he's making some sort of declaration or he's giving some sort of speech and

That led me to believe when he's saying you guys, he doesn't mean media members. He's not mad at media members who are calling him out for his behavior or no showing in this. I like I literally could not find a single media member who wrote an article ripping about him because it's become commonplace among PG tour players.

to sort of stiff arm the media. And I don't think he's talking about Brandel and McGinley and Rocco Mediate as well, because I don't think he quite frankly cares what they have to say. I think he's looking into the camera and saying to the fans, right?

that it's hurtful to see some of the things that the fans were saying on the internet about him sort of hitting at his character, saying he's entitled, saying he's being selfish, saying he's not being fan friendly in this new fan friendly era. That's to me how I read it. Again, I was not there, didn't ask him to clarify, but to me, that's how I read it. And I think that's an interesting tack where he's just sort of taking out like the middleman and just going directly to the source.

That's a take, and I can see it. I'm going to fall back on you and I had this conversation beforehand. I think when a player or an athlete really in any sport refers to quote unquote you guys, he's normally talking about the press. Yeah. And you're right. I went and watched the video after we had this conversation. A little weird. A little weird. I always think like Nick Saban when he does the silent interview. He's always like looking directly in the cameras. Like he's talking to the recruits. Like you want to come play for me? Yeah, because we're always up. No other coach does except for Nick Saban. I had the flashback.

And it very well could be, I mean, you and I kid about it all the time. Like, Hey, meet me on camera one and you're going to lean into it. And I get what you're, where you're coming from there. I really feel like,

It's general feeling that the media is after him on this. And you're right. I don't know that anybody wrote a story that was overly critical of him. And I feel like this was directed towards Brandel, towards Paul McGinley and the 25 minute conversation they had on live from the other night. It'll be interesting to see when Colin, hopefully he talks tomorrow after a good round, if he will clarify and tell us exactly who he was talking to in that moment.

And again, the story just continues when it's so needless. He could have said immediately afterward, like, hey, I don't like how that came out. I didn't mean it like that. Let's just move on. This is how I feel, but I don't mean to be disrespecting to your profession. That is it. We never talk about it again. Instead, we are now on like day four, the Kamu Okawa story. And potentially he could be asked about it again because it's literally leading every single golf website.

All right. This is a mini podcast. So what is going to happen? Who is in the lead Rex after 54 holes at the players championship and why?

I think it's going to be some combination of those names that we just talked about. Rory, Colin, there's a bunch of other names that fall into that. Certainly Will Zalatouris has my interest as well, although I didn't gasp when I saw his name on the leaderboard because of what we talked about. This golf course has a tendency to start on Thursday with an eclectic leaderboard. You have a journeyman up there. You have superstars up there. That's kind of the secret sauce when it comes to TPC Sawgrass. But as we get closer to Sunday, it seems...

to sort of weed out. And we end up more times than not with the Rory's winning or the Scottie's winning. And you can keep going on and on over the history of this event. I truly expect one of those names to be at the top. I'm not going out on a limb and saying one. I know that's what you're trying to do, but I don't want to play into your narrative. I, I,

Oh, well played. If we so I'm obviously I'm rooting for absolute chaos. I want anarchy. I want this to be Armageddon on Saturday at TPC Sawgrass. I'm going to go a little bit down the leaderboard. I think Tommy Fleetwood, who is going to begin the third round, four shots back, an absolute flusher of the golf ball. The one that actually the two things that you need to do exceptionally well, hit it on the screws.

and make sure you are controlling your trajectory. Tommy Fleetwood does that arguably better than any player. He clearly looks like he's in form inside the top 10 strokes gained approach for the week. My boy Willie Z, by the way, is leading that category, absolutely throwing darts over the first couple days, just three shots back. He does hit moon balls. I'll be curious to see if all that experience in the Texas wind pays off for Will Zaltor. So again, it's just three shots behind.

behind. I know you struggled today. Wait a minute. I know you struggled today because you were herding some cats out of the golf course. Can you focus in? Can you lock in on golf tomorrow and the rest of the weekend? Probably after like 3 o'clock.

Or two o'clock. Keep in mind, the final group goes off at two 40. You and I will be doing some sort of Comcast business seminar. Looking forward to doing that with all of our corporate friends. Then we'll be doing our live from hit roughly 11 a.m. Eastern time on golf channel. So there'll be plenty of time. My six year old is coming out to the golf course. Yeah.

if I was hurting cats, now I'm just hurting out a raging bull, which is what he's going to be on Saturday at the players championship. All right. Thank you guys for listening. Thanks for the support. You guys are the drill NBC sports.com slash golf for lace news, notes, and updates. We'll talk to you guys Saturday night. Experience the performance of Lexus racing, the thunderous V8 engine.

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