The fans have spoken! Here's what they want from the PGA Tour
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Hello and welcome to this edition of the Golf Show Podcast with Rex and Lav. And if you are joining us on YouTube, first of all, welcome. I am on the back edge of the 18th green. And I'm saying that, Rex, quite literally, that I am on the edge of the 18th green. If I go about three more feet to my left, I could experience my demise. You have been in this spot before. Have you not to do some...

some podcasting, some TV work. This is a very familiar spot to you. It looked very precarious. So do me a favor. It's a visual medium. Most of us are visual learners. So take your laptop and show the folks how close you are to the edge and how far down it is. It's got to be like 15 feet down, right? It's quite the drop. Yeah, it's definitely more than a basketball hoop. Yeah, it's probably closer to 20 feet. I don't think I would die, but I could be seriously imperiled.

Look at you. Yes, it was during the US Open that Graham McDowell won. And if you remember, yeah, you would have been there for that. So the media center is way up the hill. So probably what, maybe a mile away. I don't even think that's an exaggeration. Trying not to exaggerate here. And so just the way timing worked out between interviews, doing TV hits, having the right, being on deadline, everything else. I spent the entire week right there where you are.

essentially overlooking that beautiful Bay writing. And I think I was smoking cigars back then as well. I have quit since then, but yes, it's a glorious spot. It's a beautiful spot. Yeah. I've been here a number of times now. I'm not sure I've ever experienced a better three day stretch of weather that we have had in the Monterey peninsula since I arrived on Monday, like literally 57 to 61 degrees.

Beautiful sunshine, little wind. The golf course is in absolutely phenomenal shape, playing firmer and faster certainly than last year, which you covered an event that was shortened to 54 holes because of a deluge and dangerous weather on Monday. They couldn't even stretch it to that as well. And so I think you're going to see Pebble Beach in all of its glory, which if you've watched the PGA Tour over the past month, it's certainly going to be a needed respite.

for a lot of players. We'll get into Scotty Scheffler's return, Jordan Spieth's return, Roy McIlroy's return to the PGA Tour in a moment. There was something very interesting that was sort of unscheduled, Rex, that happened here on Wednesday at Pebble Beach. There was a...

A meeting that roughly a dozen or so reporters who are here at Pebble Beach for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am met with a group of tour executives basically to outline some of their findings from this fan forward initiative that the tour has talked a lot about of the past couple of months. They've they have.

solicited opinions from 50,000 golf fans since last summer. And they're now ready, at least in the next couple of months to unveil some of their findings. There's four key areas of that broadcast enhancements. We've talked a little bit about that. You've been a part of that more walk and talks, more accessibility, um,

more focus on the Friday cut line, things like that. They're going to be talking about the onsite experience, sort of making it an experience like Formula One where, yeah, you don't have eyes on the race or the golf tournament all in one spot, but you can still make it sort of an immersive experience. But I think the main takeaway that what happened and sort of the headlines that you're seeing across golf websites today on Wednesday, Rex, is this tour's renewed push to look at pace of play.

And it seems finally that the tour is ready to have a crackdown on pace of play, how long it takes players to complete rounds, what it means for the fan experience. How much are you surprised, I guess, that either it took this long or the impetus that it finally took for the tour to address what has been an issue for decades, if not eons?

I missed you on Monday for the roundtable. You were flying to Pebble Beach. So it was just me and poor George Savarikas by ourselves against Amon. And he came at us with a little bit of this. He wanted to sort of talk about the pace of play thing, which I think I said two weeks ago when you brought it up. Like, no, I don't want to do this. This is not the podcast I want to do. I've done this podcast a million times in my career. I don't want to do another one of these. Like, no.

Is there a fix? Yes. And that was my take. I think the reason we are where we are right now and all praise to Dottie Pepper, because I think she said it very well when she put she put a word on it. It was respect. And it's a lack of respect for your playing partners. She said this during the telecast on Sunday last week at Torrey Pines. Lack of respect for the for your playing partners, for the fans, for the product, for the tour, for the media partners, for everyone.

essentially is what it is. And I actually took it one step further. I think there was one more word that needs to be added to that. And it's will.

Like, yes, the PGA Tour really wanted to do something about it. The Paradigm of Hope was just on TV the other night. It was on ESPN. It's TGL. And I know it's not a perfect comparison. And everyone's going to be like, well, they're in a big simulator and it's a perfect world. They don't end up with weird rulings. There's no consequence. There's no real consequence to the action. Apparently. And all those things can be true. And

But the other part also can be true. If you put a shot clock on these players, they realize 40 seconds is not a whole lot of time. And we talked about this. Like, give them a timeout. Give them two. Give them three timeouts. Whatever the case may be, if you run into a bad position. But to answer your question, I think that's why it's come up. Because fans have seen firsthand how you can digest two hours of golf and make it –

condensed, make it exactly what you want. And again, TGL is not for everyone. I think we've talked about that as well, but you've seen what pace of play in a shot clock can do in that arena. The reason I think it's coming up now is because the fan forward initiative, they put a lot of resources into this and that's something the fans were concerned about. So forget about you and I complaining about it and the rest of us in the media, forget, forget about Dottie pepper who said it as eloquently as anyone else on Sunday during the CBS broadcast, forget about the other players.

If the fans are going to say it and you're going to solicit their advice and you're going to say this is going to be our Bible going forward, this is how we're going to dictate what the product should look like because we need to improve the product, then, yeah, that in my mind is why we're at these crossroads again.

And look, I jotted a lot of notes down. We were in the lodge. And so I'm going to be referring to this because I want to make sure that I get it right because pace of play was really the biggest takeaway from what was an hour-long meeting with these tour executives. You mentioned the shot clock. That was something that I brought up specifically with Tyler Dennis, the chief competitions officer, as well as Gary Young, who is in charge of rules and competitions as well. They didn't

explicitly say like, yes, we are going to consider implementing a shot clock on the PGA tour. Keep in mind, that would be very difficult to do. It's, it's really easier to, to govern in a, in a MLB stadium with pitch clocks. It's easy to govern in an arena of 1500 seats like TGL where, you know, it's all sort of confined and,

Golf tournaments are anywhere from 120 to 156 players spread out over dozens of acres, basically the entirety of the day. And so they are going to look at it. And tour executives point was that we already do have a shot clock. It's just kept internally.

They have shot link data that shows the average stroke time that players in the PGA tour are taking. And Tyler Dennis said that that's about 38 seconds. And so, yes, it was, is this one of the more aggressive measures as you could take to ensure it probably. And I think that's,

that's something that the player group who's going to look at pace of play is going to look into. Cause you look at the trends across other sports, major league baseball trimmed about 30 minutes off its game times by going to the pitch clock. Even a NBA commissioner, Adam Silver on Wednesday said that he is going to look into trimming the amount of time for,

quarters in NBA from 12 minutes to 10 minutes, essentially trying to keep it at 40 minutes of game time and keep it within a two hour broadcast window, which sort of meets the consumer demands and the changing media habits that you see. And so that's sort of all on the table. What the PGA tour is,

is either discussing or about to implement is the use of range finders in tournament competition. That has been tested on the Corn Fairy Tour. Gary Young said they're probably going to start testing these at a mixture of team events like the Zurich Classic, signature events sometime in the spring and summer, sort of get a better gauge of whether this is something that could actually lop off time.

You and I have covered the PGA Championship. This has been in place since 2021 in that event. I think it's unclear, Rex, like how much time range finders actually save. Keep in mind, most good caddies are going to be looking at that as a reference point for yardage, but they're also going to be consulting with their yardage books as well. And the amount of time that players are taking is not limited.

on the tee or in the fairway, it's on the green. And so that's where I think the shot clock still has some viability. If you have a shot clock on each and every green that is controlled there, that's sort of the element of the game that I think is more worth looking into. The PGA Tour also said, Rex, that they're going to take a, quote, hard look into transparency. If you were a longtime listener of this podcast, you know that you and I have been harping on this, been beating the table on this.

that we want to see transparency. Name and shame the slow players. And so they actually said that they are looking into publicizing what has been private information about players' average shot time with shot length data, also publicizing for the first time

violations, any monetary things. They also said in addition to strokes, which of course has been done just once since 1995, they also could dock FedEx Cup points. And so they're looking at, you know, financially, looking at competitively with strokes, and they're looking at sort of competitively with playing status as well as it comes to FedEx Cup points, which I thought was a very interesting point as well.

Well, and you asked me, but I don't think you ever got around to answering the question yourself. Why do you think the tour finally got to this crossroads? I think the fan survey...

certainly pointed them in the right direction. Now they have data to suggest that this is what fans of the PGA Tour want, as opposed to just sort of relying on an opinion or player fervor, whatever the case may be. Now they can actually point to a data point and say, look, it all comes down to the broadcast. They want to improve the flow of the broadcast. I think that's an important distinction to make.

Major League Baseball trimmed off 30 minutes. Adam Silver wants to keep within a two-hour window for the NBA. The PGA Tour is not necessarily looking to take a five-and-a-half-hour round and all of a sudden trim it down to four-and-a-half hours. That's not a realistic expectation. That's not really what they're interested in. What they're interested in is the fan experience, both on-site, not having so many

sort of slowdowns, as well as the viewer experience on TV, where you're not sitting there watching players mark and remark two footers and showing short putts. The cadence, the flow needs to be sort of more energetic and fast moving as opposed to what we saw. And you saw firsthand the American Express where it really slowed and grinded down to a halt.

And I think I had this conversation last fall at the RSM Classic with Andy Wetz, who was at this meeting today. He's the tour's chief marketing officer who really spearheaded this. And he talked about the idea that when it comes to the actual telecast, that telecast

I think the line that he used or something to the effect of we're showing too many two foot putts. And I'm not talking about golf channel or NBC or CBS. It's a collective. This is just, this is how golf is produced. And you don't have to, you probably shouldn't. That's not what the fan wants to see. They want to see more tee shots. They want to see more short game around the green. They don't need to see tap ins for Paul.

No one's tuning in to see that. To go back to the pace of play issue, and I will just point out one thing that did come up during the roundtable on Monday, and I think it applies here. Mark Russell, who you and I both love. Shout out, Russ.

And he actually got a cameo in the TJL match this week. So good for him. And I do a fantastic Mark Russell, very limited fake impression if you ever want to hear that as well. But he would always argue to me that I'm going to go ahead and do it in his voice because I can only do it in his voice. Rex

We have to have everybody going 55 miles an hour. We can't have somebody going 35 and someone going 85. I need everybody going 55 miles an hour. That's a really good Mark Russell. Kudos to you.

And his argument was that you could see the actual true slow players once you got to a golf course like Colonial, where it was a bit of a shorter field. It was a 120-player field at the time. The golf course was set up for walking, and that's when the slow players stood out. I would argue that in the new reality of the PGA Tour, where you have signature events now, that you don't have too many players. You don't have to worry about the guys going 55 or 85 anymore. The only thing you need to worry about now is 35, because now either you have signature events,

which are 72 player fields or starting next year, it's going to be anywhere between a hundred and 120 players. Any golf course in the world should be able to hold up to that. You should have a decent pace of play. If you've only got anywhere between 60 and 120 players on the field, golf course at one time. So that argument doesn't hold anymore. So I can see why the tour is coming around. Yeah. And Gary young clearly went to the school of Papa Russ by, by making the point that little Russ, that,

Happy birthday, Little Russ. Happy birthday, Little Russ. That slow players have been able to hide on the PGA Tour because they're always going to be roadblocks. When you're playing in threesomes, when you're playing this time of year with sort of a condensed window because of daylight, like you really can't separate or decipher the slow players from the fast players because you're always sort of going to be

you're going to have a roadblock somewhere. You're going to be waiting, whether it's reachable par fives, whether it's drivable par fours, whether it's watery par threes, like you're going to be able to catch up at some point. I can envision a scenario though, Rex, and let's say the next 18 months when you get sort of the mid to the end of the 2026 season,

PGA Tour season that you can see the PGA Tour executives doing a victory lap. Because keep in mind, beginning Jan 1, 2026, field sizes on the PGA Tour are going to be reduced. Some of the issues that you currently have on the PGA Tour with 144-man fields and limited daylight, you can only go so fast.

because you have to have tighter tee time windows. And so once you limit that, once it is 80 players, once it is 120 players, like the flow is automatically going to be better. And then when you do have sort of these new initiatives that the PGA Tour is looking into, whether it's naming and shaming, whether it's sort of expediting what is a pretty protracted pace of play policy where you're out of position, you're told to speed up,

you get a warning, you get a bad time, and then you circle back for the actual penalty. Gary Young said that's on the table as well, sort of letting the dawdlers not gain the system and sort of being more proactive if you're the PGA Tour. I mean, it's a wholesale fundamental change

for how they've always operated. I remember the famous quote from Slugger White said, you know, we can't be jeopardizing these guys' abilities to pay their daughter's tuition by docking them strokes and costing them spots in the tournament. It seems like that's over. And the PGA Tour is most encouraged that a lot of the input is not coming from broadcast partners. It's not even necessarily coming from the fans and wanting to have sort of a quicker experience. It's coming from the players as well. Player input

after the fans sort of made this push now it's the players who are taking ownership of this and i think it's important and you mentioned this but it's probably need to double down they're not going to cut 30 minutes off a round they're not going to do what mlb mlb did and like look no no one enjoys those games being faster than me like i'm shocked that you have a game that is as entrenched in the historical value of what made baseball beautiful is and anything can go on forever

That's what we all love about baseball. And yet somehow they found a way to trim 30 minutes off an average game. That's an incredible amount of time. I don't see that happening on the PGA Tour. But to your point, I don't think if they are proactive about this and they do take these steps and they do get start to get out in front of it and they do start shaming players that we don't end up with a situation where we were on Sunday at Torrey Pines.

When a threesome of leaders, the last group, took three hours to play nine holes. That doesn't work for anybody. It's a very delicate balance to your point, Rex. Like if I'm here at Pebble Beach this week and it's Sunday and you've got an amazing duel between Scotty Scheffler and Roy McIlroy, I don't want there to be a 40 second or 60 second shot clock

on the seventh hole if it's 50 degrees and it's blowing 30. I don't want the competition to be compromised just because they're trying to appeal to this audience that needs to get it quicker and faster, that the telecast needs to move at a more brisk pace. I don't want a player to have to rush over his second shot into the watery 18th because he's worried about getting a shot clock violation. There is a very delicate balance between making a product that's more

sort of conforming to our changing habits of this generation while also sort of undermining the competition and making it sort of goofy golf where you have this sort of artificial number of, yeah, we need to finish each shot inside 40 seconds. Whereas let's just let competition shine because that's actually the core foundational component of the PGA Tour.

No. And I think if you start going after the habitual offenders, the reason I was so optimistic when the PGA Tour tinkered with the pace of play policy a few years ago is because they went away from the idea of penalizing groups. That was always sort of their M.O., where if a group got out of position and then you got a bad time and then a second bad time, that's when fines started to pile up. When, in fact, you know, out of a group of threesome.

The tour official knows exactly who's causing the problem. And I think we had this conversation on Sunday night talking about it wasn't Andrew Novak on Sunday at Torrey Pines that was causing the problem. Every time the camera swung to him, he was hitting a shot in the air. That wasn't the problem. You know who it is. And I'll actually take it a step further, having watched the TGL match this week. I wasn't surprised that Tiger Woods got a shot clock violation. Very slow player. On the green.

very slow player on the green, not necessarily Tita green, but on the green, he invented slow play. Like he would get just glacial greens and prime just like Jack would. And I think there's something to that, to your point. That's why I like your concept of, I think most shots. And I did this a few years ago. I think it was probably at the players championship where I walked Roy McIlroy's round and I timed every single shot he hit. And on average, I,

T shots were 26 seconds or something around that approach shots were somewhere in 31, 32 seconds. And then it wasn't until he got to the green that now we start getting close to 40. So it's 38, 39, 40 seconds, somewhere around in there. I think most players that's the MO. So no, I don't need to see the shot clock on the T or in the fairway, put it

put it on the green that's genius and again give them timeouts however however many you think is fair so if they do find themselves in a situation they can always just throw the flag up in the air they can take a timeout but that's the the fix in my mind it all goes back to

sort of this central theme. And it's one that I touched on in a column, NBC sports.com slash golf on Tuesday, where the tour is, is, is trying to tow this very fine line of being entertaining while also sort of

maintaining the history and the legacy and the tradition of being the world's strongest tour. And there's this push to sort of have all these elements that we've seen added with these golf adjacent things, whether it's TGL and the fast pace, whether it's YouTube and the influencers, whether it's, you know, broadcast enhancements and being more open and accessible, you know,

The core PGA Tour product is still based on intense competition among the best players in the world. This should be, behind me, Rex, like an amazing canvas for the Tour's best players this week. It's the second signature event of the season. Almost all the top players on the PGA Tour are here. Xander Schauffele, who's targeting a return in a couple weeks' time at the Genesis Invitational. This should be as good as it gets for the PGA Tour environment.

I don't think anyone's going to be talking about pace of play or pre-round interviews or, you know, onsite creator content is assuming the golf continues to be played at a high level among the stars. I think that's an important point to keep in mind as well. One other note that came out of, uh, the conference call with the tour executives today, Rex was the PG tour executives confirming that yes, they are under, uh,

potentially undergoing changes to the tour championship format. And the tour said they're actually expecting to deliver proposals at the next tour policy board, which if approved, could be implemented at Eastlake this year if they can't seem to come to some sort of concept alignment among players, among fans, among broadcast partners. They'll probably just kick the can to 2026.

As it relates to the players, Rex, who are you most interested in seeing back inside the ropes this week on the PGA Tour? Is it Scottie? Is it Rory? Or is it Jordan Spieth who's making his first start since August in that hand surgery?

I have for me, it's Scotty. And again, my level of concern is still pretty low, especially after hearing him talk this week at Pebble Beach about the injury. I do think it's funny that he elaborated a little bit more about exactly what happened. And I'm still having a hard time wrapping my mind around exactly how you hurt your hand trying to make pasta. But no, no, no, no. He explained it. And it actually makes a lot of sense.

very, very using a wine glass. He was using a wine glass, correct? Yes. But why don't you go stemless? Why, why do you need the stem? So, so here's, here's what happens. Scotty said, if you, if you miss this press conference, he said that he was making homemade ravioli. He was at a rental house, so he didn't have the necessary tools and utensils to do so. What he had around was a wine glass to sort of cut the dough for the ravioli. So he takes the wine glass and,

pushes it down onto the dough snaps and all of a sudden uh glass goes into his hand bloodshed everywhere he did say the ravioli was good but probably not worth the pain rory had a good barb as well saying look the dude made like 70 million dollars last year why does he not have a chef

There's something to that as well, but he's the one that interests me the most because he's the world number one. He had an extended break. He probably needed an extended break. I don't foresee any problems. If anything, I would imagine there's going to be a little bit of rust because he wasn't able to do what he normally does during his offseason, even the abbreviated offseasons that we normally have in golf. So I'm not exactly sure. I'm not exactly anticipating him.

him coming out swinging and being Scotty Scheffler right out of the gate for a lot of different reasons. But I do think that we'll, we'll see something close to the product that we're used to seeing. It's, it's Jordan speed. I know that's who you're going to say. It's the exclamation point. It's the one you've been waiting to come back. And I know that's where you want it to go. No, it's, it's, it's definitely Scotty. And I, I,

I actually think my expectations for Scottie are high. It's not like he took, you know, three or four months off from competition. He did just win in his last start to her will challenge in early December. He apparently is in fine form. He shot 63 at Cypress point just a couple of days ago. It was six under first, first six, watch them in the range. Watch them just practice around like 10,

He's not missing the center of the club face, just like you would expect with Scottie Scheffler. Is there maybe some competitive rust once you get the scorecard in your hand? You know, Roy McIlroy earlier this week sort of marveled at the sort of seemingly mistake-free golf that Roy plays or that Scottie plays, the number of bogey-free rounds. Can we expect that sort of precision right out of the gate?

Probably not. That's probably a little unfair. This golf course, Spyglass as well, very small greens, small targets, obviously big penalty. If you do miss them, it's not the easiest way to start the season. He said he would have loved to play Kapalua.

Huge fairways, huge greens would have loved to play the American express. Another scheduled start dome golf, a pretty easy, low scoring is to be expected. A tough start, certainly for the season, but I don't think Scotty will get too off. I did ask him and something that we discussed on last week's podcast Rex was would Scotty potentially add a start to

to his schedule after missing two ahead of the masters. I asked him that explicitly on Tuesday. He said, it's going to be sort of a feel as you go type thing. Keep in mind over the last three years, guys won two masters. He has played at least seven times ahead of the year's first major. If he has his usual schedule, which would be this week, Phoenix,

now Torrey Bay Hill Players Championship in Houston. That would be six times ahead of the Masters. There's no real obvious choice that Scottie could add, but he did say it'll be sort of a feel as it goes. And if he needs to add one, he will. He's also not going to disrupt the flow and the cadence just to get to a certain number. How about Roy McIlroy? We saw him in Dubai, his first start on the PGA Tour since the Tour Championship. Is it all about Augusta at this point?

are these just sort of test runs for him? Preparatory, you know, how much stock do you put into Rory's season debut Rex? Not a lot for the reasons you just pointed out, because he can win multiple times in a season, which he did last year. And he does, he has done more times than not over the course of his career, but that's not what we're defining his career by. And,

I don't know disrespect, but I'm not worried about how many more Canadian opens he can win or how many times he can go to the Zurich Classic and win alongside Shane Lowry. Although I'm covering the Zurich Classic this year. I'd really like to see that. I think this this has more to do with him just trying to figure out whatever the formula is at Augusta.

And he's tried so many different things. Like, I don't think anybody has left a stone unturned like Rory has when it comes to trying to figure out a way to be his absolute best going into this year. And some of the things that he talked about really towards the end of last year and at the beginning of this year about how he's approaching the swing a little bit differently.

that he just needs to get his body to move correctly. And so he knows that when he puts himself into the situation, going back to wing foot, that he knows his body is going to do the right thing. Now, maybe your mind doesn't always do the right thing. So it seems to me he continues to try to make that progress. And I think I probably have sat here for the last five years and predicted that my big, bold prediction is that Roy would win another major, hopefully the Masters, to complete the career Grand Slam. I don't know if I have a high degree of confidence at this point.

At this point, it has less to do with Rory and his game. He can clearly still win on the PGA Tour, but it just something clicks inside of him when he shows up at Augusta and there's no getting around it. I just don't think that I don't know if there is a magical formula that allows him to show up there and have some sort of clarity of thought and some sort of absolute knowledge, absolute calm that I'm going to do the right thing in every situation. I haven't seen it.

Yeah, I like the steps that he's making with his golf swing to sort of get more mindless, to make it more efficient, to make it less reliant on timing, to make sure that any of the sort of physiological changes that happen within a player when you're in sort of major championship contention don't unravel him, which I think is sort of what happened over the closing hour, hour and a half at Pinehurst. If he can sort of...

set the swing aside and, and, and know that that is in a solid place. Then he can focus on sort of the other elements that he needs to do, whether it's breathing or staying in the moment or whatever it's going to take to finally unlock a major championship as it relates to this week. Yeah. Like, do I put a bunch of stock into it? If he finishes, uh,

second or if he finishes 40th. He finished outside the top 60 last year in this event. He still had a fine season, still had an opportunity to win a major championship. You may have missed it, but Rory had an interview with Ian Carter of the BBC seemingly last week where Rory outlined his three goals for the remainder of his career. One, win a Masters, complete the career Grand Slam. Two, win an Olympic medal. Came very close

Last year in Paris, unraveled over the closing nine holes. He will be approaching 40 years old during the next Olympics in 2028. But obviously, he should still be one of the chief contenders there. And he'll win an away Ryder Cup.

which he said remains one of the most difficult things to do in all of golf. I like to hear him verbalize that because it's good to sort of put his. Wait, he's already done that. He's already done that last thing. When a second, when a second one, that one, he, he's, he's not saying it like explicitly Rex. It almost seems like that. He sort of used that one as a fluke.

That the Americans collapse on the final day and Europe stages an incredible rally. Sort of with where the game is headed, with the advantage that you now see with the home courses, he's saying that winning a second away Ryder Cup is really a career goal. And so I like to hear him verbalize that. I like to sort of view what he accomplishes from this point forward, age 35 season on,

through the prism of like, these are what his three goals are. And I wonder if it's going to be difficult, Rex, for Rory at this stage in his career, I think this is his 17th season on the PGA Tour, to sort of get up for regular events on the PGA Tour when it's so clear at this stage of his career with all these accomplished, there's really only a couple things that

That could make him either the most accomplished European player of all time, one of the best players of his generation, certainly as it relates to the complete of the career Grand Slam, one for absolutely the record books.

I mean, I think that's certainly a fair concern because how much more motivation does he need to win another Canadian open, not to pick on the Canadian open on this hating, just hating on the RBC Canadian open. We love our friends north of the border. I do. And I covered it last year. It was a great event. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't, I just don't know what's going to motivate him anymore at this point, other than those things. You're right. The fact that he verbalized those things kind of makes it clear. Well,

Well, you know, what do I go into the season? However, I will say he still clearly has a passion to compete. I don't think that's ever been in question when he's feeling it and he's playing well. I don't think anyone can sit back and question. Does he really enjoy to do this? I don't think anybody that watched him leave that parking lot in a huff last year at Pinehurst can question what it meant to him because clearly it means the world to him. And I, I, I,

i would and i keep going back to the idea that he clearly still has the game to win just not at augusta but at oakmont and in ireland at the open championship and anywhere else the pga tour ends up it's the part it's between the ears right there's clearly something that's just not clicking when he needs it to click and you can sit here and make the arguments that well the competition is better than it was when he was winning early in his career maybe but he was winning by eight

earlier in his career. So it's not as though he never lost that talent. So clearly he's gotten to a point now where it is a mental hurdle. And I don't know how you get by that. Yeah, I'm very much looking forward to see Rory and the rest of the PGA Tour stars. I know the PGA Tour has been playing for the past month. The tension divided because of the NFL. Like this feels, Rex, like the unofficial kickoff point

to the PGA Tour season. So many stars. Only because you're there. It's your first event. You're just doing it. I'm excited. You're a prisoner of the moment. I'm excited. If you're not jazzed for this event at this golf course with this field... I know there's been...

So much, I almost said a naughty word. So much kvetching, so much hand-wringing about the PGA Tour and the product that they're putting out. Like, this should be an incredible showcase with nothing to divide our attention. There's nothing else going on this weekend. I hope you guys enjoy the golf. Rex and I will be back.

to record the podcast Sunday night on your televisions on Monday. Full recap of the AT&T Public Beach Pro. And we may, again, touch on some of the discussion that we had today about pace of play where the PGA Tour is going in that direction as well, as well as anything that comes up for the rest of the tournament week. You guys know the drill. Find us in the comment section on YouTube. Ask a question. If you ask a good one, we'll put you on TV. If not, hey, we'll probably put you on TV as well. All right.

All right. Thanks for listening to this edition of the Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and Lab. You guys know the drill. MCSports.com slash golf. You can find all my content from on-site this week at Pebble Beach. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the support. We'll talk to you guys on Sunday night. Happy birthday, Russ. Spread the love for black-founded brands. Yeah. Found here at one.

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