With Tour's future in focus, is Kapalua the best way to kick off the year?
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Hello and welcome to this edition of the Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and Lab. The record-breaking start to the 2025 PGA Tour season. Hideki Matsuyama is the winner of the century, an eight-footer on the final hole. Gave him a 35 under par total. That breaks the record of the PGA Tour for the lowest score in relation to par that was set just a couple years ago by Cameron Smith. That total, Rex...

was 33 birdies and two eagles across 72 holes of the plantation. I ask this in all sincerity. Have you ever made 33 birdies in your entire life? No, of course not. Are you kidding me? Let alone two eagles. You're 57 years old. You have not made a total of 33 birdies.

No, no, probably not. I'd have to go back. And if you really made me think about it, I probably made 33 birdies. Certainly not in the last decade or two. Let's go ahead and put that since I've been on this earth for a long time. And I think Colin Morikawa, we're going to hear from him later on in the podcast, probably said it best. It was a little...

A little profane, but we're going to go ahead and go with what he said. When he is playing, when Hideki Matsuyama is playing that well, man, he's hard to beat. When you look at what he did, 35 under par, that broke the PGA Tour record for 72 holes. PGA Tour has been playing 72-hole tournaments for a really, really long time. You look at what he did. TD Green picked up almost 13 strokes on the field. It's impressive when all parts of that game are clicking. I like to think, Rex –

That Hideki Matsuyama was still steaming from being left off the ballot for PGA Tour Player of the Year in 2020. Scotty Scheffler obviously was going to win that award. Xander Shoffley obviously was going to be on the ballot after winning two major championships. How was Hideki Matsuyama not on the ballot

for 2024 PGA Tour Player of the Year. He won a player-hosted invitational, the Tiger Woods-hosted Genesis Invitational at Riviera. He also won the most difficult FedExCup playoff event, the very first one, the 70-man event at TBC Southwind, the FedEx St. Jude Championship. Roy McIlroy was on that ballot, and technically Roy McIlroy did have two victories on the PGA Tour in 2024. One of them was a team one with Shane Lowry.

What are we doing here? The other one, of course, was the Wealth Fargo Championship, another signature event. Hideki Matsuyama, Rex, this is three wins now in the past 11 months. He's all the way up to number five in the world ranking. I think what we saw at Kapalua was a reminder that this dude is an absolute force when he's healthy. And that has been a big bugaboo over the past couple years for Hideki Matsuyama. He's had neck issues. He's had back issues.

He's had wrist issues. He turns 33 years old next month. Like as hard as he works at a Hideki Matsuyama does like he probably needs to dial back the intensity and work a little bit more efficiently. But this was this was a tour de force. I think a reminder of just exactly what he's capable of, which is incredibly high level golf.

Do you think in his heart of hearts, Hideki cares that he was left off that ballot? Be honest. He doesn't care about anything when it comes to other than actually hitting the perfect iron shots, which is what he's really, really good at. No, he doesn't care. Two things stood out for me and I was watching golf central after they finished up and I heard Brando talking about it actually got close. I mean, if you,

paid attention on Sunday. Kalamurakawa got within two strokes. It seemed to me there were some things that could have happened coming down the stretch with the way that golf course sets up to go so low. I mean, if, look, we're going to talk about Kalamurakawa later. I'm not quite sure what else he possibly could have done. But the moment to me was when it seemed like Kalamurakawa had the advantage on 16.

He was in the fairway. He had an iron in his hand. He'd been hitting his irons perfect all week long. Didn't hit particularly great one. I think he hit it to 20, 25 feet. And then from the rough, a much more difficult position, Hideki hits it and almost hits the flag. And I thought the best part of the entire show was Smiley Kaufman saying, huh,

It's a good thing he didn't hit the flag. Like he's that good that from 180 yards, we can be like, yeah, he knew not to aim for that flag because if he hit it, he would have gone off the green and then he would have been in trouble. That's where we are with Hideki right now. And when you look at where he's won, this is his 11th time winning on the PGA Tour. And sometimes with certain players, like certainly Tiger Woods didn't fall in this category or Phil Mickelson back at his prime, Dustin Johnson,

But certain players, it seems like they get on certain courses and just fall in love with them. And those are the courses they're going to play well at. When you look at where he's had success, there is no rhyme or reason to any of it. He's won at the Memorial, which is a really, really hard golf course. It's beefy.

beefy U.S. Open like he's won at the Sony Open, which is nothing like that or what we see this week. He's won this week at Maui, which is completely different. It's resort, of course, to the maximum. He won last year in Memphis, as you pointed out, like his game travels. And I think you touched on probably the most important thing, that when he's healthy and he talked a little bit with our Todd Lewis after he finished up today in Maui, the idea that

For the first time, he had an offseason. He was able to recover. He was able to recruit. He was able to work on some things with his game. And the result was a really impressive victory. How has Hideki Matsuyama Rex not had a better record in the major championships since, let's call it 2018?

In that span, he has three top tens in the majors. One of them was very good. It was a victory at the Masters in 2021. The other two were at the past three U.S. Opens, but he was never really in contention. He was never closer than three shots. He sort of backdoored it at Brookline a couple years ago with a Sunday 65. He never really had a chance. What's the deal that's going on here? I think most people

point to Hideki Matsuyama and look at his putting. And much was made of the putter switch that he went. He went to the center shafted putter, which seems to be a little bit of a trend on the PGA Tour. It can only help in sort of that range that Scottie Scheffler was trying to prove as well. When you're as good of an iron player as Hideki Matsuyama is, as Scottie Scheffler is, you're going to make your hay in sort of that 10 to 20 foot range. And you look at Hideki Matsuyama's putting on the PGA Tour last year, 119th

on the PGA tour inside 10 feet 90th on the PGA tour from 10 to 15 feet and 66th on the PGA tour from 15 to 20 feet, not terrible, but not great. And that's the reason why he was actually pretty low on the birdie average number. So he's not a great putter and his driving, uh,

Is sort of subpar as well. 160th on tour and total driving, which combines distance. He's not necessarily long and accuracy. He's not necessarily accurate as well. So that sort of plays in to the golf courses that he could win on as well.

Kapalua, wide open fairways, let it go. And then when you couple that with a hot putter, that's going to work. On more difficult golf courses, more penal golf courses, golf courses where the ball is going to sink to the bottom of Bermuda Rough or golf courses where it's really penal with hazards outside the fairway, he's going to struggle. But again, when he's driving on a rope like this and he's putting as well as he is now with this new putter,

Like he can win any golf tournament in which Sudeikis Matsuyama teased it up in 2025. That has to be a very good feeling for him.

No, the major is his major record is certainly something to look into. And you don't look like we want to give him his flowers because of what he did to start out the season. But certainly you look at the next step for him is obviously the major championships. Winning the Masters was very special. But you have so much high expectations when you see this is the product. This is what he can do when everything is clicking. I'll go back to the idea that health factors into this. I'm not quite sure over the course of his career that he's had a prolonged stretch where he's played an entire season or even just the four major championships.

with 100% complete health. And it's also relative to the rest of the field that at the major championships, you have the absolute best players going head to head. And yes, in theory, you had that this week, but you didn't have Scottie Scheffler there. And of course, Bryson DeChambeau and the live guys are also not there. I think all those things factor into it. The bottom line is, and I think I've said this before, I think you've probably said it before. He is probably the most inconsistent star player

in the game at the moment. And I don't mean that as a knock. If you look at a player like a Rory McIlroy, he can be inconsistent, but not along the lines that it seems like Hideki can. Because when you see how special he can be on a week like this, you're right. It makes no sense that he couldn't play better in the major championships, that his resume isn't better. I'll go back to last year's Presidents Cup.

Let's just take that as a micro as a one-off right there. He went two and three for the week. I think both of us agreed going into those matches that if the international had, he had to be four and one. Yeah.

I mean, he had to be 5-0, really, if we're being honest. But if they were going to have any chance whatsoever, their stars, a.k.a. Hideki Matsuyama, needed to step in and do it. He's never done it in those matches either, and we've heard time and time again that when you get in a team environment like that, whether it's the President's Cup or the Ryder Cup, that it kind of feels like Sunday at a major championship. And you could probably extrapolate something along those lines that he's missing a gear that he probably needs on a Sunday at a major championship.

Could be. I think your point's well taken about the inconsistency. He's an inconsistent driver of the golf ball. We see the number of one-handed finishes that he has, which are probably mishits, at least in his mind. The inconsistency with the putter, some days it's good, some days it's not. And inconsistency with his body.

Keep in mind, like he won the playoff opener. He had to withdraw from the second playoff event last year because of a back injury. He had a good opening round. He was in position to even move higher up in the FedExCup race and really give Scottie Scheffler a run. And he had the WD from that golf tournament. How about the runner-up in this case, Rex, which was Kawamura Kawa? Dude shot 32 under par. That's rounds of 66, 65, 62 under par.

67 and did not win. He didn't just lose by one. He didn't just lose by two. He lost by three shots in Kawamura-Kawa. Had a little bit of a funny exchange with reporters after the final round when he was asked exactly about what Hideki Matsuyama did over the past two days at Capital. Listen to this. How would you describe what Hideki did these last two days? Yeah, excuse my language, but fuck, 3,500 bars. That's low.

I mean, he's got a point. First of all, is Kyle Morikawa going to get fined for this? This is ridiculous. We want our PGA Tour players to show more personality, to be more open with the media. This is as open and honest as I've ever seen Kyle Morikawa in what? He's probably going to get a fine from Ponte Vedra?

I love the fact that he started with, excuse my language, that he laid it out there. It's like me being critical of my boss. You know exactly what's coming after that. That's right. It's like me being critical of my boss and saying, with all due respect, nope, you don't get away with everything you want to just because you say it with all due respect. In this case, I love the honesty, but he is going to get fined. I mean, that's just the way the tour works. It's the no fun league sometimes when it comes to these things. But you can't debate what he said. All right, so maybe he shouldn't set it on a family program like Golf Central, but

you can't debate it like when he is rolling like that and you run up against someone that shoots 35 under over four rounds if you look at Colin Morikawa's record in Maui he's never finished outside the top seven he has been in contention time and time again he probably has to feel a little snake bitten if I'm being honest here but I love the fact that he was able to keep pace with him it probably would have been really easy to start mailing it in on the back nine when you realize that

He's not coming back to me. Like I got it within two strokes. And as we pointed out, the exchange on 16 was probably more. Kyle said that's when he knew that it was over. There was nothing I could do at that point. He's playing so well. This goes back to last year. I think he'll only draw more from this, but it's going to be harder and harder every time you come up short. Yeah, it certainly feels like he's a little bit star-crossed.

especially when you have a heater like this. He obviously has a point about what transpired over these 72 holes at Kapalua. And on Sunday, Kyle Morikawa missed twice as many greens in the final round with four than he did over the first three rounds combined. And again, he was not leading heading into the final round. Kyle Morikawa on Sunday, he made par on

The two par fives in the front side. He bogeyed number six after three putt like those those little miscues. He's probably going to be be rewing for the next 12 to 20, 24 hours as he as he thinks about one that potentially got away from him. I think big picture, though, Rex, like this is such a different player than the Kalamaro cow we saw who coughed up a seven shot lead.

With with eight holes to play at Capitol Hill just a couple years ago, he's coming off the best strokes gain season of his entire career, one of which he did not win, one of which he did not win a major championship like he's done previously in his career. He's such a more well-rounded player now, particularly with his short game and his putting. I feel stupid because we just had the.

predictions podcast that dropped last week, wherever you get your podcast. And neither of us picked Calamore Coward to win a major championship in, in 2025. He has been a fixture on the leaderboard at Augusta each of the past three years. He is the most precise player outside of Scotty Scheffler on the planet. That is going to play well at a tournament like the U S open. And as he just proved, uh,

these 72 holes of capital like the dude can make as many birdies as anyone and that would obviously play in a PGA championship or an open championship which she has won previously is your arrow continuing to point upward on young Kyle Morikawa I

Absolutely. You asked me at the top if I've ever made 33 birdies in my entire life, and the answer is probably no. I can tell you what I haven't done in my entire life. In the course of a 54-hole span to only miss two fairways, that is what he does to a tee. When you look at what he did through three rounds, that's phenomenal to me. And look, these are resort fairways and England's...

ever been to Maui and played Kapalua, they can attest that it's, you have to probably hit it pretty bad. I played it. I've hit it pretty bad. I know what it's like to miss fairways there. That to me is phenomenal. And this goes back to the idea that you're absolutely right. He's so much more of a complete player now than he was before. And I'll go back just a few years ago.

when he started to struggle. 2023 is what I'm really thinking about here. And you hear players talk about this all the time. There is a tendency. When you get to the level that Colin got to with a multi-time major championship winner, your perennial in the top five, top 10 in the world rankings, all of those things is to start looking at the little things that you feel like you don't do well enough.

and you spend more and more time focusing on that because that's where you feel like you're going to make those incremental gains to break through, to get to that next level, another major championship, get to world number one, whatever the case may be. I think in the case of Colin Morikawa, he started looking into other areas of his game

And it was detrimental to what he did best, which is that iron play, sublime iron play. Again, I can't stress this enough. Two fairways over the first three days he missed. That to me is phenomenal. And this is back to what he does best. And you know he's just going to keep plugging away.

I found it fascinating. You read his transcript on Saturday. He talked about the idea that his mission coming into this year, which was really fun to read and sort of dig into this mind that goes so deep, is to go into every round trying to pour everything I have physically, mentally into every single shot. And he said that's what Tiger did. That's what the greats did. And he admitted that over the course of my career, I probably had rounds, tournaments,

days shots that I wasn't pouring a hundred percent into it. You certainly saw it this week with the way you play. You certainly did. The arrow continues to point up on column or a cow. How about the scoring in general? Rex, 25 players shot 20 under or better. As we mentioned, F Hideki Matsuyama shot 35 under par, obviously heavy, two holes at Capitol. Like, are you cool with this? The 76 hundred yard course,

Three par threes, reachable par fives. Like this isn't quite as low as it was in 2022. Remember that with Cam Smith, John Rahm, Matt Jones shooting 34, 33 and 32 under par respectively. Like, do you have a problem with it? The winning score, how easy Kapalua played in the 2025 lid lifter?

No, absolutely not. And we go through this every year. We always show up and I think there was 68 drives of 400 yards or longer for the week in Kapalua. And that's pretty much the norm. And it's getting longer and longer. That's a whole different conversation.

This is where the players go to knock off rust. I don't want to call it spring training. It's a signature event. There's a lot of things up for grabs here, but I have absolutely no problem because what will you end up with is Hideki winning in record style, which is fascinating. You have primetime golf on the East coast. You have people who are freezing in the Northeast of the United States, looking at Maui in these beautiful views, uh,

We will get to Florida. Actually, we'll get to Riviera soon enough. And then we'll get to Florida, which will mean Bay Hill and the Players' Championship. And then we'll turn the page and start heading towards Augusta. Trust me, there's plenty of really, really difficult golf courses out there that we don't need to make all of them have to be these just slugfests.

that you can come out and you can have a tournament like this. I don't think anyone is looking at this tournament thinking to themselves, well, that's silly golf. No, Hideki still had to play really, really well to be able to do what he did to shoot 35 under par. I don't have a problem with it at all. Yeah, like it's, it's draining in its own way to have to make as many birdies as you do that. Like that applies a certain sort of pressure on you. I think the bigger point Rex is that this is not necessarily a great test of golf because

when you have 25 players shooting 20 under or better. And that is a problem when this is a signature event on the PGA Tour, when you have only 59 players in the field, when you have a $20 million purse, when you have 700 FedExCup points going to now the winner, and you have this scenario where, yeah, you may have guys who have played

Throughout the fall and staying sharp guys who aren't tinkering with their equipment or going through some sort of life changes that they had, or they, they sort of took it easy on the holidays. And now the guys are, are a little bit rusty. Like I, if, if I was running the PJ tour, I would strip, uh,

Kapalua of signature event status and have something bigger and bolder, more fun, more inventive because they seem to be caught in this way of this is what they call the opening drive.

for the PGA tour. Like they're, they're, they're trying to usher in a new era and they're trying to make this an important event. And yet you have guys who are saying, yeah, you know, I'm literally just knocking off the rust. I'm just, this is a family vacation. I'm collecting, it's guaranteed money. It's guaranteed points. Like I have a little bit of a problem with that. I would like to see a, a sort of lean into the easiness of,

of the season opener as opposed to saying this is an important event and we just so happen to have it at a golf course where if the wind does not blow like you're going to need to shoot 35 under par

And I think our colleague Mark Ruffing had some breaking news on this during Golf Central. I'm not sure if you saw it, but I think the conversation now is to move. I believe it's the 15th hole. It's the shortest of the par fives. And again, it's a par 73. So it's a little bit different. They want to make that construct. Who cares? They're going to make it a par four going forward next year is the idea. So just lop off however many shots you want to make.

So, yeah. So, no, we're not at 35 under par. We're not talking about historic scoring anymore. And they did that a few years ago at Bay Hill. You're right. It's absolutely silly. It's just a number. We shouldn't get caught up with it. Just like I don't think we should get caught up in the idea that if you weren't entertained watching Hideki play the last four days, then maybe that's just not your brand of golf. And we'll reconnect when the tour gets to the PGA and we'll get to the Florida Swing. I mean, I think that's fine. But, like...

Did you think that this was a suitable season opener for the PGA Tour? If they're leaning into the entertainment value, if they're trying to look at how they could appeal the PGA Tour to the masses, did this entertain you in ways you have not entertained before? Or is there a way to spruce up this thing? I mean, were you not entertained? No.

I guess I would flip it back on you. I was. I enjoyed watching it. I thought – look, Hideki doesn't show a lot of – I enjoyed watching it. Can it be better? Can it be better? Of course. Sure. Sure.

Sure. I will counter your comment, and I understand you're leaning into the idea that this is a signature event. Maybe we need to do something more, something bigger, something more special. But your leaderboard was Hideki Matsuyama, Colin Morikawa, Sungjae Im, Ludwig Oberg was tied for fifth, Corey Connors. I mean, it was a who's who. Where's Scotty injured? Where's Rory? He's waiting for the DPA World Tour. Where's Xander Schauffele? Finished, what, T30? Millie.

Apparently pretty rusty with his long game. Like if, if I'm the PGA tour and this is my season opening event,

If I'm ushering in a new era of the PGA Tour, I have to do something different than this. This is sleepy. There's few fans on site. It's low energy. People are still distracted by football. Like, do something different. Make it a Tuesday through Friday for the first month. The NFL is only going to expand its schedule for another week. And so, like, you're going to have a problem where you have to combat it.

with a different schedule for the first month. This is what I would do, Rex. Here's my grand idea. Please take notes. I would make Kapalua... I've been thinking about this a lot. I would make Kapalua like...

a pro bowl type event. You ever watched it? Like the old pro bowl is gone, you know, where they used to have, you know, guys. Yeah. It's, it's a real game. It's, it's not, it's not that anymore. It's like a flag football competition. However, they also do like skills competitions. They have like a precise passing. They have some sort of like tic-tac-toe thing with kickers. There's like a tug of war for linemen. There's like a snapping competition to see who can get more accurate. Like I'd love that.

How fun would that be with PGA tour players? Longest drive closest to the pin chip offs, weird putting contest,

You could have a team event. You could make this match play. Like that is something different than just the monotony of 72-hole PG Tour. That's a way to spruce up your season opening event to make it feel bigger, to make it feel better, to make it feel young, to make it feel fresh as opposed to sort of what transpired last year.

over the week at Kapalua. You may want to hold off on your hot takes. You're digging into the season opener, and we have a whole other segment on the season-ending hot takes that you're going to bring to the table. So you may want to pace yourself here. We only have 51 minutes to get everything into this. I see where you're coming from. I don't like the idea of turning it into the Pro Bowl because no one pays attention to the Pro Bowl. Of all the things that the NFL rules, and they pretty much— The Pro Bowl probably gets better ratings than PGA Tour golf does.

Probably. I'm not getting into that because it's football. But of all the things that the NFL does well, I would argue the Pro Bowl is that one thing that this just doesn't look right. It's actually way better over the past couple years because it's new. It's why they keep tinkering with it. Because it's fresh. Because they're trying something different. I will counter, however, to your point. And I'm going to get this wrong. So please, everyone, be gentle when you come after me on this one. I believe the NHL All-Star Game has turned into something called the Four Nations Cup.

which is pretty much what it says. It's kind of a round-robin team event with the four nations being the United States, Canada, Russia,

Oh, man, I'm going to get beat up really bad for these. I don't know what they are. But I love the idea of coming up with some sort of team event where you could have, I don't know, however many teams you want to show up at this. I'm perfectly fine with tinkering this and trying to make it a little better. Eventually, you have to start playing actual real golf. And I feel like we've had this conversation and we'll continue to have this conversation again.

I believe the PGA Tour schedule, I believe professional golf looks vastly different in 2026 than what it looks right now and what it has looked like for the last few decades. I do believe that we're getting to a point where we will see massive changes. And I'm not against doing something different in Maui. I don't think the Pro Bowl is the way to go, though.

No, I just think something fun, something inventive. You could do match play. You could do a team event, something along the lines. I think the only issue with my plan, though, Rex, if I'm really thinking this through, is that if you strip the season opening event of signature event status, right, if it's no longer guaranteed pay, if it's no longer guaranteed FedExCup points, if it's no longer $20 million per season,

Guys aren't going to come. They're not going to fly seven or eight hours or for an international player like Victor Hobble. He's not going to fly and waste an entire day for something that does not pay off in the long run. I do think you got caught in the air with the ball and didn't know what to do with it. I see what I know. Clearly, you have to have other ways to entice players. Roy McIlroy skipped this event several times over the past decade. Like your your biggest star is.

Needs to show up for the season event. I think there's ways to tweak the PGA tour schedule, which I'm sure we'll get into in 2025 to make it more appealing for the fans and for the players as well. That was very clever of you, Rex. I believe that's called a segue in the TV business to allude to possible changes to the tour championship. As our friend, Gabby Herzig of the athletic first reported and then confirmed by Doug Ferguson of the associated press. PGA tour is considering changes to,

to the tour championship format. You and I have discussed this ad nauseum since the staggered start format was introduced in 2019. Scotty Scheffler has probably been one of the most vocal opponents of

of the format even called it, I believe silly this year, according to the athletic, we could see some sort of match play bracket. We could see some metal match play. It should be noted that nothing, at least to this point has been brought to the pack level and it is unlikely to be greenlit for 2025, but I think it is at least noteworthy that changes to the tour championship are being considered. What's your read on this?

No, we have gone round and round about this and it quite frankly, it bores me because

Because I feel like we've gotten to the point where I'm sure you could sense it last year at Eastlake. I didn't want to have this conversation because I knew what you were going to say. No, no, Matt, it has to be match play. We've got to figure out a way to make this head-to-head. We need to figure out a way to take the math out of it. We need to get rid of starting strokes. Like, yes, there's plenty of things they can do. And from the reports that I read, both Gabby Herzog and Doug Ferguson with the AP, I like the idea of starting with some sort of stroke play.

event where you sort of narrow the field from there. If you start at 30, which is what we have going on in this, then play two or three rounds, play 54 holes of stroke play. And then whatever, whatever is less Sunday that you go with it. And we can bounce that around however you want and some sort of metal match play. I like that as well. Cause then you're guaranteed that all matches at least get to 18 holes. Cause that's another logistical concern that they always have when it comes to having mass play events on the PGA tour, you're still leaving yourself in danger. However,

of leaving your top players out going into Sunday or whatever that final match is going to be. Even if you added a day or however you want to sort of spend this. I love match play as much as the next person, but there is an inherent problem with it that sponsors don't like TV doesn't like I'm pointing at you and I, and it's going to be, it's not going to be fixed anytime soon because there is no fix. If Rory shows up next year at Eastland,

And he's second behind Scottie Scheffler in points, but then doesn't play well for two or three rounds of stroke play. He's gone. He's home. That's the problem for the tour. It's the problem for sponsors. It's the problem for TV. And that problem's not going away. Everyone loves match play, and everyone loves the idea of match play. But match play on TV actually gets worse

the deeper into the tournament you go. Like, you know what I mean? When there's eight matches, it's great. When there's two matches or God forbid one match and that's the only match that you're watching, like it can be a real drag. I'm all for trying something new. I literally just talked for 10 minutes, pleaded for 10 minutes about the PGA Tour trying something new. Like I'm not gonna knock them for like considering changes to this format. I didn't actually hate

the staggered start format that like it's simplified. We're not having Steve Sands on the whiteboard doing like eighth grade arithmetic. Like I, I, I'm happy. We're, we moved away from that. I never agreed that two shots was enough.

Like when you have the season that Scottie Scheffler had, he probably the math should have worked out where he had a five, six, seven shot lead over the rest of the field. Like you could lose that on a snipe tee shot. OB left Eastlake on number one. And all of a sudden your lead's gone. Like, I think that's, that's ridiculous. I, I think regardless of the format that they go, the tour is still ignoring what the main problem is.

And the main problem is that they're trying to determine the best player all season long at one highly entertaining event that's volatile, but also not too volatile because then you're going to have sort of a fluky winner, right? And so they're trying to pigeonhole everything into this one event and it just doesn't work. My solution, you can do match play, you can do metal match play. I don't think it really matters. What I would do, Rex, is,

is I would make the Wyndham championship or you could make the FedEx St. Jude championship the end of the FedEx Cup season. So let's take what happened in 2024. Scotty Shoveler has a big lead at the end of the first playoff event, which is in Memphis. Call him the FedEx Cup champion. Give him the big bonus.

splash it all over their marketing materials that Scottie Scheffler is the 2024 FedEx Cup champion. And then once your top 70 is determined, then you can have some sort of playoff. Then you can have an event in the Northeast for top 70 players. Then you can have an event –

for the BMW, maybe it's in Chicago for the top 50 players. And then you have the tour championship at Eastlake where you can, again, then experiment with a different sort of format where it's not all reliant on crowning a FedEx cup champion. You can, you can call it whatever you want. The NBA had their what? NBA cup championship.

whatever like their in-season tournament was, that's not called the NBA finals. You're not all bridging that. Like it could just be a standalone thing. And this can be a playoff champion as opposed to the overarching, uh,

FedEx Cup champion. I think until they solve this issue of trying to cram everything into one event, it's never going to be solved. No one's going to be happy. You're going to continue to have a situation where the best player all season long isn't necessarily the FedEx Cup champion, which the tour is vehemently against. I would agree with you, and here's why. This was Scotty's

quote from Eastlake last year after he'd won the season-long race and the Tour Championship. Quote, you can't call it a season-long race and have it come down to one tournament. Actually, that's exactly what you need to call it. And I understand why he's frustrated by it. He's hardly the first player who's been frustrated by what the Tour is trying to do. A couple of things that the Tour, from the very beginning, seemed to stumble on and they were never able to recover, it seems like. One, they called it the playoff.

And they sort of painted it with this brush and it's just not a playoff.

Golf doesn't lend itself the way other sports do to a true playoff. The other being it's a season long race. No, it's not. You're absolutely right. What this is, is you played really, really well just to get to Eastlake. And now everyone has a chance, not the best chance, but they needed to make sure that all 30 guys showed up, had some sort of mathematical chance. So, yes, I'm with you 100 percent. You could either do it the way you described it, where you play the first two playoff events and that sort of decides it, or just do it and win the championship.

at the last regular season event. They already have something called a Comcast top 10, which is pretty much the exact same thing of what that would be. So just shoehorn that into it and you can split the money however you want to, but this person won the regular season and these 70 qualified for the playoffs. And now we're just going to play it out true to heart from here. And if you don't finish inside the top 10,

You start with 70, you would go to 40, I guess, in the next round. Or no, you start with 100. Yeah, 70, 50, 30. Yeah. So you would do some sort of combination. If you don't make the cut, you don't make the cut. I don't care if you're Scotty Scheffler or Rory or whoever the case may be. That's probably the best case scenario. But I don't see them getting anywhere close to that because of the money that FedEx has invested and the money Coca-Cola has invested in the Tour Championship. But I think you can just...

you can just sort of allocate it differently. Like if the FedEx Cup means as much as it does to the PGA Tour and clearly to FedEx, I don't think there's any – there's nothing wrong with the regular season ending in Memphis at TBC Southwind for the FedEx State Championship, calling Scottie Scheffler the FedEx Cup champion, and then going into whatever it is that you want to do. You can break up the funds differently. If you can have $50 million for –

the tour championship and whatever that sort of comes into and $75 million bonus pool for the FedEx cup champion. You know what I'm saying? Like you could just allocate it differently. I think it's, it's really an issue that the PJ tour has with branding and

And titling it's that's what it comes down to in marketing and marketing. If they can just break the mold of what they're trying to do and what they've been trying to do since 2007 of creating a season long champion, that's also being determined at one tournament, which is volatile, but again, not too volatile until they understand that that's sort of the crux and the core issue here.

That you can't do both at one. Golf does not lend itself to that. It can't be a season-long champion that's determined over 40 weeks, and then all of a sudden you can have a Mongolian reversal in the season finale. That's unfair to everyone who had just played over the previous 40 weeks. And so I think there's ways to do it.

I would be interested to see match play or metal match play determining sort of whatever this bonus is going to be in the playoffs. But just stop it at Wyndham. Just stop it at Memphis and then go into something that's really fun at the end. Did we ever find out where Mongolian reversal came from? I assume that Sahid did not get canceled for it, so it must not be delicate.

It must not be. Although Saad, he didn't do a whole lot after Royal Montreal. Maybe he was in hiding after. He was looking over his shoulder. He was worried about it.

And I will go back to the idea, and I had a long conversation with a tour official about this late last year. And they sent there's been a few waves of surveys that have been sent out to fans and broadcast partners and sponsors and players. And they really are trying to engage with the fan in a way that I have never seen over the course of my career. When I'm talking with this official, for example, I was curious, what are you hearing on the TV front? Like, what do we have to do?

And not necessarily, I mean, you and I clearly don't have to do anything better, but when it comes to showing live to live tournament golf, like he pointed out that they had broken it down very statistically of they're showing a lot of putts and not a lot of the other things. And it seems like the fans want to see the other things. You want to see the drives and the chips and the growth shots, but,

and everything. So I think only good things are going to happen from these questions, from these conversations, whether or not it changes. And it's important to point out that nothing has been put before the player advisory council. And it seems very, very unlikely that anything would happen this year going to Eastlake that we would probably go into 2026 goes back to the conversation that you and I just had. I can imagine that being one of the lesser changes going into 2026 as we look forward. But this certainly is something that I'm at least happy they're looking at through a different lens.

I'm kind of digging this new PG tour on true Rex. Like it basically just, if you, if you have an idea, it could be implemented very, very quickly. Keep in mind, Maverick McNeely crunched all the numbers data specialists during his college career at Stanford crunch, all the numbers about the FedEx cup point distribution brings it to the pack, brings it to the PG tour board. All of a sudden that gets implemented for 2025. Scotty Scheffler world. Number one comes off the best season since tiger and probably Oh seven comes

Comes up with the best season at the tour championship with all the FedExCup branding behind him. Comes up and says, this is quote silly how it all comes down. What is the PGA Tour? Well, all of a sudden, they're going to be considering it. If you have an idea, put it in the suggestion box. And all of a sudden, it might just make its way onto the PGA Tour. Let's go to some quick hitters, other news and notes for the week that was.

in the world of golf no scotty scheffler uh this past week at capalua as we mentioned because the hand injury that he suffered at christmas we're not making light of this be very careful around broken glass apparently scotty scheffler needed surgery he is supposed to play according to his agent blake smith at the american express next week however the commitment deadline is on friday and

Blake Smith during Kapalua said that they were going to reevaluate this week to make sure he'd be good to go for PGA West. 54 holes. Do you think he'll make it back for the third round?

PGA Tour event or do you think he'll hold off until Pebble Beach? I do think he'll play the American Express because by all accounts, this is not a serious injury, even though you're right, he did have to have surgery. That being said, I don't even know, like we did the scale of one to 10, what's your concern level right now? I don't even know if my concern level would even go up if he doesn't commit to play the American Express. It's not a signature event. We all know how much of a grind this season, this new PGA Tour schedule can be. I can see a scenario where he doesn't come back until Pebble, which would be the next

signature event that he would play and then probably LA and then on into the Florida swing. So I'm not going to worry about it yet.

Because the one thing that seems to be the constant when it comes to Scottie outside of that machine like ball striking is the idea that he's been relatively healthy. And I know this is a bit of an odd injury. This isn't like something that you would sustain on the golf course. But until you actually see it in an event that you would fully expect him to play, which would be a signature event or a major of the Players' Championship, I don't even know if I would be very concerned if he doesn't play Amex.

Yeah, like I'm not a doctor. I'm not examining his wound. I have no idea if, you know, four competitive rounds will reopen the wound and all of a sudden he's set back for a couple of weeks. I do like the fact that if you're Scotty Sheffield, this is not like a knee issue or a hip issue or a back issue where all of a sudden it becomes where if you play, you could potentially make it worse and then you're set back for months on end or there's potential re-injury. Like this is literally just a wound injury

That has to heal. If he doesn't play the American express, I will not think anything of it. And I'll be more than happy to see him along the Monterey peninsula. How about these stars? It was a quiet week. We mentioned Hideki Matsuyama, Kyle Morikawa duel. Where's Xander Shoffley at T30. Where's Justin Thomas at T26. We had high hopes for both of these guys. If you listen to the 2025 predictions podcast from us, what, what, what happened this week? Where's the stars?

I think Xander, you mentioned it at the top of the podcast. I think that was probably just some rust coming into this week. We've talked about the idea that, look, guys are not showing up this week in full grind mode. That's just not what they want to do. That's not what they need to do. After a long season last year, they needed some time off. So I would expect, because if you look at what Xander did, he had a really, really bad start. I think he shot 72 on day one. And I like the part that gets you is I think he had two penalty strokes.

on year one. Do you think he had two penalty strokes all of last year to keep playing this game? That was very out of character for Xander. JT probably surprises me a little bit because we touched on it towards the end of last season and the way he played in the Bahamas and the way he seemed to have turned his game around. What does JT need to do? He just needs to look at Scottie because he's doing all the things that Scottie does really well, which is ball striking, but

He still struggles with his putty. This really had nothing to do with that. He looked, just looks sloppy from the beginning. So that one concerns me a little bit. It's, it seems to me that he would have shown up with a little bit more form, but again, I'm not, there's no alarm bells for either one of them right now. If we were having this conversation, when we get to Florida, then I'll be a little concerned. Oh,

Oh yeah. I'm sure. I'm certainly not concerned. Justin Thomas has been tinkering with that longer driver. It worked out well at the hero world challenge. It did not work out so well, uh, on the friendly confines of the plantation course, uh, really struggled, uh, from the outset of that hit roughly about 50% of his fairways, which in this golf course is not going to cut it. You really have to play from the fairway. Xander Shoffley. I was a little bit surprised, um,

He couldn't buy a putt, and he's one of the world's best putters. But in his pre-tournament press conference, Zander was talking about how the swing changes with Chris Como have not fully bedded in yet. He's not fully confident in his game. This is a dude who won two major championships. I don't know if this is like a –

this is psychological warfare and he's just sort of like keeping the momentum or he's trying to keep the motivation up, you know, trying to stay hungry. You know, he's talked about the metaphor of trying to climb Mount Scotty. Like, I don't know if this is like his way to do that. But it's, if you look at the way that Zander Shoffley struck the ball in 2024, I'm not sure there's much room for improvement. He sort of just needed to maintain form,

This is, I think, one of the biggest storylines that we saw pop up, at least over the first couple days, Rex, at the Century. And that was Will Zalatouris gaining 20 pounds, going full Bryson, pounding calories, eating the equivalent of like five steaks a day to prolong his career. The thinking being...

that he's 6'2", and you can't be 160 pounds swinging as hard as he does with the body positions that he has during his swing. He has to become more stable. Do you think this plan is a good idea, or should he just focus on his putting?

No, I think it's a very good idea because when you look at the things that he has dealt with over the course of his career and all of the injuries and so early in his career, and look, there was alarm bells from the very start. I think our colleague Randall Chamblee has done probably the best job of anyone where he kind of breaks down the swing. And when he first came out on tour, he was going 110% at every single thing and just the positions he was putting his body in. There was a lot of stress. There was a lot of torque. And as a result, he ended up missing pretty much an entire year.

when he was playing some really good golf. So that to me was always a concern. Putting on the 20 pounds is hugely beneficial. Beneficial, I would think. Getting stronger, getting bigger, getting faster, all of those things. But it also looks like, look, he finished middle of the pack. It was not a special week, but he just looked healthy. There was nothing. I listened to his interview with Todd Lewis earlier in the week. There's a lot of optimism there, which I think is good for golf. And it's really, really good for Willie Z because you and I both agree. Like he has,

all of the tools to be a very special talent in this game. Oh, he absolutely has the tools to be a world number one player. He has been special ever since picked up a golf ball. He was an amazing teenager, amazing college and amateur player got on the PGA tour. And, you know, before he was beset with these back issues, like he was contending in major championships is, you know, it's the, it's the high point of irony where he wins it for the first time, his breakthrough victory on the PGA tour came a week before the

He had a pretty serious back issue at the BMW championship that later led to him undergoing a microdiscectomy, which at his age in the mid-20s is a very scary procedure for him to do. Gaining 20 pounds, getting more stable, getting more efficient, having to feel like he doesn't have to swing it, as he put it, 110% on every single swing, I think is really positive. I think game-wise, his ball strike is going to be just fine. His driving distance is going to be –

picking back up. He's going to continue to be one of the preeminent iron players. He still has work to do with the broomstick putter really struggled in the final round and sort of an uneven performance. I would say on the greens on the very big greens at Kapalua. I think that's something more that we have to watch.

Finally, Rex, how about Victor Hovland, one of the game's most interesting characters? Not only did Victor Hovland break up with his swing coach, Joe Mayo, again. Keep in mind, this is a big storyline in early 2024. He also breaks his toe on the eve of the tournament. He said he'd been traveling all day from his home in Norway, woke up to go take his clothes off, stubbed his toe on the bed frame, breaks his right pinky toe,

Sounds very painful. Where are you on Victor? Because keep in mind, you and I at the 2024 PGA Championship sort of came out of nowhere, had not done anything for the first four months of the season, pops up, nearly wins a major championship, then doesn't do a whole lot for the remainder of the year. Where are you now as we sit in the early stages of 2025 on Victor Hovland? If you're going to break your toe the week of a PGA Tour event,

I only think Augusta would be worse. And it's probably neck and neck. I mean, if we're being honest, I mean, that's a tough walk, the plantation course at Kapalua. I can only imagine how painful that would be. The Joe Mayo stuff shocks me. I just don't understand it. There's an ebb and flow here. And you did a really good job in a story last year. And you've talked a little bit about it, of how painful

Victor just wants to own his own swing. He wants to be the one that decides this is the direction I'm going, which I totally understand. And look, it's Tiger Woods is the paradigm of hope in all of this. You would look at what he did over the course of his career and say, well, it worked out pretty well for him following that path. However, Victor has been down this path before. He saw what happened when he split up with Joe Mayo. And then he saw what happened when they got back together. I believe it was at Valhalla at the PGA championship where they ended up started working together again. And again,

Kind of on cue, Victor started piecing things back together. It seems to me that if this is not a personality conflict, and I don't know, I'm not even trying to pretend here, if this is just Victor just trying to own his swing, then I think he needs to compartmentalize a little bit better.

Instead of just axing someone out of your life, just give it a beat, man. Just give it five minutes and we'll reconnect next week. Let me get through Maui. Let me get through the broken toe and then we'll reconnect next week. This seems to be not a very sustainable path for him to be on at the moment. I saw a tweet this past week that said I would pay $100 to

to see the text message exchange between Victor Havan and Joe Mayo over the past, let's call it 52 weeks. The back and forth, the breaking up, we're getting back together, what they're actually working on. And Victor has always been very secretive about what he's working on and why, which I think is actually a shame because he is a instruction savant.

You know, when it actually comes to the golf swing and what he's trying to do, and it helps provide context what he's working on, because all right now we have are the visuals of how he's playing and also the stats that show how he stacks up against his PGA Tour peers. And this week, he was 42nd this week in a 58-man field after Davis Riley, WD, Tita Green. That is very un-Victor Hovland-esque.

And his short game continues to regress, as we saw in 2024, because he's putting so much emphasis on rediscovering his long game feels. I don't feel great about it at the moment. This is unrelated completely to the injury that he sustained. It's more, can Victor Hovland find a swing that works for him and actually commit to it? Can he actually just stick with it as opposed to being the constant tinkerer that Victor Hovland is?

All right. Just a couple minutes left in this edition of the Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and Lev. We're going to do something different in 2025. We're going to be soliciting feedback from the crowd in the form of listener questions. We're running out of time, so let's just do one that we had from our friend. I think it was Cup of Coffee or something that we had, Rex? It was Pot of Coffee. Pot of Coffee. Excuse me. Pot of Coffee. Has Hideki ever written a manual called How to Win the Masters Without Smiling Too Much?

And does Hideki's golf bag way more because it's carrying the hopes of an entire nation? I'm not sure. Is this tongue in cheek? Is he being serious? You can take this however you want. The second question is the one I actually wanted to answer because I think there is a layer to that. It's the onion thing here. There's a, there's a layer to that, that I know pot of coffee is probably trying to have a little bit of fun here, but yeah,

When you look at how guarded Hideki is, and you and I have covered him for a long time, and we have seen how he has an entourage of media around him that, I mean, even Tiger Woods in his prime didn't have. Hideki talks after every single practice round, after every round, after every practice session. He is under the microscope. And I think that explains, that goes to his character a little bit, that when you see Todd Lewis trying to interview,

him after winning in Maui, there's not a lot there. There's not a lot of emotion. There's not a lot of effusive comments. You're just never going to get that from a Deki. And I think that has a lot to do with him carrying the hopes and dreams of an entire nation.

Yeah, like I'll go back to the 2021 Masters, which Hideki Matsuyama won. I don't think it's any coincidence that that was the Masters that he won. There was limited fans on site and there was a limited media presence on site. He didn't have to have the full discourse with 25 Japanese reporters who had traveled and are asking him to go through each and every shot. I do think that's important. I do think Hideki Matsuyama now turning 33 next month is a different spot in his life.

but he seems better equipped to handle it perhaps than ever before. It's a big week for us, Rex. You and I will both be

the TGL arena on Tuesday for the kickoff event for the TGL. That's the simulator golf league. If you were unfamiliar, we'll both be in South Florida. We'll be doing a podcast immediately following the two hour match. It begins at nine o'clock Eastern time on Tuesday. You and I are going to have to stay up very late. Well past our bedtime, but we will have a record. They'll be dropping wherever you get your podcasts on Wednesday, Tuesday,

All right. That is going to do it for this edition of the Goat Show Podcast with Rex and Lav. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the support. We'll talk to you guys from South Florida on Wednesday. Let's say your small business has a problem. Like maybe...

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