The PGA Tour has a new leader. Here's what you should know
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Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com. Hello and welcome into this edition of the Golf Show Podcast with Rex and Lab. Well, this week is the Travelers Championship, the eighth and final signature event on the PGA Tour schedule. More on that

In just a minute, but first, there was some pretty seismic moves that were announced on Tuesday morning in Hartford on the PGA Tour. The reason, Rex, why you're just now getting home

from Pittsburgh, the U.S. Open, and something you said off this call was the most physically, what did you say, treacherous, demanding, training, training week of your career. We can certainly get into that in a moment as well. But Brian Rolap, as we talked about on the podcast last week, was unveiled as the new CEO of the PGA Tour, while current commissioner Jay Monahan announced his intention to leave his role at the end of his current contract at the end of

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on his first day on the job. I've trotted this line out a couple of times now, and every time I did it, I've thought of you because I'm like, no one is going to appreciate this more than Ryan Labner because we talk about coaches and general managers winning the press conference all the time. In this particular case, Brian Rolap, the new CEO of the PGA Tour, won the press conference. And I'm not even talking about his interview with me. I'm not talking about he did a scrum with reporters before that interview. And before that, he did a 90-minute player meeting. By all accounts, anyone,

I could talk to, walked away with the same opinion. Wildly impressive gentleman. When you look at his resume, he came from the NFL. If you look at how successful the NFL is, he is largely responsible for all of the media rights deals. Everything that you see that makes that special engine run, he had his hand in. So as far as home run picks, this one seems pretty easy. I had a chance to talk just really briefly with Arthur Blank, who was on the selection committee that ended up

picking Brian Rollout to be the PGA Tour's first CEO. Of course, Arthur Blank is part of the SSG, the strategic sports group that invested in the PGA Tour. He's on the policy board for PGA Tour Enterprises, and you get an idea of why. You get an idea of where the tour wants to go and why he's the right person to do it. And as far as the business side of it,

And we won't see this unfold probably for a few months, if not years. But the part that probably impressed me the most, twofold. One, he clearly has a vision. And the example that I'll give you is this. When he was talking with the media before, I had a chance to talk to him. He was asked specifically about that investment from SSG, $1.5 billion. And we have asked Jay Monahan for months now.

What's happening with that money? What are you doing with that money? It's been parked in a bank account somewhere or a savings account somewhere just collecting interest. And he hasn't had an answer. I suddenly understood why yesterday. It wasn't his money to spend. No disrespect, but this was going to go to the CEO. And when Brian was asked about it, he was very clear. Yep, I've got some thoughts. I'm not going to share those with you right now, but I've got some thoughts. And if you start sort of digging into who Brian Rolap is,

And you get an idea of how impressive he is and how he does business. One of the things that he did at the NFL the last few years is he sort of oversaw something called Equity 32, which was the investment arm of the NFL, 32 teams. And so you're talking about the NFL and all of its owners. He has an idea of what to do with that money. I think it's pretty clear. I also walked away impressed because it seems like he knows what he doesn't know. He didn't try to pretend like

To be a golf guy. I asked him sort of the last question. Give me an idea. Like people want to know what's your history in the game. Do you play golf? He was honest. Yep. I play a little bit of golf. I'm probably haven't played much since I got married and started a career. I'm probably not going to play much now as the CEO of the PGA Tour. I think he loves the game, but he was obvious. Like they didn't hire me because of my golf prowess. They hired me because of what I can do for business. He won the press conference.

He certainly did win the press conference. I enjoyed listening to your interview with him. I enjoyed following along with his press conference and scrum with reporters. He clearly very smart. He's clearly very highly regarded, um,

I would send everyone to the reporting of friend of the podcast, Josh Carpenter, the sports business journal who has been on this story basically for the past two years. They were the first to report the PGA tours interest in Brian roll up as early as early 2024. James Colgan of golf.com also did a good look into who exactly Brian roll up is what

what those around him are thinking. The one line that I loved Rex was, was Brian roll up explaining what could be applicable from his job at the NFL, where again, he was number two. He was thought by many to be a potential successor to commissioner Roger Goodell. He had built, or at least helped build, uh, this sports juggernaut and the PGA tour, which has largely been, um,

You know, there's different iterations of the PGA Tour, but it's largely the same when it was initially formed 50 or 60 years ago. And three things that Brian Rollup said were going to be applicable to this new job. Most importantly is getting the competition right.

And that's making every event, every tournament, every game, essentially the best it can possibly be. He's going to be overseeing PGA Tour Enterprises as well as PGA Tour Inc. Secondly, he wants to find the right partners, potentially the partners they already have are best. It's potentially extracting more out of them or sort of

expanding beyond that. You look at what he's had in the NFL and the fingerprints he has on it, whether it's Thursday night football, whether it's putting games on Christmas on what Netflix, Amazon prime touching different markets, basically raking in billions of dollars from everywhere and expanding the reach. That is super important. And,

to growing the brand for the NFL. That's certainly going to be a priority for the NFL as well. The media rights deals that currently exist run through the end of 2030. And so those negotiations with as large of a deal that's going to be, you would think that's coming down the line in the next couple of years to begin those negotiations. And third, and I think if you're a golf fan, this is the one you've got to be most intrigued by, is that he said that he wants to honor the traditions of the game,

but he doesn't want the PGA Tour to be bound by them. The NFL, for all of its warts, is known for innovating and changing and improving the product. If you're a golf fan and you've been watching the PGA Tour, which under Jay Monahan's watch and Tim Fincham's before that, has largely been to stayed unnoticed

Certainly in the last five years, it has been too reactionary. You love to hear the new CEO of PGA Tour Enterprises and PGA Tour Inc. saying that they want to innovate the PGA Tour and evolve it from what its current iteration is. I think that's going to be very exciting and very encouraging. One of the things that he says, and my ears perked up because I've only probably said it on this podcast about a billion times over the last year or so, is he's starting with a blank piece of paper. And how many times have I...

Done that. If we could just start with a blank piece of paper. And I kept being, every time I would bring this up, there would be pushback from people within the tour saying that, but we don't have a blank piece of paper. I'll be curious if Brian actually starts with that blank sheet of paper where he can sit down and you touched on it. Can I come up with the best possible schedule, the best markets, the best golf courses, the best fields, the best partners, the best sponsors, the

And that's going to be our schedule. We're not going to be married to the idea that, oh, we've always played Pebble Beach in February, so we have to stay there. Nope. Not if that's not the best time of year to play there. We're not. We're going to come up with a way. Well, we start on the West Coast and then we go to Florida. Maybe not.

Maybe everyone's got a private plane now. Everyone can fly first class now if they want to. Maybe we come up with a better idea. That impressed me the most. And I will say to your point when it comes to innovation and change, and I had a chance to talk with some people because I wanted to get an idea of sort of the culture he came from at the NFL. I don't know anything about the culture of the culture of the NFL. It's clearly an impressive place to work based on what they've been able to accomplish as the sports juggernaut, at least in the United States.

And one of the things that someone who used to work there explained to me is they don't promote from within. Institutional knowledge is not necessarily something they have much interest in. And when it comes to Brian and the PGA Tour and the context of where we are in the game right now, I think it applies.

Because you cannot have the same people who made the decisions that got the PGA Tour in the position where they are right now. And largely because of their, not because of their own doing. Live Golf was not created by the PGA Tour, but it was thrown in their lap. And I don't think you can have those same people who have driven us to this point in the game continue to make the decisions. Because this isn't the path forward. This isn't going to work. So that's going to be fun. The other part of it is, and you touched on it, the media rights deals over the next five years will be fascinating.

Like I can imagine when this is a little self-serving, the current media partners remaining largely the same. That would be us, Golf Channel, NBC, CBS, and even ESPN.

I am curious to see where he goes next because that was his secret sauce at the NFL. You brought up the Thursday night game. You cannot overstate how much people raised eyebrows at that. The idea that you were going to put an NFL game on a streaming platform, you don't know if the technology is going to work. You don't know if your demographic can even find it.

And you're going to do this because you have faith and they did it and they pulled it off. And I read somewhere, and this is the part that got me. The average age of the viewer of the Amazon games is about 10 years younger than what you end up with on a Sunday on a CBS or an NBC or a Fox broadcast. That is huge. As a sports league, you can't ask for a bigger carrot than that. And that was by and large, Brian Rolaps baby. So I'm fascinated to see where he goes from here. I mean, the Thursday games,

The Christmas games on Netflix, having postseason games, playoff games. Christmas was owned by the NBA. Like, I don't want to break into a sports media landscape thing, but the NBA owned Christmas. And the NFL decided that, nope, we're going to take a piece of your pie now, too. And just like a hostile takeover. And now there's no sign of relinquishing that control. They've essentially said, nope, go find a different day. This is our day. Putting playoff games on streaming platforms. Like, that is all Brian Rolap expanding the reach of

lowering the demographic. It's very, very exciting from a sports media perspective. It's clear that he is a sports media. So I was curious, though, Rex, like what are what are players telling you about this? You had an opportunity to catch up with it looked like a half dozen or more at TPC River Highlands.

It was interesting because I can tell you that as a rule, mandatory player meetings at any event are kind of a joke. They're anything but mandatory. No one goes to player meetings, mandatory or otherwise. I had one player tell me once that if they told me it was a voluntary player meeting, I might have more interest in going because players don't like to be told.

what to do. This was quote unquote, a mandatory player meeting. Most of those are very lightly attended. That wasn't the case. This one had pretty much full participation. There was a couple of exceptions. JJ spawn was doing a well-deserved media tour in New York city. But outside of that, pretty much everyone was there. I actually texted Lucas Glover early Tuesday morning because he never goes to those things. And I was like, I don't suppose you're going to go. I can talk to you afterwards. He goes, no,

Actually, I am. I am going to go because I kind of I want to see what he has to say. There was two things that stood out. It was about a 90 minute meeting. From what I was told, Brian didn't even talk the last 30 minutes or so during that meeting. And I was asked, well, who did? And it was the players. And they were sort of batting back and forth ideas amongst themselves, because from what I was told, Brian was like, I don't have all the answers today. This is a game.

This is day one on the job. I actually joked with Brian before we went on air to do the interview that I, just to let you know, first couple of questions are going to be a little bit inside baseball. I was going to ask you about pace of play and mud balls and tour championship format. And he sort of laughed because these aren't things that he has an idea about. Like these aren't, he wasn't hired to particularly worry about what we're going to do with mud balls right now or pace of play. That's not why he was pulled into the job. I talked to one player.

who came out and was very honest with me. Normally, he says in recent years, I've walked out of those meetings being bored to death and not being very inspired because this one,

Kind of was fired up. Kind of wanted to start high-fiving people. I like where the tour is going. Like, I don't know, like, exactly where it's going because there aren't any answers right now. But that one is fascinating. And the one that stood out to me, and look, Mavic McNeil is going on the board next year. We all know how impressive he is. He's going to be part of these discussions going forward. He's going to be part of what the PGA Tour looks like. And I asked him specifically what stood out. And he goes, Brian told this story.

on his desk, he has a picture of a high school football game and the grandstands and everyone's watching the game. And in the background, the actual school is on fire, literally on fire, not metaphorically. The school building is on fire and everyone is watching the game. And Brian's point is it is all about the game. And now that game is golf. You do love that because the week-to-week competition on the PGA Tour has largely been overshadowed by everything else.

Over the past three or four years, the Saudi incursion, the poaching of players, the

Signature events. Does the model work? Doesn't it work? Sponsor exemptions. We're like, we get into all of that because we cover the game. But if you're a business leader of the PGA Tour, you want to focus on making the best possible product, the best possible competition week in and week out. It's great to hear a leader who would actually be focused on that. Like if you're a PGA Tour player, you have to be absolutely jazzed by this because here's a guy who's coming in with a fresh perspective and his resume commands respect.

A guy who has helped bring in tens of billions of dollars in revenue for the NFL, a sports media savant, even players who aren't really attuned to this sort of thing, have to understand the value of their upcoming media rights and those deals and what that could potentially mean for them, their colleagues, and their future on the PGA Tour. There's also, of course, the potential with the $1.5 billion deal

That SSG, the investors, and now the CEO of the PGA Tour Enterprises could potentially be deploying in capital. That is a massive amount of money with potential for even more. That should excite even the most cynical minds like Lucas Glover on the PGA Tour. It's clearly, Rex, like it's clearly a big learning curve for Brian Rolap.

He's not a golf guy. He mentioned he used to get gas money by working at the turn at Congressional Country Club. He plays maybe a dozen times a year. Wouldn't divulge his handicap. Said that he likes to just keep it with his family. These are brand new stakeholders that he's going to be experiencing in golf despite...

sort of the sports media partners that he's built in with the NFL, but you don't ascend to his position as the number two in the NFL without being a fast learner, without being a good listener, and without being a cooperative partner. It seems like Brian Rolap should be able to get up to speed pretty quickly here.

And sort of logistically, the plan is for him to take over later this summer. I was told probably early July is what they're looking for day to day operations. He lives right now in Connecticut, close to actually Hartford. And but the plan is obviously to move to Ponte Vedra to take over as it applies to live golf. And this was always going to be fascinating. Again, day one in the job. I can only imagine how difficult it would be for anyone to parachute into a job and immediately get peppered with questions about how are you going to fix all of it?

Like, give me the answer right now. I can only imagine how difficult that's going to be. And he was honest. Like, look, man, this is an ongoing problem. Clearly, I want the best players in the game playing together more often.

Because I asked him specifically about reunification. And I thought it was telling that instead of using the word reunification in his answer, he said, I want the best players playing together more often. So it'll be interesting going forward on that one. There aren't any easy answers. I don't think just because we have a new CEO, the PGA Tour has a new CEO that suddenly everything's going to come together with LibGov and the public investment from Saudi Arabia. I think the boundaries, the walls, the disagreements, the problems they still have.

are still there. The one thing I did report, I reached out to live golf and asked him, um,

Did they want to comment on the new CEO? And they did not. But they confirm the idea that there is a relationship between Scott O'Neill, the CEO of Live Golf, and Brian Rollout. They were in business school about the same time together, and there is a relationship there. That doesn't make it easier or more difficult. But what it does, at least you can pick up a phone. Because a year ago, when it was Jay Monahan and Greg Norman, it was clear neither one of them were going to pick up the phone. Clear sheet of paper.

Once again, was how Brian roll up, uh, discussed reunification. Maybe he has some ideas of how you could reintegrate at least a few of the ones that you really want. If you're the PGA tour, what else Rex, do you think are some of Brian roll apps, biggest challenges ahead as he takes over day-to-day operations sometime in the next few months? Uh, well, the challenges are many in,

It's easy to get excited, and if I'm a player, I'm certainly optimistic in the road going forward. However, first and foremost, I think it's important for anyone who's going to take over that job to address the elephant in the room, and that is Tiger Woods. At the height of his powers, Tiger Woods drove this engine. I don't think you can overstate that.

where the PGA Tour is right now is because solely of Tiger Woods and I was told that during this meeting which Tiger Woods did attend he flew up to Connecticut he was there for the policy board meetings on Sunday and Monday and stuck around for Tuesday's announcement at the players meeting everyone stood up on the stage on Tuesday morning at the players meeting and introduced themselves some players probably didn't know John Henry or Arthur Blank or whoever the case may be Tiger Woods stood up

And I was told his line was, hi, I'm Tiger. I used to play golf. It was a funny line. I see where he's going.

However, there is some truth to that that I think everyone needs to sort of embrace. The idea that if you were to take purses from the time Tiger Woods started in 1997 to where we are right now, exponential growth, right? I'm doing the chart with my fingers for those of us, for those of you in the listening audience. It is a exponential growth chart. At some point, Tiger Woods stopped playing. He stopped being competitively relevant.

to be fair. And yet those purses continue to grow from Brian's standpoint. He has to figure out how to reconcile that. Every event cannot have a $20 million purse right now, as much as I'm sure the players would want it as much as I'm sure the administration would want it. That is probably not a realistic model right now. That's first and foremost to in the NFL, the labor was contracted. You knew exactly how long you were going to have Aaron Rogers as your quarterback, because he has signed to a contract for X amount of dollars.

That's actually easy. That's labor and management. That's the way it works on the PGA tour. You don't have anything close to that. If Rory McIlroy doesn't want to play for the rest of the year, Rory McIlroy is not going to play for the rest of the year. And the PGA tour has absolutely no say in it. That is the reality of being a CEO of the PGA tour. And then finally, and I think this is important that for,

For someone who is taking over a sport coming from the NFL where you walked in the room and you were always the loudest voice. I don't care what room it was. You were always the loudest voice. When he walks into a room now, he's not necessarily the loudest voice. The PGA Tour doesn't control the five biggest events in our sports, in our sport. That would be the majors and that would be the Ryder Cup. We can debate it and where the players falls, that's up to you. You can talk about it. But the five biggest events are controlled by other entities. All of those things are going to be challenges for him.

I think that's also, that's very well said. I think that's also part of the intrigue of the $1.5 billion in capital that he could potentially deploy, whether the Ryder Cup, whether the PGA Championship are under his list of potential options, I think remains to be seen. Yeah, like I would think reunification, the capital investment, what you're going to do with that money. I would also say, Rex, the schedule is a huge factor

opportunity for him to really maximize it. And in my opinion, the NFL really works because every week is an event. Everyone's looking forward to that singular week, A, because it's scarce and B, because there's so much buildup

Throughout the course of the week to when you actually get there on Sunday, like everyone gathers around the television where you go attend a game, you tailgate for eight hours like I do for Jags games. That's why I'm wearing a Jag shirt. Shout out Brian. That's an aggressive logo, man. That is an aggressive logo. Thank you. But they but the NFL has created this massive reach and it's become appointment viewing.

That's not the way that it is right now with the bloated PGA tour schedule and, you know, late thirties, early forties, a number of events throughout the course of the season. I would be very surprised if Brian roll app does not use some of the learnings that he has from the NFL in, in at least exploring the idea of paring down the schedule and making each event stand on its own merit. Roy McIlroy talking, um,

about a year ago, sort of parroting what the folks at the SSG had said is that they wanted to make, you know, PJ tour events similar to formula one, where it's a happening, right?

where there's events leading up to the actual tournament and even the competition. There's other things going on outside the ropes to attract a massive audience. I could see that multiplied over a grander scale, but you can't have the PGA Tour schedule in its current iteration, in its current form, if you want to have that. And so I'll be very curious to see schedule-wise, which I think is what golf fans are going to be most intrigued by, what sort of possibilities there

in there. One thing Rex, that was also sort of part of the conversation and the announcement on Tuesday is that Jay Monahan, the current commissioner is going to be helping the transition to Brian roll up. And he's also going to be seating the day-to-day operations. He's still going to be a part of both the PGA tour enterprises board and the board of the PGA tour. What do you make of that sort of succession plan that the PGA tour has laid out? I,

I think it was the best of all options. And I'm not even saying that in a negative way. If you look at the way Jay took over for Tim Fincham, the commissioner before him, Jay was anointed essentially the commissioner in making years before 2017 when he actually took over. He shadowed Tim Fincham. He learned how to do the job from every aspect. He'd been a part of the PGA Tour for a long time. So when he did take over the job, there weren't any surprises. He didn't have to learn anything. This will be a much more accelerated process.

program for Brian Rolap and having Jay there. And that was one of the questions that I asked Brian in my interview with him is what would the working relation be like relationship be like, and there will be things probably the investment for SSG and that $1.5 billion where Brian clearly has thoughts.

probably won't spend much time talking about it with Jay or anyone else with the PGA Tour. However, there's going to be plenty of things that I'm sure that Brian's going to have to come up to speed on. The Tour Championship format, for example. My guess is he doesn't have a clue of what they've been working on or where they want to go with this. And so I think Jay will be a valuable resource for the next year and a half until his contract runs out. And I think the writing was on the wall. I think eventually after the framework agreement was announced, essentially two and a half years ago or two years ago,

and the pushback from players and the press and the media that Jay was probably going to have to step down eventually. And as far as the exit strategy goes, you have to give him credit. There's been grace. There has been understanding. And I think he has tried to navigate, which were difficult waters by any stretch as well as he possibly could have. I mean, 18 months does seem like an extraordinary amount of time. Uh,

Well, it's not as though he's an executive anymore. He's just his services are on the board, to be clear. It's not as though he's going to be sitting in meetings and day to day with Brian and looking over his shoulder. I don't think that's the way it's going to work out. And Jay has always said that he wants to see some sort of resolution.

to the deal with Liv and Piff before the end of his term. Whether that's a resolution, there's a positive outcome, and there's reintegration, or they just decide to go their separate ways, just to sort of put a fine point on what will undoubtedly be a major part of Jay Monahan's legacy that's important to him as well. We see these sort of things happen all the time. I would still be surprised if we see Jay Monahan...

It's sort of the board capacity by the end of 2026, just because you get a golden parachute and you're out of there and you hand the reins over. I think one sort of outstanding question, though, Rex, is is what happens to the commissioner role? Is it does it just become ceremonial? Does he does it even exist?

Is that something like a Joe Ogilvie type would take over? Or is this Brian Rolap as CEO and commissioner of the PGA Tour in its entirety? As it stands right now, it's Brian Rolap, CEO and commissioner. And I think that's probably going to be the standard going forward. I did talk to someone on the board about that exact same question, however. And the idea probably is, is at some point,

in the future, wherever it is you get, there will be a chief competitions officer or something along those lines where it will be a Joe Ogilvie or it will be a Jason Gore or someone who from the competition side of it is there essentially to represent the players. Again, this is a different world for Brian rollout. There is no strong players union. And so it's going to be incumbent upon him to make sure that the player's voice is being heard just beyond the boardroom and they have the majority of the vote. So certainly the players have a voice there, but I,

That's unclear, but whatever it is, I don't think it's going to be commissioner. That job is now combined into one, and that's going to be the CEO. In conclusion, I think if you're a PGA Tour fan, if you're a golf fan, you have to feel very encouraged by what has happened. If you're a PGA Tour fan, in particular, the momentum that the tour has built,

where the signature events were sort of staving off the wave of defections from Live Golf. The TV ratings have bounced back in a pretty meaningful way in 2025. And now you have someone leading the organization on the business side, not necessarily with a marketing background like Jay Monahan. This is a business sports media savant who is looking to deploy some serious capital and make enormous improvements to the PGA Tour. I think you have to be.

All right. The Travelers Championship carries on this week. All the big names in the field. Sky Shove, the defending champion. Rory McIlroy is playing in the signature event three weeks in a row for Rory. What's top of mind for you, Rex, as we look ahead to the final signature event of the PGA Tour season?

I'm going to make this quick, because clearly my voice is giving out. And as anyone who's been watching has watched me cough and gag up quite a bit after the week that I've had. However, I did kind of want to try to clean up a conversation that you and I had a few weeks ago that ended up going viral. And it had to do with sponsor exemptions in the signature events. And this seems like a good time to do it with this being the final signature event. I think the conversation you and I were pretty much under the same mindset that

The idea that time and time again, the same players are getting these sponsor exemptions into these signature events, which are important. They're limited fields. They come with so many points. They really go to decide who keeps a tour card, who finishes inside the top 50, who has that ability to compete year in and year out on the PGA Tour. It seems like...

These sponsor exemptions are counterintuitive to what you're trying to do to, to the meritocracy that you claim is on the PGA tour. And I think you and I agreed that the idea probably is you probably need to limit it when it comes to a Ricky Fowler or Jordan speed, who, if I'm a sponsor, a hundred percent, I want a Ricky Fowler or Jordan speed in my field. That's exactly what a sponsor exemption is for. However, from a competitive standpoint, maybe they should be limited to two or three or four or whatever, but,

sponsor exemptions. I think that was a half measure. I don't, at least for me, I certainly didn't go to the mat on it because in retrospect, and after talking with a lot of people on the tour about this, there's only one way to fix this. And that's do away with sponsor exemptions, full stop into these signature events. And I know travelers,

And I know probably, I'm sorry, I know Century and I know Genesis and any other sponsor of a signature event probably doesn't want to hear that. But to do away with this conversation and this constant hammering about who's getting them and who's not getting them, you either earn your way into these special events or you don't get to play them. Full stop. Yeah, I think that's totally fair. The reason why we're harping on it, because it is a competitive issue. Ricky Fowler once again receiving credit.

a sponsor exemption into this week's travelers championship. But like this, this matters when you look at what happened at the Memorial, he went from 90th to now he's 70th in the FedEx cup with just about two months remaining in the PGA tour season. He now should be able to retain his card for 2026, but this is not Ricky foul. This could be player a, this could be player B. This could be player. Anybody you have Luke Clanton who was in the field this week at the travelers championship. Yeah.

fine, fine young player. I'm with you that a cap on the sponsor exceptions is probably a half measure. It's also tricky because if you are an early season signature event, well, you're just going to swallow up the, the, the brand names, guys, the Ricky's, the, the Jordan's, the Luke Clinton's, whoever else you want to get in there. And then,

If you're a Travelers Championship, a Memorial Tournament, you're probably picking from a different pool. I'm with you. I think you should do away with sponsor exemptions. I think you could probably do away with the limited field as well. That's also...

That's also an option here. Don't just have 72 players. Have 100 players. There's going to be 100 fully exempt players on the PGA Tour. If you're Brian Roloff and you're potentially going to pair it on the schedule to make every event bigger and better, just do away with the limited field nature. There's certainly a way around it.

Rex, where you don't have this sort of hyper focus on who's playing, why they're playing the justification for why they're getting it, getting a spot in the field. It just seems like an own goal for,

for the PGA tour. Just, just do away with them entirely, potentially leave those spots. If you can get to a point where there's, there's reintegration with some live players, then those exemptions can be for a Bryson, a Brooks, a Rama, a Hatton, however you want to do it, but don't have it where you're potentially enriching,

fellow PGA Tour players at the expense of others. That seems grossly unfair and sort of undermines the entire issue as it relates to PGA Tour meritocracy. That's going to do it for this edition of Golf Show Podcast with Rex and Lav. Rex and I will be back on Sunday night for a full recap of the Travelers Championship. We also have the Women's PGA, the KPMG going on this week in Frisco, future site of the PGA Championship, as well as we'll be keeping an eye on that one.

You guys are the drill. NBCSports.com slash golf for our latest news, notes, and updates. Enjoy the rest of your week. We'll talk to you guys Sunday night.

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