Friday at the 2026 PGA Championship: A golf course debate rages on in Philadelphia

Now the shotgun starting golf is full of mathematics. There's a lot of setup work that we have to do in order to make a tournament work. So I'm going to demonstrate to you just exactly how we do a shotgun start here. And here we go. Alright, alright, alright. Gentlemen! Start your engine! Greetings and welcome to a Friday edition of the Shotgun Start. It is May 15th. Andy, how we doing? Brendan! I'm doing fantastic. I gotta say, what a good day of golf. Just lots of stuff percolating out there. Percolating is a good word. Feels like it could boil over, it could bubble up. It could be, you know, everybody might turn, you know, the entire golf world might turn the guns on each other. Circular firing squad debating course setup, proper tests, fair, unfair. Data. It feels like we're on a razor's edge right now. Just data. Data. Gambling analysis. Touts. Just, I mean, you know what Andy, at the end of the day, it's just golf. It's just a golf course. I think we try to have fun with this. We try to call balls and strikes. But at the end of the day, it's just a golf course. We're trying to say what we think is interesting, fun, and proper, and good for consumers, good for listeners, and, you know, as a product. But at the end of the day, it is just a golf course. But I think it's been great. Good fun day. Good first fun two days. I mean, pretty, I think it's just a fascinating week so far. I think that obviously the course is kind of front and center. Really? Way more difficult than everybody thought it was going to be. Correct. And up, you know, I predicted 10 to 14 on Tuesday night under the win. Still got shot at that. But like, you know, it's definitely skewed on the harder side of what everybody predicted. And I think like you look at it and what's happening is that there's real punishment for the PGA tour Bible, gospel, which has become aim away from the flag. Hit it to the middle of the green and you'll be fine. You just, you're going to cash in putts left and right if you just hit it to the middle of the green. This is the gospel of how to play golf in the modern era. And Aronimink is proving if you hit it in the middle of the green, you might three putt, but decent amount. And that seems to be bothering people. Or if you missed your spot to the middle of the green slightly, that the penalty may be severe. You may be running off yonder. And I think like, you know, people are always in any listen, like the leader of words bunch is crap. Obviously, very condensed run through it. Alex Smalley and Matt McDeley scintillating Saturday final pairing that everybody was hoping for. They didn't leave the way at four under par. But then you've got effectively you got 28 guys that are even or better. So 28 players within four shots. And if you go a little bit further, if you want to say stretch of imagination, I'd say that, you know, if you're plus two or better, you have a chance. You're going to have to play outstanding golf all weekend, but you have a chance. You're six within six of the lead. You got, you got 58 players within six shots of the lead. And there's a lot of ways you could talk about like, how do we get here? How do we get to a place like, and it's a great question. Who's playing the best right now? And I don't really know. But I think this is good. I think the weekend is going to yield lower scores. It's going to get hot. The ball is going to go further and the wind's going to die down. It's been cold and windy. And I think like what you're seeing is people like, you know, you built, you play major championship golf, you know, your job is to build the house. And a lot of people are playing in a way to build, lay down that foundation, not screw it up and get, get to the weekend with a shot. And now we got, you know, 40 some people with a shot, 44 people, one, one plus one or better, who I would say enter the weekend with a real shot. And we'll see if somebody kind of deviates or just plays off the charts and, and separates. I, so I think that the critique is that it's been set up too hard in a way that has produced boring golf. I have not personally found it boring. I know there's some data underlying data that Joseph was talking, you know, we talked about midday where it's maybe not skill as defined by data to be clear, as defined by the, the model, the data modeling is maybe not being rewarded or maybe not being discerned in a way that's remarkably different from a regular PGA tour event. What I have found refreshing. And you know, I watched, I think it was Xander on Monday, he's like, we haven't seen greens like this, we just never do. We never do. And so you already know you're in for something a little different. And so I guess like if you're upset that the pins have made it to like hit it to the middle, then try to two putt, watch Craig Ranch next week or what, you know, call, have asked Gary young and everybody to come in and set it up for the weekend, do that, you can do that. But variety is the spice of life. And what we have right now is something we just don't get that often. And, you know, I think like the judgment that, you know, you. People like potgeeter and men will leave would suggest you can kind of drive it all over the place and get away with it. You're seeing. That's disrespectful to potty. He almost had a clean toilet at the end of the round. So it's not like, you know, pure T degree. I just think it's okay to have some variety where a PGA, you know, would you would you say PGA at Valhalla. Better rewarded the best T degree. And guy it might have based on the data sets. But you got to remember everybody operates like a model is gospel and the people that write this model will be the first first to admit like it's it is our interpreter. Like we put a lot of interpretation into a model. So like, he ended up I like took in the the sort of the insight of a lot of players and coaches and things like that. He said they were thought that you would just tear it up. Right. And we just we didn't anticipate it being this hard. And but I also like we were pretty clear like it's pretty there's a lot of mystery like it could be challenging even if there are a lot of more wedges and shorter irons into greens. I don't think what I anticipated was the first two days, the setup being this challenging usually get you get progressively harder or you just have to take into the consideration that you have 156 players to get through. But they carry Hague just went right to the, you know, the immediately to the woodshed with pins on Thursday pins today. I don't think I've heard players say they're like unfair or outrageous or they've said they're pretty much the hardest they've ever had. But again, that's against the baseline of this sort of modern tour and quite frankly more benign US Open era. And so nobody's saying it's it's it's goofy golf though. This is just frankly something they don't see on tour. Tom Doak built a golf course at Memorial Park. And he had to, you know, when you build a golf course, like for the tour for a tour event, you have to work with their design team. The tour design team said that they needed to have pretty big areas with no greater than 1.75% slope in those areas. So this is what the tour saying they want for setup. They want big areas with very little slope. And that's your your kind of like their dream setup scenario week in week out. Our Rodamink is the complete opposite. It is large swaths of the green with unpittable slope because it's so severe. And then these little pockets where you can place flags all over the place. And the dynamic the differences is like on tour week in week out, you know, and I saw the Jamie Kennedy compared to three putts to Augusta National. And I would say Augusta National, not like your tour setup week in week out, but it's easier to visualize. If you hit the ball within that kind of relatively small pocket at Augusta National, you are rewarded with a very good look at at birdie. If you miss it, it's a hard to putt. The difference between Augusta National and Rodamink is that those little pockets, in my opinion, are shrunk down. And with the way that the PGA kind of came out with the daggers out, we haven't seen it in some of their bigger pockets. It's been in the smallest pockets. And that's why you're seeing all these three putts is because of the insane slope where you would like where at most golf courses are really good shot would be. So the big, big thing here is like, I think in general, I would say modern golf architecture has an in setup has always kind of undervalued just what big tilt does in greens when when a green is just set with this, and you build from that, and you create from that. I think that's the story of this week is that when you're on the wrong side of gravity and it's firm and fast, you're in a bad spot, brother. And it's so you think the scores might get a little easier on the weekend because it's going to get hot. I think it'll be less windy. Yeah, that's the one thing like obviously when we're talking Tuesday, you know, there was this notion Wednesday walking around there and it was so windy. Like why are guys even practicing? This isn't what they're going to face. Like this is just point because it was just constant. It wasn't even gusting. It was just constant like 25 30 like why even practice in this. Then it turns out that is a lot of the first two rounds. I don't think people anticipated that win and it made it really challenging. So that will lie down. It seems like we didn't expect it though. And it's it but it does seem like that's supposed to lie down. Have they used all the hard pins already? Probably not. There's enough. There's plenty of them to go around. A lot of tough on those greens. So I think they just keep it going. This is my thing. Like would this be good every week? No, if it's just like, you know, this test would not be, you know, variety is what we're looking for here. And if you want the PGA to be the same every year, like it has to be the guy who's strokes gained, you know, he has to be top five strokes. Gain T to green. Then that's stupid. Just hold the PGA and the SoFi dome and they're the same conditions every year and just read the read the data sheet when it's over. Don't even watch. Just read the leaderboard when it's over. The other thing that could never happen is they have to be within X shots of the lead or else they should just quit and stop playing. You know, these are all the rules of data and we must abide by them. Maybe we need, you know, we got the fair police out there for a course setup. I liked Will Dites had a comment or a slack that, you know, you've put dropped in a question that Scott, somebody asked Scotty about, did you have anything unfair happen to you? Will Dites said, Will Dites said, that's like just sticking the Spadam or the radar gun right in his face. Trying to catch him speeding. Let me read that. Did anything unfair happen to you out there? You know what? Like Andy, I think we're over indexing on the Piner stuff from two years ago. I think Scotty, maybe I know we were, we've got too far. He's the sheriff now. We can't come back. Did anything unfair happen to you out there? Shuffler. I mean, not unfair. I mean, I think the only time in our game where it's unfair is like if you get wind's turning to blow the ball off the greens. I just feel like he's cast a wider net on what unfair is before though, right? I mean, tough town. Yeah, tough town, you know, mud balls. He sees, I don't think it's been just when the wind's blowing the ball at the green, but I digress. This is his answer now. I hadn't seen that yet. It looks like I haven't seen that yet this week. Looks like the wind's going to die down as the week goes on. I don't think we'll see that this week. It's funny sometimes. I feel like the thing in our game right now, which I do enjoy. I love hard tests of golf, but it's also the hardest game in the world. We're trying to make it harder and there's different ways you can do that. You can do that on a golf course like this. I truly believe they can have the winning score of you, whatever they want it to be. It could be over par if they want it to be just based purely upon pin locations. Is that the best test? Who knows? It's a different test. So speaking to this variety point. That's a great take right there. Different test. It's a different test. I think that's what's great about our game is very rarely do we play the same golf course. Even when you do it a place like Augusta, it's different each and every year. Conditions are always changing. The golf course is always changing. I think it's the hardest game in the world and still just trying to solve a bit of a puzzle. Really a great answer from the sheriff. I wonder if he's trying to turn in his badge here. It's a really interesting perspective about it. It's the best. I don't know. It's different. And that's what's great is how it can change from year to year, week to week. He just wants to move into different, he wants to move into the, into the DA's office. I will say somebody had just somebody was, I don't know if there was a recruiter out there trying to get people in, but someone asked a God her up who, by the way, 65, five under 65. It wasn't like everybody was just three, two putting for par middle degree, two putting for like 65 was out there. I think the probably early late wave will be kicking themselves. And you said it yesterday, like I, on the lunch, the midday check in, you're like, these guys kind of kicked it away. The early wave yesterday. And then they certainly got a bit more, more benign set of, set of win today. And they all kicked it away. They booted it. No one really went and got it, but someone did ask God her up. If anything was unfair, there was definitely a police recruiter out there just trying to get new, new troops. He goes, how do I, he looked at himself. He looked up and down. He's like, I don't know. He goes, I'm trying to answer this properly. He's like, I can't say it's unfair. So he pleases the fifth. This is a storyline nobody's talking about. He didn't want to incriminate himself. He wasn't going to turn state's witness and be a, be a, be a, a, a testify on behalf of the police and the prosecution. So I'm going to try and answer this properly. I don't think it's unfair, but I do think for pay is to play in certain aspects. There have been a couple, you know, 14 is the pin is aggressive. You're hitting four iron to a 10 foot circle. And if it doesn't go there, it's off the green. And we saw that frequently. Just balls flying off. Rory shot like a towering of an iron. You could hit just boom out of here. No chance. The thing about games of strategy, you know, golf is a game of strategy. Sometimes the right play is 15 feet left. Like in that case on that hole, it was just play 15 feet left. Take your par and walk away. What's kind of interesting about this week is that if you go to another hole, 15 feet left could be death. And I would just, you know, I would point out that never ever have, have players spent less time preparing for major championships on the golf course ever. Because of the, how the schedules compressed. Well, or just the way they go. They'll play nine holes a day. And they've, you know, these players spend so little time on the actual golf course. And what they rely on is people to tell them how to play the golf course and how to play golf. And the reality is, is that of all the greens in the world, Aranamake would rank in the top five to 10 of sets of greens that you'd want to spend the most time you possibly could figuring it out. And figuring out how, where, where the misses, where the spot to hit it is. And it's not as prescriptive as just to hit it 15 feet left or right, you know, and you shade it one way or the other based off of how far away you are. There are A plus places to miss shots into and an absolute disasters. And I think that's what we've seen out, seen play out. And I think there's an element of this is that these, somebody's going to figure out the golf course over the weekend. And they, they're going to, that, that figuring out the golf course is going to match up with supreme shot making. And we're going to see a couple of people get out in, in front at the, on Sunday. I think you started to see a little bit with Cameron, Chris, got her up. I think that's going to happen. I, I'm not ready to look, it's not bombing gouge. I think that was like the prevailing notion. It's going to be bombing gouge. It's going to be very similar to Wayne foot 2020. I don't think that's the case. I also don't think you, like you clearly don't have to hit every fairway. You don't have to be the most accurate driver. Patrick Reed is not a particularly good driver. He's done well. Steven Yeager on like on the record is like, man, I'm never going to be a guy who hits a lot of fairways. He's doing well. There is an ability. Speaking of Steven Yeager, we got to another storyline that nobody's talking about. I'm sorry to do you here more than the 10 day. What's going on? Perfect game. Yeager gets his spot start and throws the perfect game of 18 straight parses. That was amazing because it's great to be pokey free. Unfortunately. I also didn't have any birdies. I mean, potty is kind of shipping it all over the place and getting away with it. That doesn't mean it's bombing gouge, but you also don't mess. It depends. There's a penalty for missing the fairway. Some of these fairways pitch and they're much more effectively smaller than they seem. The word generous was like the word du jour at the start of the week. I don't think that would be said anymore, but you can get away with missing fairway. I think there's a couple of things here. Everybody wants black and white. There's a lot of nuance to everything. The way this golf is being played out in my eyes is there's enough space to hit a lot of fairways. If you hit a lot of fairways, you're probably going to play pretty well. We saw that with Scotty round one versus round two. The difference was Rory round one versus round two. He had a lot more fairways. He had a lot more generate, a lot more looks at birdie. There's enough space to hit fairways and consistently hit fairways, which is great. The rough is thick. It can be unpredictable. Sometimes you can get good lies. Sometimes awful lies. It's firm, so it's going to lead to a lot of outcomes. I think the key here is if this golf course was 200 yards longer, I think this leaderboard would look way different. It would be more accustomed to what people quote unquote want or what they want their model, how their models would have worked better. Because it's shorter, it's on the shorter end, that distance is not as much of a prerequisite because sure, Scotty can blast it up there and get a flip wedge in his hand. A guy like Maverick McNeely, he's gotten on a longer end of things, but that guy, Maverick McNeely, can still have a wedge. It's not like he's hitting a demonstratively longer club, if that makes sense. The best driver in the top 10 is David Pooge. Everybody else is okay to average. There is a way to score and get around here. Do you have a newfound respect for Kerry Hague? I want to say, we said, look, there's two lines of thinking. Some people told me on Tuesday he wasses out and he just doesn't go hard enough. Others say he sets up the perfect major because it's what the conditions in course that week are. He's chewing on your wallet, he's milk toasted, and he body bagged me. I tried to get him to talk, he goes, some courses have trees, some courses have fewer trees, and he just went there. He doesn't give you anything. He's not going to pop off the page personality-wise. Do you have a newfound respect? Were there any that he just went right to it? I would say, I didn't know he had this much range. I didn't know he was ready to do what he's done the last two days. I'd like to point out, I think you could make this golf course way harder with whole locations. Everybody's like, you couldn't make the, they're picking the hardest. I think you're just at the tip of the iceberg with what you could do with these greens and the whole locations you could pick out. But I do think this is kind of following the Kerry Hague playbook, which is like, Kerry Hague and the PGA, they're known for fun finishes, bunched leaderboards. And I think that's one of the hallmarks. And listen, I've complained about it in past. I've complained about, you know, they kind of just keep people close. But I think that might be just kind of the way he like set up golf courses. Not out of variety. Let's keep people in. And we're going to have, we're going to have the most exciting finish of any major every year. Or set us up to get one of the most exciting finishes. The pins. You think through the recent ones. I mean, they're all pretty close usually. You know, last year was like the only one that wasn't super close. It was Scotty doing Scotty thing, but it was close there for about, you know, 12, 13 holes on Sunday. Were there any pins? And look, 14 was really under the microscope. Six seemed to have Fitsie, Rosie and Shuffler like muttering to themselves as they walked off. Eight got a little intrigue. 11 was getting sort of under the mic. But like JT talked about it. It's like, look, you have a wedge in your hand. Like, right. And so you could make a five with the sandwich in your, sandwich in your hand. But, you know, it's really borderline. It's really hard. It's really freaking hard, but you also are coming in with a wedge. It's not hard to hit it to 20 feet is what JT, but it's really, really hard to hit it close. And that's an example. You have a great number of full wedge. You can spin it and hit it close, but you don't want to try to do too much. I did that this morning. When knocks it down out of the air, it doesn't even come close. I'm trying to make five. It just speaks volumes to how this course can be throughout the day. Scotty on 14. That par was extremely good. That was one of the craziest pins that I've seen. He talked to Fooch and Ted. He said, this is a Scotty. This is the hardest set of pin locations I've seen since I've been on tour includes us opens includes Oakmont as Fooch as Teddy. And they said anything like this before said maybe Shinnecock like I couldn't do is for everybody in the first. Shinnecock soon comes. He learned doing this again. Discourse. Hey, maybe Carrie Hake has given the USGA John Bowden Hamer a little bit of cover to turn the dial up a little bit even more. Like let the boys, the boys have been boys have been blooded. You know, they've run their race now and they're ready for a more strenuous race in four weeks. I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago on Friday with Scott McPherson. One of the more interesting things as it pertained, it was about the old course. He's a great historian. Yeah, wrote a book about how the old courses evolved and he's done some, you know, some of the book is about the championships at the old course. One of the things he talked about is that as technology has advanced, the number one thing that how the old course has changed outside of like your new T markers is whole locations. The whole locations have gotten demonstratively more tucked over the years where they I think the example and I can't remember the exact paces, but the example he uses the first hole at the old course, which everyone knows is the par four. And then you hit over the berm. A front pin used to be something like 15 or 16 paces on the green. That was like a tucked front pin. Now you see it and they have a front pin and it's six paces over the berm, you know, six paces on. So like the idea of like, how do you, how do you combat technology? And you think about Iran to make a place where as JT said, like, yeah, we have wedges in our hand. The pins are hard, but we have wedges in our hand is like, how do you, how do you, how do you combat it? How do you make a golf tournament, not, you know, a birdie fest? And I think like this is just a general rule that I believe in the more and I think like they definitely went out and said, Hey, we want, we want scores to not be crazy. Along with getting a really nice weather for, for scoring to not be crazy. The two things I think are both true. But one of the things that does happen, I believe is that when you try to curb scoring, you also curb variance a little bit. And I think that's what's happening this week. There's a, that's, and that's where you're seeing so many people condensed, you know, leaders to four under three under yesterday. Certainly 120 guys, 100, there were 92 guys within five shots of the lead. That was for sure. And if you want to curb scoring on a design side, and this is this, this plays perfectly into the early discourse of this week, like the number one thing you can do. If you're, if you're worried about score to par, oh, we'll just plant trees everywhere. But what you're also doing is limiting outcomes, which is limiting variance. So we're, we're just defining it too much by the leaderboard number. Exactly. That's everything how we've come to the data models that suggest this is skill or not skill. The leaderboard number that suggests this is a good test or not. The gambling prognostications either being borne out or borne, well, we know this guy is one of the great T to green players and the other guy, and these guys aren't playing well here. And therefore something must be off. Like we are just defining it way by, I think all those things are incredibly out, additive and have unlocked so many different insights, but it feels like that's how we purely come to define the golf course. And, you know, I just, that's what I'm like. I'm that's what I'm loving about this is just, it just is a little bit of a different, a different, I don't want to say I test is just a different. Viewing experience and I was worried it wasn't going to be, I was worried it was just going to be send it as far up as you can and hit wedges on, but it became clear over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday that it wasn't quite there yet it wasn't going to be that and and and credit to the PGA credit to the the ground staff it's it's really been awesome to watch I now I can't understand the people who were saying this is going to be just a birdie fest now. Mad. Now they've like gone to the other side now mad. It's like a lot of the same people that this is boring because guys are just trying to not three put. Can I can I just say something about online discourse. Sure. The more present you are and take this however you want online during major championship golf and the more present you are with with your own, you know tweets trying to point something out you know what the less present you are. What what aspect of the golf you're less president, the actual screen the view actually watching the shots and forming your own opinion. Yeah. Yeah, it's. You know, I saw a tweet late last night from Andy Lac who I know Joseph deals with talks with a lot and smart like data guy. Joseph deals with him or Andy whatever vice versa whatever they talk their buddies I know I like I've dealt with them to he's smart guy I like him. But but a guy who's probably more data driven I would imagine I don't know like I don't follow that he says a run a make is not a course that's going to produce massive numbers compared to other pga venues but given the strength and size of the greens they ability to keep doing this keep challenging the players. The pins today are from an organization that felt like they had something to prove will be very interesting to see where they take this championship because everyone knows the greens are everything on this course. They can create scoring about variants with funnel pins. Maybe we see more of a push and pull the scoring pins going forward. But despite the lack of scoring variants that condensing you can enjoy the enjoyed the hell out of today. I think like you can be a data driven guy you know and really come to appreciate what you saw were there any pins that you thought were too hard to much. Scotty were there any pins where the ball was coming back to players feet. No. Scotty said the one on 14 was the hardest pin I've seen in a long time. There's really just like a spine. They're like oh we'll just put it right on top of it. So he said they just dropped that one on top of the spine the 14 and that was playing very challenging. So let's talk about golf. Yeah that's our course. But that became the story. I just I can't. We'll do a full recapping of it Sunday night. But that's where we're at at the checkpoint the midpoint. You know what this story of the golf is. What anybody's in it. Anybody do you want to give me a real leaderboard. If you're going to say anybody. I mean yeah I will quibble with that notion. I just I think that this is that this is a you know pick a pick a big time player plus one or better. You know I was talking to PJ and I were talking today and he's like you know blah blah blah you know he's saying stuff. You know the real leader I believe right now is at three under you got Hideki and God her up. That's who I put at the lead. I'm not. I don't think Smully and now like MacNeely are going to get it done taking the bomb. But the real leaders at three under. So if you're sitting at plus one or you're even at plus two and you know and this is what I would ask you. Brendan is like do you think it's feasible for I'm just going to take a player Matt Fitzpatrick to beat to beat everybody in the field by five shots over 36 holes. Yes. And a golf course I do. If you do then you then they can win they could conceivably win this tournament. And if you go down that like to me that's where plus two obviously the golf course has rained some people in a little bit. You know over the two days but I kind of believe we're going to get one fun setup one hard setup on the weekend. You're going to see that the 13th drivable it's going they're going to they're going to ratchet it you know to make it really fireworks one day I believe probably tomorrow and then Sunday it's going to be back to be an ass kicker. An interesting choice. I thought was they kind of not by design. But I would say probably three best players in the world this year consistently were Sheffler Fitz Cameron young. I think Rory has like kind of you know, he won the Masters he's put him forth to put him third wherever you want but he's he's been like trying to find a few things. Right and was at the Masters and did it enough. So whatever three of the four players Roy's in that group. They were all ended up kind of buying the harder way the harder early late or sorry late early wave with a lot of the wind. Like today was this morning was freaking hard. That was like incredible balls going nowhere. It's cold. It's so windy. Hard pins. I don't think those guys are probably necessarily playing poorly and Cam Yon started to come on late. I don't think Sheffler was like, you know, the broadcast said like this is unheard of or Scotty because he made three bogies. It was freaking hard. So three of the paperwork storylines nobody's talking about. Sheriff Scotty slow start the resolve hours spent processing Higos appeal. He had to do desk work last night. They had a big controversy on the Fair Police frontier who used at the desk doing paperwork all night. He comes out and makes three bogies. Like so you have three of the guys who are playing the best right now in the hardest got the draw a little bit. It wasn't a crazy draw disparity disparity, but it was the harder point. And so that's fitzy Yon and Scotty. Like you said with fitzy. Absolutely. He'll be out a little earlier tomorrow. Of course he can go get it. We just saw a 65. I mean, honestly, it. Listen, I'm going to beat the drum always for championship setups where, you know, just generally like, OK, we're going to identify the better, the best player by then to 72 holes. But just in terms of if you're an organization, what a dream setup you got a dream leaderboard you have in the sense of like. I would be locked into golf pretty early in the morning because any of these guys at like plus two can shoot a 66 or 65 and all of a sudden they're right back in it. And that's what we saw from God, or up today. Obviously, is God or up, you know, because of how many names were on the board yesterday. It's like, we didn't really talk. We, you know, the thought of talking about Chris God or ups slow start was 72 was going to be if we had a four hour show, we might have gotten to it. But now God or up shoots two over. He shoots a 65 and like I would say if I was going to make favorites, like he might be my my favorite right now. I'd probably still lean a little bit towards Cam or Scotty, but he'd be right up there in terms of favorites for the weekend. Yeah, I think a lot, a lot can happen with 36 holes to go. Where else do you want to go next? God or ups in it. Where's your can we go back to your leaderboard? Yeah. Yeah. All right. We'll go down the leaderboard. I put Min Woo Lee on here. I had to take my guy the potty off. I was happy. One of my really good friends texted me last night that he that he followed our lead or what? What is it? PJ, when you tail tail tailed us, he got he hit a potty first round leader yesterday. All right. There we go. But anyways, the potty I'm taking off. I think those those bogey, bogey, that bogey bogey finish is going to rattle them. I but it's a good performance from potty. Come on. Let's be honest. That's that's a tight rope. He's going to fall off at some point. You're walking the potty tight rope. He's not fully trained yet that you can't have him on the real leaderboard. My story line. Nobody's talking about PJ put up here potty potty clocked. So he's either finishes bogey bogey to lose the lead on Saturday or Friday. I guess I missed that there was a loud potty shout on the broadcast at some point. Somebody screamed potty. We don't encourage that. No, don't don't bring dumb inside jokes to the ground. What are we're impressed by Ben Wooley. He made the made the real leaderboard and I got to say a moment. It felt like it was going to unravel after the double today. It kind of felt like it was going to go the wrong way. And this is a this is an experienced chef. He put out the active grease fire and got the got the kitchen back working served the customers didn't have to shut down the restaurant. So men will leave chef men who makes the leaderboard here. Love it. What else do we have Cameron got a Scotty and Cam at two under obviously peach. How'd you how did that finish make you feel coming coming down the stretch for camp finish finish maybe feel good. It was you know got get saw saw the shot. Then we went away for like what felt like an hour on ESPN. I was just waiting for it. I was like there's no way they're not going to show him at least close to live making this eagle putt refresh him the tracker. So it's like right as our team team meeting call weekend planning call started today. I'm just wait we had that call. I was wondering where you were. We did. I just assumed it was canceled. It was a great call. We're good pep talks. I was just chat. You know spamming spamming the refresh button and and and waiting for it to come up. Putt finally dropped. I mean his front today was bad. Did not play well as first nine holes. Hasn't played well as all week. I think it's a minor miracle and a testament to to being a top flight player in the world being on the T4 on the on the real leaderboard. We were going down the the the real leaderboard. This was making the graphic and and I just I knew PJ was just waiting for me to say Cam Young. So I just left him off. And he was like you're kidding. Right. You're kidding. So you're leaving. Who are you leaving? Pooj Harris English. Jaeger JT is JT is a notable admission. That's not going to go over well. We did include Si Wu though. Ludwig I might I guess it could come come to honestly I I almost said this last night. Yes. I was so disappointed in Ludwig yesterday. Yeah. To me this was just totally a show show you something round today along the lines of I think God her up doesn't have as big of expectations as Ludwig. Yeah. 66 for Ludwig today. Big time 66 from Ludwig. So then we got we got who else we go to one under we got John Rom Jason Day and and and and I got to say this is this is this is who I'm most worried about the Vulture Capitalist. Can't lay is seen a distress situation playing out here at Ronamink and he is ready to pounce just like a good virtual for Vulture Capitalist. He's one in the area Wilmington Country Club. He's familiar with the area. Is he with Rom because I think he's like I think can't lay is the guy on the board who sort of pretty out in the open despises the live situation as much as anybody that would be a good parent if it's can't lay Rom. They're both at one under so you're keeping them you've got some can't lay concerns. You think you can you know you always have to look at this and it's like what's the worst worst case scenario here and I think can't I might join that. Rico Ho is on it. Come on. Why are you doing that of all the people read it even. Oh yeah. I saw he has needed needed to have him on here just to just to have a reason to bring up what a good start to the major for how you know did you have 10 on the actual leaderboard here and he's in it. He's alive. Anybody put two over or under and he said we're in it. How he has this is the first step. This is the step towards East Lake BP. We need to get on our horse here a little bit. This is the first step. Patrick Reed is also even. Yeah that's why he had his. That even any any Cameron Smith is happy. I'm happy for the cards right. I don't want to call into sank you know question the sanctity of this list. But yesterday we had the opportunity to put Martin Kramer up there and we took it. Yeah. And today we had an opportunity to get Ho in there. We got to that point on the leaderboard and we saw our guy there and we said we got to put this up here. Some other names I could throw out Collins one over more cow. Is he out of his Ricky Zander kind of a Ricky Zander Rory Spieth are all at one up one over. I should say Ricky Zander. Do you think he's going to take it. God I thought we weren't going to talk about him all week actually. He looked amazing today. It was really fun to watch even the cold hearted haters had to have had to enjoy watching speed play golf today. Right. You didn't like that. Come on the shots into 16. He was great shot. Striping it. It was fun to watch. He's going to make it beautifully. Yeah. The problem is it's always something. It's always close. It's one part like he then he can't make any putts like he didn't how do you not catch. You can't cash in one of those great shots coming down the stretch. Pretty disappointing from Zander like quite honestly a 73 when he was kind of set up. Now he's one over certainly within striking distance Rory one over. Driver better driver was better today. Again. Look at the speed. Miss some Miss some putts. He's got to look at this and say like you know I'm three shots behind. I legitimately someone like Rory's got to look at this and be like I'm three shots behind Scotty and if I make up the if I if I keep making up yesterday he was what six behind Scotty. Yeah. I mean so he's six behind Scotty and now he's three shots behind Scotty. So he made up half the margin and you know if you're right near Scotty you're right near the lead. It feels like he had like a horrendous like 70 minutes there right where he made five bogeys coming in and didn't hit it great the whole day of Thursday. So yeah who knows. He had a week. Would you rather have a horrendous 70 minutes do you in like that where like it's like God if I could have just gone and re you know rework that or would you rather be in Garakiego's position where a disastrous minute. Unruined your weekend. Some would argue it was a disastrous like 25 seconds. Not even not even four second. He was he was on time. He missed it by a shot. I'd rather be quick so the pain is not drawn out right way better that way. I mean that was the whole thing with Rory with the Masters last year with the two doubles on Thursday right on 15 17 like God is just like these quick punches erased but he knew he was playing well. That was sort of I don't know that he's playing that level to this week at all but it was just a really bad finish on Thursday and he's otherwise kind of would be right at the near the top. He got missed the cut because of the penalty. How about Joseph not showing up when we invite we invited him. We said you could bring your wine wine time. He doesn't even come where is he PJ where is he is he not coming in. I don't heard from him. I think he's right. I bet he is. I bet he's hanging out in the in the discussion forums and Friday golf club. That's probably where he is. That's where he absolutely should be. I'm supposed to read this script verbatim from internal. Well I don't I don't think you have to read it verbatim but there is a what am I supposed to do. Just well nothing. You can read it tonight. There's talking points for Sunday so you can read it verbatim tonight if you want. You've all heard about the hottest club in town. Well I'm here to tell you that the hottest club is getting hotter. Doesn't seem possible but well I'll read more. It's simple. If you nod yes to any of the following you should be a member. Do you enjoy our coverage of golf. There's no better way to support us than joining the Friday golf club. Your membership lets us keep doing the work we're most excited about and that you hopefully enjoy most. Do you love talking about golf? Not yes. Then we've got the community for you. Thousands of members shit daily about every corner of the game. Nuance takes on architecture. Architecture. Check. Architects as musical acts. Check. Want to ruffle some feathers on the rollback debate. It's raging as we speak. Jump in the water's warm. And last but not least you love playing golf. And you should absolutely be a member. 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Well, blocky going home. Absolutely jammed. What is declaring independence? He's just throwing graphic. P.J. and I are both trying to do this. What is going on right now? We were, we were trying to put up the same one and we were clicking on it at the same time and then you switched to blocky. So here we are. We're all like, you started with a blocky because the guy, he missed by a shot. He got absolutely screwed. He was in the hard, tough draw. He's been buried. I'm not sure why they would bury him. I should have been the toast of the morning running for office. Block may be planning presidential run with media. Flip flopping. Flip flopping. There's a typo in there. What the flip, the media is going back and forth. Is that's what's going on? P.J. is this about the senior tour? Yeah. This is what you, you wanted. He's walking back his comments. He says, Alex talks to him at the beginning of this week. That's right. Blocky says, this is going to be, this is how many lives we've lived since like noon when we came up with this graphic. Sorry. I had a type of blocky. It gives this interview to ship. No, earlier this week, this is my swan song. I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to play the senior tour blocky gets off the course today after a miscut. I'd add and goes, I'm going to qualify for these for the rest of my life. I'm, you know, I'm absolutely going to qualify again next year. I should qualify for five more of these. He's not no swan song. Honestly, I hate to say this because Brandon's going to get mad at me and he's going to like this. It was very Lebronnie today from, from blocky. It was very like, oh, I'm going to retire. Here I go. Nope. I'm back. I'm back and you all love me and I'm going to do this again next year and the year after that and year after. It's very Lebronnie. The way he said it was like, I think it was to sobel. It was just, it was on radio. Complete showman style. He goes, I have to be honest with you, dramatic pause. There's no way I'm God's greener. This is my last one. Like absolutely just flips it like a wrestling. Like he's at the mic cutting a promo. Everybody thinks he's done. He said he's done no chance. I will definitely qualify for one more if not five more. So I hope to see him when the PJ comes to congressional, whenever that is 2035 more blocky. He got screwed. The guy. Plays in the hardest wave. Grimes his ass off. It's insane. How far he hits it. Andy, he just, it's like 266 off the tee. He's averaging on Friday. He needs to make up. You don't have to tell me. I saw it in real life. Up close and personally, I saw this. It came off the first tee. I was like, oh, no, like I didn't know. I made great drives. I think our last hole I had to drive it. He was like, man, that went really far. And I was like, oh, well, you know, I got one, but he is his driver's just a little poof baller out there. I mean, he's got to make par and 18 he's got 236 in. It's just crazy. It's amazing. He's able to do it. So blocky. Who got him with the game in the game? Game within the game. Who? DJ. I would beat him. DJ. DJ. DJ. I'm not going to say he's like, is he back? He's, I'm not going to go like all the way to these live, but I would really like a good round from DJ tomorrow and just have quick. Can we get one more DJ major moment? Like this guy for like, you know, like the formative coming of age years was just a fixture at major championships. And then he was just gone. Can we get one more, one more DJ moment? Blocky going home. DJ beats that would be amazing. One more DJ moment would be amazing. I, yeah, I feel like more likely to have one more major moment, DJ or speed. Both would be incredible. I mean, like DJ is like halfway to retirement. I mean, three course delay to retirement. What the way you guys speak of, I can't believe that I'm going to say this, but speed. Yeah. I think that's right. It would be great, great for golf. So with blocky, if live, if live go just ceases to exist, just DJ even play. I don't know. No, I think he just plays like majors, you know, it's kind of amazing. For your blocky, he's coming to five more. He's going to play majors longer than Tiger and Phil. He's going home, which means low amateur and the blocky or a low pro, not amateur, low club pro. We have a new recruit, a new recruit in the fair police, the Colonel. That's what we're calling him. Ben Curd and the Colonel. We have a deputy. We have a constable. We have a sheriff. And now we have a Colonel Ben Curd club pro. I believe out of Grove City, Ohio, where I used to go for an AU tournament. I, this maybe it's changed. You don't want to find yourself in Grove city about 20, 30 years ago. Sheriff, deputy and constable may have a new Kern L in their ranks. Ben Curd. He's like 30th, the T 30. Good, good job on him. So he's leading the field in birdies. Kind of insane. It's a big boy. Got the sleeve tat, I believe. Big boy. Love that. He's, he's rolling, rumbling under the leaderboard. Other MC years. More seriously, Akshay's going home to start a birdie birdie a day. Russ Henley, kind of a surprise. Not having as good a year this year as last year, but set up, should have set up well for him. Bobby Mack. Peach, aren't you happy I talked to you out of Russ Henley on, on Tuesday? You are. You called me. You called me early Tuesday morning and we were trying to plan out who we're going to pick. So we don't want to end up on the same guy. And I said, ah, you know, I already used the Russ bus, but I think he might be good this week. He said not enough popping the bat here. Not going to happen. Can't get close enough to a good irons. Absolute carnage on the Euro rider cup team. Bobby Mack, Fleetwood, Stratka, Hatten. Uh, Hovland, all going away. So those five just miscut, miscut, mis like that's a lot of, uh, heavy hitters from across the pond that are maybe they should play the rider cup. Maybe the PGA will watch this and be like, we kind of bring the rider cup to a run. I mean, in 20 years because this happened the last time. Adam Scott ejecting Sneddick Curry. I was told it was like the best case scenario for a winner. Oh my God. He hit a lot of great shots in that. Oh my God. Uh, and then probably most, most alarming, a carrot Hicca. We met out at going home by a shot to two stroke penalty. You know what ESPN went like full T-Bow mode on the Hicca thing, like Tim T-Bow first take type 2008 or whatever that would be, uh, just way too much. Like just blood in the water. We've got a mainstream ESPN car wash the thing to death. They got Marty Smith with the timer, like the shadowing him to the first tee. Like it was good. The Higa thing happened. It wasn't going to happen again today. We just overdid it. We didn't need Higa watch. We just didn't need it, but ESPN did that. They do. He, but he ends up missing by a shot and then Bryson goes birdie, birdie, birdie to finish. Um, not maybe a Pyrrhic victory at the end there with his last three holes, but declaring independence storyline. Bryson sets himself free from PJ governance in Philadelphia. Uh, he's, do you have like real concerns about Bryson as we go to Shinnecock and Burkdale and whatever he's got to do on live? He's not playing well. I mean, he hasn't played well really since the masters last year. Since like the sixth hole at the math or whatever, say eighth hole at the masters. It's not been good. I mean, he hasn't been very good. And like Port Rush, it was the, he had the bad first round and they played well, like with no threat of winning. He was never going to attract on Scotty. No, no. Um, yeah, I would be worried. I mean, he was like 10 over at one point. The thing too is I feel like three years ago you'd be like, man, this is a good Bryson setup. Yes. Yeah. Two years ago. Yeah. This is great for Bryson. He'll run the Wingfoot game plan kind of thing. And yeah, yeah. And I don't know, you know, I think it's hard to, hard to, I imagine it's hard to devote so much time to so many different, you know, things at the same time. This is the way he is though, that we talked about this where like, I feel like he has like a passing interest in pro golf and I like that. That's not a bad thing. It's just a bad thing for being consistently one of the best players in the world. Like, but when he's engaged with pro golf, he is. Everybody was doing like the lawn drive like the week after before the Ryder Cup. Was it right after? It's like, oh, well, it's trained for the lawn drive as he has to play the Ryder Cup. I think he's legitimately trying to stand up a golf club brand. And he's also doing all these YouTube videos like it is. That's hard. Got managed the P and L too for the crossers. That's true. Even if possible. He has to make sure he increase. If you're not growing, you're dying. That even of there go up this year. So he's like, he's got a lot of. It's just, I mean, it stinks as a fan to see him just be. Not competitive. There's some sort of, there's some shot and Freud elements. Some people were getting off about it, but I think he's put so much mental. Mental weight into the whole equipment thing that if he feels like 30% uncomfortable and it seems like he's still R and D and the shit out of whatever he's trying to do. That like, he just throws his hands up like, well, I'm not there yet. So that means I'm not going to play. He's like put too much agency and wherever he's feeling with this equipment, which is of course important. You need to be comfortable with your tools, but he just has put way too much weight. That's why you should go to golf galaxy right? I mean, he should go. See if they fit them into one to single length irons or if they fit them into regular irons. Get the app. That'd be a great YouTube video. Honestly. Yeah. Did played both clubs and said I play in regular clubs. He's already done it versus my single length clubs. I got a bone to pick with you. You just did notable miscuts and I can't miscutters and I can't believe you forgot this name. Do you know who I'm talking about? No, I mean, I didn't want to just run off a hundred names, but who? Anti-sulvan, Mr. Cut, the bumblebee. You know, I did it. I thought about it. Rider cupers. I thought about putting it on there just for you. I honestly, I looked at it said, no, we got to keep this move and here we are at 58 minutes and you want to talk about the bumblebee. Wyndham Clark goes to miss, but he'll be there in spirit on the T-Mobile signs all over the place. It was a win because he missed the cut, but did not destroy a T-Mobile sign this year. Yeah. Not two fewer days to do destruction. So there you go. It's a win. Who are you more most impressed with making the cut? Is it Luke Donald or or Potty Harrington? Did Donald make it? Yeah. Plus four. Oh, I had an old leaderboard up. Good on Donald. Oh, maybe he did make a cut. Yeah. Yeah. He made the cut. Yeah. He made it last year. Guy doesn't play. He doesn't even play. He doesn't play anything. Doesn't play like a Euro or one off year. Like he has not played anything since last, you know, mid last summer. Incredible. Just drops in, makes the cut. Did it. That's quail hollow last year. I would say that was even more impressive given the like distance disparity there. But that's good. Good on Luke. We have tea times. You told me to alert you when we had tea time. Well, I'll look here in a minute. I don't have much to add. I was trying to queue you up here. All right. Well, we can take this. Patrick Harrington, Proust, he's the champs tour player to beat in real events. Junior majors here. Potty taking taking the kitchen to the woodshed. I mean, it's just kind of kind of depressing. Is this count in the Schwab Cup standings? I think I think it's open. It's open for interpretation. I mean, we're getting FedEx Cup standing updates like on the hour, every hour from ESPN. That's gross. Nobody's updating the Schwab Cup. So I kind of think maybe it should matter. PJ, what do you think of the ESPN coverage so far? I think it's bad. I think it's bad, Brendan. I think it has not been good. A lot of, I hate the rejoins that I've been comparing to the LiterallyGworld series. That had me rolling. That was just that this is LiterallyGworld series content, quizzing the players about signers. The players about signers of the declaration. That's so good. What's heavier, the Stanley Cup or the Wanamaker? How many years in a row do they get to do the Stanley Cup Wanamaker thing? Because I feel like I've seen this thing like. You're right. They love that. I think Billy even was like, I've seen this before. It's this. I can't remember what it is though. It's the Stanley Cup. But your cop that like this is what they do with the Little League World series kids who signed the declaration of independence. JT got a win bagel, right? He didn't get anybody. He said, I'm a college dropout. Dude, not good enough. You can't give me one, three. They asked for three, which I think is kind of insulting. You can't give me one. Right. Yeah. I speak to it very well. I just think like that's kind of low brow. I mean, the tracers, I did not think were good. The graphics on the green showing the break of the putts were inaccurate. I didn't think the commentary was great, which is an occurring bit we have with ESPN's golf coverage. Marty was in rare form today talking to the Colonel. I mean, not many people know your life story and your journey. What is it? And just like through the Colonel into a blender by not asking a question. He just sat there. It was like dead air for five seconds. Well, he just looked at him. The speed. So look where I was like, I just saw you. I'm sorry. This Schaeffler solo. I just saw you greet Meredith and your kid. He was clearly like thrown off by that. There was dead air. I mean, it was it's CBS. I feel like I'm the I'm the guy in the meme with the sunglasses in his car being like, you know, Donald Trump, please save me. CBS, please save me. Like we need a big weekend from CBS to salvage this on the television aspect. Like, please, I thought they went a little too overboard with the Higa stuff. I enjoyed yesterday morning when they called Bridgeman, when they called Bridgeman, Bud Collie and then 76 year old Andy North, totally excusable mistake called Min Woo Lee, Seawoo Kim, a 76 year old that like, come on, let it like that's going to happen. Kurt, Kurt, ESPS golf guy. When I was a kid watching sports center for five straight hours over and over again. Andy North would be doing check ins from the, from the open. He was their golf guy in like 1997. Yeah. He's going to be their golf guy in 2027. It's an incredible career. Kurt Estrange was struggling with pronunciations left and right, which I mean, we do too, but we're not on national television. I don't think like Duvall really puts in the word, but maybe he does. Doesn't say a lot. I'm sure he did at one point or other, but I don't mind. I think we should be referring to people in media, like golfers get referred to when they're struggling. It's like, listen, you know, I know, I know PJ, his swing doesn't look great right now, but nobody, nobody puts in more hours. You know, it's like PJ, I haven't agreed with some of his takes lately, but I'll tell you what, nobody puts in more hours in the spreadsheets than PJ looking for takes. I want that, I want that to be the way people describe me when I'm not doing well is, is the way golf announcers describe pros. You got to get a coach for, you got to get a take coach so they can just say, oh, he's working with whatever, because there's always the coach like, oh, he's working with this guy. Who's the Mark Blackbird of takes? Like we got to find that. It can't be Steven A. No, God, you look at, I have like the ESPN portal open all day. It's like related videos or other video, like 25 of the 31s are like clips of Steven A. Just take, take, take, take, take, like that's all Steven A on the, on the whatever, on the Nix. It's crazy how much I don't mind ESPN dropping in to give, it seems like they have whiplash on whether they're into golf, not into golf. They're into golf again. They want it like, I don't know. It's just, they're all over the place. I will say that I had like some PTSD when I heard them going to commercial and the TGL commercial music was on and I was like, wait a second. This is a major. This is a TGL. You can't use the same music. All right. Are we bringing Kevin in? Kevin coming in KVV. No, I think we're at the, we didn't want to go too long. So we, he's, he's in the hour to long anyways. Okay. All right. All right. P.J. is waving off the bullpen. We got to listen to the coach. Listen, he's not, he's not going to the pen for the righty. How about Keegan and JT just going freaking out on the rules official. I believe this is Ken Tackett for putting them on the clock. Freaked out on them. This is the gesticulating two and so. I have a two and fro Keegan. You know, it felt like we were back at Beth page. He's arguing with PGA rules officials, but I think it was a tour official working on behalf of the PGA. I don't have anything else. You know anything else pertinent? I mean, I'm excited to watch golf tomorrow. I do too. Would you want to talk any, any spicy tea times? What tea time you like the most? Uh, sure. I don't have it pulled up, but I can, I can look at that. Our Ram and P can't lay together or no, probably not P P and Jason day. Oh, interesting. Patrick Reed and how it's on lead. I don't feel like they're on the same wavelength. I think that's sort of a fun one. Do you think there's going to be more people watching an Aldrich pot, Geter and, uh, and, uh, Jaeger or Smalley and McNeely. POTTY. Um, or Kurt Kiteyama and Aaron. I mean, this is just a bonanza for the early ESPN coverage. We have in consecutive order, speth and DJ, Kepka and Rory and Ricky and Xander. I mean, that's just back to back to back to back, go bonanza for ESPN. That's around 11 a.m. So CBS will get the end of that, uh, you know, back nine, but those are, those are some power hitters there. That's a great group. That's a great cluster. Peach, you wanted JT out of the Cam Young Group on Wednesday night and you get them again on Saturday. I was just texting LaManya who is busy writing, so he will not be joining. I just was just texting him in all caps. We got to get out of the JT vortex, man. This is too much. This is too, too much. It's a very comfy pairing. I just, I think it's not, I think it's not good. So I think. Why is it not good? I don't know. Yeah. Like I think there's a level of too comfortable to too good. I'm still rattled by the whole JT stealing the putter thing. The mojo hasn't been the same since that came out truthfully. Uh, so I just want to get out of the Thomas vortex. Hopefully Sunday that'll happen. There's going to be so many guys that finished top 10 this week and you're going to be like, God. I think I finished top 10. I didn't see any of his shots all week because there's so many people in the mix. I mean, I feel like that's pooch pooch is playing with Scottie Sheffler. And I don't think I've seen pooch once this week. I haven't seen Harris English on. I think I saw a couple of shots. No, one Harris English putt today. I need no vac. He could be totally blocked out on Saturday. Um, there's some good, there's some good parents. Ben Kern gets with Daniel Hillier. I feel like he could have had a partner that kind of put him more on stage, but not to be on Saturday. Um, that's it. I don't have any big, some good, some good parents. It's going to be tough when I tell my wife we have, I got to be locked in from like 1030 on because I have bunched up the leaderboard. Yeah. Do you think it'll stay that way for Sunday? You think someone separates? I think it, I, I would predict tomorrow they go with like the drivable for some holes and some bowls. Listen, like funnels. I, if I were, if I were a betting man, I would, I think I would go 10 under for the win. If you get to 10 under, you win this tournament. And, uh, and yeah, oh PJ's PJ or KVV entered the studio. Okay. Great. What's up? I don't think your mic's on. Maybe it could be wrong. Could be wrong. Let me check it out. There you go. Maybe that's better. Um, no, definitely not. No, that's, there you go. There it is. What's up? What's going on? Did you guys see Rory came out against the setup plate? I don't know if you saw that, those quotes. Nope. Nope. I figured we might get some setup takes from Rory. When we, when we, uh, I will read his, I will read his, he's the one who's the sheriff's recruiting them to the precinct. It sounded like it. Uh, so he was asked about the setup. He said, yeah, uh, the only thing I would say is I think a bunch leaderboard like this, I think it's a sign of not a great setup. I think when it's as bunched as it is, because it hasn't really enabled anyone to separate themselves, it's like, you know, it's easy to make a ton of pars, hard to make birdies. And it's not that hard to make bogey. It just feels like bogey's the worst score you're going to shoot on any hole. There's not a lot of hazards. There's not, you know, yeah, I think the setup is fine. Like the golf course is good. The pins were tough and the wind was what it was as well. But I think, yeah, it's always just felt like a really good setup. It starts to spread the field a bit and it's not great setups and sort of bring everyone together. I feel like that's what sort of happened the last couple of days. I feel, I feel like it's the most talented players just always want the same setup that is allowing, going to allow them to pull away. And that is not major championships always. Like you're going to have faced different tests and that's why it's so friggin hard to win major championships. That's true. That's true. I would say the word fine. He says it's fine. It's the rock. It's meant to be, it's meant to be like probably on balance positive, but it's come to the speed. Totally connote something derogatory. It's fine. I, you know, it's hard to get at some of those whole locations and I'd be curious, you know, if you, if you asked a follow up question about, about 14 right there, what comes out right after that with about 14 and the shoddy hit and the rest of the guy, you know, yeah. Right. These came in with just kind of where you're holding on your butts coming in those last several holes. There are, I see 63 double bogies, 11 others, 620 bogies. That's a lot. So the disparity between double and bogie is significant. I do think though, is it what there aren't many Parkland golf courses that produce any more of the high variance like what produces high variance generally is hazards. Water. Yeah. Water. So not a lot of OB balls. I thought potty sent one boom out of here. Touch them all on 13 today, but I hope potty wins. Do you think any of this was at Lancaster that they would bitch about this because it reminds me a lot of Lancaster and the greens anyway, like just in terms of that East coast side of Parkland set up. I mean, I think they have it at Lancaster. Probably not, but I just, I don't know. I think they, the similar thing where the greens are so severe and slope that like it's just hard, you know, I don't know. I don't know. I feel like I feel like these guys, anything that does, there is like an aspect of like reinforcing the narrative like you just pointed out. Like I think we're obviously there's Rory and Scotty are always going to be in the mix at like any kind of setup, right? But there, this, this leaderboard is like a little bit different. It is super bunched. And I think we've talked about that already at length here, but, but there is like an element to, you know, you could make a variety argument with, with majors and maybe it is good for one to be bunched. But then I would just point out if you're artificially bunching a leaderboard, which I think they're more manipulating score, which always manipulates variance. Like that's just like a go, they go hand in hand together almost. But if you, if you're making that argument, then you're cutting across championship golf. So I feel like I'm talking out of like eight sides of my mouth. But this is a super complex topic course setup. And like everything you do has these downstream implications that sometimes you don't know are an implication until you do it. It's kind of like science where like you experiment. And then like the worst thing you can do as a setup person, if you're taking the eyes of being a setup person is to not evolve. It's like a coach in the NBA, right? You have like, or the NFL or in college football, you, these coaches come in and they're innovative, but 10 years later, they're normal. Right. So if you're a setup person and you're an organization that sets up tournaments, and I think this is something that maybe goes under the radar that the masters does really well. They evolve and they change with the, with the times with their setup. Like, you know, people complain when that, when their pins not in a certain Sunday location, but the reality of that is that they are trying new things. And they like, you have to, as a setup person, have the have the stones to try something new that's different than what you've done in the past. And I think what happens with golf fans is they grip onto, this is what this tournament is and they won't let it evolve when naturally all tournaments have to evolve. That's well said. I also think there weren't like a ton of things you would do differently. I think they, I think it was an interesting experiment. It was an interesting choice. And when they say it's a bad setup, like it's kind of the golf course they have. And so you want more funnel pins or bullpins, fine. We'll probably get that. It's only Friday, right? Like, why can't Friday be hard? Why can't the pins be on ridges on Friday? Make the good players have to make the cut. Like, you know, if you had a bad round in the first round, then maybe you should have to chase a little bit in some tough pins. What was the biggest story of the day for you, Kevin? Was it all golf course related? It felt like discourse around that. I mean, I think it was a little bit was Rory getting back in it. Bryson totally bombing out again. There was no attempt to sort of get back in it. I just wrote a little bit of something up today about like, you know, Maverick McNeely and the big potty are two very different players. But they both led the tournament at one point today and are both like, you know, in it potty. If you look at like the stats, he he's putting his way through this. He's not really like the driving hasn't been what's been kind of winning the the day for him. And I just, you know, every time Maverick comes up, I feel like it's almost kind of unfair at this point to mention like Rich Dad. Oh, you had all these privileges. Like that story to me is like so kind of yesterday's news. And I think what's kind of cool about Mav is like he's improved as a player every single year that he's been a pro say for like one sort of slump year in 2023. And I kind of admire that about him. Like he's gotten better and gotten to be a very credible tour pro to where he's like a fringe president's cup guy. And I don't think he can win a major, but it does to me like those two people could scarcely be more different in terms of their abilities. Potty normally can't putt and Maverick normally can is a great putter. And so the fact that they're kind of doing what they're doing is like evidence of like we're in a good major. Like they're both credible players and they probably won't be there in the end, but halfway through they're in the mix. Do you think you wouldn't have liked PJ and I were mulling a storyline nobody's talking about that Christopher right then inspired math McNeely this week. Maybe we should have a son billionaire off. You know, that should be like the next golf golf channel games. I was having a great conversation with Shackleford earlier in the week. It's like, can we mention Maverick and really without saying, you know, make a great CEO one day. Like ever that's like the next clause, like Maverick McNeely, comma would make a great CEO one day. In fact, it might be a terrible CEO. Why do we always have to say that about Maverick? I think PJ texted like he got called young Maverick McNeely. What age do you stop being young? Cause he was like, I mean, 30, right? I think we can still call him young potty, you know, 21's pretty damn young. Yeah. He could be the little potty now. A couple of comments. Bryson's game moved away from this earth, which is just some great Brysonism about dying and moved away from this earth. I forget who he talked about. Who he mentioned that to. Michael Kim making the weekend on hole 18 was cool to sit in. Yeah. I guess he's around. Sure. Fine. Cool to see. I thought Rosie chipping in was cool in the end. I don't know if he needed the whole out, but he needed up and down. Michael definitely needed to hold out. Yes. I knew it. So. Real quick, no explanation. Best case, worst case for everybody this weekend. PJ come in. We know we're asking us to be mean. You're asking us to be mean. Yeah. Well, just real quick. No, no explanation. You don't, you cannot explain the worst case. Um, Alex Smalley. What about best case? It hurts that best case. No, no, Alex Smalley would be worst case. Best case, I think is within the realm of possibility. I think Ram would be lovely. You know, the haters might be triggered, but for the game of golf, Ram would be good. I just had no, no explanation. All right, fine. Well, you didn't even know what I meant. What does the explanation mean? I'll go cause I have one. All right. Worst case for me, Steven Yeager making 36 more pars and winning a three under. Within the realm of possibility. Yes. Uh, at best case for me, it would be speech. Just fine. Oh God. I thought we were talking realistic out. Come on. Listen. You haters were sweating it so hard today. He, I, I was even got me down. I was in the slack talking about how you might stink today just because you and Joseph put that in my head and then he hit it. Great. He was so fun to watch. He was so fun. This is why we can't quit speed. It's cause he's fun, but he is genuinely fun. I said no explanations. No, we're ringing up. No, but Hey, it was, it was fun to watch a guy shoot 72 or whatever. 74 or whatever. I think it was 70 72 72. He didn't make a bogey and I don't know. He did make two bogies, but he played really well. PJ, I think I know your best case. I will just take the two PMT time tomorrow. Best case Cameron Young worst case, Justin Thomas. Wow. Wow. First case JT. No explanation. No explanation. You should be careful. I want to explain it now. I once predicted that Justin Thomas winning would be a terrible. Well, you said he wasn't going to win. You didn't say it would be a bad thing. I've, you know, I just, I think, I don't know if I want to get started on the JT Ryder Cup discourse this early. I think he's got to earn it. I don't, I just, I think I'm good. I can't see JT winning three of these things. So I'm just, I'm third of that there. I'll take the whole two PMT. Anyone ever won three PJs and no, no other majors. I can't imagine that's a bleak existence. If you figured that out. Um, a best case for raised potty potty. Okay. Worst case. I'm going to go worst case is, um, body. Also, kitty, kitty cat. This is vehemently disagree there. We love kitty cat. You were talking about kitty cat. I like cat. I like cat this week. Potty's just not fully formed. Potty does not need to be winning a major right now. It'll hurt his long-term development. The online discourse of potty wins will be sensational. I mean, it will be incredible. Like the takes will be so wild. And like because of the take, the takes will get so wild and they'll get so absurd that it'll diminish a 21 year old, somehow to finish 21 year old winning a major, which I want, I want all of that. Okay. God be the youngest majors since Jordan, right? Yeah. It would be incredible. I mean, the online people would come with their knives out because of the chips at Augusta national. If you replay the chips, this guy won a major because of this terrible setup. You think they would call Ali and get him on live from to like describe what happened at Augusta zoom him in. It's just being like, did you see this coming? I think we just get poor F on. He saw it up close. Like he saw the ones who's out there with Ali. That was a nightmare. Yeah. I mean, if it's kitty cat, they just, they kind of bring in Don to do the photography presentation. You just got to do something. You can't be having that kind of spice it up. All right. Anything else, Kevin, are where are you like generally positive, negative? Positive. I'm headed up there tomorrow. I'll be, I'll be up there for the weekend. So, you know, we'll get some on the ground insights. That'll be fun. Good. Good. Looking forward to that. All right. I think that does it. Friday night wine time, Friday night live. Listen to this at your leisure before those, those groups go off tomorrow at 10, 11, 11 a.m. Thank you for joining us. Go ahead. I had a better wine date. Yeah. What's going on? He's grinding on the newsletter, man. I'm just, I'm just, I'm like, I'm like, I'm, I wrote about, uh, I wrote about, uh, I'm a lot of audience, McNeely and potty. So just, you know, three, 400 words, bang it out. That's kind of just, did you guys, you didn't talk about the shank of the lawry's, uh, cold top digit. That was, that was my favorite moment of the day, frankly. We didn't, that was, I mean, he does that. Let's be honest. Yeah. That, that happens every now and then for his good at ball strike. I loved it. All right. All right. That does it Friday night. Thank you all for watching. We'll be back Saturday night after play, set up the final round. Check out the newsletter. Check out the newsletter. Check out Friday at golf club. We had a great ad read for that. Yep. Yep. Kevin's a great writer. If he makes McNeely and potty interesting, then better than I even thought those will be raking in the subs. Uh, so check it out in the morning or this evening. We'll, uh, we'll talk to you on Saturday night. Yeah.