Saturday at the 2026 PGA Championship: Setup changes and a giant pack still in contention

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 Saturday edition of the shotgun start. It is May 16th. Andy, how we doing? Brendan! I am doing fantastic. I gotta say, I got no clue what's going to happen tomorrow and I kind of love it. It's incredible. Totally unique major championship experience, at least for me. For this podcast. I haven't done it for the longest time. I've certainly worked in the industry a little longer. We've done the podcast. We've done these daily podcasts since the Masters of 2019. I think before everybody was doing these dailies, we were doing those in 2019. I can't recall like a Saturday or Sunday, whatever, where it felt like a Thursday or Friday. Like I had to be locked in at 10.30, 10 a.m. Because I feel like I just watched eight hours of golf. All of it was material to the championship, to the final outcome of who could win Sunday. Totally unique experience. I still think we're, you know, 30 guys. Could technically win tomorrow Sunday night at Philly. Yeah. You know, I had like a little self-care scheduled this morning. And I was sitting in a sauna at 10 in the morning with my phone on. Because I felt like I had to watch it. Just like 160 degrees with a phone. I'm like, I hope my phone doesn't just like break. But, you know, it was, it was, it was incredible. Just like how it's, it's an insane setup. I don't know, you know, listen, I think the job of championship golf generally speaking is to identify the best player in the world that week. I don't think the setup is doing that. It gets pretty clear when there's, you know, 40 guys within, you know, 43 guys within six shots of the lead. And, you know, you could basically a record amount of people. There's 22 people within, within four shots of the lead. And, you know, but am I having a lot of fun watching golf? Yes. And that's what's, what's important, right? Yeah, we, look, it could by the end of the end of Sunday identify the best player, but no, it's not going to. But I think something going doesn't seem like that's just going to turn on all of a sudden. So let's, let's divine that out a little bit. It's been a blast. It feels like, feels like a credible test, major championship test. Maybe it's not identifying the players and ideally the way we want, but it's been a blast. Feels like, you know, it's a nice change of pace too, quite frankly. It's not Valhalla. It's not Quill Hollow. It's not the master. It's just a different unique entirely thing on its own that's been a blast to follow and will be for one more day. I don't know. You said setup. It's a mix. Let's be clear. A mix of setup right in the golf course that like there is no setup. Some of it is and the mind is called this out consistently. There's not a big penalty for, for being wayward with the drive. We've seen short hitters. We've seen quite inaccurate hitters be able to get back on the horse or stay in it. This is a constant issue, right? With golf course setup, but there are very few and far between where the bigger misses are punished and how do they often do that with woods, out of bounds, water, things like that. And Arana Mink, I remember I ran into, I talked to, I walked with somebody for a while on Wednesday morning who's like, you know, in the industry, he's like, I, this would be like one of the biggest clubs in the Northeast, like in terms of land and like just clubhouse. It's a giant, feels like a giant place for an 18-hole facility. And yet it's very constrained for a major championship, right? They're like, I don't think we have enough room to do all the infrastructure. So what you end up with is like a lot of matted down areas, right? You end up with, you know, benefits and Rob and Scott, a few of us called this out to being worse, farther wide off the fairway than just trickling in as many of these sort of sloping fairways kind of tumble your ball just barely into the rub. So that's not necessarily, you could do graduated rough, I suppose you could put like pits with alligators up for like wide misses somewhere. Like there, there's like a mix of setup, mix of how far the ball goes, mix of how, you know, just what the golf course is that is has created this condensing. But where would you, where would you pinpoint the setup issues or not issues or just the, the setup choices that you think have condensed it? Like this is just, I think the way the modern games gone is people play similar strategy, right? Every way plays a similar way. So that's like number one. I think there's less daring shots than ever before, just because of the way analytics and statistics have done that. So from that perspective, you have more people hitting it to the middle of the green stuff, right? I think the second big thing is the distance that everybody hits it leads to a lot of, a lot less variance in approach shots because everybody's earned a lot of money. And then you have a lot of people turning pretty short shots into the greens because it's 7400 yards. Then I think probably the most important thing about it is just the thick, the preponderance of thick rough. Around green. Around greens and just off the fairway where, you know, you have these par fives where there's a canted fairway. You have a ball that trickles into the rough and it's in worse shape than somebody that hits a 20 yards offline that gets into the gallery. That's a lot of it. And we talked about this at the end of the show last night is that like majors are too high stakes to deviate from certain setups. This isn't a setup critique. I think they set this golf course up given what this golf course is like in a manner where it's, you know, somebody's not going to shoot super low scores. But when you try to curb scoring, you also curb variance. That is just naturally what happens when you try to artificially curb scoring, which like I think they've artificially curb scoring with the rough. And I would say the, you know, the whole location is being hard on the hard side have done that. But that being said, if you're the PGA, is this a dream set up going into Sunday where like people look at this and they say, oh my God, like we've got John Rom, Ludwig, Rory, Xander, Patrick Reed, Justin Rose, Scottie Schaeffler, Chris Goder, Cam Young, all these guys have a shot legit shot to win. And, you know, from that perspective, like this is a huge win for the PGA. Yeah, I think it's been, it's been as far as a championship goes, it's been a great championship. Do we think, you know, there are quibbles and there are certainly issues. I know Shane Lowry, I was just looking at a BBC Northern Ireland interview. He seemed quite vocal like, no, I think it's been poorly set up. You know, he said he was happy to hear like Rory and Scottie express some frustration on Friday night. You got the seltzer going again. You're the seltzer boy going again. What kind of seltzer? JLM was going to get. No free ads. No free ads. All right. Okay. We should get a seltzer sponsor. We need a seltzer. That's what I'd be into. Summer's right around the corner. We're open for business. Hey, can we talk about Alex Smalley? I was about to say that. I don't want this to be lost to history, but him shooting 31 coming in on Saturday after just a disaster of a start. 31 on this nine that is just blowing everybody out to see everybody is just, just hanging out for dear life on the back nine at Iran to make. And the guy shoots 31 in his first major championship final pairing. After bogey, three of the last first four holes, three of the first four holes, bogeys, nightmare start. And then, you know, he birdies seven of his last 12, seven of his last 12 with the three bogeys mixed in. But yeah, we're birdies, but like, let's be honest, the first swing on one, you're like, whoa, all right. Well, you know, we're not going to see him much after the first 45 minutes. And it did seem that way once he bogeyed the first three of the four holes, like full credit to that guy, like birdie and even 18. I mean, it's incredible. It's incredible. I want to try to figure out who, oh, it's Ludwig. He's like, look, the wind changed a little bit, made the par five certainly much, it was downwind, much more in play. 15 was just a ball buster again. But the wind changed a little bit today for the par five, nine and 16 were down. But Ludwig was like, hey, whoever wins tomorrow coming down that straight is literally going to have to play their shots all the way in. There's no hiding. There's nothing. Course 16 is a birdie chance. But all the way in, 18 was a challenge. 17s obviously can be somewhat variable based on distance, but a ball buster in and of its own right. And for him to birdie that 31 coming in was incredible, incredible. We were talking about maybe going live when these guys were on like 15. We didn't know what was going to like Smalley and McNeely. We didn't know if they were going to be material to championship. I guess we should have figured out, you know, anybody that teed off after essentially like 10 a.m. is material. Anybody but everybody but like Brian Campbell is basically in this going to tomorrow. And that's where we're at. So big, big shout out to Smalley. I think if you're even, you have a chance, like you have the chance to go out and do what Chris Kirk did this morning, except don't throw a ball over yourself on 18. Chris Kirk. I mean, Michael Kim was five under through eight. There was also again, a significant wave disparity. Like it came up quite a bit, which makes Smalley's achievement all the more impressive. This is a storyline that I don't think anybody's going to talk about. And PJ and I didn't make a graphic about it. Yeah. But legitimately a great advantage could be like if you're Cam Young, God, Cam is going to play with JT again, PJ. Well, he both shot 72. He's not. Is he actually? Is it now? Both shots of 31. They're both finished at the same time, you know. About if they're not together, they're going to be really close. Well, if they're not together, that's a win. So it's a big disparity right there. But if you're if you're Cam Young and you go off literally like you're going to finish before the leaders tee off. Yeah. He's going to be like, you know, there's going to be 20 tee times between him and the leader and he's only six shots off the lead. And there's only four off second. So if Smalley spits the bit, I mean, if Smalley comes back to earth, which is a reasonable expectation, then this thing is wide open. I think today, you know, well today it was like Roy's going to be in the lead before Smalley gets the first tee. But there was an expectation that between Cam and JT and Scotty and Smalley, McNeely, whoever that like four or five wasn't going to be in. Smalley eventually pushed it to six. But then the win just came up. You're like, well, those guys who did get to three four, Justin Rose shot 65. He went off at like 930 today. And I would say he's technically got a chance for sure tomorrow, Rosie. And so like you just assumed, well, yeah, they're going to be three or four under Roy's four under one point, but the lead's going to be seven, going to be six. Like there's one of these guys that are going off later are also going to get theirs, but that just didn't happen. Some of it was the win. Some of it's just like these guys can't, I don't say they can't putt. I'm not saying they can't figure it out, but they are missing more four, five, six, seven footers than like you will ever see in a major or otherwise. And so it's just really freaking hard when you think you've done all the work, right? You've done all the hard stuff. You've found the right, you've eventually got to the right section of the green. Then even hitting the last putt seems to be such a, like it just makes you sweat all the way through the finish line. And you just saw with Rahm at 18, right? Just these short putts, I saw with Roy a little bit early with the one bogey he gave back. It's getting these like last four or five feet in has never felt harder in a major setting. Yeah, there's just so much slope on the greens. And so what you're seeing, and this is like the anti-PGA tourification of greens. You know, the PGA tour famously on this podcast wants every setup to be like the Marriott. Know exactly what you're getting into when you show up that week. And it's led to guys spending less time than ever preparing for golf tournaments because they kind of know what to expect every week. But this week, these greens, like if you throw in the wind, which is one of the hardest things to putt with is wind. It just brings another layer of doubt in. It makes it so hard to commit to lines and it can just die out of nowhere while you're hitting a putt. So anyways, that combination and the intense slope in these greens have just made it impossible. It's just like the other aspect of it is that it's so hard because of how much slope there is to leave a putt dead. And what do I mean by that is like where you just go brush it in. So it's made it so hard to leave the putt dead because of how fast and how slow these greens are. The accumulation of stress over the course of a round is so high here because you're constantly having to mark and really work at those like three foot cleanups over and over again. Like I get anxiety watching it. I mean, watching Scotty today was like, man, that was tough. Scotty looked like 2021 Scotty with the putter. Early on it looked like it got better later. He was hitting good putts but didn't go in. Did it get better? I mean, it looks good from 20 feet. It doesn't look very good right now from four. That's true. That's true. I mean, missed a bunch of early, the first two rounds. That's important distinction. Scotty's got to feel like he should be like four or five clear. I suppose. He's been sloppy at times. Yeah. Did you see what he said to Amanda? She asked him something about his round and he goes, I'm not going to think about it. Not until, especially when I stop getting asked questions about it. I think that's more to his mindset of like nothing I do. I'm just focused on tomorrow now at this point. I'm going to go work on my swing. But yeah, it was a little terse. So here's what I have who led today. Here's Scotty real quick. Too much. Nobody's talking. What is it? City of Broughly Love has the sheriff rethinking arrest strategy. What does this mean? He's surrounded by Philadelphia love and he's thinking like, maybe I don't want to send all these golfers to the clink. I mean, he came out and said, look, he clearly said the only time things are unfair is when the ball blows away on the greens last night. We're going to remember that. We're going to next time he gets a mud ball. Next time he goes in a divot. Next time there's a blind shot. We're going to say, well, you said you recodified the law. You made the amendment new constitution in this jurisdiction. Next time he says, you know, something about the wall. We'll go back to the tape on that one. Um, leaders I have today are Alex Smalley, Maverick McNeely at one point. Chris, don't call me Charlie Kirk, Roy McElroy, John Rom, who was solo, I believe at five for a bit. Justin Thomas, who, um, hand up, hand up, I fell asleep on the couch for 15 minutes today. 15 minutes felt hand up that rarely happens. 15 minutes woke up and JT was in first, did ray round the tape, checked all the leaderboard videos. I couldn't believe it. I was like, Oh, well, JT's now joined the fight. Didn't see him again. I don't think I saw a shot of his really after that. He's in the lead. Grazerman in the lead. Ludwig was in the lead. Aaron Rye, too. Go there and Rye was in the lead. Nick Taylor. That's the best. And I, you know, Aaron Rye, her, uh, her Alex Smalley for the win. I mean, I, I can't think of a, you know, I can't, I don't know what's the worst case scenario, unless all the tales about Smalley and his mom's travels come out. I mean, that's, that's a good scenario for us because we can chuckle at it. I mean, the, the mom, like, you know, my wife and I always have these, like, you know, like we agonize over, like kids aren't independent enough. Like, are we doing too much for them? Like that kind of thing. Like, oh, you've got to learn how to, you know, start the conversation himself or do this or that. I mean, can some of the tales about Smalley, it makes me feel a little better about our station. Like, you know, my kids aren't going to be leading the PGA ever though. I'll tell you that. Remember, remember a period of time when we thought it was, uh, it was a little strange that JT's parents were always around all the time? I mean, this is, this is way stranger. Can you share any detail? I mean, the mom is essentially shadowing him everywhere he goes is the thing. Like he keeps his stats, his shots, you know, I don't know. Pours his creamer in the milk and stirs it up for, I don't know what they do. There's a lot of substantiated rumors, you know. Seems like a good guy. Seems like a good guy. But worst case scenario. Seems like one of those, one of those situations where he hasn't really been let out of the nest yet. Yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah. Just got out of the stroller and walking along here. Um, so we either, you're saying worst case scenario, you've got Aaron Ryan is two gloves. Throwing his hands up in jibberlation or Alex Smolley and his two sun sleeves, throwing his hands up, throwing his arms up in jibberlation. You're saying those are tough scenes tomorrow. I would propose Maddie Schmidt, who also led the day would be at one point, even the final group. I texted you guys. I think we're going to have a final group of Nick Taylor and Maddie Schmidt. That's what it was looking like. It's the final groups. Alex Smolley and Maddie Schmidt. 3M5. I mean, this is going to be all time trivia in like 10 years. I mean, it's like who didn't Rory play with the final pairing of the PGA at Keowa. Do you remember? Oh, how was it? David Howell. David Lynn, I think. David Lynn. David Lynn. It's like an all time golf, golf trivia question. This one, this one's going to be all timer. Like what was the final group at Aronimic on Sunday? Yeah, but usually at least you have like a Rory in the final group or, you know, some, who was Scotty, somebody playing with some. This is going to be Schmid Smolley. I thought it was me Taylor Schmidt. Like we're at 3M. Loedwig held the lead. Stephen Yeager held the lead. Chris Goddard upheld the lead. I think we had 14 or 15 guys hold the lead on Saturday from about, call it like 1030. I know it's later than that. Like closer to noon all the way through to seven o'clock. Do you want to do? Yeager got sent down. He pitched the perfect game yesterday. He team parsed. Got a spot start, but the second start he got shelled. He's heading back to triple A. Somebody asked him like, you know, Martin Kramer said you're not really German anymore. He's like, oh my God. So mean you didn't have to ask him about that. I mean, game within the game. Who earns Loed German? Schmid. Schmid, Yeager or Kramer. Marty Kramer is still in there. The Kleeke. The Loed German betting market. I didn't think anybody thought that was going to be such a sweat this week. I mean, if you're invested there, I would be just sweating bullets. I know we're a little all over the place, but it feels representative of what's going on. Yeah. This is like one of Liv's best showings as an organization. It's funny as the tour is dying and in need of a vulture capitalist to come in. They've got Rom. They've got Neiman. They've got Pooge in the mix. They've got Marty Kramer in and they're like, they're pretty relevant. They could, they could get a. Well, do you think this is how they get a scoop up a little investor? They go, oh, we got Rob. Somebody chips him off a little extra because they get a Rob. That's, I don't think so. I don't, you know, I love Rob's responses. Like I'm kind of playing for myself. I like someone asked them though. It's like, are you carrying the banner for Liv? You're trying to save Liv. It's like, yeah, seems like that's all trending towards maybe bankrupt. The thing they're hot. Yeah. Whatever. Different conversation for another day. Yeah. Great showing for Liv or great potential showing for Liv come, come Sunday night. I think we've talked enough about the golf course. Unless there's something else you want to add about the golf course that we're going to talk bigly about it on Sunday night. I know it's going to be, you know, we said it's the start of the show on Tuesday. I thought we handled that pretty well and, you know, it's played out not maybe in a way that anyone envisioned necessarily, but you know what I, you know what I'll say right now and we could talk about this more tomorrow. I think it's an instance of the course got put in a bucket based on satellite imagery analysis or that kind of thing, right? And immediately got just boxed up. This is the case and that became a narrative from some of the coaches as players got out there Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday, like, you know, I don't see that. And so they're like Monday Tuesday was like, oh, 20 under is going to win. And that was like wide fairways, wide cones of disparate, like, and then you'd like actually walk the earth, walk the turf, walk the land. And it's a little different that changed. I think honestly, everybody overlooked it from the sense of so I would even throw, you know, I played, I think I've said this on this pot a few times and this is not meant to be a flex. This was our fall tour last year getting ready for this year. I went Shinnecock, Marion and Iran make and it coincided with, you know, as a as a former competitive golfer it coincided with like my weak run of spectacular golf last year where I where I like played as good as I can play. And I played great. And it was interesting the place I struggled the most to score was was Iran make. Why putting what I think when I think back to it now and it like, you know, what's it, you know, when I think back to it now, it's the fact that when you play safe, you get really punished. And that's what Ram, Ram said also, you know, we've been kind of talking about it all week. But when you play away from whole locations here, you are you you have 25 feet, but it's like, oh, I might three put this like they are they are some of the hardest leg putts you'll you'll ever face in your life at Iran make. So but you kind of have to play safe in a lot of instances. Well, then like safe, the version of safe is now a monumental challenge. And I think that's where the should you not kind of, you know, this is so nuanced. This is where the rough is like a little bit. Now the rough curbs scoring. So if you if we went to shorter rough, the scores would go down. But I think you'd see like more people not, you know, trying to take on a little bit more because from the fairway, you can hit the shots to these hard pins to get close enough to make putts. Right. We've seen that like guys make birdies when they're in the fairway in the right position. But it's just like as soon as you get off the fairway, it is just like, OK, I'm just getting this to position where I can get up and down for par. And that's what has led to the lots of three putts and lots of bogeys. So I would say, you know, this has got to be just the absolute nightmare scenario for CBS. It is impossible to broadcast this tournament managing traffic. Yeah. And they were a lot of like media reporter types like front office sports type saying like this is a major. It's like a massive event for them after like the Masters criticism and stuff like that. But it's yeah, you got to empathize a little bit with just the absolute kind of firing gallery. They're going to be in tomorrow having to get all these people whip around. I mean, it's just there's only so many people you can show, I suppose. Um, Rom, just to put a bow on your quote or on your your allusion to Rom, he said, you're going to see very few major championship golf courses. If you're in the middle of the green, you're going to have to has as hard a time to two putt as you can on the holes out there. Usually be in the middle of the safe haven. This week, you need to think about where you're going to leave the ball because the middle always isn't the best option. How slow these are. Credit the PGA for the setup. They found some incredible locations. If you guys have said this, usually in these practice rounds, I'll be out with Adam. Like if you put the cup there or the disc there, I tell you to like get the hell out of here. And like that's where they're putting these pins where they just maybe didn't even think about during a practice round. Um, so that's that's Rom. He's certainly in it. You want to do a little contender, pretend or should we jump right in any other stuff you want to hit on? I can promise you that this is going to be the biggest contender, pretender we'll ever do on this podcast. Let's do an ad read then real quick for our friends at shady rays. If you're serious about your golf game, your vision on the course matters. That's where shady rays golf collection comes in. That's right. They are built for a race could help some guys read putts better this week. They're color rush lens tech enhances contrast that helps you track the ball in the air, re greens better and cut harsh glare. Blight weight weight frames that stay put through your swing. There's no slipping when you're lining up a putt. Uh, they also have their little protection program here lost and broken protection program. If I drop them in the lake, they replace them. You knock them off the car path. They replace them. Sit on them one day. They replace them. You go to shady rays.com. Check out their golf collection and grab a pair with the lost and broken protection. Uh, our promo code is shotgun. All caps one word shotgun for 40% off two pairs of polarized sunglasses, 40% off two pairs of polarized sunglasses. They've shades rated five stars by over 300,000 people. That's a lot of people. A lot of people. Uh, so shotgun is the promo code at shady rays.com stock up here. Summer kicks into high gear contender, pretender. Is that where we're going? Smalley. He's the 54. Yeah. Let's go. Smalley. Uh, I'm going to say pretender. Valley and effort. I just don't see it. Nothing doesn't do it for you. I'll be excited to talk to him, but I'm going pretender. P.J. Contender. Uh, this is a, this is a, I gotta say contender. He's leading by two. P.J. Get in here. Oh, screw it. Pretender. He's not winning. He's not winning. Screw it. Pretender. I think the big issue here is that, and this is a storyline nobody's talking about. Sure. He's playing for history. Sure. He's trying to become a major champion. He's dealing with something that not everybody's dealing with. He knows that there's a big contract from Detroit Motor City Golf Club waiting for him if he gets this done. And that's going to be the biggest, the biggest challenge for him on, on Sunday. I mean, it's like, it's like a contract here. You could either be like Alex Rodriguez, you got to win an MVP in your contract here or something like that, or, or some guys wilt. Some guys absolutely just stinking up going into free agency. I'll go pretender on Alex both. Wow. We're all pretenders. He's leading by two. I hope he throws it right back in our face. I'd love it if Smalley, do you think it's going to be a good idea? Smalley, do you think his mom goes up and accepts it with her? They each put one hand on the water maker. He's on one side. She's on the other of the each foot. It's a big trophy. You can have two people lift it at one time. Uh, Maddie Schmidt, let's go down the board. We're just going, we are doing a, we aren't doing a CBS order, which is always scummy. You know, they, you know, traditionally the first player in or the player furthest along gets the top spot in a tie situation. Yeah. I mean, every, every TV, you know, telecast does, you know, this, but John Robbs all of a sudden the top four under guy. Yeah, I know. I spit. Pretender. Pretender. I mean, he's just, you know what? I'm just going to put them in here as a, as a contender just to be different just in case Maddie Schmidt gets it done, which honestly, I would just think. I would just think about all those porcelains in the media center that have to write the, write the story about Matthew Schmidt. I mean, at that point, you're just, you're just not even, yeah, you're doing something else. You're writing a brahm, something, something else. Um, Nick Taylor, foremost Mario Kart player, best Mario Kart player, uh, Boomi zone. I have the bobblehead somewhere over here. Um, national open champion. I got a national open. He is. So all these guys that we've talked about are all top seven and putting an incredibly sort of mid, middling or mid as the kids might say in other areas of the game so far this week, Schmidt, Taylor, Smalley, Nick Taylor, contender, pretender. He's a pretender. Okay. I'm going contender. He's, he has, he has one tournament's late. He win, he won the playoff last year. He won Phoenix. Yeah. He has, he's been around enough. I don't think Nick Taylor is going to just wilt. I'm going for contender. Hey, do you think, uh, do you think Bernard, uh, taught Mattie Schmidt how to, how to use the broomstick? I listen to German. Are there, is there anybody else you would want to learn from? I mean, think about sample size with Bernie. There's a lot of ways you could go from there with that. Yeah. Yeah. So if I was, if I was Mattie Schmidt, I would be asking how it looked like you're not connected when you might be, you know, you said it, not me. Okay. Uh, John Rom contender, pretender, four under he's two back led at 1.3 plus 18 contender. That speaks for itself. I don't think we need to do a ton of Ram analysis. We'll talk about him more tomorrow. Same further. You want to add with Ram? Yeah. I mean, let's, let's be honest. He had one just completely shitty round at the masters, like awful first round. And I know live is harder to judge. He's had a good year there. Hasn't like kind of contended, did contend at the PJ last year. Quail, but like kind of, he's not been bad. He's, I would suggest Bryson seems a little lost right now. I don't think Rob's ever felt like totally lost sneaky. You know, he's won a tournament that felt a little bit like this before. Tory Pines, US open, like literally it was, I remember like eighth hole Sunday. And it's like, Oh my God, like 20 people might win this tournament. Harris English is going to win. Russell Henley. Henley. Yeah. Yeah. He's got it in the beer box. I forgot about that. He's done that. You're right. Bryson shot what 42 or 44 on the back nine that something bananas. It was over the 40 over 40. It was going to go back to back at the US open. All right. But that was like a similar thing where it was, it was super tight. And if I recall, was it Louis and him going down the stretch? We're like really. And, and I think Ram, I mean, Ram just, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he just distanced himself right at the end. It was just one quick burst to finish. You know, small, he kind of had that burst today that I mean, that's, I think that's the interesting thing about, about this, what tomorrow is going to be like, who gets hot? It kind of is who gets hot at the right time. And who's, who's kind of gets that it might come down to literally who shoots a 31 on either side. Like who has the hot nine? Yep. Yep. I think they'll probably allow for a hot nine tomorrow more than they did the first two days, similar to the day, right? That, that, that might be out there. Who knows if we'll get the full wind that we got late. He said it was like four changes, six with their pin, which has been impossible. You saw guys driving it. Six and nine downwind, 16 downwind, 13 being drivable. Those difference three or four makes a huge way, the difference in how you can score. So Rob's a contender. Aaron Rye, two gloves Aaron, contender, pretender. I can't, I have to put all of my effort into this not happening. So pretender. Save. I, I don't know if I'm showing up tomorrow night if Aaron Rye went. You did say that already. You did, you did make that abundantly clear. I forget who is the last one that you threw down that gauntlet for. There was somebody at Oak Bot Carlos Ortiz. It was Carlos Ortiz at Oak Bot when he was winning on Sunday. You were like, we're canceling the. We're not doing the. I've saved pretender. So I only have ROM right now out of four guys we've done. Yeah. I'll go under an Aaron Rye. Yeah. Ludwig four under. So this is the last guy. God, I hope he's a contender. It was two people in my opinion from today that are kicking themselves. And it's crazy to say this one. Ludwig shot 68, but he felt he played a lot better than that number. He's fourth and off the tee fourth and approach the green, 70 second in putting. Yeah. He's playing well. Just not getting the ball in the hole in the greens. Ludwig is absolutely a contender. Any scar tissue from the players or anything like that or what you saw. All right. Let's go to the threes. Roy McElroy three under three shots back now shot a 60 ended up being a 66. Bogie 17 a great par up and down on 18. Very good day at one point. Quite frankly, it looked like he was going to shoot like 64 or something. Could have had a few more birdies early on bad Bogie four contender or pretender contender. I mean, yeah, I he's probably played, you know, him and Ludwig have probably played the best golf the last two days. You know, you could probably put you could put a bunch of people in that, but you know, he went bogey free yesterday. Today he was super clean. Probably could have been a little bit lower. He hasn't, you know, one of the things that's interesting about Roy is he hasn't like, you know, there's only two par fives, but he hasn't taken huge advantage of the par fives to get to where he's at on the on the leaderboard. Like the masters, right? What? Like the masters. He wasn't like never on the masters and on any of the par fives and two through the first or burglars. Yeah. And like it feels a little bit like he's done this before where he's come from like way, way back in the sense of, you know, 20, 25 masters where everybody's like, oh, he's out of it after round one, because, you know, there's all the stats tell us that we should just stop playing golf when when you're certain amount back. He's done this for a while. He's done this. I mean, I think even like bet page, he was a disaster in the opening round and like ended up with the quote unquote wikipedia yellow. Like he's really, and for a while there, and that's what I'll say about tomorrow. Like for 10 years, he would come to a Sunday with a chance and there's like, there was a wait about it. Like, let's just be honest. There was probably a little bit of attention about it. And I throw every I throw the three after the masters went out the window last year. I was like a whole different figuring out swimming in my victory, figuring out what I am right now. Like, I'm very fascinated to see how he is now. That way it's gone. Like that 10 year of like, I'm sorry, like literally get out of the car and the camera is in your face and every step to from the from the parking lot to the locker room. Like this big thing. Think about it. LA and Pinehurst and and all these places forever. That was a thing. I'm very fascinated as he goes to this sort of third and final or third act of his career. He's talked about it. Like what's his primary focus? Like the live stuff. That was a distraction to him. That's totally gone. Like there's so much less. Circulate less junk circulating around him less weight with like this. This is really the first major non masters edition where, you know, he's popping out of the car and like, I can just go get it. And I don't have to be talking about like, can he close it because he hasn't won one in 10 years. It's really interesting to me. It feels like he's in a similar situation to Oak Hill a couple of years ago. Yeah. The big difference here is he looks up the leaderboard and it's that Brooks at the top. It's it's Alex Smalley. So he's playing well. The driver seems very much fixed for at least last year or improved. It's just, I do. I echo what I said, you know, 10 minutes ago. I think like that what's going to win this tournament is literally somebody, one of these top flight players will get on a nine hole heater or a six hole heater. Or an eight in that. And that's going to win the tournament is like, that's what's going to that. That is to me, like how this tournament feels is like somebody is going to do to have this like iconic six hole stretch that we talk about for a long time. And I think that's probably what's going to, you know, like what's going to happen tomorrow to, you know, to get a winner. Yep. Otherwise, how sick would be a six six man playoff like the like the Sea Island tournament years ago? Yeah. Was it a six man or five? Maybe it was a lot. Yeah. Kenzie Hughes, Blaine Barber. Who else was in there? You don't need to run them down. Well, there's that one at the ISCO a couple of years ago that had like, Oh yeah. Harry Hall. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's the ISCO PGA. All the great. Well, did you, did you like, did you like them talking about comp and sedge field to, uh, yes. Rodimic today. It's not a bad comp. That's maybe the, maybe Smully. This is where him and his mom are at home. Uh, yeah. Scott, Rory's absolutely a contender. Probably if you're talking about guys who got nine hole heaters, like he'd be one. Scott, it would be one. John, Ron would be one. I think it's an interesting, like super interesting case study of this like next wave of his career, right? Where he's like, I just, all I want to do is pile up majors. I don't have a lot of distractions. He's got happy days going on right now. It's super interesting. He's now in contention and all the stuff that maybe was hanging over him at prior contentions. It's totally gone. Um, Xander three under contender, pretender, really kind of trick or treat this week. Contender. Good question. Who wants to go first? I'll go contender just because I've said more pretenders than contender so far. I'll go contender too. It feels like he should be in a, in a better spot than he is currently. Honestly, it's a lot of gas in the tank here. It's, it's an interesting one because it would be like kind of apropos for the guy that like not, not once in this tournament have I been like, maybe in the first round I was like, you know, Xander might win. Like, but like, you know, he just has been just in this blob. He's never been a standout in the, in the blob of players and that would be a fitting way for this to end. Yup. I'll go contender. So contenders across the board. P Patrick Reed also at three under in the group. So we're liking this group. I'm going to say at three under with Rory Xander, Patrick Reed. I think Patrick Reed, as he become the people's golfer, he was the people's villain. He's got these quotes that just are playing to the purest hearts. Let me throw this out there. This is from Saturday Friday now. This is right up your alley. Totally like kind of the blender that this test is. I got sick and tired of making 5,000 parts. So I tried a little too, too aggressive on 15 and I made a mental mistake. Poor tee shot on the next. And that's what major championships do in places like this. Playing tough. I don't think that would happen at Valhalla. He didn't say that. I'm parenthetically out. You're out there playing boring golf and you want to make birdies. So you try to get aggressive and that's where you can make mistakes. I made two of them. And because of that, that's why I'm sitting here with you guys at even par. You always know you're going to have adversity at some point. Every major play, hopefully mine was Friday. We tightened it up. So it's, it's me being picky. That's interesting. Right? Like you get sick of being boring golf. You get sick of playing these pars and then boom, I try that, but I'm out. And you get it and, you know, edgy. And you're talking about a guy who's won a major. He's been around the block. It's like, uh, it's like, you know, somebody's garden in the cookie jar and you're trying to get a cookie out, you know? And you get your hands slapped away when you go for it. You got to be, you got to be sure that the person, that, that person, garden, the cookie charge asleep before you, before you go up there and try and get it, get a cookie. And then he added the day, whenever it's windy like this, we have greens. You have to be creative. You have to play golf. You can't sit there and focus on technique and be a robot. And we've always loved that about Patrick. He's always been a shot shaper and a magician of straight of sorts. Are you ready to put away the past and make him the most popular golfer of the, of the late 2020s? I mean, that's just not going to happen. He's not going to be, I don't need to worry about that. Uh, that was one of my favorite anecdotes. Let's just put the past behind. Well, yeah, it's kind of like half of golf. I go, I bet he does want to put it that way. I bet I would too. I mean, if he has a different person than fine, you know, whatever, he can't. Yeah. The lawsuits make it a little hard to just run back into embrace. Um, what did he say? If you're hitting the ball while you're putting, you're going to, yeah. Uh, he was not whining. We're the best players in the world. And when they throw a hard challenge at us, that's when you got to step up. You got to be creative. He said, you see slopes at Chinacoc, but there's so many flags this week that are either right on a crown or right in a valley. The ball's two feet from the hole. It could be a go a complete different direction straight up hill to downhill. Makes it so hard. He says he doesn't see Chinacoc in it at all. Interesting. Um, it doesn't, it, Chinacoc doesn't have like these little cool internal contours that around him. It does. It has similar like slope. It just doesn't have like, it just kills you with gradual slow. Someone made that distinction against Oakmont too. The other day, like Oakmont's are just one sort of giant sloping away. Whereas these are, yeah. Um, math contender contender. Are we doing contender for read? He's contender. Okay. We have a storyline nobody's talking about for, for P here. What is it? Stolen Valor read looks to take playoff P nickname back from Philly legend Paul George. God, where's that headshot? Is that headshot from like 2015? From 2018. This is the official PGA tour headshot Patrick Green. Look, look at Leon. All right. Uh, Matt McNeely is the last three under too bad playoff P's in Cancun right now. You know, such a shame. It could be podcasting about it. Uh, Maverick McNeely is three under. I don't think we need to talk about it. Maverick McNeely is not pretend. Okay. Christopher, right. Any other thoughts? No, pretend. Right in Chris Kirk together at two under. Are we throwing either of them in contender buckets? I think I'm putting a right hand there. Playing well. It's playing well. Oh, we have another storyline market mover. Chris right and inspired by Matt McNeely being expired by Chris right. It's just a revolving door of billionaire kids. Yep. You know, inspiration goes around those circles, those high, those high class circles. They're not playing together. Are they? They might be. No, they are not. Yeah. Okay. Matt McNeely and Reed are together. So that's fun. Um, I bet they have a lot in common. I was going to say, almost made the same joke. McNeely and P, you know, the billionaire's kid from Silicon Valley. Yeah. Yeah. The Texan. Um, all right. What other, so right in your given a contender, Kirk is no Rose at two under Rosie. McClearn. The McClearn's got proper tires today. He went vroom vroom shot 65. Not a lot of chatter about the, the McLaren irons. Maybe he replaced them. Can never tell contender or pretender at two under. He's four back from the. I think this is, this, this is ripe for somebody to go out and steal a major. And I think like of all the, all the, you know, you talk about players that can get absolutely insanely hot for six to eight holes. Is there a man in the, in the field that's done that more, more, more times in their career than Justin Rose? Yeah. I think he's a contender. It's hard. I don't think he's going to win, but I think he certainly could do it. Um, each. I just, I, I'm, I'm worried about the masters. I really am. I'm worried that that just will be a lingering effect of I had the masters in my hands and he just, he might have given it all the gas he had. I mean, it was a great effort to make the cut. Great effort to get back into contention. I'm, I'm worried about if he really is in contention tomorrow, just the master start hanging. Maybe, maybe, uh, he hasn't been hitting it great. Um, any others that too under, we have Neiman, Kimer, Kali, BG, Cameron Smith, Min Woo, just call one out if you've got a contender. Grazer. Grazer men who led the day, Hideki and Goddard up. Goddard pretty disappointing finish. I thought for sure Goddard was going to come in as the leader when he was like at 10. I will take Goddy and Chippinsky out of that group. Here's Chris Goddard up storyline. Meet the man, Goddard up is set to unseat Cameron Young as the top metropolitan golf association player on tour. This would be a killer for the boys. I was a disappointing finish. God, I thought he was going to be at like four or five at the worst. He hit it in some dumb spots. Yeah. Like long on. Long on 11. That's just like you cannot hit it there. Yeah. That's not good with a wedge in your hand. I mean, and then getting, getting long on 17. That was a disaster spot. Um, you know, a lot of guys actually scare me in this in terms of like contenders. Um, Neiman. Lot on the line tomorrow. Getting the yellow. He needs a yellow. He needs another dash of yellow on the Wikipedia page. I'd say Neiman. Min Woo. Actually feel like Grazerman would be just like kind of like a fitting winner of this tournament where it's just like, Oh, he won. And we saw like two shots of his on Saturday and, and then Sunday it'll be like, wait a second, this guy might win. And it's like, Oh 16. This is an impossible tournament to cover for CBS. There's no way you could cover all these players. Um, God, when they went to Max Grazerman and they're like, he just did it 360 yards down the middle on 16. What are we doing? Just hit the middle of the green eagle putt. I'm not saying he's like short at all. It's just 360 is just a thing. You know, like nothing anymore. No wind and never seen fairways run like run like they are here. Doesn't happen. My, my public course. Uh, they are flying. Uh, you're giving Grazerman contender status. I'm more worried. I'd be more worried about Max Grazerman than Hideki, which may be blasphemy. Cameron Smith. Cameron Smith. I'm not really worried about in this version this day and age. I've got God her up too. And I like God got her up. We's already shot 65 this year, this week. So could get a mid sixties from him. If you just need six, six to eight holes of mega nuclear hot, that kitchen, that kitchen could be humming and he could be chef it up. I mean, men will you want to just get nuclear for six holes? I'm not really. I'm not really worried about walking. I'm quite. I don't know. I'm not like a food expert, but Japanese kitchens cook really hot too. Right. And that's what Hideki did in that masters that he won that Saturday night when he shot whatever coming in. I mean, yeah, I'll tell you who's not going to be the people that get nuclear hot. I don't think Mikhail Lindberg or Brian Harmon. I'm worried about it. The one under. No. Are you worried about the deputy? Sam, he got hot for a minute. He flew close to. I was, I was whooping it up, watching for like that half hour. And then it just immediately collapsed. Exploded. I am. What's the storyline case dismissed sheriff and deputy fail to place anyone under arrest on Saturday. They didn't. Yes. The law, they were just, there was petty thefts occurring all around them. Kids shoplifting. They can't catch them as they run away down the block. But yeah, they didn't get any, they didn't book anyone in on Saturday. I. Now we're getting to a point where it just feels like there's a lot of guys ahead of them. And I realize it's not by a lot. It's crazy condensed. The thing, the thing is, if you don't believe in Smalley, what's your lead? Romit for. Yeah. I think it's going to come from the four through two group. One would be a crazy thing, but they're going to be going out so early. Like, do you think Scotty could shoot 63 tomorrow? 63. Yeah. 64. See three is a big number. The putter, the putter is a. Holy shit. That was bad. He's hitting it as he normally does. He's one under his five back. I do think he could shoot like 64, 65, pretty easy, not easily. If he, if he shoots 64, he probably wins. If you shoot 65, he's got good shot to win. I think that's where we cut off. We're one under is our Pooge, Schaeffler, English, Ricky, Brooks and Burns. I don't think I give anybody but Scotty a contender in the, in the one under. I don't think Brooks is like putting well enough. I don't think he's putting well enough. It's just too many questions there. Like, I think he's playing pretty good, but just, yeah, not my pick. Um, is Scotty a contender? Would you say that? Would you go that far? No more player in the world. Um, yeah, I think I put him in the contender bucket. Would you? Yes. He would tear the other thing about it. He's going out. He's going to go, he's going to be done before they finish. So like the thing, if he goes out and hangs the number, everybody's going to have to look at it. All day. And then golf, golf like gets harder when there's like some number that you know, you have to post. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Um, so we are going to 30 players in this bucket. We didn't name them all as contenders. I think the other thing that is insane is like today, everybody goes out guns a blazing in the morning. And I tweeted, I thought, I thought, I thought, I thought, I thought, I thought, I thought, and I tweeted. I thought that seven would lead at the end of the day and that you would want to be at four. And what was wild to me was like, it didn't go anywhere. And obviously the wind picked up. It was really hard. The lead literally didn't go anywhere. So after three days of this, like, I think you got to stop being fooled to a certain extent and realize that like. There's a good chance that five or five is like a playoff in six wins this based off the last three days of golf. I completely agree. I gave some of the names that are towards the top and what we've seen for the last three days. I think like six could be it. So then it kind of changes like the whole calculus of like a 65. If you're teeing off at like 10 a.m. You're going to it's going to feel so weird teeing off that early for someone like Scotty and being this in the tournament where he's completely disassociated with the people that are like squarely in his sights. Really, I was talking to somebody today about this. It is like a fascinating golf tournament in the sense like you know the setup is like a whole topic that I think like people will talk about for a long time. But like this is the strangest psychological situation for a guy like Scotty or any of the one unders where you're teeing off in a spot that when you tee off there, you're conditioned to believe that you're out early and don't have a real shot. But the reality is is like you're out early and you have a shot but you have a huge advantage because you're out early. Like that. I don't know what like I don't know if there's ever been data done on this but like I would say that the advantage of going like going out at at 10 a.m. Or whatever. I don't know what time Scotty is. 12 0 5 with David Fudge again. 12 0 5 versus 2 30 or 240. That's the last group 2 35. That's a huge huge advantage. Besides the fact of being five shots behind you mean just purely on the T like I would almost say I don't know if again I don't know if there's ever been like data done on this but I would suggest that it might be like you probably pick up like almost like a half shot or a shot for that. Yeah. Small is the favor small is the betting favorite huh. I guess that would make sense. Then it's wrong. Ludwig. Rory after that. Yeah. It's a fascinating like rolling T sheet. So we've gone to 30 guys. We have omitted. Cameron you on it even par PJ do you want to speak for your man. I he was not. He did not live up to the family name. I don't know if you noticed Carson young. Went ham. Carson on the corn fairy to our shot 63 today. Carson young. Well Cameron sort of sputtered about. This was from Andy a submission before things went haywire in like the hour where cam was just alternating birdies and bogeys and was never on television for his first hour on the course today. Not enough aura. CBS says young doesn't connect with Gen Z audience because he was dropped from coverage literally after his first tee shot. We never saw him again. He got dropped. He just was decided to not be important enough. Did they really not show him again outside of the first hole? We watched him on the first hole. They had to show him again. He we saw his drive in his first approach and then we did not see him again until seven. Maddie Schmidt Schmidt. We need to see we need to see Rory and they were right trading watches and scoring and Rory. He's talking about it. We're walking off and Rory pointing at crew Kepka like all right. The number three player in the world has eight feet for birdie on the first hole and we're not going to see it. Yeah, it was bad. I'm going around. Just type the FedEx cup standings. No, because he's number one in that he's number. I thought he said number one player in the world. Blind items going around that players are. This is like pop culture world that players are stationing their kids for like waiting for photo photographers to emerge and to walk in with their kids in the parking lot. I don't think I don't get into that whole world. I don't know. Photographer submits it to one of these pop culture sites like us. Okay. All right. Interesting. I will report though out of the JT vortex. So playing with C. Woo tomorrow. Cam Young is so maybe that means he'll be able to put. What is the reunited? We just just in time to talk about Cam Young. Does he have a chance tomorrow? Would you put him in a contender bucket, Joseph? How far back are you going? I don't think he's even par tomorrow. You see Mellon Kali about it. It's just a Thomas. Anybody. Nobody had even part. What about potty? Big potty at even par felt like potty had a blowout. Need a plumber. Sorry. Like no one's talking about potty struggles with septic tank. How about that? You want to, you want to make a connection? The potty needs a septic tank in the field to succeed. Seed. Seven. This is the cut. No tank out there today. And potty goes under. He did kind of. He rallied. He rallied. The thing about this tournament though is like the second you cross somebody off two hours later, they reappear. So explain that. You can't, you can't make like two sevens in a row. Not like, or, or just make sixes. Yeah. I think that's what it is. It's like the second, the second somebody's out of like the, the lead and that intense pressure, they make a couple of birdies and they're back in it. I mean, you don't want to, I wish this tournament was, what was the old tournament that they played a six or eight rounds? Was it the, remember that you used to get all the best players down. Do it at pinehurst. Frequently. Like the world cup, world cup of golf or world champions. Yeah. 90. Yeah. If you, if you went to 108 holes, what would we answer Sunday with like the number of players within three shots of the lead? Like, would it be 10? By that logic, is potty the youngest player in the field? Would he just wait if we played this in perpetuity? Cause he would presumably die last. I don't know. We don't know about this help. I said presumably. Yeah. Bryson missed the cut. Bryson's going. I mean, Bryson, Bryson would have another hundred years. So potty. Yeah. I feel like partly because of Joseph potty has like the worst rep. Everybody thinks he's like a joke. And it's because you've been slandering potty since he turned pro and everybody forgets that he's 21. Well, Andy, come on. He hit some of the worst shots you'll ever see. He's 21. Frequency. Most of the Nampard Fs were still in college. I just think you're giving me way too much credit. I was going to say Joseph small. You give me way too much credit. I think that was such a disaster. Data community in the town community are, you know, Devour every JLM word. Um, what else do you got? Any other contenders were good. Right. So we've got our, do you have any real leaderboard people connect the dots is came on the latest to feel the effects of the JT four texts. What is work here? You know, when you look at it really, are you blaming him for, I'm not blaming. I'm just, I want to just connect the dots. Jordan Spieth, close friend of Justin Thomas, would you say that Jordan Spieth the last couple of years have gone well? No. Zach Johnson, close friend of Justin Thomas, how'd that work out? Keegan Bradley. How's that currently working out? Max Holma, Tiger Woods. The list is pretty long. Fair. All of spring break crew. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's not, that's not gone well. Interesting. I just, I just want to submit that to the world and see what happens. Joseph, what are we sipping on this evening? Do, or do we have a pairing with us for this? Funny. Funny you should ask. I was scared to bring it out, but you brought it up. Nice little red. What, what do you, what do you got there? Nice little Pino. Little Pino guy. There we go. What are your impressions? LaManya, what did you write? You can give us the high level. What'd you write for the newsletter? What are you thinking as we go to Sunday? I didn't get like super into this in the newsletter a little bit, but I don't know how much setup discourse you guys have done so far on this pod. I think it's been clear, at least my impression after watching today, slightly more accessible whole locations, whole locations were sort of the scapegoat of the last couple of days. I'm saying that the whole locations have muted skill and that that's why talent hasn't separated. We got slightly more accessible whole locations today and talent didn't really separate appreciably more than the first two days. And I think these greens are just really hard to hold pots and there's short pots, 13 footers that are breaking multiple directions, way more slope than these guys are accustomed to. And I do think it's just really hard to hold pots. And that's part of why we're not seeing a lot of birdies. Separate. Maybe not a super novel insight here, but I think the whole locations and setup has acquitted itself a little bit from the past two days and that it's just a feature of this golf course. So I don't know that that's a good or a bad thing, but I think these greens are very hard to hold pots and that's part of why we're seeing so much density at the top. Is that a condemnation of the golf course, the setup skill? Like, honest to God, like, I can't believe we're talking so much about pin placements, whole locations. Like, it's insane how much that's like going mainstream. And I realize it is like, because there were some that were challenging and I like wanted to tap out there for a little bit last night. Can I enjoy it? My favorite thing in the world were the whole location reactions that were like posted like literally like minutes after that they went up like, oh my God, they went for the jugular. Carrie Hague chose violence with like people that have never seen any of the greens. Like there's no contours associated with these. Like you're just looking at a one dimensional, you know, image of the green. You don't see any of the contours and whether they're in a bowl or not. And then in the morning, people were like, oh, they went so soft on the whole locations. And then by the end of the day, everybody's like, man, it's so hard. The whole location is so hard. And it's just like to me, the most amazing thing is like everybody's running to get a takeoff so quick that nobody knows what take their, their, their, their putting out there. And it's like, you know, somebody who I've listened to, if they looked at a T sheet and studied it for like 30 minutes and is like, this is here is like somebody that's played around to make for like 20 years. That's like, here's this. This is where this is. It's actually like right over this someone who's spent like weeks like I guarantee a lot of the players look at it and they're like, I don't really know where this one is. Like is that on this side of the ridge or that side of the ridge? Like they have to match it up with a green sheet to get an idea. And on online, everybody is making proclamations within five minutes of this being released. And most of the people making the proclamations have never been there. I mean, I think it's sort of, I mean, golf majors are so weird, right? When you think about it, you cover it four days. And like we've done it do it daily podcast. It's like our hands up. We didn't, we have done it for eight years, seven years now. But like you had, there's a lot of time, right? And this is roller coaster, but these judgments are made, right? There's like soft, they've gone soft at 1130 or, you know, yesterday it was boring because it was too hard because it was just a two-putt fest. It's just a weird, it's a long week, right? And so you end up with these insane sort of roller coasters of judgments instead of just waiting to see how like we're, we're part of the machine. But I hope, hopefully we're not racing to conclusions. I take what you have, what you have so far. But yeah, today was another roller coaster like that. Do you think the players, I noticed like Paul McGinley last night was like, these guys complaining about pins need to shut the hell up. So he didn't say that. He's like, they have all the best equipment, the economy, everything, they have all the physio, the dinners, the mute, like everything is like the most finely attuned and catered. And the tour has never been just like softer and more just like they, they wig, they wag the dog and tell it, you know, set up for them. Like, I'm sorry, you got some tough pins on the edges. That was my paraphrasing, Paul McGinley. Do you think there's been too much carping about it, Joseph? I think my bigger takeaway is that the whole locations aren't having that significant of an impact on the condensing. I don't, I don't believe based on what we've seen. And if you want to have a more substantive conversation about how you could make this potentially a little bit more skillful, a little more separation. If the ball didn't go as far and guys had more distance into the holes from the rough, there'd be more of a penalty for spraying the ball. And perhaps if you scaled back the game a little bit, you could have a first cut and some of these balls that are hit pretty close to online that just trickle into the rough. It doesn't come down to what kind of lie you get. You have a lie in the first cut. And then if you're spraying it way offline, you're in thick rough, not a trampled down area where spectators have been. Like to me, that is actually a much more substantive way that we could potentially improve the way that this golf course plays. But again, that's not a setup issue. That's just a reality of the scale of the current game. So that's where my head has been. Like I do think a first cut is something that could potentially have made this a little bit less or a little bit more of premium on driving accuracy. And you'd probably see a little more talent separate. Yeah, I think I think the other thing of this ilk of setup is just the rough around the greens. The ball just doesn't go anywhere. It stops. It just stops. So like OK shots end up a foot off the green and like pretty bad shots end up two yards off the green. And that that's just like, but I also would agree with the idea of like, hey, Aronimix always had rough around the greens. That's the way the golf course is. And we shouldn't just shave everything down. It would be insane in certain spots if you did that. But like one thing I've always wondered with setup is like, and this is this is again like out of the box and it would be hard to do this for a PGA for like, you're, you know, to roll out in a major players would probably freak out. But like at courses like this, what if you had a really short rough around the green so the balls would get more away and then it got gradually really thick. So you actually got balls that went away from the green. But it isn't, you know, it isn't fairway. And then you could have rough thick rough, you know, off the fairway if you want to do that like and you have just different heights of rough all around the golf course. I'm wondering with like how extreme the greens are. Would having all shaved down not like more frequently shaved down areas around the green like just be too. Too penal because like a mini miss on like a small a short a small miss the green so extreme. Now is like going to like a million miles away like they're too extreme that they're too sloped inside to have also that. Absolutely like around some of the greens are it's too severe like like a lot of these greens to get like just pushed up like they just piled dirt up to build them. You know, so like they just took the dirt plopped it up and then they started building the green. That's why so many old greens have like the back further than but if you shave down the back, it would be insanely, insanely severe. It would be crazy, which is why I've always thought like why don't you have the rough like one inch. So the ball still rolls away and penalizes and if it just barely trickles, it stops. But then at the bottom like, you know, the hill and progressively as you get further away from the green, it gets thicker and harder to hit out of. Yeah, but the underlying premise I guess to the conversation we're having is that the golf course needs to change and maybe it could be improved a little bit. I'm still not sold. This isn't a great setup. Like it's been really fun. Oh, I agree. It's a great set up. I just also want to check myself earlier. I think that I think the narrative last night that players were complaining was a little overblown. Like I don't think I actually heard a lot of complaining. I think like, but it's like, oh, it's a proper major because the guys are bitching. That was one storyline also mentioned. I think like Rory made the point which we frequently do here. Andy frequently does about, you know, not a lot of separation sometimes as an indicator of not a great setup. Don't know that that was like a bitching. Scotty said the pins, some pins were absurd, but I don't think he meant it like in a totally critical derogatory way. He also said that nothing was unfair. JT had something about one of them being incredibly hard and like challenging. Lowry today said he didn't think the setup was good. There wasn't any kind of like zatch. They've lost it. There was none of that. I don't know. I felt like a lot of strawmen stuff going around like the players are bitching about stuff. I don't think they were like some people called out some pins that were like, that was crazy hard. I felt like the only one that was like legitimately mad and complaining was Lowry. Like all the other ones were like answering a question. Yeah. And like yours like, you know, and it wasn't like maliciously like this sucks. Yeah. Yeah. They don't know what they're doing. This is bad. You know what? It feels like a couple of the guys were having fun with the setup and embracing it or some of the guys were playing well. And you can call that the egg. But I think, you know, Patrick Reed's having his best PGA championship in a while. He seems to be embracing the challenge. Maybe some more guys should get into that headspace. Do you think, do you think I asked Brendan, do you think P the pass is going to, you know, leave him? Everybody's going to accept letting go by the wayside and he becomes the people's golfer of the late 2020s. I mean, I accepted P a long time ago. So I'd love to see that. You're accepted. That is worse. You're the P whisperer. You're accepted. That's quite a nickname. All right. Anything else? LaManya, what are your other things? I need like three things going to tomorrow. What else do you have for us as we try to wrap it up here? Three things going into tomorrow. I thought that to be three. I think that there are no excuses for Rahm and Ludwig. I think Ludwig, that little sputter in the middle of his round is could end up proving pretty costly. But those two golfers, no excuses. And then obviously, you know, Rory and Xander are only one behind them. So I kind of believe that Smalley could hold on, especially on a setup like this that is a little less dangerous. I think some of those nerves won't necessarily show up here versus some other setup. So I think he could hang in there. But I think there's really no excuse for John Rahm or Ludwig to not be able to make up two shots on Alex tomorrow. I think the other thing we'll see is some really nerdy missed short putts tomorrow. Yeah, it'll be fun. Do we want to do picks with 18 to play? We've made picks with 72. We made picks with 36. Do you want to do picks with one more day to go? We've done contender-pretender. PJ, do you want to go first? Who's your pick to win? Hey, real quick, I just wanted to get this out there. Yeah. There's like a talk about how Alex Smalley is like Sean McKeel. I saw Danny Rapps tweeted this and I think this is like a sentiment across. Is that going around? Twitter is like, this is a no-name. And we haven't given, we haven't, we've talked about how impressive Smalley's round was. This guy is not anything like Sean McKeel. And I just want to, I just want to reference some data points for this. Data boy. Yeah. A, Alex Smalley was like, like the dude in college, one of the best players in college golf, basically from the start of his college golf career. Data point number two, Alex Smalley has two runner-ups in his professional career, his entire professional OWGR sanctioned events career, which started, his pro career roughly started in 2020, 2021. All right. So 2020, we're on year seven of his pro career. He's got two second place finishes, two, the three third place finishes and 15 top tens, four through, four through 10. So that's in total 20 top tens. All right. Now I just want to go to Sean McKeel here. Oh, leave Sean McKeel alone. His family, let him ride off into the sunset. He's played professional golf since 1994. Can you tell me how many top 10 finishes Sean McKeel from 1994, you know, through his career had? I do know of the, of like the Ben Curtis, Todd Hamilton era, which feel like he has the least accomplished outside of the major win. How many top 10s in his career? OWGR Stenction top tens, 23. That is career that goes back to 1994. That's not a lot for a lot of years. Alex Smully has 20 in six years. So this is not, not any, this is not a fair comparison. And I will not stand for any Alex Smully slander comparing him to Sean McKeel. Who is a genuinely wonderful human being and won a major championship. When Sean McKeel misses a cut at a PGA and sits home on the weekend watching it, do you think he's like seeing Alex Smully up there and just praying his name doesn't come up? I mean, that's what I wonder. Like the PGA comes around as just a, it's an annual occasion to shit on Sean McKeel, you know, like you feel terrible for the guy. Want it. I mean, he already had a big week with the Higo thing. There was a lot of exposure hitting the Higo shot. Yeah. So it's been a big week for Sean. Who are you picking tomorrow? Joe's PGA. Do you miss Don PGA? Yeah, man. What? The Charn's interview, that was terrible. That was, that was abhorrent. It's like, why would you interview JD Vance when, when, why are we giving him airtime? Why are we just acting like he is giving statements on behalf of the organization? He didn't, who elected this guy? Nobody, literally nobody, like where did he come from? I know his golf is the engine of good. We could have used a little Don, if I'm being honest this week, could have ejected him in on Saturday midday, brought a little swagger. Who do you like tomorrow? I will take, I'm going to take pay. I'm going to take pay. Maybe that's just me hoping for it, but I'm going to take pay. Okay. This is total fucking crap shit. Yeah, it could be anything. Like literally, I feel like I'm throwing a dart blind with no clue where the board is. And this is like the eight, this is 18 to play. This is it, you know, you feel less confident picking now than you did Wednesday. You know, it honestly feels like if you said after the first round, pick the winner. Yeah. Uh, LaManya wasn't in the field. Right. Right. And Scotty was not there. LaManya. Let's go Aaron. Right. I want to see Aaron. Right. I want Aaron. Right. Two gloves dead straight flusher. Get him in the mix. Well, then you could write the newsletter. You could dedicate there. You could do the newsletter. Congratulations. You just earned yourself the newsletter writing. Voluntary yourself. Aaron, right? When's this he on the Ryder cup team next year? I mean, there's, there's going to be a lot to write. Don't worry. Hey, subplot here. Subplot. I just put together two guys legit in the mix. Who were involved with the, uh, the Wyndham Coucher situation. Yeah. Grazer in maybe Coucher's mentorship at the Wyndham is going to, it's going to allow Grazer into not fall short this time when he's doing right. That's actually Andy. We could get a 12 way playoff and they could play so late into the night that Grazer man says, you know what, I'm done playing. I'm done playing. I'm coming back tomorrow morning to finish. I learned from the best. That is a great storyline. No one's talking about it. Honestly, there are a lot of Sedgefield stories here. Maybe we've met, maybe the Wyndham is it because he got smally the Sedgefield member. You got Aaron, right? Sedgefield champion and you got, you got Grazer man. Well, who designed that golf course Andy? Donald Ross. I know. Um, I will take, I said, Rob last night. Oh, I said, Rob, good case. I think is what I said. I feel like I'm talking myself into Rory, but that just feels too mainstream to go there. You know, I like how Joseph picked John wrong before the tournament and now it's put up a shut up time and he wants it. I'm still, I'll stick with John. I don't know if you can do that now. I think I liked what I saw from Roy McElroy. I think I'm going there. I think I've talked myself into this third era of his career and anytime he's in contention of major, he's going to become a slightly different person now and the way it's gone and I think he's going to win. I, you know, we were talking about how a certain side of the wave, uh, you know, like, oh, you didn't hang a number and then Scotty went out in that after noon and shot that number. And the Rory thing kind of feels similarly where he, he, he shot 74 in the opening round and nobody put, nobody like could shoot the two good rounds that then put him in like extreme chase mode and, and like they just let him basically play two clean, clean rounds of golf and, and Waltz's way right back in. Um, I'll just, I'm just going to stick with my guy who's going to finish before the leaders tee off. Uh, he won't actually, I'll take Scotty. You're taking Scotty five back. Wow. It's, or three back, I guess. He's three back. So he's shooting 64. 65. He shoots 65, gets it done. Wow. I like my other pick would be Rory. That's like the, uh, I think like in terms of, you don't get two picks. I would, I'm just, I picked Scotty at the beginning of the week. So I'll just stick with it. That's a good pick. Yeah. I'm picking Ron and I think he's had a very admirable attitude all week. I don't know if you get picked up on that or talked about early in the pod, but we're taking self-shaking off bad shots. Besides hitting a volunteer at the dinner. I think, I think Ron's been an enlightened individual this week. Uh, or chasing something, something's going on, but yeah, that's good. Uh, I, I've been impressed with Ram as well. Like we're talking. Ram, Ludwig, Rory, Xander, Scotty, Patrick, I mean, God, it's just a crap shoot. Even a month's like the guys would put in the top tier total crap shoot. It's going to be a blast. Potty, don't count potty out. Potty. What else? One last one. Are we counting Brian Campbell out? That's one we can remove from the, remove from the equation. 82. We said it's hard to put big numbers up here is what, what Campbell had an 82. 41, 41. Feel bad for the, This is your, this is your design. Oh, Randy's road. This is a shout out for Randy road place of, of Elias sports bureau who is just every stat, every stat you could ever imagine. I almost, almost marked a miss spam today. I think I did my inbox with meaningless stats. This is a media thing. So I'll just let people in on this. Imagine someone, someone just tweeting meaningless stats for four strings. I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm just tweeting meaningless stats for four straight days. And then just coming instead of being a tweets that you just scroll past their emails that you have to delete every time. I did this last year. I think I'd subscribe. But it's like, it's, it's just, it's not even like there's, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to be mean. They're, they're, they're meaningless is a good word for it. Nobody would sign up for an email newsletter. That's literally like a stat, a single stats feed. This thing has to go. I will, I'm going to fill out my PGA media feedback form and, and, and this like give me a place where I can log in and see all of Randy's work, but I don't need a direct connection to Randy. PGA is the only one that does this. It's insane. My inbox is a mess because of them. I was waiting for that guy to start. I must have unsubscribed last year or like opted out. I don't know how, but I did. Um, okay. That does it. Saturday night pod Sunday morning. It's going to be great. Maybe we'll do a lunch. Maybe we'll do a lunch with the boys. A little quick live with brown four CBS goes live at one again, set up for a great PGA. This is wonderful. I'm debating if I should drive up. I'm kind of torn. We'll see if I go. I don't think you know where to follow. I think this might be the hardest onsite major to cover all time. It's a challenge jumping around. I don't know what I would do. So you know what the players are complaining about the, the setup. I think us media members, TV included radio is the PGA trying to screw us over. And that we're the ones that they're trying to screw over because like we need to prep to, to talk about 52 guys. You can't do hard. What are you going to pre write? Um, this is, this is the thing. The players are mad. Media should be more, more mad. Poor Brian Campbell just buried here at the end. We almost got out with talk. I'm talking about Brian Campbell. You just crush him. All right. Poor us. We have to put up with having to talk about golf and 30 guys. Potentially winning. Uh, Joseph, thank you for joining us. Read your work. Has been just hot. The newsletter. You've been. Enjoy your Pino. You've earned it. Don't you agree? You're not going ham on the Pino on the pod, you know, you just, it looks like you've taken a few gentlemanly sips during this time. Yeah. You just got to go ham before the pod. Oh, All right. Uh, everyone's just going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, All right. Uh, everyone enjoy your Saturday night, Sunday mornings. We'll talk to you late, later Sunday, not right as soon as it ends. Uh, although. If we have a playoff till dark, who knows? We'll talk to you late Sunday night. Uh, live again. Yes. Live on YouTube again. Friday channel. Uh, we'll. You know, share a time a little bit later, but it won't be as soon as the trophy, you know, as soon as the last putt drops, we will, uh, we'll talk to you then. Thanks for your continued support. Talk to you. Bye.