Matt Adams | Golf Channel Insider

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That's BetterHelpHELP.com slash positive. We're really excited to have Matt join us from England. Royal Liverpool is the site of the Open Championship here. It's after hours on CBS Sports Radio. Matt, I know it's not your morning anymore.

Well, it's your morning, but it's later in the morning. What are you looking at? Where are you right now? I'm in the media center right now, Amy. Good day, one and all. I head out at 9.47. I'll be doing the on-course play-by-play for Scottie Scheffler, Tommy Fleetwood, and Adam Scott this morning.

And then this afternoon, our time, it will be the group of Colin Morakawa, Max Homer, and Terrell Hatton, my targets. Have you been practicing your golf voice, your on-course voice? You know what? A few years ago, it's probably more than that.

It's more like 15 years ago now. I took this just regular old clipboard and I went to Home Depot and I bought sound insulation, you know, that you put in between walls and so forth if you were like setting up a room for a baby or something. And I put it, I taped it down with electrical tape in the shape of a U, an upside-down U. And it's shaped in such a way that I can jam the microphone in there and then in between the bridges, it kind of molds to your face, around your nose. And whether I'm at a Ryder Cup or I'm at, you know, an Open, whatever event that I'm broadcasting, I can talk into that microphone a little bit, pretty much kind of like what I am right now saying about this level right here, and they can't hear me.

It works for me, so that's what I use. That's very ingenious of you. You're like a MacGyver, Matt. I don't know. I'm not sure.

I didn't use a stick of gum and a light bulb. Matt Adams is not only with Golf Channel and Fairways of Life, but also now is going to be part of the on-course coverage for the Open Championship. You mentioned a couple of groups that you're following. What's the buzz right now, the storylines as this tournament gets underway? There's a lot of storylines. I mean, you alluded to one of them as you were coming into this segment with Cam Smith coming back as the defending champion and, you know, where are we at in terms of players both from BP World Tour, the year of the filming of the championship, and the PGA Tour, and Live. And is that even still a story now where people are like, do we expect that the Live players won't play as well? Well, they proved it was that they never forgot who they were as great champions and many of them as major champions. So I think it's made the majors in 2023 even more exciting with that mix.

In other words, the whole world is here together. So that's part of it. Cam Smith is coming off a recent win outside of London in his Live event, so he has some form coming in here. There are changes to this golf course, Royal Liverpool, since the last time we were here in 2014 with Rory McIlroy. One is a brand new par 3 at 17. That's very, very difficult and we'll be curious to see how it plays out over the next few days.

The 10 pole, which was the easiest last time we were here as a par 5, is now an incredibly difficult par 4. The weather is not so much an issue as it many times is here at the Open because today is expected to be eventually sunny all day. It's just a little bit quietly overcast right now, but really no prospect of rain. Hope I don't jinx myself on that.

So sometimes you have this, you play early, you play late, you get the wins, don't you get the wins? It's going to be fairly benign all day by those standards, so we should see good scoring all day. A lot of rain here, so the golf course is relatively green, again, by open standards.

It's also relatively soft by the same measurement. So those are all parts of the story. Rory McIlroy is always part of the story. He's the one that won here last time, hasn't won a major since.

He won his majors in 2014. So there's those kind of questions that surround. I happen to think, Amy, that the real question slash answer here is the fact that so many players are going to be in contention.

Why? Well, for all the reasons that I just described here, the weather very much being one of them, the fairways are fairly soft, so you're not getting the ball bounding through and running into difficult positions. I think as a result, it's not, of course, it's about length.

It's about precision. So I think as a result, you're going to see a wide open open. I think it's going to be as exciting a competition as we have seen in many years. Well, we love the fact that we can watch it live coming up here in a half hour. It's going to be on USA.

I know that some of the coverage already taking place on Peacock, so we love it when we've got international events that we can follow during our show here on After Hours. Matt, I've heard a bunch of questions posed to these guys about live PGA merger. We know that Congress had a hearing about it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot more information from your perspective. What do we know that that's advanced the story since it actually broke? Well, I mean, I think the whole business with the congressional hearings, the permanent subcommittee and special committee on investigations was just political bluster. I mean, that the legislative branch of the government is not going to pass a specific law relative to this one union. They can put pressure, obviously, on the Department of Justice and the investigation that they have ongoing about antitrust.

And they certainly could pressure put pressure on the PGA tour relative to their tax exempt status, their charitable status. But other than that, I think that it's it's just about bluster. They have to have a senator. My question from the beginning has been, who is the constituency that they're claiming to represent in terms of protecting, as the senator called it, a cherished American institution when there are military bases in Saudi Arabia that is disparaging the Saudi Arabian government? And it doesn't matter if you like or hate the Saudi Arabian government, you have every right to feel the way that you want to feel. But what I'm saying is the very same government is in business with Saudi Arabia and actually trying to forge deeper ties with them at the same time as this senator is suggesting that any relationship with them could potentially damage a cherished American institution. Mind you, the same one that they're investigating from the Department of Justice. So there's a lot of hypocrisy that surrounds all of that, as it seems to have been throughout this entire issue from the very beginning.

What was revealed, both the court documents and the filing in southern Florida, as well as what little new revelations we got from that Senate hearing. We know that the discussions are very much ongoing. We know that now that Saudi Arabia and the public investment fund is looking to invest perhaps as much as a billion dollars into the game of golf.

And I've heard figures even higher than that from my sources. So the impact is going to be mighty. It's going to be across the board. From the people that I have heard from on the inside, they all feel that this union will take place between these different entities. Will it bring peace to the game of golf at its top tier level?

Yes. What remains undefined that you were also mentioning there, what will happen with LIV. We know that they want to give the team concept a fair shake, which I think has been a successful move by LIV Golf. And what the final decisions will be in terms of who's running the show, who's calling the shots.

I still always tend to believe that it's a golden rule and the one with the gold makes the rules. And so I think that the influence of the source of funding will be greater than what we're being told, which is basically that Jay Monahan, Commissioner of the PGA Tour and the PGA Tour's board, of which they named the majority of, will be in charge of everything and making all the decisions. But I have a feeling there will be a little bit more discussion about all of that.

But by and large, that's where we stand with that. I can tell you that from the players' perspective, the players are really not getting into it this week. I think they have the perspective that this week is about the open.

It's about the final major on the one side of the game for 2023 and all that surrounds. And I respect that. I respect that this week is really about that.

And I don't think anybody really had to whisper in the ear. I think the other part of it is the fact that the players have started settling into the fact that this is going to happen. This is going to be our new reality. There's going to be a lot of money involved. And it's probably going to mean considerably more money from them if they're at the top.

So for all those reasons, it already seems like, and it's weird to say this at this point because we don't have a massive amount of defense, but it already seems like the best is starting to settle. When you and I spoke in the wake of this bombshell announcement, we were talking about Jay Monahan. And you mentioned that he was likely willing to take the hit for the future of golf and the influx of money that the bottom line was the bottom line. It does seem as though the emotion has died down some.

So would you say that he's safe then? That there's not likely going to be any type of an ouster of the commissioner of the PGA Tour? Well, I never felt that there would be an ouster of the commissioner.

I never thought that there would be a crew. What I thought was that initially, as it was, there would be a tremendous amount of emotion, there would be a tremendous amount of anger, there would be a tremendous amount of, if you will, distrust for how this whole thing came together and that the players were completely blindsided by and large. Although we are learning more in the aftermath that people like Roy McElroy did know what was going on to some extent.

He had met with the chairman of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia at one point. So from that standpoint, my feeling was always the same. That the ace of the sleeve of Jay Monahan was to say, okay, be mad at me now. We had to do it the way that we did it in order to get the deal done. But his trump card is the fact that it is so much money. And when you're talking about professional athletes, when you're talking about people that have hardened pencil in their hand because they get paid to do what they do, and you come back and say, look, sorry that we couldn't keep you informed of what went on. We had to do it for the reasons that we stated.

However, this is the way you're going to benefit from it. And I think from that standpoint, I don't think that the players are hung up on the prospect of the moral issues. I think the players were hung up on the prospect that they were being told that these people are bad. People don't go there.

Don't play for them. They didn't find out that they were going to be in union with them and they were caught off guard. And I think the way that Jay's going to overcome that with the masses is to say, yeah, look at the bottom line here and look how much money is being brought in.

So I actually think that that's already happening. I think that's part of the reason why things are settling down. Matt Adams is with us from Hoy Lake, England, Royal Liverpool, where he'll be on the course in mere hours following a couple of different groups through the opening round.

It's after hours on CBS Sports Radio. Matt, I know you're a big fan of golf across the pond, as I say. You do trips over there. Ireland. I know you've been to Ireland. Have you done Scotland and England as well?

Trips? We did. This year we brought a big group over to St. Andrews. So we played the old course and a lot of the courses on the Scottish Rota.

And before I came here to Royal Liverpool, I was back at Valley Bunyan in Ireland. And while it was there, it was kind of neat because Jon Rahm came in to play in the practice. And you've got, you know, one of the top players in the world and you're able to walk alongside.

I didn't say anything to him. I just watched and watched him play little shots from tight lines, little run out areas around the greens, all the stuff he's facing right here at Royal Liverpool. So, yeah, it's been a pretty cool run. What makes it special? Why do you love it so much? Well, I mean, there's two answers to that. When it comes to Ireland, I'm Irish.

I'm a dual citizen. So I enjoy getting back there and seeing family and friends. And it's just the atmosphere for me. I'm sure you have your places too, like everyone, where you feel like your soul is set free to soar. And that's what it is for me.

I don't have to worry about, I just don't feel like I have to worry about life's issues. But when it comes to Lynx golf, I think Lynx golf is the most pure form of golf. Yes, it's subject to strange twists of fate that you may not be ready for. And that certainly is going to happen at this Open. You will see great shots that will not be rewarded. You will see absolutely awful shots that will be.

But I also see that as kind of the flow and ebb of life as well. Beside that, it's about measure. Here at Royal Liverpool, this is about strategy and this is about ensuring that you navigate your way around these bunkers. Because while they are the vetted bunkers that people are familiar with, many times called pot bunkers, which tends to relate more so to size.

These are shaped in such a way that they tend to scoop the ball in if they absolutely can. But more importantly, the faces of these bunkers are not sloped the way many vetted bunkers are. So as a result, the ball's not settling into the middle of the bunker. Everything's been raked flat. So you're going to see shots that come to settle right alongside of the wall of the bunker. Meaning that the only shot option that a player has is to blast it basically straight up in the air and have it drop a couple of inches outside the bunker.

And hope that it trickles away instead of trickling back into the bunker once again. So they're very much going to be a part of it. So that whole kind of mystery that surrounds and links golf is very much part of the appeal. But I also think that's in large measure the reason why the openness is as appealing as it is to people around the world. Because it's so very, very different than what they're used to watching week in and week out on most of the major tours. Man alive. Remember those bunkers in some part in Newport when I used to play at your course.

With the link style. They're very challenging. So it's going to be a lot of fun.

The open sounds like good conditions though. And Matt, we can hear you Sirius XM PGA Tour radio. What time?

What groups? I am going to be starting with Scotty Shepler, Tommy Fleetwood and Adam Scott. And that's just over an hour from now when I'll be on course with that one. This afternoon, my time, it's going to be about 10, 15 Eastern.

I'll go out with Colin Moore, Colin Maxcoma and Terrell Hatton. And you can hear us in North America on Sirius XM PGA Tour radio. I think they call themselves open radio this week. You can hear us on the official open app. Or you can hear us on veopen.com. I believe on TuneIn radio. It's a lot of different places. And the nice thing about how the RNA does it is that there's no fees.

We're on the air right now. So you can get us for free no matter where you are. And you don't have to worry about registry.

You don't have to worry about payments. It's just there for the taping. Awesome. Are you also doing your show this week?

I was, yeah. Once the tournament proper begins, I don't do the show because I'll physically be on course when I'm normally on the air at 8 a.m. on Fairways of Life on our YouTube channels and all that. And what we will do, our national television broadcast this weekend, which are on affiliates from coast to coast. I would tell people just look for us there. I will be able to do that because the two times obviously for the leaders are later on the weekend.

Yes. Well, we are privileged to have you here with us since you have so many responsibilities. You're juggling Find Matt on Twitter at Matt Adams FOL, which is Fairways of Life on YouTube.

Podcast TV Golf Channel and then Sirius XM PGA Tour Radio, the open radio channel this week. Matt, you're the best. Thank you so much for a few minutes. Love talking to you. Thank you. Bye. Hi, my name is PJ Vogt. I host the podcast Search Engine, where every week I hunt down the answers to the questions I can't get out of my head. Like, why are drug dealers poisoning their customers with fentanyl? Or is my local sushi restaurant a part of an international scam? Or how sad are the monkeys at the zoo? If you, like me, find this world bewildering, but also sometimes enjoy being bewildered by it, check out the show on the Odyssey app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you listen.