Monday Qualifying And The Ascension Charity Classic-Sunday, -Golf With Jay Delsing

This is golf with Jay Delsingh. A two-time college All-American at UCLA. A participant in nearly 700 PGA Tour events.

Seven professional wins to his credit. Over 30 years of professional golf experience. This is Golf with Jay Delsingh. Hey, good morning. This is Golf with Jay Delsingh.

I'm your host, Jay. Who is with me today? Pearly?

Pearly May? What's going on? Thanks for joining me. You don't get my accolades anymore in the introduction. What happened? I know. That was heavily suggested to me. And then after those accolades, I was kind of like, I don't really care about Pearly's accolades anymore. Pearly, okay. All right. Give us your accolades.

That's a good point. You shouldn't beg, anyway. All right. Caddy, you caddied this week. Obviously, you fell short a little bit on the caddy, though.

I have a hard time blaming you for any of that. Anyway, let's get into this thing. We formed the show like a round of golf. And this first segment is called the underwriting segment. And it's brought to you by the Gateway section of the PGA.

Gosh, I love having them as a segment. We also are giving away a dozen TP5 golf balls each week. Send me an email. Jay at jdelsingh.com. You will be entered to win a brand new dozen tailor-made TP5 golf balls. Want to thank Bob and Kathy Donahue. 314-805-2132. Guys, Donahue Painting and Refinishing. Remember that name. They are doing great work. They can beautify the inside or the outside of your house.

And besides that, they are great human beings. Call Bob or Kathy. 314-805-2132. All right, Pearl. Wow. So, we're going to talk a little bit about my qualifying or lack thereof qualifying. We're going to talk a little bit about LIV. We're going to talk about the fact that the boys are going to Wentworth. And now they've got the BMW, which is the flagship event on the DP World Tour. And they've got live players over there. And there's all sorts of conversation going on about who, what, why, should they be able to play, should they not be able to play. Yeah, we got some cool stuff to go.

So let's just jump right in. This is Sunday of Ascension Week. Man, we've been waiting for this week a long time. The golf course, the setup of the golf course, it was just spectacular. What was your takeaway? We had a really not a great weather day on Monday. We had a hell of a lot of rain on Saturday and Sunday.

We only got sprinkled on a little bit here and there on the tournament round. Could have been much, much worse. But man, Pearl, that golf course played long. I thought it played long and I had to laugh. How many times did you guys get on the tee and you're taking practice swings and you had to move up a little bit because they had the signage so close to the tee. You couldn't hardly take a backswing. I laughed every time. You know why?

Because that was my dream. Okay, so we got to set this up. We got to set this up better. So folks, it's totally typical for the title sponsor to have this name-branded signage on every tee.

And it's beautiful. And it's, if you go to the very back cut of the tee and then go a foot further back, that's where the signage starts. Well, one of the things that they set the golf course up, they wanted it to play long and it was a very fair test. It was a long test of golf.

But there were a few of them where I looked at you. I'm like, Pearl, am I going to hit this thing? I mean, it was literally that close to the tee. Well, again, normally you're back behind the ball two or three steps taking a practice swing. You couldn't take more than one full step. And even then, it had to be in the peripheral of your vision when you're taking the actual swing. And you weren't the only one. I certainly don't think because I had the shivers about it being my nightmare dream. And the other guys, it was the same thing.

One of the guys, Mark even mentioned, he's like, what's going on with his billboard back here? Exactly. So set us up what your dream nightmare scenario looks like here. Unfortunately, in my career, starting pre-high school golf tournaments, I have dreamt the worst dreams ever. The anxiety the night before tournaments is horrific for me.

I'm exhausted before the tournament starts. And so normally it's a dream. By the way, our good buddy out in Utah, Bob Kahl, has some similar dreams. And when I was out there with him a couple weeks ago, we looked it up. So we're not the only knuckleheads in the world that have these dreams. Hats off to our buddy, Bob. What a great guy. And I guess you guys had a terrific trip out in Salt Lake. Yeah, I played Glenwell and floated the Provo River for some trout. I mean, just a dream of a weekend. So Bob and I actually looked it up while he was cooking his aged steaks over dinner one night. And so we both had to laugh because we're not the only knuckleheads.

And then there's, of course, some psychiatrists who's interpreting the dreams and stuff like that, which I won't get into that because it even gets scarier. But anyway, the dream is John Pearl is next on the tee. I tee my ball up and there's a wall like six inches behind the ball. And I can't hit the shot. I'm looking around like, does anybody else see this wall? Is this fair?

Can I get a ruling? I'm sitting there having to toe nibble the ball away from the wall so I can hit my next shot. And it's just it's just terrible. I used to have the dream of putting it in the water.

Literally in my life, I've had about like two good dreams and I can't remember what they are because they're so buried by the bad dreams. I just don't have them. And it has to do, what a surprise, with control. Does that surprise you? No. No, sir, not. That doesn't surprise me at all.

So anyway, I saw that signage and that's what I thought about. But yeah, back to the qualifier. Can I interrupt you real quickly, though? Of course. You always interrupt me.

Go for it. Exactly. It's my show. Hey, I don't have any dreams like that. What does that say about me? That doesn't surprise me either. That doesn't surprise me either. You should have dreams like that. That's what my point is. You should have a horrific night's wet dream for crying out loud. Of all of the ridiculous things that I put myself through, Jason Whitey all over the place, I don't have any dreams.

Maybe it's the no brains, no headaches sort of thing. I don't know. Anyway, so let's get back to the qualifier.

Well, how did you feel, Jay? Here you haven't really played competitively other than for a couple bucks with your buddies. During the week in the summer. Not the same. It's not even close to being the same.

Exactly. So explain the difference. Because what's the difference? Let's say you play for a couple hundred bucks or you're going through the qualifier.

What is the difference? Well, first of all, the Mark McGuire interview that we had on the show about a month ago helped me so much. I was so prepared for the nervousness, for the anxiety, for really the adrenaline. So for me, there's something about going through this that just sets my body on fire. And I have all sorts of adrenaline that runs through my body and it manifests itself in a lot of ways.

Right. So most predominantly, I want to swing faster. Most predominantly, I want to swing faster. Not that you've ever noticed this, but my backswing gets a little snatchy and quick off the ball and my transition is a blur.

If you blink it, you'll miss. And it filters down into some pretty lousy ball hitting. Those two components alone are enough to screw up anybody's golf swing. So what's interesting is I hit it down the middle of the first hole. I didn't hit the drive very well, but hit it down the middle, hit a really nice iron shot. And then had the first real issue was on the putt. I looked at the putt. I had a sense for what the putt did. But when I got over the ball, everything changed because the feel of how fast this putt was going to be totally changed my read, meaning I needed to play a hell of a lot more break because I wasn't going to be able to hit it as hard as I wanted to and play as little break because that speed was ramming speed and it probably wouldn't have gone in the hole anyway. And so instead of backing off of the shot, which I should have done and regrouped and said, hey man, instead of playing a cup outside the right, you need to play a foot outside the right. I just hit the putt and tried to give it a little more. It's exactly a mental mistake no-no that you don't want to commit.

I mean it's just what you don't want to do. We made the decision, verbal decision, that we were not going to miss any shots before I played. And on the third shot, I did that.

I did that. Now I'm not saying I would have made the putt, but I don't care. I don't want that. That gets checked into a mental mistake box and not into a physical mistake box.

No fault of my stroke or anything like that. That was just a plan in the head that didn't go well. You know, talk about that for a second Jay. I think it's such a great tip for the audience of what we mean by don't miss a shot before you swing it. Yes, so we got to commit to, we're going to commit to several things. First of all, we're going to commit to a shot, we're going to commit to a target, and whatever that consists of, we're going to see that through from top to bottom without having any sort of interruption in the middle of that stuff. Meaning, if you get halfway through your swing and something, a thought of, holy smokes, this isn't enough club, runs through your head, you're going to back off and start over.

It's not about being right, it's about being committed. Because as you and I know, there's probably two or three clubs that I could hit for every single shot out there. That's a great point. There absolutely is.

There is for everybody. And it's that commitment of seeing it through. For the most part, wouldn't you say that the guys out there, that if they're not missing shots before they actually swing, they're probably going to have a pretty good day. There's not too many days when you go out there and you're truly committed. That's half the game anyway, is what I'm saying, competition, and maybe more. A hundred percent. I totally agree, Pearl.

A hundred percent. And I think that's what people are talking about when they say the biggest challenge for golf is between the ears. Because you wind up defeating yourself before you start, just with the way that you think or the approach that you have. But after that, we had a really kind of screwy situation happen on number two. It's a par five. I hit a nice drive, but it hung up, just barely hung up in the right rough. And I just misjudged the rough. I had a sense for what to do, but I thought I was going to be able to do something else. And we didn't pull it off and wound up making a bogey there.

I'm not really so convinced that that was a mental error, John. It's just kind of a recognition sort of thing because the rough was so wet and so wiry that the ball just didn't go anywhere. Well, that's one of the holes that played remarkably different than it normally plays. You know, you can miss that thing in the rough and still have a shot and be able to advance it to that second level. But as you said, when it was that wet, that ball got stuck on the side of the hill to that degree.

It was almost like a baseball bat swing. So that was tough. Yeah, I regret as caddying that, you know, I'm like you. I saw that you could get the back of the ball.

So why not go for it? But by the time you stood over it, I'm kind of thinking, oh, boy, this isn't. He can't really even go after this thing too much because then if he doesn't miss a little bit, it's not going to go anywhere either. So that's another one of those. Just that was bad, bad caddying on that hole for sure. So let me ask you this, bro. You don't caddy.

You don't get out like you used to do. You know, you there's an art to this stuff for you as well, to recognizing some of these things and to getting familiar with some comfortable with some of the stuff, isn't there? I definitely felt behind early on. I'd had a long weekend with the tournament myself, driven to see you the night before. And I was definitely behind the eight ball.

And again, a challenge for me, a big challenge for me. Caddy, because I know the course quite well, you've been good enough to have me out there with so many times. The course just played so much different.

The tees were at the tips more or less. And the golf course was so soft that it was it was uncomfortable. That second hole, you certainly birdied it more times than anything else. And we made it a gosh dang bogey there.

That hole alone, if you if you make your regular birdie, you're probably in the tournament. Right. So it's it's just that kind of stuff.

But so once you got to go and it was a lot of fun, though, because then all of a sudden you rattle off three birdies. Yeah. Pearl, we're going to hold the thought there. We're going to have to wrap up the on the range segment. I'm going to do the tip of the cap and then we're to pick this up on the front nine.

And absolutely, we'll go right from from where you were there. But I want to tip the cap today to all of our unsung heroes and all the unsung unsung people that are involved in the tournament that are involved. Like, I don't know if people know this, but do you know how many volunteers are working this week to make the Ascension Classic work? I don't. I certainly nine hundred nine hundred St. Louisans and from around this this area took took off work to grab their vacation time for no pay to make this thing work because they love the game.

They love be they love the charities, whatever it is, to be a part of it. And that and that Pearl, that is happening every single week on the PGA Tour, on the Champions Tour, on the Corn Fairy Tour. It's amazing. And so my hat is and this the tip of the cap is brought to you by the Dean team. Volkswagen of Kirkwood three one four nine six six zero three zero three.

My buddy Colin Burnt is a rock star over there. He's got my vehicle. He's given me a vehicle. Pearly's bought a vehicle from him.

My daughter Jo's got a vehicle from him. Folks, he's the man. If you need anything, reach out to Colin. And I am thanking all of those people. The volunteers, the people in the hospitality, the people that run the transportation, all the servers that are the food servers over there. The people that are working at the club, our staff at Norwood. Jason Marcinik, Smitty, Brandon Smith, Bobby Pavolones, Matt, Tyler, all those guys that are there work work in the range. They're doing all sorts of double duty, triple duty this week. And we couldn't do it without them. That's going to wrap up the On the Range segment.

Don't go anywhere. Pearly and I'll be back for more of golf with Jay Delsing on the front line. I want to officially welcome Darty Business Solutions as the new title sponsor of this show. So who are they? Well, first of all, they've been headquartered in St. Louis for the last 37 years. They're the number one largest I.T. consulting firm per the St. Louis Business Journal. They're also the number one largest software development company per the St. Louis Business Journal. They were voted number one top workplace in St. Louis for large companies.

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I'm your host Jay. I'm sitting down this morning, gosh, with Bob Gaus. Bobby, we have known each other for, man, over 40 years. At least.

And we used to play a little Gateway PGA Junior golf together before high school. So, you know, I'm 61 now, so it's definitely been maybe 45 years. That's how long it's been.

Well, first of all, it is crazy. And thanks for joining me this morning. Let's tell the folks a little bit about you have been the predominant player in our section for the last at least 25 years or so. You played in major championships.

You've won just about everything there is to win around the section. But just last week you qualified for the National Senior Club Pro. Yeah, you know, I've had I became a member of the PGA in 1995. I kind of waited a little too long to do that.

I wish I'd started there early. But since then, yeah, I've been very lucky. I've I mean, I think I've won the player of the year like 10 or 11 times. I have won a lot. You know, I played in seven majors, five PGA's. Thanks to the PGA of America, a couple of U.S. opens.

And it's been a quite a good run. And as you get a little older, you kind of wonder if you can ever keep it going. And then the other day I played at Old St. Albans and played Tavern Creek, which is it's not easy if you never play there. It's it's it's a challenging little golf course, very narrow. And, you know, I shot even part of the first day, a couple of bogeys, couple birdies that make it even. And second day played bogey free and that which was nice. And even in some wind with about six holes to go. But, you know, you just when you get a little older, you never know if you can keep that stuff going. But right now I'm hitting the ball good and I'm even putting better. That's what's even that's the best part of it. I'm putting good again. Yeah.

No rhyme or reason. You know, Bob, this game is it's just maddening because certain components of it come and they go. But the fact that you've had the longevity, the fact that you've been in this area and I know you do a ton of teaching. And I know you love the game and want to grow the game. Tell the folks a little bit about what your days are like, how they can hang out with you, get a lesson from you or even just talk to you and talk about the game. Well, I'm at I'm at family golf just about every day other than the days we play a few events.

You know, I'll start at seven thirty eight fifteen, give four or five lessons in the morning, take a couple hour break and do three or four in the afternoon. And, you know, it's hard to believe the PGA of America has tried just about everything to get people to play golf. And along comes this crazy pandemic, this covid. And all of a sudden here we are. We're I've never been so busy as I've been the last three and a half years.

And so it's every day, eight, nine lessons, five or six on the weekends. But I'm around there. If you ever need to see me, that's where I'm at. Old family golf every day. There's a bunch of us there.

We just we march along. It's pretty impressive what's going on right now with the golf business. It really is. And who the hell would have ever thought it took a global pandemic to get the boost on golf? But man, Adam Betts, our buddy, you got to take your hat off to him and what he's done at family golf.

Well, he came on at the right time. That's for sure. And I was done a great job. We did the whole building. We've put in some new putting greens.

He's done more than that. It's just a nice range. Everybody likes it there. The whole crew gets along.

You know, him and RJ are running the show, RJ Villafurado. And they do a fantastic job. So we're all lucky after being a Tower T for, gosh, twenty eight years. I mean, I've just I got lucky again. Now I'm in another great place and I couldn't be happier. Things are good there.

There's no doubt about it. Well, Bob, we so appreciate the fact that you've been in our section for so long. You've been growing the game. You've been playing the game. You've been teaching the game. We wish you all the very, very best of luck and and good luck and keep doing what you're doing. Yeah, I hope I can keep it going for a while. I mean, I stay in shape. I'm working out, you know, hopefully I can, you know, have a few more rounds and keep it going. Who knows how long it can last.

But I'm going to enjoy it while I can. I am proud to welcome the Gateway section of the PGA back to my show. Whether you're pulling into your favorite driving range, public golf course or country club, there is an excellent chance that the staff there is part of the over 300 men and women PGA professionals at over 100 facilities that make up our Gateway section. I grew up watching so many of these fine men and women getting to the golf course at dawn, leaving at dusk, spending their entire day running events, giving lessons and growing this great game. PGA Reach, Drive Chip and Putt, PGA Hope and the fantastic PGA Junior League are a few of the examples of the programs run by these same PGA professionals. Go to GatewayPGA.org to learn more or to find your next PGA professional for your next lesson, go to PGA.com. The Gateway PGA, growing the game we love. This is golf with Jay Delsingh. The Front 9 is presented by the Ascension Charity Classic, September 5th through the 11th at Norwood Hills Country Club.

For tickets, AscensionCharityClassic.com Hey, welcome back. Jay and John are here and this is Golf with Jay Delsingh. We are headed to the Front 9, brought to you by the Ascension Charity Classic.

It's here. Guys, sneak out there this Sunday. You're going to see some great golf, man. You're going to see some great golf. The golf course is perfect.

The weather looks like it's going to cooperate. Get out there and watch the best players play. Alright, so Pearl, we're talking about our qualifying round. Yeah, well the other thing I want to bring up about the golf. First of all, you rattled off three birdies, so that was pretty exciting.

You could have made a couple more, so you kind of got yourself back in the game and it was fun to see you kind of get pumped up and that kind of stuff. I want to mention one thing about, one of the guys we played with, Brian Cooper. Does he pound the ball or does he pound the ball? He pounds the ball.

He absolutely pounds the ball. And you played with him before. It's just interesting the quality of the guys that were in that qualifier, the quality of the guys that were in the tour, in the tournament. I checked out the roster for the tournament.

It is absolutely an old who's who. Ryder Coppers, U.S. Open winners, superstars. Hall of Famers, absolutely.

Across the board. It's almost surreal, especially in the Senior or the Champions Tour, how close you can get to these guys and you can still watch them play. You know, they're not bombing it quite what they used to and that kind of stuff, but man, they can still flat play. The qualifying score out there the day you went through it was a playoff, for crying out loud. It's three under.

And here's what I want you to know. That's good playing. Alan McLean, the guy that got through the playoff, went to number two. He birdied number one.

He went to number two and hit driver four iron on the green. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Wow. That's enough. Wow.

What does it say to you, John, when I feel like I should re-retire after? I mean, what in the hell is that? It's just amazing what's happened to the game. It's just the amount of talent is exciting.

It's exciting to watch that. There's still that intangible, that ability to play and get the ball around and really have all aspects of the game. And I'll tell you what, if you don't, you absolutely cannot compete. You absolutely cannot compete out there. You know, we talked about Brian Cooper, and man, did he have a chance to really shoot a good round.

And you know, you just saw it all kind of fall apart on him coming off his shoulder surgery. This is the first event, qualifying event he's tried to play in. I don't know how many years.

In one year, I think. Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I heard him say that he came off of something.

I didn't realize it was that recent. That certainly explains it because he was obviously rusty with his scoring. But the quality of some of the shots, the power, was just absolutely awesome. And it was fun. How is it, Jay, to see your old buddies out there kind of hanging out?

Some of the guys went through qualifying with you, other guys like Scotty Dunlop were just kind of practicing that kind of stuff. How is it to see those guys? Does it bring back good old memories?

What does it do here? It brings back memories. I don't know, John.

That's a loaded question. You know, we are a high road show. But some of the stuff, you know, I feel like the guys live in such a time warp sometimes that I have really shut it down five years ago, six years ago, seven years ago. And some of them look at me like, how have you been playing? Like, I don't play anymore, man. They're like, no, I mean, I know you still play.

And it's like there's just this void of, you know, what's really happening. I mean, you get to see Willie Wood, who's a great guy and been a longtime friend of ours since back, all these guys. John, we've been hanging around the same group of guys since college. Since college.

Pre-college. I mean, yeah. I mean, so you're getting to have lunch with Scotty Dunlop. Scotty's a good buddy, a good player.

It was fun. You know, talking to Esteban Toledo, who's really a character and a really good guy. But, you know, I said, Esteban, he lost in a playoff. I felt bad for the guy.

You know, he played well and shot 68, lost in a playoff. And I said to him, gosh, you know, I'm sorry it didn't go your way. Didn't you think the golf course played long? And he goes, no, not really. And I mean, Pearl, I know I'm as long as he is now.

He's never been. And I'm like, I think I hit five or six or seven four-iron Esteban. And he goes, no, not really.

It's not that long. He goes, I'm really straight. I go, I understand straight. I only missed three fairways. I was pretty damn straight too, but I still felt like it played long.

And he said, nope, it didn't play long. I just think that's that thing where you used to think 10-foot putts were three-footers. I think it's a certain way we kind of talk ourselves into things so that we can deal with it. The 10-foot putts look like 30-footers now. Yeah, it's kind of swapped on us a little bit.

Yeah, it's gone the wrong way. I don't know those guys. I haven't been around them as much as you have, but I have for as many years. And it's fun to see them. And there's a certain amount of respect that I give to them for kind of sticking with their passion for all these years. It can't be easy to be 60 years old, shooting three under, missing the cut, and then hopping back on the plane or going to the next location.

It wasn't easy when we were 16 missing cuts, and it sure as heck isn't easy when we're 60 or 62 missing cuts. So we played in a Pro-Am yesterday on the East course. My team won by two.

We shot 48. And hanging around, I ran into Tim Heron, lumpy, great guy. Got a good chuckle with him. Ran into Kirk Triplett, who's been a good buddy of ours for a long, long time. We played college golf with him. He went to the University of Nevada, Reno.

And we wound up playing together a lot. And saw Billy Andre and congratulated him on the most recent award. He got the Payne-Stewart Award.

Payne-Stewart Award, absolutely. That's a big deal. And yeah, some of the, you know, Pearl, it's kind of like the same movie. You know, it's like everybody's aged a little bit, but it's all the same characters in there. It's a little strange. Well, it's interesting. We've seen this and talked about this for many years. Distance or not.

Equipment or not. The same guys that got it done for the most part back when we were juniors, back when we were in high school, back when we were mini-tours, back when we were on tour, are the same guys getting it done now. There's just a certain belief or intangible or combination of skills that they do have that somehow they still, on average, still get it done more so than the other guys that don't, that they've always been beaten most of their lives. There's the exception, but not too many. It's interesting, Pearl, because I'd push back on that a little bit.

A little bit. Because where are guys like Paul Asinger, Brad Faxon, Ian Baker Finch? These were top-tier players when we were playing. It's really interesting to see how you age and see what happens to your game as you age.

What does that look like? Because, Pearl, if you were going to tell me that Brad Faxon would completely have lost his game and not be able to play on the Champions Tour, even though he's able to because he's made so much money with the way that he chips and putts, I'd have said, you're crazy. Why doesn't a guy like Paul Asinger play anymore? I don't know. Maybe it's lifestyle. Maybe it's the combination.

Maybe it's the aging. There's certainly exceptions. I agree with that. There's other things that we've talked about through the years. In general, you don't see a whole host of new names. The other thing about the tour that you've mentioned in the past, the Champions Tour, it's a small field.

This has been getting narrowed down. We had 150-plus guys kind of on tour, if you will. This is narrowed down to close to 50 or 60, isn't it? 78 players.

Yes, that's still a half. It's basically half the field it used to be. There's going to be attrition through injury, bodies shutting down on them, guys losing interest, haven't been out there long. Some of those guys made a lot of money. They don't need to chase this money either. Well, they're not and a lot of them aren't chasing this.

A lot of them will tell you they don't have anything else to do. Yeah, right. Which is pretty interesting. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, I don't know. The one thing that I forgot about, John, that was so evident was I forgot about what rain does to the scores on the PGA Tour and the PGA Tour Champions. There is no way. I totally forgot that it makes it play so much easier scoring-wise.

And if we don't get some sort of... It'll be interesting to see the scoring this week because that golf course playing soft is really susceptible because the greens aren't as fast and it's like throwing darts in there. Well, especially in the qualifier, you guys can pick the ball up in your own fairway.

So, that's the recipe for a whole bunch of birdies. Did you find that the course is speeding up a little bit? Because I don't think you're supposed to have rain the rest of the week, or are you? Well, I played the East course yesterday. And I won't be on the golf course anymore. But I am doing... So, I'm not really sure.

I'm not really sure what that's going to look like. But, you know, John, most people think that if you have to go out and play golf in the rain, that that's going to be a nuisance and that's going to screw everybody up. And it does the exact opposite. It lowers the scores. The balls stay in the fairway. There's less roll. Your drives don't roll into trouble.

They stay where they land. Same with your iron shots. And it slows the greens down enough for the guys to take a little bit more dead aim. And if they're in doubt, they just go ahead and drill it. Well, I just hope, obviously, we hope that it's going to be a great tournament.

The golf course is fantastic. And the more it can dry out and get faster, the more interesting it will be to watch the guys get challenged by the property. Yeah. So, today's the final round. And so, I think, you know, I think you can see the course speeding up a little bit each day. So, it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun and a fun finish. All right.

So, John, let's shift gears a little bit. I want to give a shout out to my friends. They are running the Birdies for Breathing Golf Tournament. It's over in Belleville, Illinois.

It is, it's called Birdies for Breathing. You can reach them at, let me find their number. I got it right here.

It is 314-607-7202. Talk to Lauren Ziegler. Lauren's a great girl.

She came into the Wild Crush last week. She and her husband are putting this together. And, guys, support this.

It's to try to end a really, really nasty disease called cystic fibrosis. And, Perline, I know a lot about this from losing a dear friend's wife a few years back. So, support them. Matt and Lauren Ziegler are great folks. And, their daughter is kind of the poster child for this event.

And, they're doing it with her in mind. And so, I just want to give those guys one more shout out before their event. It's September 19th. It's at St. Clair Country Club, which is a fun golf course to play. That's where the great Bob Golby, Mr.

Golf in St. Louis, he'd like to hang his hat and play over there. So, visit them. Check it out. And, try to support that event. John, do you have anything? Do you want to report anything about Liv and the Boston event?

Yeah, I do. I just saw some articles. You know, and it's happening. It's happening that the world rankings of the given players that are on the tour are slipping pretty dramatically.

Because, they don't qualify within their tour on multiple fronts to get world ranking points. So, I think the top guy is now down to like 23 or 24 in the world. Started with Dustin Johnson at 13. Went to 16.

Now, I believe it's 22 or 23. So, the battle continues. Norman's in there, you know, pitching to try to get, be part of the world ranking.

But, as we've mentioned before, there's three or four categories that the Liv tour does not fulfill relative to qualifying for world ranking points. So, it's another problem. It's all these things are converging to kind of come to a head. We also had some guys at the BMW be a little confrontational. And, in some ways, the media is trying to gin it up. In other ways, they seem to be respecting the privacy of the guys at least a little bit.

They certainly seem to like to stir up that there's some scuttle butt. But, we had an incident a little bit between Ian Poulter and Billy Horschel. Which is not a surprise, I suppose.

They're both kind of fiery guys. And, no fists were thrown or anything like that. And, I don't think the voices were raised too much.

Otherwise, the media would have picked it up. But, clearly, there's some frustration. So, again, I think this is, we've talked about this.

This is going to take more than months, probably years, to get to the bottom of this thing. I don't know how much time we want to spend on it. It's still, I think, at the end of the day, golf's going to come out ahead.

But, it's messy along the way. Well, we are going to wrap up the front nine. But, we're going to jump right back on this.

Because, I've read a couple articles about what John Rahm had to say. And, I thought it was pretty interesting. But, we'll get back to that as we get on the back nine. But, this wraps up the front nine. This is Golf with Jay Nelson. Boy, is this housing market tight right now.

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Welcome back. This is golf with Jay Delson. Pearly is with me. We are headed to the Back Nine.

It's brought to you by Pro-Am Golf. John, you went and visited CJ this week. What did you think? Yep. Fantastic.

Phenomenal. I am definitely buying a game. I have to tell you, I got a buddy that I play some golf with that's semi-new to the sport. And even he was giving me garbage about the clubs I have in my bag. I said, you know, I'm a little bit behind, and he started laughing.

He's one of the guys that's going to buy a game every chance he gets. But my buddy Jerry. But that was the final straw for me. So I went to see CJ.

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And if half of what comes true, they say with these new sticks, I'll be back in the game, baby, and I can't wait. Fantastic. All right. CJ is number 3146478051.

Pearl, I've got to stop this for a second. So that's CJ's number 3146478054. Great guy. Go get CJ. Go see CJ.

Go get fitted. All right, John. We were talking about LIV, and we were talking about some of the scuttlebutt and some of the skirmishes of verbal sparring and things that were happening there. And I read, and I got to tell you, the more I look in and watch John Rahm and the way he handles himself, I'm really impressed. You know, he's a super fiery guy, and I didn't know what to expect off the golf course with him.

But I'm really impressed with how solid a citizen he is and how thoughtful some of his responses are to a lot of the, you know, there's some hot potatoes that these guys are tossing at the players nowadays. And he said, he goes, look, I can understand, and he didn't name any names, but I can understand wanting Sergio to play in the field, and I can understand wanting Westwood, and I can understand wanting GMAC and some, and Poulter, some of the guys that have helped create the DP Tour and turn it into what it is. But he don't understand why a kid like Taylor Gooch gets to play. Here's a guy that's never played one event on that tour. He's never supported that tour. He gets to play now because there was a rule change, and again, he doesn't have anywhere else to play. And he's taking a spot, John, from one of the guys that supported that DP World Tour all year long, and that doesn't seem right. So now this, so this guy bumps one of the guys that's played 30 events on the DP World Tour up because Taylor Gooch wants to play in a bit.

Or Matt Jones. Well, you know, there's always that level where there's those problems, but to your, to your point, that's, that's where the angst is. And we've talked about this. Golfers kind of like the way things are. They don't want to see a whole lot of change. Don't move my cheese over here.

So you can see all of those arguments. The other challenge that I think that's out there, as you know, it was the hardest part of the whole playing golf for me was there is so much time you have on your hands when you're on the road playing golf. It's unbelievable where your mind can wander to and the things you can start thinking about you have some bad dreams. Well, beyond the dreams, it was just, I love being on the golf course. I'm just, you know, you can only practice so much. You can only do some of those things. There's just, there's so much downtime out there.

And then you get to certain guys that, you know, are right all the time and you get five or six guys that are right all the time and you get those guys together and there's going to be some fireworks. No, there's no question about that. So it's interesting. I mean, do you have a take on this?

Do you think these guys should be prohibited from playing the BMW? I honestly don't have a take on it. I don't want to get, personally, I don't know why. That stuff doesn't generally interest me. I know that it's going to be messy.

I want to look towards things like the President's Cup and talking about the guys that just went through Corn Fairy Tour and got their card and, you know, those kinds of things. The other messy stuff, it's normally with names that not too many people even know who Taylor Gooch is, for crying out loud. So, and unfortunately for him, the track record he's got going, they may never know.

So that's, that's my, maybe that's wrong attitude, but that's my attitude. All right, well, yeah, and I'm not really sure. I mean, none of this was all thought about when LIV came into existence and some of these rules and never thought that there'd be an application that would be this sort of divisive and convoluted and ying and yang. And so I don't really have much comment on it either. I, the only thing I just keep going back to the fact that LIV is splintering professional golf. And it's in a way that is not allowing the best players to play against one another as often. And I don't like some of the things that the PGA Tour has done in response. They've, they've, they've further created a case, a cast system on our tournament schedule.

And I, and it pisses me off. And we already had a cast system that I didn't like. And now they've furthered that and made it worse for some of our friends, like the John Deere classic, like the travelers up in Hartford. Those are never going to be elevated events. And where do, how, how do they now slide further down the, the relevant totem pole on the PGA Tour?

That sucks. Well, you know, when the argument was, well, LIV should have done it for players for the money. That's all the tour is doing now, like you're saying with the cast system is these top 20, top 30 players. They're getting, you know, pushed in a different direction.

The tour, the tournaments themselves are getting, you know, highlighted differently. So in essence, they're doing what they were trying to rail against. And supposedly they're doing it to keep the guys that save money.

Isn't the most important thing to keep them happy with money. So there's an awful lot of talking out of both mouths sides of your mouth here, uh, which is, which is more than aggravating. Here's the thing that, I mean, I'm a huge Jay Monahan fan as a, as a human being, I love the guy, but I got to tell you, I don't, I don't think he, I think he kicked the dog on this thing. Well, the thing that was Jay to your point that right there is there must be more to this LIV than I thought that I think that there is because he's making some, what I would consider some pretty drastic, semi desperate moves. So they must feel a major threat to this thing. Oh my gosh, a hundred percent.

They feel whether it's real or perceived. I don't know, John, but it doesn't matter because the reaction has made us look incredibly weak. Well, that's the point, but as a leader, if you're wrong, if, if it's, if it's not a big deal and you're making these moves, that's, that's, that's poor leadership. If you're reacting to anything, uh, you know, we, we don't need a hammer to, to kill the fly. We need a fly swatter, but apparently, and maybe their look is we want to squash this thing, as my father would say, nip it in the bud. So they might be doing, that might be the mindset too, is just say, we're not going to take any chance of this and gets any momentum and we're going to try to squash it. That might be the philosophy as well. It's hard to second guess, right?

Jay, cause we don't know probably 20% of what we need to need to know to be, have a real rational discussion here. Absolutely. But John, one of the things that I would have liked, first of all, the tour was complacent. There's no question in my mind, you know, there's no way that they shouldn't have seen this coming. Greg and Greg's been trying to do this for years. He's already tried to do it once with Rupert Murdoch.

He's been trying to do this for years. There's no way that we don't have enough resources to be on the front edge, cutting edge, leading edge of technology and creativity when it comes to the world, the world of golf. There's no reason. Second of all, we did not need to be such knee jerky reacting to this crap that LIV threw out there. Give them more relevance because of our reaction. Why the hell couldn't we tap the brakes?

You know, Cameron Smith, our number two ranked player in the world is going to go. He went at the improvements that the tour threw in there and I put improvements in air quotes. That didn't stop him from coming or going. And so why couldn't we have gathered ourselves and come up with what didn't seem like such an overreaction reaction to this stuff?

Why couldn't that have happened? I don't know. Again, I don't know that we know enough to even make those arguments. That's part of the frustration. I don't know that any of the public knows much of the stew that's happening and behind the scenes.

Right, right. But anyway, only time is going to tell. The court systems are going to play a huge part in this thing, which also sucks. But the hearing for these guys is not until the end of 2023, so sit tight because this thing is a long way from being over. Well, what's the next biggest stuff that we were going to want to probably talk about and not get caught up in the minutiae too much is how the majors are going to handle these players.

I suppose that's the next big thing. We know how the President's Cup is handling it because none of them are playing in the President's Cup. And that sucks too for that event.

And Pearl, I got to tell you, if this thing stays the way it is, one of my favorite all-time television events and one to see in person, the Ryder Cup, will forever be changed. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That's a big deal.

That is a spectacular event across the board. And yeah, you're right, Jay. Say that again. Say that again. I forget what I just said. What did I just say? You're right, Jay. Say that again. I don't think so. That's it.

Anyway, Pearl, the thing, man, it's going to have such a profound effect. Listen, we changed the Ryder Cup format back in the 70s to include all of Europe because the U.S. whipped the crap out of Great Britain and Ireland every single year. And it wasn't even a contest. And by the way, it wasn't interesting and nobody cared about it. That's one of the reasons why Jack, you know, Jack Nicklaus has a blase record in it because nobody cared.

It wasn't interesting. So we include all of Europe. So now Seve can play. Bernard Langer can play.

Jose Maria Othobel can play among several other great players. And it turned this thing into a hell of a fun competition where literally you are going to be flipping a coin to see who is going to win each year. I was really excited after watching Captain Stricker bring home the Ryder Cup trophy back at Whistling Straits last year because of the youth in the U.S. pipeline.

I was extremely excited about that. And now with the people that we've lost, it's almost like, John, you almost have to put like an asterisk in the record book because of it. Well, I think so. And then we've got this President's Cup coming up, so we have similar issues going on there. And that still is lopsided.

I think the record is 11-1-1 for the U.S. winning that. So all of a sudden they've got quite the cast of characters. Now, again, such wonderful, great players, especially the Asian contingency is really bolstering that. So who knows? We know the game of golf can be kind of crazy, but you definitely have a who's who versus who are we talking about?

It's a tough combination. And I'm looking forward to it because it's kind of the last big event, I think, for golf on TV, other than maybe some silly season stuff. But I'm still looking forward to it.

It's a great golf course. It's the end of September. So that's kind of something to look forward to as well.

And it's really the second version from what Ernie Els created for the rest of the world team to kind of bring them together differently instead of being segmented by the different nationalities. So there's that kind of intrigue. So there's stories inside the story, but it is tough to have some of the guys not be there.

I got a question for you. And then we're going to we're going to wrap this up the back nine up if Greg Norman and I don't think he would have taken this. But if Jay Monahan was sat down with Greg Norman and said, look, we're going to do this, we're going to run January to August, you get September to January, you get September through the end of December. And we're going to try to we're going to try to make this we're going to you know, the wraparound season is questionable.

Anyway, we're going to we're going to wrap up our thing at the Tour Championship and we're going to do your tour then. What what what what where could we have gone with that sort of thinking? Absolutely nowhere. Nowhere.

Nowhere. Jay's not going to give them the foothold and Greg wants it all. So I would say that that has a good point.

My two cents that has has zero starting potential. I don't think I think when the egos are involved, that's why we're where we are. There's not going to be communication. There's not going to be logic that everybody's fighting for territory. The tour is built.

This is establish the territory over many years. And it's a place that I think I do agree they're not going to give an inch and they probably shouldn't. And especially not to a guy like Greg Norman, who the old if you give him an inch, you'll take a mile.

If you give him an inch, you'll take the rest of the season. Well, that's going to wrap up the back nine. Folks, don't go anywhere. John and I'll be right back with the 19th hole golf with Jay Delson. You already know that Marcon is a great corporate citizen, as well as the largest distributor of GE appliance parts in North America. Well, folks, they're at it again this year at the Ascension Charity Classic September 6th through 12th at Norwood Hills Country Club on the 14th hole. Marcon is sponsoring the military and first responder viewing deck. This is a designated area for our military men and women, first responders, police and firefighters to watch the best champions tour players compete at Norwood Hills.

The best part is it is absolutely free. Contact me at Jay at jaydelsongolf.com or Connor Bradley at cbradleyatascensioncharityclassic.com for complete details. That's the Ascension Charity Classic and the Marcon military and first responder viewing area September 6th through 12th at Norwood Hills Country Club.

I'll see you at the golf course. Hey, this is Jay Delsong for SSM Health Physical Therapy. Our golf program has the same screening techniques and technology as the pros on the PGA Tour use. SSM Health Physical Therapy has the Titleist Performance Institute-trained physical therapist that can perform the TPI screening on you, as well as use a KVEST 3D motion capture system. Proper posture, alignment, etc.

can help you keep your game right down the middle. We have 80 locations in the St. Louis area. Call 800-518-1626 or visit them on the web at ssmphysicaltherapy.com. Your therapy, our passion. I've been looking for over three years for the perfect place to be the official 19th hole of the golf with Jay Delsong show and the search is over. Please welcome the loading dock to the show. What a great place it is.

It is located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers in beautiful Grafton, Illinois. Their patio is killer with seating for over 800 and every weekend the loading dock has the area's best live music. There's no reservations required. They have overnight lodging available and they also have an ice skating rink in the winter months. And don't forget about the super cool Riverside Flea Market, which happens the fourth weekend of each month from April through October.

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For more information on their live music schedule, the Riverside Flea Market, and more. The loading dock, the new official 19th hole of the golf with Jay Delsong show. Pearl, thanks for joining me. I look forward to watching the end of the Ascension and great to be with you Jay. Same, same and great golf in the loo.

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