Brooks Koepka Joins LIV Tour

This is the best of the Adam Gold Show Podcast brought to you by Coach Pete at Capital Financial Advisory Group.

Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. How much thought? Like I legitimately don't get it. I'm tired of the conversations and tired of all this stuff. We're here to play and you're talking about some event that happened last week. Well, there's events going to be going on there for the next foreseeable future. I know, but you can't drive a car looking in the rearview mirror, can you? Wouldn't have thought so.

This is the Adam Gold Show. I mean, if you're going backwards, you can. Sure. Right? If you're going in reverse, you can drive looking in the rearview mirror. You should at least check every once in a while. It's not the best way of doing it. What if you have a backup cam, though, Adam? Backup cams are good. They're a little distorted, though. Yeah, I actually don't have one. I don't have a backup cam either, but I mean, I've used them before.

They're just a little distorted. I prefer to stick my head out the window and look back if I'm going in reverse. Okay.

That's what I prefer. Hi, everyone. It's the Adam Gold Show. I am him. Dennis Cox is here. Thanks to Hayes Permar for not only filling in yesterday, he'll be here tomorrow as well, but also for adding to the coffers apparently. Yeah. He made you some units. Last time Hayes was here for an extended period, he did well initially. Yeah.

And then fell off the face of the earth. So we're kind of stopping that for a day now, and he'll get back on tomorrow. And then I'm back for the balance of the week.

We have just personal matters to deal with. I hope everybody's having a good day. Dennis Cox, how are you? How did your lacrosse wagers and your MMA or UFC, whatever they are... Well, my UFC fight actually didn't happen. It got canceled the day of. What happened? So the opponent for Donald Cerrone... Did Juan Soto fight?

Yes. Sorry, that's a joke from last week. He bet on Soto how many days, two days in a row, and he didn't play. No, that happened. But Joe Lozon, who was supposed to be the opponent for Donald Cerrone, actually had a freak knee thing happen in the morning. So he wasn't able to compete that night. Whatever.

So there's no fight. No, apparently his knee... Chicken. Yeah, you're going to tell him that?

Chicken. You're going to tell him that? Yeah, he was locked up. So he's had dealt with meniscus issues in the past. So his knee locked up and he couldn't get it unlocked.

So he was unable to fight. But I actually, I hit on Will Zalatoris on my future, him top 10 at plus 330. Will Manny, over four and a half points. He had seven. That was a plus 140. So yeah, actually. And then Colorado Mammoth won, just like I said, won the championship. It was a Mammoth win. Exactly.

One by two. Plus 140 on that. I was plus 420 coming out of the weekend. Very good. And I was a plus again last night. Very good.

Shipping away. I think I... Did you adjust my total from on Friday? I did not. Based on, or yesterday, based on my minus 100 from over the weekend? I did not. All right.

So I'll have to take another 100 off. But Hayes did very well yesterday, so I appreciate that. Polite golf clap. Also, I appreciate him calling me and Will Brinson golf dorks. I mean, I'm not arguing against that. Yeah.

But to me, that entire segment was basically, how can I call gold and Brinson golf dorks? Yeah. Right. Which is fine. I got no problem with it. I've never had a problem with that. Because honestly, I mean, it's kind of true. It's kind of true. Although, I do dispute this with Hayes, and we are gonna start with golf, because we have...

There's actually even more news than when I sat down to prepare for this program. But I disagree with Hayes in this regard. I actually don't spend a ton of time, because I don't have it, watching the regular tour events.

I do. I will watch if it fits in to what I'm doing, and if a player that I desperately want to see win, insert Rory McIlroy here, I watched the Canadian Open, if he is in contention to win. Basically, my golf watching is centered around the majors, like Hayes pointed out. And I don't watch a ton of the garden variety events. I watch some more than others. But again, it just happens that it has to fit into my schedule.

With all of that said, I accept golf dorkdom, as I'm sure Will Brinson would as well. We got a lot of things to do. We're gonna talk about the Panthers with Joe Person next hour, a little NBA draft preview, Bob Herrig at the bottom of the hour to talk about the latest on live golf, and that is where we will start. Before we get into the latest defection, or defections, because there have been two in the last couple of days, this from Golf Digest, PGA Tour had a player's meeting with the commissioner today. They are in Cromwell, Connecticut for the Travelers, which is traditionally the week after the US Open, they didn't have to go very far. They went from outside of Boston to outside of Hartford. So you know, I'm sure nobody flew, I'm sure they took a bus or a pack mule or something.

Anyway, so everybody just moved west about 150 miles. And what came out of this meeting was essentially starting with next year's PGA Tour season. The fall portion of the schedule will include, see if you get the similarities here, Dennis, eight limited field, no cut events, ha with $20 million each.

Yes, that is fantastic. So those outside of the top 50 will compete in an alternate series of tournaments where they will fight to keep their cards and earn better status for the following season. This would return to the tour, this would coincide with the tour returning to a calendar year schedule right now. The following season begins a couple of weeks after the tour championship, or the week after the tour championship, which is in Atlanta.

And we start the 22-23 season, like in early September, when we're kind of golfed out. What? So look, the PGA Tour was always going to react, they had talked about doing team events, so this is a good move for the PGA Tour. Is it shotgun start?

You know what? They should do that just to mock Liv. Just to mock Liv, the first event should be a shotgun start. Can we buy mulligans? And they should, and they should have like a modified scramble.

Do a Texas scramble, everybody play the best drive. They should also have stupid team names, like the Stingers and the High Flyers and the Nibleks. And I don't know, do they have masheys? I'm not sure. That's an old golf club back from the 20s. Taking on the spoons.

Your great-grandparents. The spoon's very good. Very nice.

Thank you. The spoon was I think a five iron. Maybe. I think it was a five iron.

Anyway. So that's what the PGA Tour players heard from Commissioner Jay Monahan today. Now back to the real news of the day, since that has not become official. We knew there would be more defections from the PGA Tour.

We knew there would be some big names. Numbers 19 and 20 in the current official world golf rankings made their move to Liv Golf. Abraham Anser yesterday from Mexico, number 20 in the world. A very good player who has won once on the PGA Tour. I think he's been out probably for four or five years. He won a world golf championship event last year.

He went yesterday and Brooks Koepka went today. And there will be more. And there will be more. My guess is if not this week, next week. The next event is next week in Portland, Oregon. So my guess is if we don't hear something the balance of this week, then we will hear something over the weekend or Monday.

And who knows who's going to be the next. In February, with all the pretend loyalty of the Dustin Johnsons and Bryson DeChambeaus of the world, Brooks Koepka said that the Saudis could keep doubling the money. Some guys will sell out. Those are his words. I retweeted the story.

If you go to my timeline at a gold fan, I retweeted the story. It just my retweet simply said Brooks was right because he said some guys will sell out. He said it with disdain then.

And he was right. Of course, he was the guy that sold out last week before the U.S. Open at his press conference. When you heard this in the open, Koepka acted as though it wasn't an option. Why have you decided to stay on the PGA Tour?

And is that a permanent decision? I mean, there's been no other option to this point. So where else are you going to go live? I mean, as of last week, that's it. I wasn't playing last week. So I'm here. I'm here at the U.S. Open. I'm ready to play U.S. Open. So and I think I think it kind of sucks to you are throwing this black cloud over the U.S. Open.

And I mean, it's one of my favorite events and I don't know why you guys keep doing that. But the more legs you give it, the more you keep talking about. Is it a figure which you would swap to yours?

Does that exist? As simple as that? I haven't given it that much. I mean, I haven't given it that much thought. I mean, I was I don't understand. I'm trying to focus on. Why have you decided to stay on the PGA Tour?

And is that permanent decision? All right, like I said, you are throwing a black cloud on the U.S. Open. I think that sucks. I actually do feel bad blaming the media because it's I mean, it's a situation I just wanted to get that in. Blaming the media is always a good play, right? Blaming the media is always a good idea.

Yes, absolutely. Honestly, our fault. Here's where it is a good play is because there are enough people in the general public who also have disdain for the media and think, well, you guys weren't good enough to play. Therefore, I don't know that we're not allowed to discuss it.

But so there's enough people out there who have disdain for the media that like to see the media get their comeuppance. But those are all valid questions, just like the questions asked of Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter in London a couple of weeks ago. You know, if Vladimir Putin put on a golf tournament, would you go play with you a play?

Would you have gone to play in apartheid South Africa? And the imposter just stared at him like, I don't I don't have to answer that question, which is true. You don't have to answer.

Nobody is making you answer. But not answering it or pushing it off as a media problem, as Koepke was doing, really says more about you. And when I saw that interview, I watched it live. When I saw that, actually, I didn't I didn't watch a live watch to watch the entirety of it on tape. The first thing that's that jumped out to me was, oh, he's going he's he's already he's probably already signed. Because to me, it was obvious.

I texted a friend of mine who used to play the tour. And I said Brooks is gone. And he his initial reaction was, that's not the impression I got.

I said, listen to it again. And he texted me back not that long after he goes, oh, yeah, I think you're probably right. Yeah. I think you're probably right. Look, the next one, we don't know who it's gonna be. Colin Morikawa came out very strongly against it today. But honestly, okay, you never know.

You just you just never know. Like there are certain people I think definitely will not go. I'm, I mean, I'm as strong as strongly as I could possibly believe Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm aren't going right. Those three guys are definitely not going.

Everybody else. I've heard enough, enough of their non answers to the questions to to say, yeah, I mean, they could go, including Morikawa, including Morikawa, not that long ago. So what he said today certainly seems very solid behind the PGA Tour. And maybe he said that after meeting with the commissioner of the PGA Tour.

I don't know. Adam Gold in studio with my man Coach Pete DeRuta with the Capital Financial Advisory Group. We are talking retirement. Coach, let's say I have more than a million dollar balance in my 401k. Congratulations.

Thank you very much. How can that actually come back and bite me? Well, because and this is the thing that we it's a mirage.

You see mirages I've written in the desert before you see what's water ahead, but it's not there. Well, your financial mirage is thinking that that total balance in your 401k or your IRA is yours. We have two people that want to get a hold of it, two uncles, Uncle North Carolina and Uncle Sam. Right. Both of them are going to do some damage to that balance, depending on what kind of other income you have. You could lose 40 percent of your value.

So if you're looking at a million dollar IRA, maybe it's only worth six hundred thousand to you. So how do we get around this? Well, you don't get around it because you end up in jail if you try to do that. But you can do tax planning to minimize the effect of taxation into the future. The tax train is coming. Adam, we need to make sure to minimize the effect of the derailment of our financial accounts. And for the next 10 people, we'll do it at no cost or obligation, put together your very own tax and retirement plan, eight hundred six six one seventy three eighty three or text Adam to two one zero zero zero for Coach Pete DeRuta.

I'm going to guess at the next ones. Jason Kokrak, who has a sponsorship deal with Saudi Gulf. Who? Yeah, exactly. Adam Scott, former major champion, former players champion, one of the best players in the world for a time. But it's really on the downside of his career.

I think those will be the two next ones. But there will be others and there will be big names. I wrote this for WRL sports fan dot com. And for those of you who think I am going to go hard on the Saudis, think again.

The Saudi royal family isn't doing anything they haven't been doing with Formula One or the English Premier League. This is not like it's about that, but this isn't about that, OK? We are here because Greg Norman sees an opportunity to take a sledgehammer to the PGA Tour.

That's why we're here. This is one hundred percent about revenge. And I will even tell you that his mindset is justified.

I wrote about it today. Norman started this exact tour. He wanted to start this exact tour in nineteen ninety four. He had the whole thing planned out.

Eight events outside, an outsider to broadcast the event, unlike what has no broadcast possibility right now. But he had Fox on the on the hook for one hundred and twelve million dollar broadcast rights over a period of time. They were going to play three million dollar events, smaller field, no cut, best players in the world. Norman had it done. And the commissioner of the PGA Tour at the time, Tim Fincham, threw a fit. He threatened to ban all the players who played in this in this series.

And then when he threatened the ban, the players backed off. Norman killed the deal. Remember, Norman at the time in nineteen ninety four was the number one player in golf. He was the number one player on the PGA Tour. He had just won the Open Championship the previous year.

Right. I think he I think in ninety four he also won the players championship like he was Tiger Woods before Tiger Woods. And Norman was humiliated by Tim Fincham and he never forgot it, ever forgot it.

So Norman has been waiting for an opportunity. He sees the Saudis who have bottomless piles of money as an opportunity to finally get his revenge on the PGA Tour. And this is the mistake that people make when they think, well, the PGA Tour should work with the Saudis.

It ain't about working with the Saudis. The PGA Tour can try to work with Greg Norman all they want. The tour, the live golf series is not about an additive.

I talked about this. It's not about opportunity. It's not about being an additive.

It's not about growing the game. It's about damaging the PGA Tour. This is what Norman wants to do. He has been waiting to do it and he's going to do it if he is allowed. And everybody within the tour knows it.

We sit here as members of the media thinking that, well, they're just trying to carve out their little piece of no, they're not. The series is going to be 14 events in two years. That's not an additive.

That is a tour that it's that is its own entity. No other sports league would allow it. The NFL didn't allow the AFL after a time.

They eventually merged because they saw an opportunity to get bigger and better. I don't think the PGA Tour sees live as something they want to incorporate within their own umbrella. No other league would do this. So stop thinking that the PGA Tour is doing something that I can't believe they're doing this. These guys are not really independent contractors. They draw pensions from the PGA Tour. They get benefits from the PGA Tour. They agreed to the rules of the PGA Tour. Now maybe those rules will prove to be legal in a court of law, but the tour feels just as strongly as live does that the tour can enforce their rules of engagement. Look, nobody is telling the Dustin Johnson that he cannot play professional golf. Nobody is restricting him from earning a living. He's proving that by playing overseas or by agreeing to this series. The PGA Tour is simply defending their league, if you will. So again, I wrote about this is all about a revenge play from Greg Norman, and he believes that there are enough players who have a price that can be bought.

Notice I have not talked about the Saudis and what they're about, because this issue, while it does matter to a lot of people, isn't really about that. There's blood money everywhere in sports, everywhere. There's blood money everywhere in life. We get, I mean, I'm tired of the what abouts.

I'm tired of the false equivalencies. We hear all of the talk, what about the NBA in China? Yeah, everybody makes business decisions. The Chinese have a 1.4 billion person marketplace. That's why about 350 US companies do extensive business in China.

That's why, you know, manufacturers get stuff made in China or Vietnam or the Philippines or wherever, because they can get it made cheaper. It's all, these are all business deals. Taking Saudi money is not a business deal. It just isn't.

If you can't see the difference, I'm not going to explain it. And to me, it's not even part of this issue. It's part of it, but it's not what we're talking about.

This is about players who have decided that the PGA Tour, for whatever reason, doesn't fulfill their needs or simply wants to cash in at enormous sums of money, monies that the PGA Tour cannot even dream about competing with, can't, no chance. And that's their prerogative. They have every right to do that. And if they don't care where the money comes from, that's fine.

That's fine. None of it's being, I mean, Norman's not being honest. The players are not being honest.

That's just where we are at this stage. Can we get a PGA versus Live Tour video game? Like back in the day, N64, we used to have a WCW versus NWL video game. Can we get a Live Tour versus PGA Tour video game out there? That would be nice.

Actually, it would be kind of cool if Live Tour does stick around for years. Do a Live versus PGA Tour match. How about Norman trying to think who would be the equivalent. They got all the muscle over there. They got DJ, they got Koepka, they got DeChambeau. I'm thinking about Norman. Norman versus Monahan in the Octagon. Yes.

Would you like that? Last man standing. Yeah, Norman would kick Monahan's rear end. Norman's still yoked, man. I'm sure he is. He is nearly 70 years old and he's still in amazing shape.

I'll never be in that good of shape ever. But let's just understand for what it is. And it's simply a Norman revenge play.

That's all it is. And if you believe, first of all, there is zero economic sanity behind what Live is doing. It's not a business model. They're not trying. They have no hope of turning a profit. They have no sponsors and no TV deal. There's no chance for them to turn a profit. Zero. And they gave away more than half of their tickets to an event that capped attendance at 10,000 people a day. They're not even selling tickets. That's fine.

They're putting on a golf tournament. It is what it is. And if you're interested, that's fine.

You can go find it online. I mean, I watched a little of it two weeks ago. It just looked like a golf tournament to me. It looked like any other golf tournament with moderate attendance.

That's it. That's what it looked like. It looked like anything else I would watch on the European tour.

I'm not knocking it. That's just what it was. It didn't have the excitement of the Canadian Open. Didn't have the crowds of that. Didn't have the excitement of the US Open, which by the way, I will just say that Matthew Fitzpatrick, you got a new fan. Matthew Fitzpatrick was awesome.

I've never been a Fitzpatrick fan. But he hit two of the greatest shots I've seen in a US Open. The irony hit from wide right of the 15th fairway to get on the green and ultimately make par. And then the shot from the bunker on the final hole was just... I can't think of another shot from a fairway bunker on the final hole of a major where you needed to make par that was any better than that. I can't.

Can't think of it. He was amazing. So good for Matthew Fitzpatrick. June 19th, 2006. But it all started May 6th, 1997 with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina.

It's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The Canes Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina, listen now, find Canes 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcast. Bob Herrig, Sports Illustrated, author of the book Tiger and Phil Golf's Most Fascinating Rivalry. Mr. Herrig, you've been all over the place.

You were in London or just south of London, I guess, for the initial live event. Then you came back and covered the US Open. Have you gotten a nap in? Actually I have not.

No. I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about that.

It's never ending here. I was going to start with Brooks Koepka, but it does seem like there might be some other things to get to first, especially that meeting between the commissioner and the players where according to, I think it was Golf Digest, said that there's going to be a fall series that sounds a lot like Liv to me, albeit this will be on television. What can you tell us, and obviously this is the best thing that Monahan could have done to counteract what Liv has done? It's actually been in the works. This has been discussed before. They had a meeting in February where some of the details came out about... The main thing is that the fall events won't count towards the new season, and there'll be some big money fall events. There'll be some other events for the guys who are not considered the elite for them for an opportunity to possibly improve their standing in the FedEx standings to maybe move up spots. I'm not exactly sure how that would work because if you're an exempt player, you're an exempt player. It doesn't really matter all that much.

If you're 100th or 125th, you're basically fully exempt at regular events. I'm not sure exactly what that entails, but they would have some no-cut big money events with big purses, which is great. It's been discussed. I'm not sure why they didn't try to get this out sooner.

It's sort of, I think, trying to put a Band-Aid on an axe wound. It's a good idea. It might have been a better idea had they had this all sewn up a couple of years ago and incorporated a couple of these big events into the schedule because what's being talked about now is just way, way beyond what anybody can compete with.

It would have never gotten there if everybody had stayed on board with this. So listen, from a PGA Tour standpoint, it makes a lot of sense to get back to a January to September schedule, a real regular season schedule that's going to have far more meaning if it's shorter and that we can rally behind the idea of an opening day and an ending day. And then to have some big money events in the fall, if guys want to play them, they can cash in, they can get the guaranteed money that has been missing in golf and is really the reason this whole thing started, the reason why we were at this point. And then also if there's the opportunity for the other guys to play, guys still want to play. And just because the public might not want there to be golf all the time, that doesn't mean that golfers don't want to play, which is why the tour has always given the opportunity. They always have felt like, look, if they're going to play tournaments anyway, we might as well be the ones running them.

And that made a lot of sense in some ways. But I just think that it got away from them when we're ending the Tour Championship on the Sunday of Labor Day, and two weeks later, we're starting the new season. And the whole reason they ended early was to avoid football, the NFL and college football. And then two weeks later, you play your first seven or eight or nine events right up against football. Again, I mean, that's the time for the alternative events. That would have been great time for 54 whole events Tuesday to Thursday or Wednesday to Friday, get it over with, do something different, you know that that that that people will tune into play overseas so we can watch it at night. You know, anything to get away from the Saturday, Sunday golf tournaments in the fall that are just going to get dwarfed by the other sports. Bob Herrick is joining us from Sports Illustrated, it does bring me back to why Monahan didn't make this plane beforehand. Because if he makes this obvious to Mickelson to Dustin Johnson, if they've been working on this for years, why keep it a secret when this is the reason why these guys are leaving? Or are there or did Norman come to these guys earlier and say, hey, look, I've got two hundred million dollars right now.

I will I will get it wired into your account. Don't listen to Tim Fincham. They're not interested in I mean, or was it just a Norman power play? Well, listen, my understanding of all this is the live part of this really didn't come into play until late last year. So if you go by that, if you go by late twenty twenty one, the PGA Tour had had plenty of time. This idea of a rival league has been out there, the golf league has been out there for years.

They started this up like in 2014, 15. Their whole premise was that the star players are not getting compensated for their worth. They show up to a tournament and they bring the value, but they're not guaranteed anything.

And that's where I think the tour missed out. They didn't need to give these guys hundred million dollar deals. But if they would have just put in place a program that sprinkled around some guaranteed money from week to week.

At the various tour events and come up with maybe just a series like they're talking about three, four, five big money, no cut events where you're guaranteed something for showing up. But you could win four million if you win it, you know, like it's happening now. Yes, they would have stayed.

They would have they would have been fine because it would have been why would you want to leave the PGA Tour still can play the majors, still could play for the FedEx money, still could do all those things. But instead, they just kind of dragged their feet and they they thought that just increasing the prize money, which they've done and they've done a great job of they've increased the FedEx Cup. I mean, the winner of that thing is going to get 18 million this year. You know, there's like a seventy five million dollar pot.

But the problem is you have to earn it, you know, and I mean, well, of course, you will why shouldn't we all earn it? Yes, but I mean, in entertainment and in sports, people are compensated for their value based on what they are going to bring, not necessarily how they're going to perform. You know, like Steph Curry's getting paid fifty two, fifty three million dollars.

He delivered an NBA title this year. But if they had missed the playoffs, he would still gotten the same money. It's based on the expectation that he's going to put people in the seats, you can help sell luxury suites, he's going to bring TV ratings. And there's, you know, a handful of 10, 12, 15 guys on the PGA Tour that sort of bring that cachet. And yet on Thursday morning, they tee off and if they don't beat everybody else, they don't get all the money. So this has been out there for a while and this is where I think they were slow to adapt. And now I, I, I, you have to acknowledge that when you're a nonprofit, as they are, there are some issues with just which is guaranteed money. I mean, their model is such that it's not as easy as perhaps I'm making it out. So I grant them that. But still, you know, they have a lot of smart people on board to try to figure this stuff out. And I just think they let it get too far gone.

And now live. They have overpaid, you know, to when the thing blew up on them in February. They were, you know, all these guys had retreated. Now, now Liv had to turn around and just throw these, you know, ungodly sums at them to get them to come on board to do this.

And now it's sort of out of whack. I mean, the tour can't compete with that, but what does Liv care? I mean, the, the, the public investment fund is worth $620 billion. I mean, it doesn't really matter. It's, it's, it's play money.

It doesn't. And you know, the tour can enhance its product. And I think that's really smart. I think the ones who might've been wavering, that might be enough for them. It's going to improve their product. You know, maybe, maybe some of these guys, you know, after a year of this, have a change of heart and try to go back, you know, and and, you know, whatever, that's fine. But for right now, it's incredibly disruptive. And you know, the tour, I don't know what more they could do. Like people are like, well, they have to take firmer action. What can they do?

You can't really work with them. If you allow them to play PJ tour events, now you've opened up a crack to where they can, they can do both. And if you do both, then why wouldn't more guys go?

Here is, wait, I'm going to have to let you go here in a second. Bob Herrick from Sports Illustrated is joining us. I actually think that Jay Monahan, you know, without knowing that they were working on this fall series, big money, smaller event deal and had had this sort of in the works for a long time, I actually think he did the right thing by instituting the band, suspending the players and protecting his tour, because I don't believe that they had another play. They had to deny the other players their right to official world golf rankings points, which I assumed the world, the DP world tour, the old European tour would ultimately do the same. They haven't for this week, but my guess is they probably would have fallen in line behind the PGA tour. And there really wasn't any other place for these guys to earn world golf rankings points. And unlike DJ and Brooks Koepke, that was really there in to the major championships through the official world golf rankings. But now that I know that this thing has been in the works, I'm just at a loss for why any of it was, why any of it happened, why, why he didn't make it clear to the players that I don't know, this just seems like it was completely mismanaged. Well, they, they, you know, this was discussed in a player's meeting in February, so they've known about this and it's been out there like the players know, like it's, it's more just coming out now and, and the other thing that they did, they thought was a way to combat it was the PIP that the, uh, the player impact program, which was 40 million last year, it's going to be 50 million this year. And I think it was what 10 players, yeah, 10 players got to share in that money, 8 million went to tiger and six to fill.

Well, I mean, you know, tiger deserves it probably. And so did Phil, but I mean, that was another very nebulous thing. You don't really know who's getting it. I mean, like of the four of the 10 guys have gone like, uh, Bryson, uh, I think Dustin Phil and, uh, and, and kept that we're all in on that, you know, and now they're, they're gone anyway.

That wasn't, that wasn't the answer. And look, they had 50, they have 50 million for that. Plus they do this $10 million bonus thing for this Comcast business thing that rewards the guys who are in the top 10 FedEx going, going into the, going into the last, uh, after the last event. Well, it doesn't attract anybody to the Windham event. They take it or leave it.

So it's like, that wasn't really doing anything. So there's 60 million right there. If they could come up with 60 million, why not another 60 million somehow and disperse $5 million among 25 regular tour events that are the big ones, 5 million a piece to just, you know, used to recruit. That's what you and I talked about this last time, I believe, uh, appearance fees should have been part of it.

Bob Herrick from sports illustrated, uh, author of the book, tiger and Phil, uh, golf's most interest, fascinating rivalry. Uh, I thank you very much for doing this. I know it's busy. You need rest and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Take care. This is the Adam gold show June 19th, 2006, but it all started May 6th, 1997 with the announcement that the Hartford whalers were coming to North Carolina.

It's a story of transition of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The canes quarter. Look at the 25th anniversary of the move presented by the aluminum company of North Carolina. Listen now find James 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcasts.