How do PGA Tour events feel about the 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. So basically anything about the doors? I don't know. I think Jim Morrison can carry a tune.

Oh yeah, he's great. But you generally don't have to do it yourself. I don't have the Jim Morrison deep voice, all that. But you can basically just scream Roadhouse Blues.

I would also say that, surprisingly enough, Superstition by Stevie Wonder, very similar. But there, this is sort of the top of my playlist. So what are we doing karaoke? I don't know. Next time we're somewhere where I don't have to go home and we're available to do karaoke. ACC football kickoff.

Maybe in Charlotte in July. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid to do it. Let's go. I'm just not.

I'm all about it. Hayes Permore is going to be in studio with us. He paid me a very good compliment. I was out the day that Mick Mixon came on for the last time. And I joined the show and sang to Mick. I know, I was here. Oh, you were here for that? That's right.

And I heard him talking about how that I could carry a tune. It was absolute dumb luck, but it was quite fortunate on my part. Anyway, sort of breaking news today in that the PGA Tour finally answered, came out and doled out punishment for the now 17 former tour players that have chosen to take their talents to the live golf series. They suspended those players from from the PGA Tour and they did not put a length of time on it. They didn't call it a banishment.

They called it a suspension. I don't know how this is going to work, right? I don't know.

We just we just know that lawyers are going to be involved. There are and I don't believe that people have. I'm not sure the tour is taking it seriously enough. To be perfectly honest, I'm just not sure the tour is taking it seriously enough. Because they have taken going all the way back to the players championship, hell going all the way back to before the players when the news really started to hit home during the the LA Open Tigers tournament called the Genesis Invitational now. That's when Phil Mickelson made his statements. That's when a lot of the players came out and pledged their allegiance to the PGA Tour. Hey, that's when Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau, who's going to play in the next event, pledged their allegiance to the PGA Tour. Bryson saying as long as the PGA Tour is where the best players in the world play, that's where I'll be.

Well, first part of that is still true. Best players in the world are at the on the PGA Tour. Except Bryson won't be. Whatever.

We'll get to some of the comments of the players in a little bit. But my fear is that the PGA Tour is ultimately going to lose this battle because they cannot compete financially with Liv. No chance. No chance to compete financially.

Think about this. Dustin Johnson in his entire career in terms of PGA Tour winnings. This has nothing to do with the FedEx Cup. Seventy four million dollars. He's competed on the tour for how many years?

He's a 24 time winner. Seventy four million dollars total on the PGA Tour. They cut him a check for.

We'll split the difference. It's between one hundred and one hundred and fifty million. They cut him a check for one hundred and twenty five million just to show up. If he wins this week, he makes four minimum because there's team money as well. If he finishes dead last, he gets one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

PGA Tour can't compete with it. The PGA Tour's total purse for the entire season is something in the neighborhood of four hundred million. They're going to pay. They're going to play for.

The purses are two fifty five on Liv. But that has nothing to do with the upfront money. The guaranteed cash just for showing up. PGA Tour can't compete with it. And if enough of the best players go. The PGA Tour will lose. They'll have to rework sponsorship deals.

They'll have to rework television deals. I don't know that the tour ever took it seriously enough. And now they are, in my opinion, completely beholden to the majors. Do you think that the PGA Tour was just right in the fact that, well, we're the PGA Tour. They're just. Yes. This is the place to play. Like, yes.

Basically going off their name. Yes, I do. I do. I think that.

They have been. Feeling a sense of arrogance. Yeah.

Completely arrogant. This has nothing to do. Well, I shouldn't say it has nothing to do.

It has something to do with what the Saudi royal family wants in terms of scrubbing their image. It has something to do with that. But I don't believe that they took Greg Norman seriously enough.

Because Greg Norman. I believe that he has convinced. The royal family.

You want to do this? Here's how we do it. We blow them away financially. Because that's what they're doing. Phil Mickelson isn't worth $200 million to anybody.

But that's what he got. Interesting. Interesting stuff. Adam Gold in studio with my man coach Pete DeRuder 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 a 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 ahold of it. Two uncles.

Uncle North Carolina and Uncle Sam. 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% of your value.

So if you're looking at a million dollar IRA, maybe it's only worth $600,000 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.

We'll put together your very own tax and retirement plan. 800-661-7383 or text ADAM to 21000 for coach Pete DeRuta. For a long time, Mark Brazel was the tournament director of the Wyndham Championship. He is now the CEO of Piedmont Triad Charitable Foundation, who basically oversees the operations of the Wyndham Championship.

And I thought, because Liv has happened, now we've had balls in the air for about three and a half hours in England, I was wondering what the impact is on tournaments like Wyndham, which we care about. So let's talk to Mark Brazel. Sir, how you doing? Good, Adam. I apologize. I'm a little late.

It's all right. Let's get down to the issue. This has been a story and a major story in golf, really, for the last probably more than the last five or so months. It's really stretched back a couple of years since we started hearing the rumors of this. So from somebody who is so intrinsically tied to a very important regular season event, how do you guys look at it?

You know, I'm not going to lie to you. I wouldn't say it's ideal. I think it's a little I think, you know, for the tour, it's a little tricky. But, you know, I went down I went over to Memorial last week and, you know, to do a little recruiting, but also to, you know, kind of hear what's the latest and, you know, to to, you know, just share my opinion with the tour that they need to be strong and that's what they're doing and that's what they've done today. So, you know, I just feel like all of this is unfortunate. I'm not I'm not upset with any of the players that are over there.

There's quite a few of those guys are my friends. I don't like it. What's going on? But I, you know, I understand.

I just I'm happy to see the Justin Thomases and the Roy McElroys and Tiger Woods of the world standing with the tour and wanting to play against the world's best. And, you know, I think that there's obviously a morality part of this, too, that you can't you can't overlook. And as soon as we start overlooking it, then then the sports washing has won. Right.

And, you know, this is these, you know, these guys are taking millions and millions of dollars from the Saudi regime, which is not real high on human rights. No, no. Look, Mark Razzle from the Piedmont Triad Charitable Foundation, and they oversee the operations of the Wyndham Championship. He's a past tournament director there. And I said this yesterday, and this is no disrespect to any other regular season tour event between now and the end of the regular season. Yours is the most important one is the most significant one left, in my opinion. And there are some other good events.

I'm not I'm not knocking any of them. But yours, because this is sort of the, you know, the difficult time during the regular season of the PGA Tour, because really everything is surrounding the majors. You know, from the PGA, we have a major event every month.

Once we get through January and February and March, we're into the major season and then the season ends. You know, it used to be yours would be after the PGA, but that's not the case anymore. And like, I just don't know how the PGA Tour can compete with the money that is being offered.

And we'll get to the sports washing thing in a second, because I think it's very significant how it's being discussed. How does the PGA Tour compete with the money? Because we know that Bryson is going to, they've already confirmed that, and there are rumors of Patrick Reed as a past champion at Wyndham.

Two of the two of the six players who were in your playoff last year are in this field and another one might be in future fields because he's talked, you know, positively about the series. How does the PGA Tour compete? Well, I mean, look, they have, the tour has had about, I'm going to say this because I've been on the tournament advisory council and I was the chairman of it.

And I've also sat through a bunch of the policy board meetings and the player advisory council meetings. And for the past 10 years, the tour has talked about and has been working on pumping up purses, getting more money to the players and how can they do that. And so now that they've hit this, just, I think this is the first year of it, their new television deal, they were able to do some of the things that they had been talking about and all along. And even, you know, almost kind of increase purses almost like it's on steroids. Our purse itself is going up like $900,000 to a million dollars from last year to this year. You know, Memorial was up from like $9 million to $12 million, I believe.

Some of the other events are up to $15. Now, on the LIV, they're playing for $25 million. They're just playing for crazy money. And, you know, you can't talk about that without talking about the sports washing in because they've got basically a trillion dollars, $500 billion to a trillion dollars sitting on the sidelines. Yeah, they always do.

And they're just trying to normalize their, you know, their regime and what they do in Saudi Arabia through sports and probably through other things as well. But I'm not sure I want the PGA Tour just to sit here and try to compete. I want the tour to continue being the strongest tour on the planet by far and just, you know, keep providing more and more incentives and more opportunities for their members and especially, you know, I would say their top 50 members, if you will. Right. And not just the 10 in the PIP program, which Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson finished one and two, two guys who clearly didn't need any bonus money.

Although maybe, Phil, again, I'm not going to get into somebody's personal finances. Off of the crossbar! And the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup! It's 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 Cane's Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move. Presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now.

Find Cane's 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcast. You're right. You can't separate the sports washing thing.

It is important and the press conferences that I watched from England were egregious in how they basically just glossed over it. Well, you know they're in such a tough spot. They can't even answer it. Right. And they're choking for words and it's sad.

I mean, a lot of those guys are my good friends and I know they're struggling with it, but they're taking the money. That's all you can say. Let me ask you this.

One thing, you're going to see this, I think, Adam, and you probably have already spoken to it. I think what you're going to see this tour become, you know, let's pull DJ out of it because he's not on. I don't think he's 40 yet and maybe a couple others, but you're going to see a lot of these. First off, I don't know 30 of the players.

I'm with you. Right. And then it also could become something for the guys that are in their 40s that probably aren't competing like they'd like to against the 20s and 30-year-olds. This might be a place for them to land and make some money and so on and so forth. So, yeah, I would see that you're going to see some of that. I mean, Adam Scott, if he joins it that he would be kind of a good, good illustration. Yeah, I mean Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Graham McDowell. These guys are all in that in that area that not quite ready for the Champions Tour. What would if the PGA Tour allowed appearance fees, would this go in some way to solving some of the problems? Look, I think that there are ways around that that I'm sure that the tour is looking at.

For example, I mean, like I don't I don't really consider this an appearance fee at all. But as you know, Brandt Snedeker is sponsored by Wyndham. Yes, it's a big logo. He's also sponsored by Workday. Well, I got to think that and there's nothing in his contract because I know his contract, but he's probably going to come to the Wyndham tournament every year when the championship every year. I mean, because that's one of the so there I would not say that I wouldn't call that, you know, pay to play. But I would say that these guys have the opportunity to make a lot more money through some of their corporate relationships. And they're going to pay those corporations back by playing those tournaments so you can see where I'm going.

I mean, it's not that different than the pay to play thing. So except that these guys are you know, they are part of the family of their sponsors and they do a lot of things for them. One of them probably would be to go play their tournament, which which is why you see a lot of the RBC guys up in Canada this week. Except two of them who who are no longer RBC guys, Dustin Johnson and Graham McDowell. Snedeker's won one year tournament twice.

I'd go back to if if I won that tournament twice. Look, Davis loves a three time winner. Webb Simpson threatens to win basically every single year. Again, Patrick Reed's been rumored to go to live. He won a few, I don't know, five, six years ago. Yep.

You look, you have a great event. Patrick, he's in. It sounds like he's, I think he's in as of yesterday. He and Bryson. Yeah.

So look. So what changes, and we only have about two minutes left here. What changes if more players, because I think we have just started here.

We've got basically six or seven. Now, with Bryson and Patrick, you're going to like six of the top 40 players in the world. Plus, Phil, what changes if five more of the top 40 go?

I don't really think anything changes, to be honest with you. The PGA Tour is so deep, so loaded with talent. As you know, anybody can win, if they get a hot putter, anybody can beat anybody on that PGA Tour. Right. If you're a member and you're top 125 last year, you've won the last couple of years.

Or even if you're coming up through the Corn Fairy Tour school, these guys are so good. They put a good week together and just about any of these guys can win. I keep thinking about this. I'm like, how is this going to affect our tournament? I just don't really feel like it's going to. Yeah. Are we going to miss a couple, maybe some of our past champions? We might. Yeah, of course. We're going to with Patrick and with Sergio, but our game moves on. We keep going. They've decided to do that, so we've just got to understand that we're going to lose a couple of those guys, but there's going to be some really good players taking their spots and some young players. This is one of the things.

I'm at my AJJ event right now, me today. This is why we do what we do. We want to know who the next best young players are.

I'm bringing quite a few in this year for sponsor exemptions. Really talented players that are going to be some of the best players in the world. We just keep working on our relationships with those players. I'm not too worried about this Liv thing. I hate it that it's even happening. It's tricky, but there we go. All right. Final thing.

I really have 20 seconds for your answers. Does the PGA Tour have to have support from the Masters? I think the other majors will fall in line behind whatever the Masters does.

Do they have to have support from the Masters? Good question. I sure hope we get it. That's for sure. That would be a big deal.

No question about it. That's about all I know. I don't know anything else about that, but it would be a big deal.

Mark Brazel, connected to the Wyndham Championship for a long time. I can't wait to see you. I'll be out there.

I'm still the executive director of it, but also I'm CEO of the Foundation as well, so I'm still very, very much involved. You wear a lot of hats. I love this thing.

You wear a lot of hats. August 4th through the 7th. We will see you then. We'll see you soon. We'll see you soon, buddy. You got it. Mark Brazel with the Wyndham Championship. PGA Tour, man.

I hope you got good lawyers. This is the Adam Gold Show. On with the crossbar, and the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup. 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 podcasts.