New drama in pro golf?!?

So, the PGA Tour season is actually split right now.

Well, sort of. I mean, we have the DP World Tours in Dubai, which is a big event, and the PGA Tour is in La Jolla, California at the Farmers Insurance, which is also a big regular tour event. Two best players in the world, Jon Roms in one, Rory McIlroy's in the other, but because it's a DP World Tour event, there are still live golfers playing in it, and Patrick Reed went over on the range to try to say hi to Rory McIlroy, who wanted no part of Patrick Reed, which frankly, day ends in a Y, I can understand it. So here's Rory at the press conference, I guess it was yesterday or earlier today, on the issue.

I didn't see it. I was down by my bag, and he came up to me, and I was busy working and sort of doing my practice, and I didn't really feel like, I didn't feel the need to acknowledge him, so I didn't see a tee come in my direction at all, but apparently that's what happened, and if rules were reversed and I had to throw in that tee at him, I'd be expecting a lawsuit, so I mean, I got a subpoena on Christmas Eve, like, I mean, I don't see your, like, you can't pretend like nothing's happening, right? I think that's the thing, it's like, why, that's, you know, we're, you know, we're living in reality here, he's not, so. There you go, there's Rory McIlroy at Dubai, Bob Herrick, Sports Illustrated, who's joining us here on the Adam Gold show. I didn't know we were going to start here, well, I did, but I didn't know that the golf season would start with such silliness. Do you have any thoughts on why Patrick, if Patrick Green's going to go over to Rory McIlroy, shouldn't it be like, hey Rory, I just want to apologize for serving you a subpoena on Christmas Eve? Yeah, listen, the whole thing I think comes off as a bit petty.

Some, some, probably some poor choices here on both sides. First of all, it wasn't Reed's lawsuit, it was his attorney apparently sending a subpoena that had to do with live golf, not Reed specifically, but still he's associated with Reed, so that's what, of course, Rory's going to think of. Why Rory felt, or Reed felt the need to go over to him, that's probably the first mistake, like why would you just, why just, there's 140 some odd guys in the, in the field, guys come and go at different times, you're on the range, you're, you can avoid him, why would you do that? I mean, that's the first thing, but then the other side of it is, okay, look, you know, what, how hard would it have been for Rory to say, hey, how you doing, good luck, and then that's it, and we move on, there's no story. It dominated the news conference, it was earlier today, they're nine hours ahead of us, so it was, it was this morning in the UAE, and it dominated the questions that Rory got, you know, and, you know, here we are, he, like, as you were noting, you know, we've got the two best players on opposite ends of the world competing this week, the Dubai event's always been a really big one, a good tournament on, on the DP World Tour, Rahm's playing great, you know, it's sort of a chance to get it back to golf, right, but I mean, how can you not ask when something like that happens? So then that becomes the huge story, and, and here we are, look, we're talking about it, so it's, it's, this whole live thing has really created a, you know, there's just a tension and, and, and a, you know, an upheaval that, that's just been a little uncomfortable, it's been hard, you know, we've, we've all had to deal with it, but it's just so unusual in golf. Some of the, that could never happen at a PGA Tour event, but because this is a DP World Tour event, and they actually, I, I believe this is how, why it all happened, they actually allowed live golf tour players to play in the first couple of events after live golf happened, and then when they tried to prevent them from playing, and it was at the Scottish, or maybe it was the, I think it was the Scottish Open, they couldn't prevent it, the courts, a court in Europe allowed it to happen, and now the DP World Tour just has to deal with it until some sort of resolution, so that's why Reid is in, is in that event. Plus, I mean, I could certainly understand Rory probably should have been maybe above it, but I think Rory has worn this pretty much from the start. I just think that this is the way Rory feels about what, not just live, but some of these players are doing.

Sure, I mean, look, there's a couple of ways to look at that. Well, first of all, it's, there's going to be an arbitration panel in the UK early next month, it's going to be like a week-long thing, and then it's going to probably take another couple weeks for them to rule, apparently it's binding, so they've been allowed to play under this guise here. It's almost like an injunction, I guess you would call it, we would call it, and, you know, they have a better case because to be a member of the DP World Tour, you're only required to play four events outside of the majors.

It's doable. You can play live, and you can play the DP World Tour, and, you know, if I'm the DP World Tour, why would you not want Henrik Stenson in your tournaments? Right. Why would you not want Lee Westwood? Why would you not want Sergio Garcia? You know, forget about all the, you know, all the negativity here, those would be good people to have in your tournaments.

They're suffering from a lack of star power anyway. It's different with the PJ Tour where they have a higher minimum, it's much harder to make that work, but to your point, you know, look, Rory did take on a leadership role on the tour. He made it very clear where he stands.

All that's been great. There's no, I think he should be commended for it, but like when it comes to this sort of thing, you know, I just sort of think be above it. Like, the bottom line is at the end of the day, they decided to go play another tour. Right. They're getting paid a lot of money to do it. A guy like Rory is getting paid a lot of money too, you know, and they're all interested in guaranteed paydays, and Rory has a bunch of those, you know, so it isn't what he wanted to do, it isn't what a lot of guys wanted to do. Obviously, there's the moral issue with Saudi, which is completely understandable, but at the end of the day, they made a business decision, okay, go ahead, let them do it, and let's just be above it. You know, there's nothing you can do. I mean, so you show up in the same golf tournaments together. I mean, nobody said you had to be buddies.

No. Well, look, what's interesting is that we just had a President's Cup that was kind of, I mean, damaged by what happened with Liv, and we are likely going to have a Ryder Cup that is also going to be damaged by it, but that's an issue that we can even, if we have time, we can get to some of it today, but, you know, maybe it's for a conversation down the road. What do you think the impact, Bob Herrick from Sports Illustrated, also the author of Tiger and Phil, Golf's Most Fascinating Rivalry, available on Amazon, at Bob Herrick on Twitter, what do you think the impact is of Liv's, I guess, contract, their rights deal with the CW, which involves no rights fee money. Liv's not getting paid by the CW, they are just sharing the revenue.

Yeah, my understanding of how that works is this is not that unusual because they're so new. You know, unless it was like the USFL back in the day, when you knew you had a product that was not really competing with the NFL, you know, and there is, look, we've seen it, there's an audience for football all the time, so they might have got a rights deal right off the bat. This is different, you know, you're going up, you're still being played during the golf season, there's only so many hours, there's a lot of people that don't like it, there's a lot of negativity with the Saudi stuff, and so nobody was going to pay them. There was even talk that they would have to pay, they'd have to buy the air time.

So this is a win from that standpoint for them. It gives them exposure on cable, you know, most older golf fans aren't into streaming, so they, you know, and I've made the point that, you know, during the NCAA basketball tournament, I don't know where the heck TruTV is right this second, but during the NCAA basketball tournament I figured it out. Because, you know, it's spread across four channels, right? I think it's CBS, TBS, you know, TNT, and TruTV. So like I sort of see this the same way, like if I really want to watch it, I'll find the CW.

And it's actually, you know, my research on it is it's pretty prevalent on cable, like almost everybody has it. So it's, you know, they weren't going to get on one of the big ones, and it's obvious it's easy to poke fun because it's syndicated programming and, you know, all that kind of stuff. But the bottom line is, is they got themselves something and there's a chance for some revenue to come in, and now let's see where it goes.

Right. You know, here's the interesting thing about this, and it goes back to Greg Norman. When he, the quotes are about a very competitive bidding process, like I think we kind of know that it really wasn't that competitive, but I, like I understand what you have to say. But I just, I think he was sort of exposed as really not being truthful. Like I think he's been exposed for not being truthful throughout most of this process.

That does not help them. I mean, I've heard, I had heard rumblings about others, like one of them was Telemundo, which obviously is quite big. Oh yeah. But like, would it have been an English language broadcast? I mean, like, that's a hard one to wrap your arms around would have been, would it have been translated? I mean, but you know, like that, that, that has been a wide reach. Obviously Fox was in there. I don't know if there was another one, but if there wasn't, it was not really, he just, he could have just avoided it. He didn't have to go down the road of saying that. There's been, there's been other things.

Like he, I, I, I think he's hurt them too. Like you guys launched, you got this off the ground. Nobody thought this was possible. You played eight tournaments. You got a lot of big names. Just live with that. Live on that. Don't be so contentious. Don't be so, you know, quit pushing back at all the narratives. Just point out your positives and move on. Like you're never going to win over a bunch of people by just getting in a fight with them. They're not, that's not going to make them come over to you.

So you might as well just live with, you know, take who you've got, try to convert the ones who are on the fence and go from there. They have, look, they have a lot of really good players. The next step for that tour is somehow getting official world golf rankings points. John Romm, by the way, has been talking about the world golf rankings.

He's got to make him fun of it because he's won four of his last six starts and has only risen to number three in the world. I don't really understand how that could be the case either, but how close is Liv to getting official world golf rankings points? I know you have written about this. I haven't been able to get to the bottom of that. Apparently it's being reviewed now. It took them a while.

They were in no hurry to review it. The world rankings people. And frankly, there's conflicts there. And actually they've stepped away from some of them. Jay Monahan, Keith Pelley, basically the commissioners of the two big tours. And then another guy who was the chief operating officer of the DP World Tour, who heads up the, it's called the International Federation of Tours. Those three guys have recused themselves. There was a seven member board, those three plus representatives from all four majors. So now they've stepped away. And I think they did that for legal reasons.

They knew that that was going to look bad. So now it's basically in the hands of the four majors. Now, none of the majors have come out really staunchly in favor of Liv, but they're in a tough spot too. Like, don't you want all the best players? And as I've argued, if you give them world ranking points, it's not a clear path to the top 50 in the world. Because there's only 48 players, there will not be a lot of ranking points at stake. So they're going to have to play really hard and have a lot of high finishes to make any move. I just think, okay, this is what you wanted.

You wanted short fields. All right, here's the world ranking points for 48 players. See where it falls. My guess is, is that you will not see a big change in the world rankings. You will not see somebody rocket up by playing Liv golf. Now, a guy who's already up there, a guy like Cam Smith, who's now fourth, he could maybe solidify his spot or hold on to his spot with good play. But is Dustin Johnson the 42nd ranked player in the world?

I don't think so. He's clearly a top 20 player. And he's fallen because he's not getting points.

Based on the way he performed last year, if they had been getting points, there's various projections that would have him around 15th right now. To me, that seems fair. So just let it play out. There's a lot of other negatives to Liv that they shouldn't be so worried about the world rankings. Let every player get ranked.

See where it falls. Let me ask you about John Romm and just the way he's playing right now. I don't know how much you folks, Bob Herrick is joining us, and we'll close on this. I don't know how much you follow betting odds or not, but at plus 450 going into an event like the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, it brought me back to a time where Tiger Woods was like even money. Because theoretically, even the heavy favorites are about 10 to one at majors. And John Romm is four and a half to one at an event that is one typically by just about anybody.

What are your thoughts on where Romm is as a player and is it basically he and Rory as the two best in the world? You beat me to it there on the Tiger analogy. I mean, it's very similar to that. I mean, the idea of a guy being five to one or so to win a golf tournament is ridiculous. I mean, remember back in the day, it was Tiger or the field.

It was crazy. I mean, come on, there's 140 more guys. But yet, if you'd have taken him, there was a bunch of times you would have won. So yeah, I think it's just the way betting works and the way he's playing. I mean, I'm not so sure that his chances of winning this week are any better than they were any other week. It's a course that he likes.

He's playing great. That doesn't mean you're going to win. The first tournament in Hawaii, let's be honest, he shouldn't have won that. So would we be looking at it differently then? But the way he's played over the last several months, there's a lot of recency bias that we have. But I mean, that's how it is. You look at how guys are doing their recent form. But I wouldn't discount like Justin Thomas and Scottie Scheffler and even Morikawa who had the meltdown. Those guys, there's a reason it's hard to get to number one. There's a reason that Jon Rahm only won once last year on the PGA Tour. There's just a lot of competition.

It's hard. There's no question. By the way, my recollection is that that event where it was Woods versus the field was, I believe, the 05 Open Championship, which Woods won. He did. You're right.

I mean, Tiger versus the field was pretty much an even bet. Bob Herrig, I appreciate your time. At Bob Herrig. Thank you very much. We'll talk to you soon. Enjoy the golf. We're here.

It's already here. Thanks, man. Thank you for having me. You got it. Bob Herrig.