How nice is it to not start out a conversation like THIS…

The PGA Tour also hitting the green with Jason Sobol and our friend Michael Collins, Sobol and the Caddy, Sirius XM 2-4.

They steal money. A lot of things I want to talk to you about, but isn't it good to not start every show with what's the latest with live golf and all the controversy that dominated everything last year? Isn't it kind of refreshing just to talk about the game you love? Yeah, for a few days now until we get to Augusta and I think at least Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of Masters Week is going to be very much dominated by the... Oh my goodness, can you believe that 18 live players, 20% of the field at Augusta National plays on a different tour and these are not guys who are used to playing against the guys you've been watching on TV. What a difference it is. Quite frankly, they've all played in golf. They're all used to playing golf.

It's not going to be as different as I think everyone's going to make it out to be. But that's going to be storyline number one when we get to Augusta next week. Yeah, but we've already done that. We did that with the US Open. We did it with the Open Championship. There's a couple of more players that will fall into that category.

But at Brookline, it was Phil, it was Sergio, all these guys. So in a way, you know, I'm kind of over that controversy, if you will. There are other controversy. I know there's lawsuits being filed all day long between the two tours, PGA tours, countersuing, live. Unfortunately, my guess is that all of these lawsuits will be dropped. The biggest, I think the biggest, I guess, negative to the live lawsuit is that they exist.

They've proven that they can exist. So what's the point? What's the beef if you can exist and you are still paying out?

It's not the same. Maybe they've had some other financial issues, but they're still paying out the purses. So what's the issue? What I find very interesting and Adam, I bring this up because I know that you responded to the tweet thread and started going back and forth with a few people is that I am trying to look at live right now as its own entity. Golf tour, which is what it is. They're playing golf.

And so let's look at them not as, you know, some defectors and outsiders that, you know, we're kind of gawking at them from another place. Let's, let's take a viable look at how they're playing and what they're doing. So I tweeted yesterday that of the 18 players who are on live, who will be in the masters field next week, they've combined for 36 starts so far this year. They've only played two events, but they've totaled only five top tens in these 48 man fields.

And none of them have two top tens. The most anyone has is one who's playing in the masters next week. And of course I got all this vitriol thrown at me. Like you're just a sick, a fan for the PGA tour. You're doing this.

No, like literally like I'm looking at it from a dating perspective. Hey, who do we want to look at from live moving forward towards the masters next week? And the answer is, I'm not really sure there's that guy yet. Now they have another event this week. I'm not sure how playing a muni course about five minutes down the road from my house here in Orlando is going to prep them for Augusta national next week, but good luck to them. And I, you know, I will keep looking into who's playing well, who's not playing well, and who might have a chance of winning a green jacket from live this year.

Yeah. Look, even last year, I mean, Phil obviously played poorly all year long and I know he's played a little bit better, but it's still, that's not really a high bar to get over. But none of their best players, DJ, I mean, Cam came in late, but DJ Bryson, Sergio, if we consider him one of the stars, none of those guys had consistently good performances in those events. Now, a lot of those guys were on major, you know, on top 20 and major championships.

DJ looked like he might win the open championship really until the weekend. So it certainly would be in contention. So they need those stars. If that's going to be a viable TV product, they need their stars to play well.

And that just has not happened yet. Let me ask you about two other stars, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler. That had to be such a deflating consolation match at the match play. Not only did they look like they didn't really want to be there, but they both blew leads in the semi-finals to get to the consolation match.

What a downer that was. Yeah, I'm sure that at some point Rory and Scottie were walking down the second or third fairway and said to each other, can we just go good, good from here on in with the cash and have a share of third place? Like what are we doing here? I mean, they've already played six rounds.

They're working on 120 something holes of golf in a week. And it's like, look, I am not belittling the fact that first of all, TV needs something to show. And this is exactly why they play a constellation match. Because if you get two of the world's best three players in that constellation match, you want to put them on TV. And I know there wouldn't be a lot of people if, if there wasn't a third place that say, Oh my God, how come we're not watching the worry and Scotty right now?

That would be amazing. And this is exactly why they did it. Of course the match play won't exist any longer.

So I guess it doesn't quite matter anymore. But I do think there's, there's some sense of, you know, those guys, Hey, let's, you know, all right, our week is finished. We're not going to win this thing. We've got plenty of money. We're just going to play for a little extra. It's almost like playing a side match for a few hundred thousand dollars between friends. And then, all right, let's, you know, let's rest up and get ready for Augusta next week, because of course that's where the focus is for both of those guys and really for all of the top players out there right now.

Jason Sobel from the Action Network is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. It bothers me that that event is going away. I think it's a fun, good, necessary event because the format's different.

It's just a different feel to it. I don't want that event to go away. I'm with you. I, I've likened it on my radio show to, in a way, the WM Phoenix open because every year we get to Phoenix and the players by and large say, I love it. I love the chaos, the mayhem this year, the party atmosphere. Do you want to see it every week? No, absolutely not. There's no way I want this every week, but one week a year.

It's pretty good. I feel the same way about the match play that six times a year would be way too much match play on the PGA tour schedule, but zero isn't enough either. We need to have something out there besides just the Ryder cup and president's cup each year. And I struggle to figure out whether this was a great outcome this past weekend for the PGA tour that they had four veritable superstars playing on Sunday afternoon. Or was this the worst possible outcome because they almost needed four guys who everyone looked at and said, Oh, this is a terrible semi-final and final. And I don't want to watch these batches and they get sort of go off with a whimper instead of going off with a bang instead. I think they've got a lot of people riled up saying, wait, that was a whole lot of fun.

I really enjoyed that. I watched for five straight days, seven matches for these guys at the end, and now we don't get to watch it anymore. I do think Adam, the match play will be back in some form at some point. I hope they don't fool around with it too much. There's a lot of different strategic elements that they could make alterations to, but again, I hope it will be back. I think Austin country club, the membership itself was sort of over hosting a PGA tour event.

They kind of wanted their course back, but that doesn't mean they can't go somewhere else. No, I mean, it hasn't always been held at Austin country club anyway. A final thing for Jason Sobel from the action network at Jason Sobel, T-A-N. And just on a kind of a lighter fun note, Jason Day is back. He's in the Masters, so he was a factor this week at the match play. And Ricky Fowler is dangerously close to becoming, maybe not what he was, but certainly a viable top 40-ish player on the PGA tour. Is there a chance that Fowler wins this week at Valero that he can get into the Masters? I think that would be great.

It would be certainly something worth watching. And just your thoughts on those two guys coming back. There's absolutely a chance that Ricky Fowler can win this week. There's one last golden ticket for the chocolate factory next weekend. The winner of the Valero Texas open, if it's not one of the eight players already in the Masters field, will get that final ticket. Ricky Fowler is, depending on the book that you look at, either second or third shortest odds this week. And so, yeah, there's a very good chance.

Granted, it's a really difficult thing to look. It's difficult to win on the PGA Tour at any point, let alone when you absolutely have to win. And Ricky said last week at the match play, my main goal is to get into the Masters this week.

There's no hiding that goal. There's no, hey, I'm just going after the consolation prize at T-17 would be pretty good. No, Ricky's basically win or nothing. He wants to get out there and get into the Masters field for the first time since 2020.

I think that's a very difficult proposition. Again, when winning is literally the only possible positive outcome for you at the end of the week. Yeah, if you could surely take some good vibes from another top 10 finish or top 20 finish.

But really, when winning is the only thing you want to do, it's really, really difficult to win, especially when you haven't done it in a while. As for day, I love how he's trending. I love where the game is right now. I would be just a little, a little guarded, have a little trepidation moving forward after we saw, um, what's it say that illness that kind of crept up on, I believe it was Saturday during his quarterfinal matches. Uh, maybe not quite what it was. I've heard some things.

I know some things. Let's just, you know, take a cautious look towards Jason day as we move forward. But we've always been doing that with Jason day. It has been, and just to throw a little love at both guys, they were the poster children for live golf.

Absolutely. Like how they, how they turned live golf down is for me a, you may know, you probably do know a lot more about the inner workings of that than I do. Uh, but the fact that both guys, uh, did not go to that tour because they had, they both had to rebuild their games and it's, it's a lot easier to take, you know, 50 to a hundred million dollars. And I have to imagine both guys would have been worth that to live golf for the attractions that they are.

So, uh, I just, I have a ton of respect for the fact that both guys are still playing on the PGA tour. I would say, I mean, my quick take on this and, you know, I certainly haven't had these conversations with them, but I don't think Jason day ever had the greatest relationship with Greg Norman and wanted to essentially go work for his league. And so I think that probably help things up there because there are a number of other players who are represented by the same agency. You can kind of follow the, the, the dots here.

You can connect the dots when you look at agencies and managers and who left and who didn't, and there's a definitive line there. Um, and for Jason day to not go, I, I think that's, uh, sort of the connection is that, you know, you look at his relationship with Norman and say that that might've helped hold them off from doing that. As far as Ricky, uh, look for years, a lot of the public, the golf fans out there would sort of make fun, poke fun at Ricky for being on every single commercial of every broadcast, over-hyped and overvalued. Well, that probably kept them on the BGA tour because doing all those ads over the years, but a lot of money in Ricky's pocket.

And so I'm guessing again, just to guess, haven't had this conversation with him, but I'm guessing that Ricky looked at it and said, you know what, I'm doing pretty well for myself. Let me try to make it out here as opposed to just kind of taking the money and run it over off the live. And if live is still a thing in five years, that'll be, that'll still be an option.

Uh, it'd be an option for a lot of guys who knows, uh, Jason. So I appreciate your time. Uh, thank you as always, my friend, I'll talk to you soon. Thanks buddy.

Appreciate it. The masters is next week. I want Ricky to win at Valero in San Antonio this week. So he gets into the masters. He's so good for golf as is Jason Day.