PGA Championship is this weekend!

Jason Sobel, The Action Network, my friend. I appreciate your time as we get into the second major championship of the season. I don't want to make this all about Liv Golf.

I am curious though about a couple of things. The Masters definitely did not want this as a discussion and it shone through. Players didn't talk about it.

Media didn't talk about it. It was kind of refreshing because everything has been about Liv. How has it been different as we head into the PGA Championship? Yeah, so Adam, I think that we're now just in a spot where this is the new world in golf. This is what we're going to see moving forward, if anything.

Look, I'm a bright, optimistic guy and I like looking at silver linings. I'd like to believe that the major championships almost take on a little more importance and relevance now because sure, we see all the best PGA Tour players competing against each other on a pretty regular basis in the designated events on that circuit. Only four times a year will we see the best PGA Tour players and the best Liv players competing against each other. It almost ups the ante a little bit in these events. As far as the whole, what happens if a Liv player wins this thing, I kind of feel like we're past that.

I kind of feel like we understand that. There's two different big professional tours with big name players on them and they play separately other than four times a year and then four times a year they come together and we'll see who comes out in the end. It's funny, I have not been a proponent, you know this, of Liv golf at all, but I kind of wanted Brooks Koepka to win. One, what he's gone through at the Masters, what he's gone through, and two, just the social experiment of how people would deal with Koepka winning. Obviously, Jon Rahm was the best player after the first hole of his opening round.

He was by far the best player in the entire event, but Koepka came off a win and then finished second. Johnson coming off a win where he shot, what, 61 in the final? No, Cam Smith shot 61. Did you know he shot 62 or 63 in the final round?

Something silly like that in Tulsa. Obviously, he's got good form. He hasn't won a PGA. We could be on the precipice of him going for the career grand slam coming up later this summer. Yeah, I liked us and Johnson a lot this weekend. Not only did I listen to him speak about his game after winning at live, the live Tulsa event this past weekend, he was saying, you know, we do something on our show called press conference interpretations, where we, we appropriate whether a player is saying, yeah, I'm playing well or yeah, I'm playing well.

I mean, you read the words and they're the same word, but you hear the inflection of two different things. Dustin Johnson, when he said it is I'm playing well, I mean, he means it. He is very confident right now. So I like that. And also this guy who has just eaten on big brawny Northeast PGA champion style courses over the course of his career.

So I like him a lot this week. And I will say if we get a live winner, I think there would have been a little chaos and maybe some mayhem at Augusta national if we get it this week, especially if it's a Brooks or a DJ. I just don't think it's going to be that huge of a deal. Maybe outside of, you know, golf circles, maybe, you know, with the casual fans a little bit in the mainstream media a little bit. If it's a Phil Mickelson, I think it's a different story. If it's a Brooks or a DJ or even a Cam Smith, I sort of think, all right, we, like I said, we kind of understand this is what the world is now.

This is what golf is. We know who the best players in the world are, even if the official world golf rankings don't tell us that. DJ is better than the 82nd best player in the world. Brooks Koepka went healthy, we know is better than number 44 in the world, but that's where they are. But these are the opportunities for those guys to earn points and they're not earning points.

And you and I can have that discussion another time. Rory McIlroy, Jason Sobel from the Action Network at Jason Sobel TAN, did not play well at the Masters. Took an intentional $3 million hit from the PGA Tour because he missed the second elevated event this year, having already missed, I believe, the Tournament of Champions at the beginning. He's not in great form. Is he in a good head space right now?

It's a great question. It's one that I think Rory is trying not to dive into himself because Rory has been, Rory sort of looks at his own self value, I guess, and sort of this introspection more so than maybe not only just any other golfer, any other athlete who's around today. I mean, Rory's very introspective and looks within himself and it's very open and honest. I think he's trying to keep some of that in a little bit now. So I don't know if we necessarily have a great answer to that, but as an outside observer just watching him, I think that's something still not quite right with Rory. I don't know how much of it is just the wear and tear of being the PGA Tour leader, speaking out against Liv over the past year, how much of this is not challenging at the Masters and wondering if he'll ever get a chance to win that career Grand Slam and a green jacket that he's always wanted, how much of it is just balancing the pressures of professional golf and family life at home.

I don't know. Or maybe there's something we don't even know about, but I just get the sense that something is not quite right now where he's a honorary member here at Oak Hill said himself, he's seen this less than a couple of times over the last few years. So it's not as if he's out here all the time, but when he does visit the in-laws because his wife grew up right around here, they are not too far away.

And so he's made a couple of trips over here. Does that give him an advantage? Maybe a very, very slight one, but I still just, I don't see it happening for Rory this week. Like you said, he's not in great form. He's missed the cut in his last two starts, maybe not in the best head space right now. And if you're not at the top of your game, look, there's a lot of guys are going to pass you very, very quickly because there are a lot of guys who are in form and playing great golf in a good head space.

But if you don't have everything working for you going into a major, there's going to be some issues. And I would just say, cause I agree with you, I would not pick him, but sometimes when you're in that position, maybe your own expectations are lowered and maybe that's when it all happens for him. I will say that of the, of the pairing that he is with the trio that he is with, with the defending champion, Justin Thomas and Colin Morikawa. For me, Morikawa's game, whether he's playing well or not, his, the strengths of his game, I think are better suited to this course than the other two. Because the last two major champions on the regular tour, not, you know, tour champions that have won at Oak Hill have sort of been that guy, the Jason Duffners and Sean McKeels of the world. We could even go back to Curtis Strange back in 89 for a similar, more of a tactician, not a big bomber on that particular course.

Although I know it has been renovated and it is different. But I like Morikawa, if I was going to wager who would be the best of those three, it would be him. I'm taking the defending champion, Justin Thomas. I think that he is on the verge of playing some much better golf coming up soon. Morikawa to me, and look, two years ago, Colin Morikawa went to the Scottish open having never played links golf. This is the kind of Scottish open said, I can't really figure this out. I don't even know how to hit a shot on these links golf courses and went out and won the open championship the next week.

Things can change in a hurry when it comes to this stuff. But I watched him as he was missing the cut at quail hollow a couple of weeks ago and boy, that putter did not look good whatsoever. Unless he's figured out how to get the ball in the hole from six feet away. I cannot back Colin Morikawa in any way coming into this one.

So he has a fate for me. I do like JT. I think, like I said, Justin Thomas is going to start playing some better golf very, very soon. I think he's played some angry golf, some frustrated golf over the last year since his last PGA really PGA tour win was the PGA championship here last year. And before that was the players championship the year before. So he's got a couple of big ones over the last few years, but nothing else to speak of.

And that's getting him a little frustrated. But like I said, I, I will take JT and that three ball who said Brooks kept going to live golf. He's just become Justin Thomas, Jason Sobel from the action network is joining us. All right.

Give us your pick to win. And then a couple of guys down the board you think would be worth some, some favor. Yeah.

So I am on this, this second tier, third tier guy. So a little bit below the John Rums and Scottie Scheffler's, but not so deep that I'm looking too deep into the, the triple digit. A long shot.

So Sunjay M's at the top of my list, uh, hits it straight. It's at far enough. It's not really far, a very good ball striker. He, he won this past weekend in Korea.

I'm not sure. I love the fact that he was in Korea half a world away and then has to come back to Rochester and play golf this week. But I do think that his game is trending in the right direction.

They're there sharply at some point, almost by accident is going to win one of these things just because he is that talented. I like him a lot. Talked to Max Homa yesterday, uh, did an interview with him for serious like them PGA tour radio and Max seems very, very confident on this golf course. He likes it a lot. I think there's some comparisons to TPC Potomac at Avondale Farms where they played the Wells Fargo championship last year and he won. And then I'll go to Cam Young who, okay, it's not a home game. He grew up five hours away, but he told me there are some definite similarities between Oak Hill and some of the courses that he grew up playing in New York. No question about that.

All those big ballpark Northeast courses carry some similarities. Jason Sobel, Action Network, Sirius XM. You're everywhere, my friend. Appreciate your time. As always, enjoy the event.

The major championships supersede everything in golf and I can't wait to see how it plays out. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks buddy. I appreciate it. Please follow me on Twitter at Jason Sobel, T-A-N.