What will the PGA look like after this “merger”?

Actually, let me bring Brad Fritsch in now. He is PGA Tour Emeritus, also with Red Rooster Golf.

You go buy golf clubs from Brad. Brad, you're a big hockey guy. You were the only player I ever saw who was sponsored by the Ottawa Senators. And do you remember when... who was it? Wasn't Ed Belfort. Who was the goaltender who was miked up during the All-Star game, the period he played. Do you remember that? I'm still confused by what emeritus means.

I threw you at that, I apologize. No, I'm a big All-Star game watcher, I don't remember. He was miked up, goaltender, during an All-Star game, back when we played 5 on 5 in the All-Star game, was miked up during the period he played. That's phenomenal.

That stuff's good. The games don't matter, we should stop pretending that they do. We should kind of loosen our tie a little bit when we talk about an All-Star game. Alright, let me ask you about, not about what happened on Capitol Hill yesterday, I made fun of that yesterday, because 90% of the people asking the questions had no idea what they were, what they weren't even there to talk about golf. So let me ask you this, because this is what's coming out of, not just of this hearing, it actually has nothing to do with the hearing, but it's coming out of player comments about their lack of direction. On the PGA Tour side, lack of direction, they have no idea. If you're a PGA Tour player right now, what would you be thinking about? I think it depends on the player and how good they are, frankly. You know, guys like me who are off and on, I think are just happy to be there, certainly happy with what's happened over the last couple of years in terms of purse increases and the accessibility to way more money than they're used to playing for.

If I'm at the very top, it's got to be a little confusing day to day, because as you said, there seems to be a lack of direction. I don't blame anything that's happened on PGA Tour executives or anything like that. This is unprecedented, where, you know, when I was growing up playing mini tours, and then nationwide web.com corn fairy tour, we would always talk about, oh my god, PGA Tour has so much money, you know, they could do this with the corn fairy tour, they could do that. The amount of money that the PIF fund has is so staggering, that nobody's ever contemplated this before nobody has ever thought, oh, the PGA Tour is going to have 600 times less money than their editor. So if someone could go back in time and say this is what the PGA should do, I think that person is lying. I think if they had the solution way back when, I think I do think they're speaking out of an orifice of their body that is not their mouth. I just don't think there was a clear path that any person in your line of work, let's say, would have found absolutely acceptable two and a half years ago. If they had said two and a half years ago, yeah, we're going to partner with the Saudis, and we're going to create, you know, a very tiered tour, and it's going to be back rolled by the PIF, I don't think that anyone in the world of professional sports would have looked at that too fondly at the time. I don't know if that's correct or not, but that's my point. I think you're probably right. Brad Fritsch is joining us, and I think he was referring to somebody speaking out of their 19th hole.

All right, let me pose this to you, because this is what keeps jumping out to me as I've thought maybe way too much about this particular issue. The live golf starts, there is guaranteed money, oodles of money, they spent, I don't know, a couple of billion dollars in year one on guaranteed contracts and purses and all of that, and the PGA Tour felt compelled to compete. That was the only way. And when they raised all the purses and they doubled or whatever they did with the player impact program, all the things they did to put more money in the pockets of the best players, I think what they found out was that that was unsustainable, on top of the fact that they have all this litigation to deal with. But that they couldn't ask sponsors to suddenly double their outlays to keep these tournaments going. I think they found out that the sport doesn't generate as much money as the Saudis could provide. And it became a situation where, we want you to play here, but we can't pay you nearly the money they can. So we're going to have to, you're going to play here for essentially prestige and love of the game. Is that fair? Yes. And you had me on several times when talking about this and I kind of alluded to that.

It was guys ostensibly taking a pay cut to stay on the PGA Tour, despite them raising purses, some of them three times the amount of purses that they were playing for. So it's always hard. It's always easy to spend other people's money. And it's always a fool's errand, I think, to say, oh, what would I have done in that situation?

Nobody would know. But the guys who stayed were definitely prodded and talked into staying for less money. But the opportunity to compete on the best tour in the world with bigger fields, with historical precedents going back almost 100 years, certain events. But they were definitely taking a pay cut. Certain guys like Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Jordan Spieth, Xander Shoffley, I'm sure was offered. Guys like that were definitely going to play for less on the PGA Tour. But I think there were a few things that compelled them to stay, one of which was the guaranteed ability to play in majors, guaranteed world ranking points and the kind of the uncertainty that live golf would provide in terms of both of those things. Honestly, I told you, I don't know exactly what happened yesterday, but I guess there's a whole bunch of documents that kind of spelled out in an ideal world what would have happened. And those were kind of passed back and forth between the two parties. It's just it's tough for me to envision both entities remaining exactly the same going forward.

I don't think that's going to happen, but I also find it hard to believe that people or players would cross back and forth between the two. I don't I don't know. It's so hard to predict what's going to happen. This is certainly a very odd time for professional golf. The last two or three years have been the most uncertain I've seen throughout my twenty two year career.

That just means I'm all they told Victoria sold sold. But it's it's just so difficult to predict what's going to happen down the road. So I think all these articles that are written and and and, you know, guys like you who who have to kind of report the news of the day, it's just so hard to see where it's going to end up. I mean, I'm going to ask you one more thing about this and we'll we have to keep it quick.

So I appreciate your time. Brad Fritsch, PGA Tour player emeritus. That's just in perpetuity. I don't know the there's a lot of people questioning the leadership of Jay Monahan. I know he just had some health issues and he had stepped away from running the tour. And there are other good people in place. And Jay Monahan was not part of what happened yesterday. Greg Norman will be out as live golf CEO at some point whenever, whenever, whenever this arrangement is is finally executed.

Do you see Jay Monahan as the commissioner of the PGA Tour in a year? Oh, man, that's a good question. I don't blame guys for I wouldn't use the word betrayal, but just feeling out of the loop. But at the same time, there are so many leaks all the time, guys, players have their, their guys who they go to, to, you know, give them memos, give them emails. And good on the journalists for having sources. But this kind of thing, I don't blame Jay Monahan for keeping kind of close to his chest.

It's just got to be. It's got to be so hard to see, like at the bottom line is a PGA Tour existence was threatened, I believe like I think there was a decent chance of it just going away throughout this. So I when you're talking about keeping players in the loop, trusting them is is very difficult, I believe. And then there's the issue of as much as the players like to say it's a player run and player owned organization. Certain players are more important than others. So if if Joe Blow who's on his first year on the PGA Tour feels betrayed, I don't care because he's not that important.

That was me. I wasn't important to the sustainability of the PGA Tour. But but keeping a guy like Rory, a guy like Tiger in the loop, I, I guess that should have been done. But at the same time, these guys are so into themselves and their career. I don't see how they could have provided any value in a billion dollar deal boardroom if that makes sense. I don't know. It's it's it's hard for me to kind of square the two