Join us for an unforgettable day at the Chicago Pro-Am where we got paired with LIV Golf stars Dustin Johnson and Thomas Pieters. From the nerve-wracking first tee shot to the surreal moment of DJ giving us putting advice, this round was packed with unbelievable golf moments, laughs, and behind-the-scenes stories. You’ll hear about the camaraderie, the pressure, and the pure fun of playing alongside some of the best golfers in the world. Whether you’re a golf fan or just love a great sports story, this is one you don’t want to miss!
the Chicago ProAm. So, really interesting opportunity came um last Tuesday. The show’s recorded on Tuesdays, gets posted on Thursdays. Uh the ProAm was on Thursday. So, two days before the event, the day of the show, I got an email response. It says, “Dan, we’d love to have you come out and join the ProAm.” At that time, I didn’t know who I’d be playing with, what time, anything. Shortly after the show, I got a welcome email that said, uh, “The four aces would like to welcome you to their team at the ProAm.” like, “Okay, well, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, you know, I don’t know. I’m not sure who I’m going to be playing with.” And then shortly after that, I went through and I had to like register and do all this stuff. I saw that I would be paired with Thomas Peter and Dustin Johnson. Uh front half, the front nine was going to be with Thomas and the back nine with Dustin. And uh I said, “Boys, I let’s all go. We got to do this together.” Like, I mean, come on. I’m I don’t know what I’m doing out here. I need a little backup. So, the whole gang, all of us packed up and rolled out. Look at DJ’s tan, dude. He’s been outside his entire life. He was born outside. I mean, look at that. Can we talk about how cool and just down to earth DJ was? You know what he so is? It’s crazy. Like, he was It literally just felt like, you know, you got paired up with a random at a at the local MUN and this dude just happens to be one of the best golfers in the entire world. But he was just as cool as any dude. He was fun. You can talk to him, ask questions, hang out. Here’s what I will tell you. Um, there was there was a few moments in in the day that, you know, I’m not going to say I was super nervous, but I was like some nervous, you know, probably a lot. Uh, was the first te, the first hole, stepping up, hitting the first ball of the day. Uh, that we had Thomas Peter with us for the first hole. And all you want to do is the first, you just want to hit a good one off the first te. It’s the first everything. You know, I’ve done it all. I’ve practiced. I got a good warm-up in. I rested the day before. You know, these guys play every single day of their life. I for me, I’ve got to structure it out for like a month. Um, hit a good one off the first tea. The first relief just like, oh, okay, we’re rocking. We’re rolling. And and that being said, remember Thomas, he took a lunch ball. He did. He did. Uh, and I didn’t need one. I was I was I was happy about that. Thomas also said, “Nice drive as soon as you hit it.” Yes. And then we were up looking for our balls and we kind of couldn’t find mine. And then his caddy uh he was like he’s like no man. He’s like you smashed it. You’re up that way. And I was like yeah cuz there’s nothing worse than when you’re looking for your ball and they’re like no you’re way back here. It’s it’s it’s nowhere where you thought it was. It’s way back here. Adam’s like it’s way up there. Way up there. That felt great. Uh, second most sort of nerve-wracking moment was the the repeat version of that when we get to 10. It’s now the first drive in front of DJ again. Just met I mean somebody I’ve looked up to in the golf world for a very long time. Um, one of the greatest golfers of all time quite quite factually multiple major winner, green jacket wearer. Um, you know, you want to hit one more good one, just step up, feel good about it. And I I was like, “Listen, golf gods, if you can hear me right now, I mean, I don’t ask for much, and you could tell, look at my golf game. But I’m asking for one right now. Just sprinkle me down a little golf blessing and let me smoke a good one right here off the tenth D.” And I did. And I got the Oh, good ball. I was like, “Did DJ just tell me from DJ?” Yeah. No cooler feeling on the planet. Can’t beat that. You cannot beat that. And then we make our way down. We’re playing our shots. We get all the way up. I hit a decent one. I’m on the green. I don’t know, like a kind of an eightfooterish. And DJ, DJ takes his putt and picks up his ball and comes over and walks right behind me and starts helping me read my putt. And on one hand, I’m trying to be cool, calm, collect. On the other hand, I’m like, “Holy [ __ ] Dustin Johnson’s helping me read my putt right now.” And he’s like, “Yeah, I shouldn’t do much. Maybe a little this, right side. I forgot whatever he said, whatever. And then he stands behind me to like see me do it. And I remember standing over the ball. I wasn’t thinking about the putt. I wasn’t thinking about pace, distance, break. I wasn’t thinking about I was literally holding my putter going, “Oh my god, Dustin Johnson’s watching me do this putt. Hurry up and do it. You’ve been standing here too long.” Like, this is what’s going through my head. Nothing else. Not like, “Okay, here’s kind of the pace I want to do.” Like, whatever. Just whatever normal swing thoughts you had. Zero. I had none of them. And I hit a putt. Kind of hit the edge of the cup and lipped out. I think I hit a little hard. Whatever. For the record, you stepped up and hit it quick, too. I was panicking so fast, dude. I I had no sense of reality at that point. I for me, I felt like I was standing over the ball for a month. No, I had no clue what was going on. All of time is slowing down. Like every heartbeat. And I I hit the putt and I was like, “Ah, I think I jammed that one a little hard.” And he was just like, “Yep.” I was like, “Yeah, yeah, it did. It’s fine.” Wow. I You talk about like the pressure that they are comfortable with versus like the pressure that none of us are even remotely used to. It’s it’s it’s just not even the same planet. But man, was it cool. All right, guys. You guys out there running cameras, any highlight moments, takeaways from you guys? Um, I don’t know if I have a one direct highlight. One just completely random moment that I think we need to talk about is we’re like what hole 15 I think we get off the 15th green. We turn the corner and Andrew Santino is just standing there on the T- box with a super randomly whole camera crew. All of a sudden, a video just starts and now we’re in a Santino golf video randomly and like we’re not invited to be a part of it, but I promise we’re in the background of a bunch of and like and all of a sudden like DJ walks over, starts untucking his shirt, gets all miked up and like puts the mic pack in and does everything. And they’re like shooting intros and like was this planned? We didn’t know about it at all going in. And then we’re like, “Are we still like playing? Like do you want us to sit out? Like I don’t know what’s going at this point. I’m like so hot. We’ve been out here for like 11 hours. I’m like, I don’t even know what’s going on. Should we leave? Yeah, it’s fine. Like, if you want us to leave, it’s fine. You know, so many times I think, you know, with normal golfers, amateur golfers, like you get defensive and you want to like, well, no this, you know, you can blame stuff and whatever, but like they get to look at it so objectively like, okay, what happened here? You know what? Just talk about it as it is factually. Cool. Got it. Uh the kind of the fun thing was though, uh Claude Harmon, obviously son of Butch Harmon, you know, one of the greatest swing coaches of all time. And now Claude is one of the greatest swing coaches of all time. Uh I got a chance to meet him at the Masters. Super cool guy. And it was during a tournament round, so he’s not out following players around. So we’re all hanging out in the Cobra truck and I mean literally just like killing time, hanging out, having fun. We’re like showing each other like dumb videos on the internet that are like going up from the week and the Masters and whatever. It just like I had this total fun time and that was when I first met Claude and and you know we got you know to know each other a little bit and became friends. And so here we are walking on the course. I look over and I’m like wait that’s Claude’s with DJ. We just met a couple men months back at the Masters. And as we’re going down the fair I was like Claude Dan we met on the Cobra truck. He’s like you know dude whatever. And uh so it was just it’s kind of fun Josh as you were talking about like these cool events and opportunities we get to be a part of and now that they’re like starting to connect and it was like oh you were from that one and this one and that one and it’s um it’s just it’s so fun because these are all guys that I’ve looked up to that I’ve studied that I’ve followed. I mean I cannot tell you how many swing videos of Dustin Johnson I’ve edited over the years and making Tik Toks and stuff more than Tommy. Um I think so. Wow. Yeah. Uh because Dustin Johnson is just such an incredibly unique golf swing and like the thing he does with the bow wrist and his flexibility and like getting it to the top and like it’s just it’s so cool. I find it fascinating. Um I don’t know. So just these moments and they’re so surreal and they’re so cool and so interesting and it’s like here’s us idiots like we’re allowed to be out there. They give us badges. We’re not going to be kicked out. Like this is it’s just so cool. I mean, so I’ve got something kind of to add on which I don’t think I had a chance to talk to you guys about, but do you guys remember that right at that time when he went over there, there was another guy that kind of came over and was talking to Dustin and Claude and stuff like that? I think so. So, it was just another guy that was over there. Well, I was chatting up Claude a lot. Like, we walked probably four or five holes just talking about all kinds of stuff. Talking about like, do you think love and live and PGA will ever marry up and figure it out? His response is, “Well, as soon as soon as PGA decides they want to, it’ll happen.” You know, interesting. Which so smart, right? Then I I asked him, “Well, I know they just with the uh the world the world golf rankings, do you think I know they just resubmitted for that. Do you think that’s going to happen?” He’s like, “Well, just like the other if they decide they want to make it happen, it’ll happen.” You know, what a good point, right? Well, so then we’re kind of talking whatever. And when DJ goes over to talk to those guys, that other guy, uh, he he’s a little he was shorter than DJ. DJ’s huge, right? Um, so he goes walking over with him and talking and I’m talking with Claude about something. I’m just random again and he’s like, “You know what’s pretty cool about Liv? It’s not every day you see some you see somebody like that come over and start talking to your players and just be just be out on a on the proam.” And turns out that was Scott O’Neal. No way. Yes. I totally missed that. So Scott O’Neal, he he walked like three holes with us just talking with Dustin. Just no idea. Wow. Yes. It was too hot. If you wouldn’t have been told that, none of us would have known. It was too hot. No way. Yep. Huge miss. Well, I mean huge miss, but I mean it was just I just you like a huge thing that I missed. And not that there was a miss, just like what a huge like I can’t believe I I didn’t even didn’t even catch that. Wow. Regular cool dudes. Yep. And you know, maybe we lucked out and we just happened to be kind of put with the coolest guys out there, but I just the whole time I was just like I I can’t believe it. You know, just how fun, how cool, conversational, great time all the way around. Highlight, one of the highlights, we were in the player dining room after the event like Josh was talking about and uh there was this thing called the green room after which we were invited to. At this point, I was so hot and tired. And I drank like 15 bottles of water. Had yet to even use a restroom cuz I was just sweating everything out. And uh Dustin was on his way to this thing called the green room and he’s in player dining and he’s like got his elbow up on the bar and they’re like like, “Hey DJ, we need you in here.” And he was like, “Hang on, I’m trying to get a drink. Just leave me alone. Just I’m trying to get a cocktail. Leave me alone.” Like that’s our guy. That’s my teammate right there. He’s my teammate. Your bag was so full. Here’s the thing though. You made a comment after the round that was to me perceived as pure insanity. You’re like, “Did you even use all those clubs?” When you bring your set of clubs, you don’t know what clubs you’re going to use. Like, there’s no way. It’s like, there’s no way I’m hitting a five iron out there. I’ll just leave this at home. Like, you don’t know. I You did not need to have every single one of those clubs. Oh, wow. Yeah. Who on this planet is not bringing your full 14 set of clubs, your your legal allotted amount of clubs with you to play a brand new course in a proam? Like what am I going to do? Bring like I’ll bring like 975 iron and leave out the in-betweens cuz it’s heavy. The person that’s not going to do that is the caddy that was told it was supposed to be a golf cart and you had to carry the bag all day. What are you doing with all these clubs? How many you got in here? Let’s go. Get out of here. Let’s go. This one don’t need it. This one don’t need it. Out of here. You’re like, “Yeah, well, did you We can skip every other number here. We don’t need every single number.” He’s like, “Yeah, did you use all those wedges, though?” I was like, “I used every one of them for a fact.
