WHAT’S THE BEST GOLF GLOVE AND WHAT’S A PROFESSIONAL PUTTER?

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On this episode:

• There is something a little different from the norm!
• Big G interviews two separate guys with two very different involvements in the game!
• The first interview is with UpGlove Founder and CEO Shawn McCannon. Shawn talks about creating the best golf glove on the market as well as the building of the company and what the future holds.
• The second interview is with Brock Gillespie who runs the NPT: National Putting Tour. Yes there are professional putters out there. Brock shares his passion of putting and what’s involved with setting up events. 
• Boys of these guys are fascinating individuals who have incredible passion and knowledge of their product. 
• Check out UpGlove.com (http://www.upglove.com) and use Promo Code: GLORIFIED for 20% off your first order.
• Check out NationalPuttingTour.com (https://nationalputtingtour.com/) and find out how to get involved!

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If you have any questions or comments, please email us: podcast@glorifieddonkey.com

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on this episode of the real life C podcast there’s something a little different from normal on this episode I have two great interviews with two guys doing fantastic things within golf but in two completely different areas in the first interview I speak with sha mccan who is the founder and CEO of up glove up glove is a subscription-based golf company and certainly the highest quality glove that I’ve personally ever used Sean discusses the Genesis of the idea and talks about how the company’s grown and what the future holds in the second interview I speak with Brock Gillespie who runs the national putting tour Yes you heard that correctly there is a putting tour and it’s no joke however it also makes sense as there’s a tour for long drive so why not putting his knowledge and passion for the sport is tangible and I was fascinated to hear more both of these men are passionate and very knowledgeable about their products and I know that you share in their enthusiasm and contribution for what they’re doing to make golf a better game stick around to the end of each interview because Shawn has a great glove discount for our listeners and Brock shares details about how you can have a bash at competing in an npt event yourself as always many thanks for listening please support us by following us on the socials sending us an email or text and visit our website where you can buy as a beer if you wish to do so in the meantime though I hope you enjoy this episode [Music] [Music] okay so I’d like to welcome Sha mcconnan of up glove to the real life carry podcast Sean welcome hey thanks for having me on Gordon happy to be here so the listeners know I’ve been speaking to Sea for a good couple of years actually and we we discussed do this quite some time ago so I’m really glad that we finally got around to introducing you to our listeners and talking a lot more about sort of the history of yourself in golf and then how you got involved in creating what I think is the best golf Club I’ve ever worn so please Sean take it away tell us who you are where you’re B how you got involved in golf yeah yeah Sean mccan you know I’m originally from Cleveland Ohio and you know I did my undergrad at Bowling Green State University and that’s that’s kind of where I got involved in golf I I played a lot of golf when I was in college and then to be honest with you I moved down to Tampa Florida and I didn’t really play that much and then you know I was I worked in the investment field like my whole career so I decided to join him and you know I recau the bug and you know I played a ton of golf essentially how up glove got started it was really kind of to solve my own problem I would always forget to have a glove and then I would get you know just robbed at the pro shop so I ended up paying $24 for uh Titus permas off is the glove that I that I wore M so i’ always sh out $24 at the pro shop so really initially the thought of starting a glove company wasn’t even on my mind what I started doing is I started researching where all these manufacturers were contacting them and I just wanted to order like a 100 glub could I take you back and ask you what kind of golfer you are what kind of golfer yeah are you any good oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I I can play I can play I I would say I haven’t C my handicap as of L but the load I got down to was a two and are you a right-handed left-hand golfer yeah right-handed you wear one glove or two gloves uh just one glove where was the wear and tear that you were finding in the glove I think for me I would get it a lot kind of you know in the heel pad um that was that was that was pretty much the main spot that I would that I would wear you know gloves at so the heel pad is that the where your wrist joins your your palm where the pinky is yeah where the pinky is yeah straight down where you know that’s sitting on top of the grip okay gotcha essentially I I didn’t feel like shelling out I I mean the purse offs a great glove I just didn’t feel like shelling out you know $25 every time I went to play golf were you was it one glove per round basically or how many rounds of golf were you getting oh no no I mean they would they would last me they would last me quite a bit it was good quality Titleist you know that’s kind of what you expect from them but I started trying other gloves cheaper gloves and the feel was completely different and down here in Tampa you sweat a lot because it’s so hot out like after like one round of usage with one of the cheaper gloves that thing’s like a brick yes the next time you go play uh because it’s just cheaper leather ultimately I went down this rabbit hole and started talking all these manufacturers and then before you know it I was building a prototype so I actually yeah I actually built the prototype for up glove I I uh you had like six manufacturers that we were you know considering ultimately we we landed on one and uh it was you know there’s a really good glove and I was like you know what let’s do this and at the time Gordon like there was no when we first started out we were strictly just a subscription okay and at the time there was no dedicated glove companies that that had a subscription model so as far as I know we were the first glove company ever to have like a like a subscription like a dedicated subscription but we made it like you know we don’t even call it you know a subscription anymore we we kind of call it more of a OnDemand program because you can pause whenever you want you know we have tons of different options as far as we have monthly bonly every three months every four months and then you can pause whenever you like how long did it take you to go through that process of initial idea to having the Prototype I would say from researching manufacturers going back and forth because you know you’re you’re you’re giving them feedback on the first iteration and all of that that that was probably close to a year yeah definitely a lot of uh a lot of time involved in that and then you know you you get the glove back after they make an iteration you make some improvements here and there and then you know so there’s a lot of back and forth going on until you kind of finalize you know like the the product the end product you know what I mean how did you come up with the name up clove I think the the way that I came up with it is I was researching names that had glove in it and then up up glove was like one of the fewest um letters for a domain name and then you know when I saw up glove I was kind of like you know what this is just like I’m upping the competition so it just kind of It kind of just stuck with with me it was short for the logo and the design we had all these design I think we use gosh I think they’re called 99 designs I think is what they are basically you post a job on there and then you have all these different graphic designers develop like the logos and everything like that and then you kind of choose you know uh which one you want to work with and once that came back and I I really like the logo I was like all right this is this is the brand this is definitely the brand and how would you have started did the business then did was it just in Florida was it friends was it couple of clubs or did you go about online pretty much we did it all online uh we we started building um you know started building our email list and just getting interest in the gloves and I mean we included everyone who was following us at that time I mean even to the initial design of the website we got feedback from all of them so we kind of built like anticipation and people who they were they were part of the whole process and were coming along for the journey so once we went live we we had you know quite a few people who were all you know ready to jump in interesting how many guys are involved in the business so there’s four people that work for upload so we’re we’re we’re a small company but we we streamline everything we’re we’re we’re we’re pretty efficient I mean I handle pretty much all the marketing and I have a support person I have a dedicated shipping person and then I have one other person who kind of helps out in between where they’ll do either support or they’ll do shipping as needed and have they been with you since since the start or was it just you it was just me and one other person to start and then we brought a couple more on as as we grew uhuh because I know what it’s like running an online store it’s people are talking to you as if you’re customer service and it happens to be your customer customer service you’re also manufacturing you’re sourcing the material and you’re also shipping it yeah I mean I I definitely wear a lot of hats and I I help out in all those places when needed the best thing about that Sean is no one can ever pull the wo over your eyes you you can you know every part of the business oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean even you know even in my my investment career I was always you know very close that’s why my teams did so well is because I wasn’t I wasn’t afraid to roll my sleeves and and uh you know kind of get on the ground and see what’s happening and um you know so being you know this is my baby so you know I’m I’m highly involved in in everything but you know we have we have great people working for us we have I mean our support is second to none uh when you when you reach out to up gloves I mean you’re going to get a response typically within a few hours and even though I tell my my dedicated support person not to work on the weekend they will still work on the weekends and and answer people but I always tell people hey you’ll get a response always within 24 hours usually within a couple hours I always tell them but not on the weekends but since we’ve been so this is going to be our seventh year since that time we’ve had five tickets that that were over 24 hours and I would say three of those is because they hit the spam box and we didn’t see them yeah that’s I was going to next question seven years then in the making yep SE this will be our seventh year in shipping so the business was around a little bit before that but yeah seven years and actually uh and actually shipping out gloves now you said it’s a subscription based product so people can what’s your what’s your typical customer we were we were just a a subscription for a while okay um and like I said they’re not tied into anything they have full control of their shipments can start and stop at any time Cancel at any time we’re it’s extremely flexible it’s as fible as you can get but we do we do offer one-time purchases now okay so yeah people can people can do onetime purchases we offer free shipping on the 15th of the month the one cool thing that we do that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone online do is R delay payments until shipping so so if someone wants if someone wants to buy a glove and they want free shipping we don’t charge you until we’re basically packing up your shipment gotcha it’s kind of like a a delayed payment so basically it was like one of those things where like no matter when you sign up your payment date’s always going to be close to your shipping date and then if you want it if you want your glove right away you just pay $4.99 which is to be honest with you that’s less than what I pay when you factor in you know the shipping cost with USPS and then me paying people to ship it out that’s actually less than what I have to pay yeah to get it shipped out but because we can um scale it on the 15th because we have so many shipments going out on the 15th I don’t even charge for shipping if if they if they can wait till the 15th gotcha and do you find a lot of people who buy one individual glove end up buying into the subscription yeah I by far by far we the the subscription model um the pricing is better and because people have full control like I said it’s more kind of like an on demand thing yeah because they have full control over it almost everyone chooses that option and then usually what we see is when people buy one gloves usually like a lot of members are buying it for someone else you know or like you said there are some people who will test this out and they’ll order the one glove and then they’ll and then they’ll hop on the subscription later are are you all around the world or are you just in the US or North America yeah yeah just in the states and then some of the territories we have a you know we have a few people like in Puerto Rico who get glubs for much so what about people in Australia the UK New Zealand Spain is that something you’ll look at doing in the future yeah I mean I think the issue is is the shipping cost okay I mean like when you start factoring in I mean we get people all the time from you know across the pond or um in or in Canada um we get a lot of people who email us and ask about that the the issue is is the shipping is just so high it doesn’t even makes sense for them to to do that and then you know if they get the wrong size what are they going to do ship it back for $20 and then $20 back you know so I think if we ever did something like that if we ever want route it would be probably something you know through like Amazon or something like that where where we would have a distributor gotcha um to kind of reach those those other destinations hopefully that happens then what what states in in in America are your hotpots where do you sell or where you have most of your customers o that’s a good question I’m feel a good questions I guess I would say Midwest is is definitely a big one California California is a big one and then I would say kind of like the the the East Coast border is also a big one so I mean they’re all over man I mean to be honest with you there’s there’s uh there’s definitely we’re reaching tons of States we have you know quite a few people in Hawaii too okay all over me I know that you you want to offer the listeners a discount code but be before we we finish on that can you tell us what the future holds they say the next 5 years what what your plans are yeah that’s a good question I I think the I think there’s two well yeah I guess probably two major things I think one is currently we do not have a woman’s line or a junior line so we definitely want to do that we just haven’t seen enough traction on as far as like requests and things like that but we we definitely want to do better Outreach for that and then the next would be I think getting into some potential Distributors so some stores so there’s tons of that’s involved in there um as far as like the like doing all the electronic stuff in order to facilitate the orders and this is all stuff I me we started talking to a few vendors about this as far as how all that works but I think I think those are probably the two biggest things that that I I I foresee in the future is expanding our line and then expanding our reach through certain Distributors I I have to personally say what you’d mentioned you’ve been sending me gloves for a couple of years now I would rip through your standard gloves my my friend who who carries on tour he gave me some Callaway gloves uh about 18 months ago and I was in the range and I hit seven balls and where you were seeing the the sort of back right of the pal just tore tore in pieces and I think I’m 25 25 to 30 rounds with an up glove and I can’t I put a hole in a thumb once but again that was after a full season cuz I wanted to put it to the test and I I think do you remember I sent you a message and said the quality of the product is too good yeah yeah I remember that I do remember that I love the product it looks great you have kind of a mesh on the on the top don’t you is that for you know obviously to are the H yeah a few things on that one is I would you know you know we use the same makers that some of these big brands use so our gloves are getting made by major major brand that everyone would recognize uh our glove is getting made by them so you’re you’re not you’re not sacrificing any any quality there and then it’s our glove is a little bit different though on the back it is mesh and then beneath the mesh there’s actually like a moisture wicking uh fabric so it want it’s for Comfort because it’s super soft but also it helps reduce sweat yeah so I would say our gloves reduce sweat probably close to you know 40% just because of the breathability and then the moisture wicking that goes along with that and then the Palm is pure soft premium Caba leather that you’re going to find that the best brand use because we’re we’re getting it from those same people who are making those clubes the same Lea that’s that’s in the upholster in Ferraris that’s how I’d describe it yeah yeah I mean it’s it’s it’s it’s the best they got so that’s that’s what we that’s what we told so um there’s there’s no sacrifice on that that’s why um the glove can last as long as it does and that’s why it’s soft and you can get you know really a really good grip because the natural oil in the in the higher premium Caba leather is is really what helps it with the uh to give you that great grip fantastic well I I think the listeners should at least have a look and and try out even just one individual and see if the the subscriptions for you is there is there something you can offer the listeners of the real life carry podcast as an incentive yeah why don’t we I’ll tell you what why don’t we give everyone 20% off 20% off now how can they achieve that goal so go you know what we’ll use if it’s good with you we’ll use glorified as the as the promo code and all they have to do is go to upload.com and then during the checkout uh use glorified and then they’ll get uh they’ll get 20% off their first shipment that’s fantastic so up glove.com can they find you in the socials oh yeah yeah yeah we’re we’re we’re on Facebook we’re on Instagram we’re on Twitter so they can uh you know they can definitely find us um at those places as well just look for uplove upgf uplove and as I say check out up glove.com if you buy anything put in the discount code glorified for 20% off well listen thank you very much for your time Sean I’d really appreciate it Gordon thanks for having me on I wish you all the best with the the up glove product going forward and I hope you are getting enough time to play golf y right now right now I’m not getting as much I need to make some more time for it but yeah I’m definitely going to be uh playing some more here over the summer wonderful well many thanks for your time all right thanks Gordon four as many of you know our podcast is sponsored by the big game golf app however what many of you won’t know is there’s also a big game golf Founders Club anyone can become a member of the founders club and the benefits are numerous you’ll get early access to new game releases receive special promotions from Big Game Golf partners and you’ll receive a lifetime big game golf membership which also includes three one-year premium memberships for three of your golfing buddies as a Founders Club member you’ll also have access to the big game golf team to share comments feedback and suggestions to find out more visit big gamegolf and click in the founders Club Tab and if you do join the club don’t forget to the promo code gd1 to receive some big game golf swag four I’m now joined by a man called Brock Gillespie and he is in charge of the npt Brock Welcome to the Real Life carry podcast please explain to the listeners what the npt is please yeah thank you for having me Gordon uh so the national putting tour is a a putting tour that uh we throw competitions putting competitions all over the country uh it’s not just for professional Putters uh some of the putting tours out there they cater to more towards like a professional Putters Vibe now I do have a professional division that has the best Putters in the country but I also have an amateur flight so we try to include everybody and I also have uh at some of the events I have a beginner division so at a national putting Tour event there’s something in it for everyone and yeah I throw these putting competitions all over the country I don’t do too many putting competitions oh in fact I haven’t done any putting competitions at what you would call like your your local Mini Putt course that’s got like wind meals and and stuff like that I I try to the venues that I do these tournaments at they’re more it’s it’s more it’s a different type of of putting situation I throw a lot of my tournaments at the regular practice putting greens that you’d see like out in front of the pro shop at your your local municipal course and then I also throw tournaments at po popstroke I don’t know if you’ve heard about popstroke the the Tiger Woods owned entity uh they had an entity called the popstroke tour Series last year that went out of business and I’ve kind of inherited their tour so I throw a number of tournaments at popstroke locations and then I also throw tournaments at these these really cool putting courses that are built by a company called putt Tech okay and you’ve seen you’ve probably seen these putting courses out there there’s a lot of them over in Europe where they call it sometimes they’ll call it Adventure Golf if you saw an overhead view of it you you could think that it’s like a regular golf course but it’s all Turf and they have like you know you know Turf sand traps and maybe Turf water and so uh yeah that that’s that’s the the gist of of what I’m doing here and I’d like to I do a lot of stuff on YouTube with these recap videos that I do for these putting tournaments and I I claim that I’m the most watched putting tour out there which I don’t know how anyone could argue with that at this point I I’ve done a lot of YouTube videos and uh yeah so that that’s the gist of it I think it’s worth noting how it was probably a couple of years ago since you contacted me and at the time I don’t know when it was maybe the winter we didn’t have time to talk about it I would going through emails and I it really I looked at it again I never delete if people contact me I never delete it I always go through it and cuz I think this is super interesting there’s something you said about professional Putters like like how good are these people I didn’t know this was a thing I’ve been in golf all my life and I’ve never heard of a putting tour and I’ve never heard of professional Putters so tell us more about that yeah so that there’s a a big group of guys that would call themselves professional Putters uh long started yeah I think I think that’s a good analogy I think it’s similar to that unfortunately there’s not as much money in professional putting as there is in professional long drive like those guys are making some pretty good dough out there the payouts at our tournaments are good but they’re nothing like that but yeah there’s a big group of professional Putters out there it started back in the late 70s and early 80s uh there there’s an entity called the PPA professional Putters Association that were throwing tournaments at these venues called putt putt and a lot of people will call just miniature golf outright they’ll call it putt putt right that name actually comes from a a facility that’s called put putt it’s a chain of Mini Putt courses and in the late 1970s and early 1980s they actually had these like very lucrative putting contests that were actually on I think it was either CBS or ABC Saturday or Sunday morning it was a televised televised putting contest and you can look this stuff up on YouTube and see some of these guys do these putting contests on TV well the ratings went down and eventually the networks gave up on professional putting those putt putt tournaments through the PPA still went and they still kept going and the PPA is still alive and well they’re mostly on the East Coast uh but they do professional putting contest so it’s been around a long time and then it kind of just Flatline and just stayed sort of under everyone’s radar and then in 2017 there was an entity that came out called the major series of putting the msop I don’t know if you ever heard of this or not but it was a very big thing where it was a it was a series of putting contests the guy that owned it his name is Gila liberte and he owned cir to solle he’s from from uh Quebec Canada right and Quebec Canada they love uh professional putting up there and they started this professional putting tour and they built this big huge putting Stadium behind Planet Hollywood in Los Vegas and in 2017 they threw this huge putting contest at this what we call the msop putting stadium and you can do a Google image search on that this thing was absolutely phenomenal and they had uh tournaments in you know about 15 major cities across the US and Canada and that’s how I got into it I was a competitor and I finished top three in San Diego two years in a row and I made it into this putting Stadium contest and that’s how I fell in love with competitive putting the msop went out of business uh due to covid and because they lost over $3 million and the Gila liberte just he didn’t want to write checks anymore yeah uh the msop may come back someday from what I hear but for now it’s it’s on Hiatus and it’s been on Hiatus now for five years but they sort of went out of business and on the west coast there was no putting competitions I was doing this little thing called the San Diego Putters league and I decided to kind of fill in the vacuum that was left by the msop and I started the national putting Tour all the players that did the msop kind of heard about what I was doing and they started coming to my contest and then yeah we’re in our fifth season now and and we’ve grown every year and uh so that’s sort of the the evolution of things and and how we’ve kind of gotten to where we are at now there’s also another entity called the US Pro Mini Golf Association that’s pretty popular and there’s some other leagues that have sprouted up the world putting tour is at a place called putting World in Scottdale Arizona they’re doing some of the more lucrative putting tournaments they just had a tournament a couple months ago where it was $100,000 purse uh but they have since kind of uh sort of went out of business in a way where they’ve stopped infusing money into their putting contest they’re still doing them but they’ve kind of taken a little bit of a backtrack but you know the WPT there’s also an entity called the world putting League that does contests on the East Coast where you can bet on these professional Putters on Kings and bet Fred and some of these entities so a lot of different entities have sprouted up in the last handful of years I feel like I’ve kind of outlasted those entities and because I’m truly a national putting tour I do tournaments all over the country how many events do you do a year uh anywhere from about 10 to 14 I think this year I’m on track for 12 or 13 events I average about one a month Y and I live in San Diego so I do I do tournaments in La San Diego Vegas Phoenix but I’ve also been doing some tournaments back East now I have family that lives in Georgia I did some tournaments out near the Atlanta in the Atlanta area and then I’m also doing tournaments in Florida at these popstroke locations and I have a big tournament coming up on August 4th in Sarasota Florida at popstroke how do you go about organizing this this is this is fascinating to me sure so and when you say organizing are you talking about like the buyin and divisions and stuff like that yeah like how did you start do you have a mailing list how many guys take part in it what’s the entry fee how do you find the location you want to do at you know this is it 12 months in advance you plan this out how does it work yeah yeah good question so if you go to National putting tour.com there’s an upcoming events page and you can see the tournaments that are coming up because we do these tournaments a lot of them on natural grass putting greens it’s hard for me to schedule stuff too far in advance because putting greens can go bad so as far as scheduling goes usually I’m scheduling stuff maybe like two or three months out so I don’t schedule the whole year at the beginning of the year it’s always about two to three months out and I usually have anywhere from about three to six events in my upcoming events page so they’re scheduled you know two three months out to try to give people enough time to book their travel and so forth and then the divisions it varies depending on what I’m doing and what venue I’m doing it at and what city I’m doing them in some of my cities have more professional Putters than amateurs some of my cities have more amateur Putters than professionals some of the popstroke stuff that I’m doing the divisions are a little bit different because of just the clientele there so it kind of varies as far as buyin but the the overall gist of it is at most of my tournaments there’s a minimum entry of just $20 for the amateur or the pro division so it’s very affordable 20 bucks that gets you into a division where you can win prizes if you finish in the top three and then for both the amateur and professional Division I have add-ons I call them levels they’re basically just like side pots uh for instance for my amateur flight it’s a $20 minimum and then the next add-on is $30 and all that money goes back to the players we pay the top 33% of the players roughly and then my professional division the minimum level is $20 that gets you into the top three prizes thing and then level two is $60 and level three is $120 to do level three you have to do level two and to do level two you have to do level one so the gist of it is with with most of my my putting contests for the professional div division you’re looking at around a couple hundred doll Buy in and first place is around $800 to ,000 good good we usually get anywhere from about you know 15 to 50 players at these events the depending on uh you know the city and just the turnout and so forth I did a tournament in Orlando Florida early in the year we had 56 players yeah um that that’s that’s you usually on the high end of player count U and it’s when it comes to like regular golf it doesn’t sound like a lot of players but I’ll tell you you get 56 guys out on 18 hole putting course and it’s crowded um it can get pretty busy 18 18 holes uh stroke play obviously and what’s the kind of of the course so yeah so that’s another good question so this also depends on the venue so the popstroke stuff that I do it’s an 18 hole course and we usually play it three times so 54 holes now a lot of these tournaments I’m doing on regular practice putting greens that like sit out in front of the pro shop and for those venues most of the time we only do a nine-hole course that we play either four or five times right I’ve even I’ve even done tournaments where we’ve just had like a six or seven whole course that we play Maybe six times uh so it varies depending on the size of the green depending on the venue depending on you know where we’re doing it what venue we’re doing it at and so there’s a lot of variance with the amount of holes and and and how long the tournament is and then also the length of the holes varies depending on the venue I do a tournament out at a nagic golf club in Chula Vista California and they have a really long skinny practice putting green that’s in pristine condition and we’ll do a par three where the the putt is you know 100 feet long so it kind of just depends on on the venue uh what they have to offer and I try to make the courses I try to be very creative with the course creation a lot of times when you’re playing a putting tournament on a regular practice putting green you know a guy goes out there you know puts a few te’s down sits in a lawn chair and has a clipboard and there’s not really much going on yeah I do quite a bit to make these courses cool and fun I got all kinds of signage I I do you know a lot of of of different things with the holes sometimes I’ll have and this is on a regular grass putting green sometimes I’ll have like a bounce hole where they bounce it like off a piece of wood or uh I I do once in a while I have this little jump that I bring out and once in a while we’ll break out like a little jump hole where you kind of jump the ball on a little off of a little ramp we don’t try to get too far into like the mini golf realm where you got like the volcano hole or the windmill hole or anything like that but I do a little bit to spice up the courses just to kind of make it fun and to make the player feel like they’re doing something that’s unique and not boring how good are these guys compared to T professionals like how good is their putting well I’ll give you an example popstroke did a big tournament last year they they call it their pop stroke Tour Championship rumor has it that they’re going to be bringing that back once a year but of right now uh they’ve sort of went out of business to a certain degree obviously not the facilities the facilities are making all kinds of money but the putting tournaments they haven’t uh they might not do anything but anyway about two years ago year and a half two years ago they did a big huge Championship down in Sarasota Florida and the two guys that won the tournament their names are Jacob staff and Chris Johnson uh they’re two of the most well-known competitive Putters on the planet and they faced off against Ricky Fowler and Paula Creamer in a $25,000 winner take all match and Jacob STA and Chris Johnson beat Ricky Fowler and Paula Creamer by four strokes now in all fairness Ricky and Paula were only there a few hours before the event and they didn’t get a whole lot of practice on the course so it’s it’s you know it’s a little bit misleading I can tell you that the top competitive Putters are as good as the top Putters that are on tour and one of the reason and one of the the pieces of evidence that that really um you know makes that legitimate I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a guy named Taylor Montgomery yeah he’s on the okay 100% so so I don’t know earlier in the conversation I told you about this putting Stadium tournament that took place in 2019 the msop championship yes well Taylor Montgomery won that championship by one stroke against the guy Chris Johnson who I told you about that just beat Ricky Fowler okay well Taylor Montgomery now is considered the best putter on the PGA tour and TR so there’s and then also I don’t know if you’re familiar with uh I’m gonna mess up his name but it’s something like matama uh he him and Taylor Montgomery were a team and in 2018 I believe they won the msop team title and now both those guys are on the PGA Tour and Taylor Montgomery is considered statistically the best putter on the PGA tour wow so your top guys in competitive putting are as good as as your top PGA Pros but obviously if the PGA Pros were to come out and play these contests like of course they dominate if they really worked at it and practiced the courses and stuff like that but your top competitive Putters you there’s about maybe 10 guys that are considered sort of like your top tier you know A-list competitive Putters I I feel like they’re as good as as the putters on the PGA tour specialized Putters or do they just use normal equipment so it varies and you know it’s it’s very reminiscent of and this is just my own personal opinion but I I think it holds true if you look at the golf swings of your top uh golfers in the world they’re all very different and kind of unorthodox right you know John ROM only takes to about 9930 and he’s got this kind of laid off thing that he does you know DUS and Johnson is super bowed at the top uh guys like Ryan Mo some of these guys are bringing it way Steep and then they’re dropping it in the slot right you see the same kind of thing with competitive Putters it’s not just like your standard uh you know Adam Scott just perfectly fundamentally sound putting stroke and I bring up Adam Scott cuz I’m actually talking about his full swing maybe not his putter but let’s bring up Tiger Woods Tiger Woods just a conventional putting stroke right A lot of these guys are doing a lot of different things they’re they’re slicing the ball they’re coming outside in they’re using some sort of Orthodox putter there’s a lot of really high-end competitive Putters that are still using like the old ping Bullseye Putters and and so yeah it’s a wide variety of different types of Putters different types of styles but these guys have practiced their stroke for decades some of these guys and regardless of it being fun Mally sound or not it it’s it works for them and they would you know they would never want to change it because they’ve been working on that same stroke for 30 years so it’s interesting what you see out there it’s not like every guy is using a Scotty Cameron putter you know some of these guys are using old school Putters you know big huge Mallet Putters you know that that aren’t very popular I know that lab golf has really made a a pretty big imprint on a lot of these guys a lot of these guys are using the lab putter which you know according to statistics is supposed to be one of the better Putters out there so yeah you get a wide diverse of Ages a lot of these competitive Putters are old guys yeah some are young guys um the type of Putters they use really varies the type of putting Strokes that they have really varies we got a there’s a guy by the name of Matt M who’s the 2021 us Pro Mini Golf Association Champion he uses a tall Putter and comes completely outside in but he’s one of the best Putters in the country so yeah it’s it’s a really diverse uh it it’s diverse in many ways can anyone so we got a lot of listeners all over the country can anyone just turn up and play in one of your events anybody can turn up I do sell a membership okay that’s $49 that gets you you know access to to some videos that AR on YouTube and that gets you like a digital players card and and and some goodies but uh to to play in my putting tournaments I do not require you to be a member if you go on the upcoming events page on National putting tour.com and you see an event you can sign up there uh I open up signups usually about a month and a half two months before the event and you can just sign up there without paying any money you just fill out a little contact form you sign up and then even if you didn’t sign up you could just show up the day of and just say hey I want to play and we’ll get you right in and you know we we’ll usually try to put you in a division that fits for you uh I’ll often times ask someone what their their regular golf handicap is yeah and that’ll kind of let me know whether or not they should be like in the amateur Pro or div or beginning division so yeah you can just walk right up and play in any of these events cuz I’m thinking you know you might have a group of lads they’re in Sarasota one weekend and they go what we going to do tomorrow afternoon it might be the type of thing that would would fit fit for them and like how long are we talking is it a one- day event does it start at 2 finish at 6 how does it work yes almost every tournament that I’ve ever thrown is one day uh we did one in San Diego there was a multiple Day event through this charity organization called the Randy Jones Foundation that was kind of an anomaly but you know almost every single one of my events is a one day event so you don’t have to put book multiple days of travel the the time of the event varies on the venue whether or not we’re in Winter or summertime uh if we’re in winter time the events are usually shorter because the sun goes down at 5 o’clock uh so it just depends but yeah the average time for one of these tournaments is usually about three or four hours and I would imagine youd encouraging people to come and watch yeah yeah we have spectators sometimes uh a lot of people bring their families to come spectate so you know a guy will come travel the event he brings the wife he brings the kid you know they sit on the sidelines and watch and so yeah there are spectators I wouldn’t say there’s a ton of Spectators that come out to these events but yeah we we definitely love it when people want to come out and watch and uh yeah we we we definitely Advocate that are you always looking for sponsorship for events is that something that people could get in contact with you about most definitely yeah if you go to national puding tour.com uh there’s a navigation there’s a tab in the navigation bar that says sponsor the npt we do a very affordable event to event uh sponsorship where someone can sponsor the event and we actually call the event their business name so Lely we have a guy out in San Diego that sponsors an event every year he runs a internet marketing company called top IMR so we do the top IMR putting Championship I just did one out in Vegas with a YouTube uh YouTuber a group of guys called the golf fathers right these guys do really funny kind of viral YouTube golf videos and they sponsored my event out in Vegas and we called it the golf fathers putting shootout so yeah we we do have sponsors and of course you know we always love it when someone wants to come sponsor one of our events and and help out the tour fantastic and like you said National putting tour.com can people find you on social media you can yeah I do have a Facebook page but you know it’s not really that popular most of the people that are seeing me on social media are either going to the YouTube page that I have which is under my name Brock Gillespie and you can also just search National putting Tour on YouTube and you’ll see all my videos there I also do have an Instagram page the the handle for that is National putting tour allog together and so yeah my Instagram and my YouTube page is where most the people find me on social media and then I also want to tell your viewers that we have something very exciting that’s happening I don’t have an exact date on it but sometime in early August our 2023 final that we did at putting world is going to be on ESPN 2 and it’s going to be part of the espn8 the oo show and I don’t know if you’ve you’ve heard of this show but it’s a it’s a 20 it’s a 48 hour block on ESPN 2 in the first week of August where they showcase a lot of like different sports leagues out there yeah and I am part of that show this year we got a half hour show that’s going to be on ESN 2 in early August so uh you know definitely want to tell your viewers to look out for that we don’t have an exact time and date on that yet but if you keep on you know searching things in Late July you’ll you’ll eventually I’m going to be doing a bunch of promotion for it all over the Internet so if you just Google that in Late July you’ll be able to find that time and yeah we’re very excited about that I’m actually cutting the show myself I’ve become sort of a video editor over the years by doing all these recap videos and so yeah I’m cutting the show myself and it’s coming out absolutely phenomenal the guys at ESPN are really liking it and they’re actually thinking about bringing me back for another year because the show’s so good Brock many thanks for your time and I’m sure the listeners some people will get involved in some way they’ll you know either follow you come along to an event or maybe even sponsor it so many thanks for your help good luck with the rest of the season and I look forward to taking part in one of your events in the not too distant future well I appreciate it and uh yeah check out National Pudding tour.com we got a division for everybody come on out it’s a lot of fun excellent thank you Brock all right thank you [Music] n oh [Music] a [Music] oh