John Middlekauff reacts to Joaquin Niemann winning at LIV United Kingdom over the weekend, securing his 5th win of the LIV season. John speculates as to why Niemann’s great play at LIV events is not translating to success at the PGA Major tour events.
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[Music] Okay, how about the boys at Live? You know, it’s weird. Walk Neiman has dominated Liv. If you remember when Liv first started three or four years ago or whatever, Dustin Johnson won several times. Like he he was by far their biggest get at the time given his age, how he was playing. Like Phil was the biggest name. But Phil, as we see, I mean, he’s borderline retired. You know, Dustin when he got him still, I don’t want to say in the peak of his powers, but still elite and just started raking money, started dominating. And every single time they played, I was kind of gambling on him a little bit. He could win. And that, you know, we Neman is a guy that won on the PJ tour. He won at Riv. He’s a really talented player and he is dominating this year. Now, I do think overall, like from a financial standpoint, he made like $30 million so far this year. It has been a very lucrative year for Walk Nean. I would say in the aggregate, him making the move to live financially changed the course of his life. He has made so much [ __ ] money these last couple years. No chance he regrets it. But when people start anointing you as like one of the best players in the world, he’s an elite guy and you’re like, listen, he’s really talented. He’s young. If he was on the PGA tour, he probably would have won some over the last couple years. He’s a he’s won big events before. He’s a really good player. I do think his year’s been a little underwhelming because it was all kind of judged on the majors. Like I I I know when Liv plays, whether they’re in London, whether they’re in Chicago in a couple weeks, wherever they’re playing, we even might win. Honestly, pretty good chance. Couple years ago, like Gu got hot. Gu was winning like every other event. It’s like, okay, what are you going to do in the major? And these last two majors in the open in the US Open, he missed both cuts. So, it’s kind of this weird spot where you wanted to go, this is one of the young bright players in the game of professional golf. That was the thing with DJ. Like I’d seen DJ. He went on the PJ tour for a decade straight. He’d won multiple majors. He honestly probably should have won like four or five. So we go to live. It’s like, yeah, he’s a dominant player. Now it’s he’s kind of in retirement mode. But I kind of I I do think we Nean in a weird way for a guy that’s played really well when he plays these other guys, when he plays against Rom, when he plays against, you know, Bryson, like he’s gone headto-head with those guys and beat them. Terrell Hatton, Patrick Reed. I mean, these guys are major champions. These guys are guys favored when we go to I mean Hatton obviously Bryson and Rahm are going to be top 10 guys. I mean Bryson and Rahm typically top five guys in every major and we Neman’s beating them in you know when they only play three rounds but he’s still beating them. Then he goes to these majors and those guys shine. It’s like where are you? So I I just I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get a little more uh to make this argument like there is no argument right beside like he’s made a lot of money. One thing last week though I was I was on uh Twitter and I saw listen the the greatest or one of the greatest I I don’t I can’t go back like 50 years but I would say of my lifetime of a guy hitting a driver off the deck is Bubba Watson. No one plays that huge fade. I I remember when I was uh playing at the Olympic Club maybe like four or five years ago when I was living in the Bay Area, guy I was playing with was like, “Yeah, when they had the US Open here, Bubba hated it because where the tips were, there were some kind of tight lies or tight lines off the T- box where you had to like hit it through an if you’re playing way back kind of a narrow kind of shoot kind of like 18th at Augusta, but there were like four or five of those T- shots. where you couldn’t just if you play a huge curve to your golf ball, you can’t really just aim way left or way right. And Bubba didn’t enjoy that course. Well, if you have a wide open course, the Masters is kind of unique beside 18 because you could hit it anywhere. And two, it plays to a left, it plays to a draw righty and a lefty hitting a cut and Bubba hits a cut. But he hits this driver off the deck beautifully. We Nean’s running away with this thing. Bubba’s not even in the conversation until he has a stretch where he goes birdie eagle birdie birdie eagle birdie. For my count, that is one, two, three, four. That’s eight under par in six holes. That’s as good as you get. And his two eagles were on two par fives with driver off the deck both times. One of them he hit it to like three feet and the other one he hit it to like 30 feet and made the putt. But watching a guy from 260 to 290 yards take a driver out and play this huge cut, all arms, no legs, no one quite does it like Bubba Watson. So that was really enjoyable. And uh I guess me and Colin in a couple weeks will be in Chicago. I think we’re hosting a little something during the day. So we’ll see how that goes.
