In this episode of Beyond the Tour, hosts Jake Hower and Luke Manning dive into the world of professional golf, providing insights and analysis on the latest events and storylines.
The duo starts by recapping the Memorial Tournament, where Scottie Scheffler secured his fifth win of the season, and the LIV Golf event in Houston, where Carlos Ortiz emerged victorious. They then shift their focus to the upcoming US Open at Pinehurst, discussing the course setup, key players to watch, and their predictions for the tournament.
Jake and Luke also touch upon the recent meeting between the PGA Tour’s transaction subcommittee and the PIF, offering their thoughts on the potential implications for the future of golf.
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 Introduction and weekend recap
00:01:13 Memorial Tournament recap: Scottie Scheffler’s win and Colin Morikawa’s performance
00:03:22 Other standouts from the Memorial Tournament
00:05:11 Liv Golf Houston recap: Carlos Ortiz’s victory and notable performances
00:06:41 Team results and format discussion for Liv Golf
00:08:31 Scheduling challenges for concurrent Liv Golf and PGA Tour events
00:10:58 Scandinavian Mixed event recap: Linn Grant’s win and Henrik Stenson’s collapse
00:12:40 LPGA Tour recap: Linnea Strom’s final round 60 and win
00:13:13 US Open preview: Cam Smith’s form and Pinehurst course suitability
00:16:32 Pinehurst course setup, conditions, and key skills needed
00:19:27 Key players to watch at the US Open: Scottie Scheffler and Colin Morikawa
00:20:46 Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele’s chances at the US Open
00:22:41 Jon Rahm’s injury and potential impact on his US Open performance
00:23:51 Liv Golf players to watch at the US Open: Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau
00:28:10 Bryson DeChambeau’s evolution and crowd support
00:30:55 Scottie Scheffler’s emotional celebration and growing popularity
00:32:09 Other notable players and outsider picks for the US Open
00:33:32 Australian players to watch at the US Open
00:37:51 Predictions and over/under for Liv Golf players and top Aussie at the US Open
00:40:08 Excitement for the US Open and course setup
00:40:45 LPGA Tour’s Meijer LPGA Classic preview
00:41:33 Brandel Chamblee’s appearance on the No Laying Up podcast
00:43:41 Tron Carter and Luke Elvy’s ongoing Twitter exchanges
00:44:24 PGA Tour’s transaction subcommittee meeting with the PIF
00:46:47 Lack of progress and concessions in PGA Tour and Liv Golf negotiations
00:48:43 Nate Lashley’s criticism of PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan
00:50:24 Wrap-up and expectations for the US Open
welcome back to beond the tour I’m Jake and with me today as always is Luke how are you hi Jake I’m doing well uh winter I know you’ll chip me for saying that um Brisbane doesn’t have a winter but certainly the weather’s turned a lot fresher out there but it does make for some uh great golfing conditions I do not feel sorry for you at all because as I look outside it’s dark and gloomy and it’s been raining all morning bright blue skies here in in Brisbane we’ve just come up off the end of a a long weekends the King’s Birthday used to I’m so used to saying the Queen’s birthday but it was the King’s Birthday down here I’ve been a relatively busy weekend with the family running around and and doing whatnot so I didn’t get a a huge chance to sit in front of the TV and watch a lot of golf but play any golf I didn’t know it was really just a family old weekend really I got out to uh Royal Queens land on Friday and absolutely hack the course up so uh nothing to write home or talk about there so I’m a little bit of the golf course at the moment my game has been in not a very good place for a little while and I’m trying to stop the urge from going out there and trying to fix it up because that’s a rabbit hole I’m not sure I’ve got the time to go down at the moment yep swing your swing mate all right let’s jump straight into it have a quick rundown of the week that has been so we had the memorial held Scotty Sheffer was a winner not entirely comfortable coming down back stretch there he ended up winning by a shot over colar cow what were your thoughts on that particular event uh mfield Village I think was probably the star in the end really showed its teeth and it was a true test of golf for these players which is something a little different to what we see normally week in week out on the PGA tour stop so refreshing to see these challenging conditions I think there were 11 players overall in the field that finished under par they didn’t have it all their own way as they usually do Scotty fifth win this season first time anyone’s done that since Justin Thomas did it back in 2017 so a great achievement he just continues to power on and and totally dominating the PGA Tour this year it’s quite incredible the form that he’s been in under pressure on Sunday mainly because of his driving I think he only hit 50% of his Fairways and that gave morow and hadwin a bit of a chance but neither of them could get the job done in the end it didn’t really so I didn’t have a lot of confidence in moraca really but the main thing with that and I think it’s fairly obvious very quickly into a round just with how his putting is and you can see if it’s on or not and so he had a lot of chances coming down 15 16 he had a sort of 10f footer and sort of Scotty drained one on him I think to hold that was it a PO on maybe 16 and then he had a 10-footer and it just leaked off on the low side and yeah when his putter is not hot or not on if he’s not inside 5 foot you don’t know whether it’s he’s going to make really much of a charge we saw that at Valhalla in the PGA Championship where his pter went Stone Cold he was just stuck in neutral whilst everybody else was charging so it is the key for Colin but his iron players Elite and we’ll talk a bit about him I think when we get to the US Open preview absolutely any other standouts for you no other standouts for me I think Scotty’s just the dominating headline that was the main takeaway from me his 11th career title two majors now he’s equaled already the career of someone like Zack Johnson effectively not far off for Justin Thomas’s career achievements and 13 events to go in the PGA schedule this year you’d have to think that he’s easily going to get his sixth win for the year I I agree but there is one glaring problem in his resume at the moment I I don’t know when he’s going to win in May will we ever know yes so he’s debunked that theory that he’s unable to win outside of February to to which is always going to happen it’s an anomaly for it to be there in the first place but he is by far the best golfer on the planet right now regardless I know there is still a little bit of commentary and discourse around the PJ tour Fields being weakened but there’s no one on the Liv side at the moment who’s playing anywhere near him so if they are in the field they’re not beating Scotty regardless anyway I think they’re not beating him consistently and that’s the thing with Scotty he’s consistency has just been incredible every time he tees the ball up he is winning or he’s heavily in contention and it’s just shot after shot that he’s striping it down the middle of the Fairway or hitting a green and if he actually putts half decent if he’s positive in terms of Strokes gain putting he invariably wins and Rick Gman had a really good graph of this on X where he showed basically each time he get into the green instead of the red for strikes gain putting he’s going to win a championship or a tournament Scotty will be wanting to take some putting form into Pinehurst this week tital domination as we say at LIF Houston Carlos Ortiz won over Adrian Mor and Patrick Reed had a sort of good sort of finish as well being the home favorite there Reed that’s right performed well in in front of his home crowd probably was never really a chance cuz and Ortiz had open up um a full stroke gap between the rest of the field coming into the 15th unfortunately for Moroni found the hazard off the te in the on the par five 15th there and made bogey in the end and that was the difference because Ortiz was able to birdy that hole and the two- shot swing was all she wrote so Ortiz with his first win on Liv celebrated very happily with his Tade teammates shed with with champagne and he will be looking to take that forward for the rest of the season Lucas Herber did quite well from an O perspective he had a T6 Brooks kco is probably the other one of notes in that final round shot of 65 which is typical of Brooks slitting into a a major I think that seven underpar round in the final round at LEF Houston will definitely have a lot of people with their eye on Brookie coming into Pinehurst this week as say Lucas Herber played quite well the sided leean from a ripper perspective Smithy not so having four doubles and a triple in the final round there and shot an 80 yes and on the team side we had the clicks for their first team win off the back of some good strong play from Richard Bland and also their Captain Martin kimer uh met with the um expected parody from Tron at nlu some interesting tweets um professing support for the cleaks uh he thought they’d never get it done but of course they have now with all four scores counting it it’s you get some wild fluctuations don’t you it really does it’s hard to pay attention to that team side from my perspective until the final couple of holes because the swings are so fast and so violent and I just wonder whether they should make all four SC all four scores count on either all days or maybe just the final two days that certainly would put the cat amongst the pigeons I think so I think we’ve discussed it in previous episodes about I think where that becomes really interesting I think is when you add additional players to the roster who are not necessarily starting because if you have players who are completely out of form on your team and you’ve got all score four scores counting you can’t have any weaknesses so you can change out players and that probably plays into that mid-season draft or or that draft at the end of the year as well where we see a little bit more play movement to fill those sort of gaps and to try and build on that team side of things potentially and we saw that the players can come in and do quite well Ben Campbell I think F had five or six underpath for his round coming in as a substitute I didn’t see what Wade ORS be shot though he was one under I think he might have ended up at one under but certainly Ben Campbell performed really well coming in at last minute there and there’s certainly some Evolution that can happen in the team side with Liv wsby was a one under in his final round and one over in round two there was so that’s just there thereabouts what was trying to watch both tournaments they both finished essentially at the same time I think Houston is in an hour different time zone to the memorial in Ohio but it seemed to be a little bit of a whiff from my perspective with Liv having the ability to control their start time why they would run it to finish at the same time as the memorial and obviously they’ve got less events in their calendar so more flexibility with their scheduling to start with in terms of the weeks that they schedule events and as you say with the shotgun start that probably gives them another level of flexibility again yeah as to when they actually kick off it was difficult to watch both and to really get engaged in both the way that you’d like to as a fan and hopefully Liv can work around that in a bit more sensible way going forward I think obviously the reason it’s been done is because we’ve got the US Open this week so they’re trying to get reps into players so it’s probably from a from the perspective of the players where they want to be playing the week before yeah and of course they’re probably a little bit hamstrung in the fact that it therefore probably needs to be in the US which they’ve running up with issues in terms of getting courses and putting so that all plays into I think but they’ certainly had control over the start time ideally this would be a West Coast event West Coast in June is probably a good time to be over there and we don’t see a lot of West Coast Golf after sort of February March so I think that would be ideal to be there it puts you into a time zone at 3 hours prior or 3 hours after the the east coast and it would be very complimentary to be able to to do that now obviously potentially it’s the courses or trying to get access to a course that they can actually do that on given the the the Monopoly that the PJ holds in the states at the moment that’s right so there’s no doubt some CH challenges that sit behind the scenes that we don’t see but hopefully it is something that they can iron out and and get the scheduling right for next year definitely I think as I said just at least get it out of the same sort of finishing time because it should be complimentary if they’re going to compete against each other I’m sure there’s some Trump courses in California that welcome live there might be some Choice there yes now over on the DP World sewer we had the scanning Haven mixed event which was won by ly grant for the second time in three years that was it looked like it was going to be a snoozefest I went to bed before even turning it on because soda was I think he was eight shots up or was he 11 at one point even potentially Lynn was 11 shots behind to start the day and as you say Soderberg had a had an eight shot lead there and yeah just a tragic sort of finish for him where he got The pting Yips and Lenn Grant came from the clouds to win it a great achievement for her she was the first female to win on the DP World Tour and now she’s the first woman to win twice on the DP World Tour you’ve got a feel for Soderberg and I saw some footage of him in the scores Hut afterwards where he looked pretty inconsolable as you would be missing I think he three puted 18 to fall out of a playoff so sorry scenes for soda BG and happy scenes for ly Grant I’ll tell you what when I woke up in the morning I went to check the scores and I’m like Jesus he just choked that away and I wanted to go and check his whole by ho scores I couldn’t work out how to to find whole by whole scores on the European Tour website you think they’d have that worked out the other thing that I noticed so I just before we jumped on the Pod I was looking for some footage on the DP World social accounts for soda BG’s highlights or low lights shall we call them and and they’ve been scrubbed from social media history so shooting 77 in the final round you probably can’t complain too much particularly where ly Grant went out and shot 65 yeah on the lpj tour we had L strum who had a 60 in the final round she went out in the third group of the morning and held on to win by a shot just unbelievable narly missing out on the magic 59 another Swedish winner for the week I think she could believe what had happened and certainly when you look at the scores there it is quite unbelievable some decent players in the field too there with Megan Kang and tial and C Jen Shin rounded out um the top 10 there at T9 now let’s move on to the US Open this week now I think maybe just to tie in from the live Houston cam Smith finished the day um double triple and ended up with four double Bogies in his last sort of eight holes I think I think it was plus the triple did you see what happened there no I didn’t see any of it uh obviously would have been dropped from coverage with uh having that many scores but certainly quite shocking to to see um we know that Smithy can get waywood uh with the driver and that course there in Houston certainly does have some trouble lurking but it has to be more than just a wayward driver to be shooting 80 and having four doubles and a triple in your round it’s not it’s not super promising coming into the US Open now this was what I pencil marked this particular Us open venue Pinehurst as being cams probably most suited Us open venue playing similar to what we see on the sand Bel down here in in Victoria and him being used to firm and fast conditions lots of shav runoff areas and with Cam’s short game it looked like it was setting up perfectly for him but his form doesn’t look very good a recent time no and I think the things that you’ve called out on the course are the things that uh would be licking his lips at and and he may still well perform talked about the the narrowing sort of the the firm and fast conditions sorry you talked about those and we do expect it from what we’re hearing to be that way I saw some commentary from from last year’s Champion Windam Clark saying that greens are already borderline whe whether accurate or it’s some sandbagging and a shot across the bow of the USGA early on from the players or remains to be seen but yes it it certainly does set up where those players that have Supreme short games and excellent putting skills should be able to come to the four I saw a clip from Golf Channel earlier where they had Johnson Wagner out there putting him through his Paces again chipping off the top perua grass onto one of the greens and he demonstrated not only how he’s struggling with his own chipping game but I think more so he demonstrated just how good these elite players are with their short game the level of precision and pure strike that you need in order to hit your Landing spots if you’re chipping from The Collection areas and the tight grass around these greens the level of precision that you need is Extreme and that’s very as you say very similar to sand belt conditions and also course like Royal Queensland where smithy’s won before we’ll have to see how he turns it around in a short amount of time you’d think it’s going to be a major challenge for him to be able to do that but he is a major champion and he’s got that Aussie fighting spirit that we love to see he’s been positive Strokes gain’s approach in two of his last eight events that has typically been an area of his game which has also been quite good his driver has been a liability but his approach game has been a liability of recent time as well and he’s been really heavily reliant on his putting and around the green and this golf course at Pinehurst is very much a second Shot Golf Course um the flyovers that the ufg have put out uh in conjunction with Pinehurst show how small the landing areas are on and the green complexes are similar to austa in that sense where you’ve got a small Target and if you hit your target you’re rewarded with a short birdie part or a good look at your part but it will repel mediocre or poor shots and really force a very tough up and down strikes around the green strikes G around the green will be important pting will be important but also to avoid putting yourself in those difficult spots the strikes gain approach will be a premium as well it’s going to be really interesting to see this week we’re now 10 years since we last went to Pinehurst on the men’s professional side just to see what effect distance has had on how they play the course I went through Google Earth this morning just looking at Landing zones and where potentially greens and bunkers pinch in the fairways it looks fairly open still to me like it it it looks like playing quite aggressively might be might if you’re not an elite iron player playing aggressively might be your play because you’re going to get close to the greens they going to have a better chance of getting it and keeping it on the green as well potentially as well depending on how firm they are but that may blow it out a little bit about how many competitors and who’s going to be competing but certainly Scotty sheffer’s number one he’s regardless of the course he’s probably the player there’s a couple of different skools of thought on how the tournament will play out with the the course setup listening to the fried eggs preview was very much a thought that the pinch areas in the Fairway the narrowing of the fairways around the sort of 300 to 315 yard Landings could well disadvantage some of the bigger hitters and give the shorter hitters say someone like aach more of a chance in this particular tournament so you’ve got that school of thought but the big hitters do tend to work it out when Bryson w at Wingfoot a lot of people said he’s just not going to be able to bomb and gouge his way around that course it will find him out the green complexes are too challenging for him to be able to do that yet he still found a way to win couple of different schools of thought and we’ll have to wait until sort of Monday morning a time to find out what else have we got on on that so yeah Scotty morow obviously we touched on him earlier he’s having a good season today starting really his forine started turning around at the Masters but since then he has been competing most weeks with the cave of that putter still not getting hot in in any of the weeks really that’s right the iron plays Elite he’s trending well in terms of his form uh a big question mark though on how he plays in the wind we know that he’s got that stock shot of the a cut or the baby fade and in windy conditions that ball just gets eaten up if it does get windy at pinst that may change his chances but certainly if conditions are mild his appro shot and his current form I think will see him in contention it’s looking like the forecast is pretty mild and benign conditions most of the weekend maybe Saturday it looks like it gets a little windy but we’re not talking anything that would affect someone like Colin I wouldn’t imagine with in the the early sort of teens km per hour winds that won’t affect a professional golfer okay so continuing on I few the other sort of I highlighted a couple others looking at I actually looked at Rick German’s site as well looking at his Rick runs good some of his custom modeling and whatever and picked out a few things Rory I think he’s certainly someone that is going to be again up there his game’s quite well suited here I think as well he’s been putting pretty solidly his approach game this year I think has been more has been improved compared to previous years obviously he’s a driver as Elite so he’s a huge chance I think at this particular venue but it’s a major joke that’s a major I know I didn’t no look you’d never say Rory can’t win of course he can win and he’s good enough to beat anyone in the world anywhere in the world so you would never write Rory off been a decade since he won a major and we have seen time and time again him get close but not be able to close it out for various reasons or come screaming through with a backd door top 10 or top five after being out of contention in the earlier round certainly not putting a line through Rory but how many times can he fool us into believing I no it’s he’s going he has to win one surely he’s going to win one we say that every major that is is also again he the second best golfer in the last 12 months didn’t have a fantastic week at the memorial but he should be well in the mix again this particular week and I’m very much positive very positive on zand and how that he’s got that monkey off his back and he’s one a major I think that will maybe free him up a little bit and hopefully he can capitalize on it given how inform he is it’ll be interesting to see how he goes now that he’s broken the major seal and whether the he feels a lot more comfortable in the major environment and he truly believes that he can get it done a good test for Xander to see how he backs up in this next major coming off his win there at valella John rum he obviously duby deed out of Houston with a foot infection I think it was like a blister or something in between his toes he was playing reasonable golf on that first day after there was a clip going around of him wincing in pain having hit a t- shot but after that he up to three or four under so he was playing reasonably well and then wded after six holes on the Saturday right uh it’s hard to know how bad the injury actually is I saw some reporting this morning I think maybe from Brentley Roman that uh he wasn’t on course on Monday and not likely to be on course at pinhurst on Tuesday either so maybe he’s giving himself the maximum amount of time to recover it’s been pretty quiet so there’s been nothing publicly released uh to my knowledge about the finer details of the injury and as We Know A lot’s been made of the very by the various Talking Heads of ram being unhappy at live and he’s a shadow of his former self Etc I think all those things will just play into Ram’s hands and I say beware the wounded Spanish bull are the chances from the live guys Brooks as we mentioned a few minutes ago it’s major Brooks expect him to be performing quite well I think probably the one thing that from his game that sort of stands out when I look at him look at the the the numbers is his putter seems to be very problematic at the moment and it’s very unusual compared to Major winning Brooks so I’m just not sure there’s that little question mark on that putter whether or not he can get that right you can’t talk majes without talking brooksie and it seems that he just relishes the big events the harder the better for him so I expect him to be up this week as you say the putting can be not where it needs to be at times um I think we’ll get an indication early on in round one how he’s going to be if he makes those must make five eight Footers then I think we’ll see a real charge from Brooks because the rest of the game is just rock solid and and sooda Dependable when the pressure is on we saw that in Singapore event where he was asked to hit a number of contesting shots coming down the stretch and he just never faulted so expect him to be in the mix if his puttings on song what’s do you think of Bryson’s chances look I think Bryson is a a a good chance in the sense that he’s won this event before I think he’s a more mature and well-rounded player now than when he was during his win at Wing foot a few years back he’s contended at the Masters he held the lead at the Masters earlier this year but eventually dropped away he finished only a shot back from Xander at the PGA so he’s really given both those Majors a good Shake um his live form last week at Houston was average I would say and he had quite a few bogeys on the card but I think he’ll work that out on the Range and one thing is for sure Bryson is not afraid of hard work and he will put in the hours and the time to get the results and so I do expect that we’ll see a really big turnaround from what we saw at leave Houston uh the week just gone to what we’re going to see now at Pinehurst this coming week I think this is going to be a big test just to see how he’s going to handle the hard conditions Bryson seems to be able to bully a course and he performs really well when not necessarily super hard just with his sort of temperament he seems to get a little bit we saw it a little bit on the Sunday at austa where when things got hard he just made a few silly mistakes so it’ll be interesting to see how he handles golf course which is going to be so demanding mentally and yeah he certainly got the game all aspects of his game to actually compete but it’s just I think mentally we’ll see and we’ll know that quite early as well I think think the other thing I’m interested to see is what sort of crowd support Bryson has I I really feel like uh Bryson has turned a corner in terms of his public support and maybe much as if this has got to do with the YouTube and social media content that he puts out there he’s really good with the fans we’ve seen many Clips with him being genuine and engaging with the fans and if you take that back a few years ago where he was was parodied by a lot of commentators and golf influencers he was awkward and I guess he was a bit of a villain in the game I feel like that Persona he’s been able to shed that to a large extent and has tapped into more mainstream support now which I think is great to see and look a lot of that’s probably due to the fact that he has matured and maybe showing a bit more of an authentic and genuine side to him in terms of his interactions with fans and whatnot but if he’s got the support of the crowd at Pinehurst I think he’ll be really boyed by that and we’ll ride that for all that he can there was a I was thinking about him the other day I think the topic of slow play come up and he was someone obviously was ridden very hard early on because he was a turtle he was so slow and he almost for a Time refused to believe it but he went off and over the past 12 18 months has sped right up like I watched him at Adelaide and he was up the backside of the group in front at all times which is a real credit to him the other thing that he was getting a lot of criticism over was he’s not calling for when hitting a wayward t-shot and the same thing he went off and he fixed it up and he’s now probably gone the other way where he’s it’s a bit of a show seeing him yell fall because he’s so loud and so Bose over it but I think that one thing about Bryson is that he uh learns and he wants to take in as much as possible and trying to make himself better so maybe that’s gonna hopefully prove me wrong in terms of maybe that mental side of the game as well maybe he will learn from the mistakes he’s made in the past and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve done a full 180 on Bryson I was totally out on him many years ago and actively rooting against him in some of those tournaments and now I can appreciate him as a player and as an ambassador for the game um still has his quirky moments no doubt and as everybody I guess does but I’ll certainly be hoping to see him up the top of the leaderboard and really In Contention cuz it’s good for golf it is absolutely and I’ve always loved Bryce and I think when I come into sort of golf back in 2015 sort of him coming up through his amateur stays winning the the the US amateur and he’s come down to huntingdale and he played in the the Aussie Masters or he ended up second but I was watching him following him around watching him interact with the crowd he was really good he very quirky and so I was playing Cobra clubs because off the back of him really so he’s my first sort of golfing crush and I saw him play at the 2019 president cup and this was probably Peak sort of anti Bryson moments and the crowd was the Aussie crowd was very anti Bryson and I think he struggled with that he he coed a lot of from the fans some of it in Good Humor but some of it probably over the top in reality and he did struggle with that but I I do remember seeing him hit just an absolutely blistering t- shot going up 18 I think he ended up winning that final singles match on the last day there the guy has just got incredible talent and now if he can Garner the crowd support as well that can be a pretty potent combination yeah hey speaking of change do you think Scotty has changed since his celebration like it wasn’t a a huge celebration but it meant a lot you could see he he gave the big fist pump after hauling his pot on Sunday I think that’s probably from my perspective the most emotion I’ve seen from him I’d agree with that that stood out to me as well it it was a much more pronounced celebration than we’ve seen Scotty don’t know whether the memorial has any particular meaning to him in terms of family history or whatnot but but it it definitely did Stand Out sure if it’s correlated to the arrest maybe blowing off a bit of steam but certainly it did stick out in my mind too he seemed to have quite a lot of support there as well in terms of the crowds so you probably expect that at Pinehurst he’s going to come into this with a lot of pressure on him so that will also be quite interesting and Scotty is more of a subdued personality but his crowd support and his fan base has been growing and growing having the results that he’s had almost demands the attention and the fandom but certainly you can feel that swell of support for him and the Public’s interest in him growing now just before switching to the Aussies interfered a couple others that I had highlighted I think that probably good chances on the Liv side I think Tyro Hatton looks like he’s going to be someone that should perform quite well here and then outside of those guys again probably looking at mean he’s in pretty good form and not too many others that I see on the the Liv side that are jumping out at me though I’m interested to see how David pugge goes yeah he’s really been trending well and now that he’s got the opportunity I’d expect he’ll be wanting to grab it both hands so that’ll be interesting to see how he goes burmister has been one of the the standout Live players I would agree with you on on that point of view the and I guess Sergio is the other one as well he had a sneaky finish um in the live Houston event has been playing pretty well we’ll we’ll see how he travels as well we can’t consider Martin kimer we can’t can we I don’t think so he had the lead there at one stage at Live Houston fell away in the end and I suspect even if he gets hot for a round or two at Pinehurst it’ll be nothing more than sentimental REM missing and I don’t expect him to be there come Sunday afternoon now A’s interfered if I’m just going to read down the list we’ve got Cam Davis cam Smith Jason day minu Lee Jason scer and Adam Scott I’m not particularly bullish on the Aussies chances this time around we’ve talked about Smithy who both of us had him penciled in as the Aussie’s best hope and our confidence in that’s been really shaken by what we saw on the weekend not ruling Smithy out but it’s going to be tough work to turn that around in such a short amount of time Cam Davis I don’t think he’s showing that he’s a big- Time major player yet poked his head up on the leaderboard at the Masters and crap the bed almost asmed as soon as he got up there so uh I don’t think Cam’s really going to be um giving it a shake Jason Dave for me is probably our best chance outside of Smithy in the sense that his form this year has been reasonable we know that he’s got a great short game and he’s one of the best Putters on tour so those things stack up well for Pinehurst it probably just comes down to his iron play yeah um and whether he can be as accurate in hitting those small Targets on the greens as he needs to be but if he does we know that he’s going to be deadly with that pter if he gets a lot of looks at 8 or 10 ft so Jason for me probably is the Aussie’s best chance for me is a bit of a wild card we know minwu can go really low this is not a usual sort of PGA Tour stop or DP World Tour stop so having probably not seen a lot of the course or played it a lot it might take a while for him to work out and whether you can give these really top goal a head start like that remains to be seen But woozy is probably a bit of a a wild card for me Jason scrivner has been battling on the DP World Tour he’s I think 109th in the the race to the byst standings at the moment has missed three of his three out of his last sorry missed the cut in three out of his last five events so you’d think that’s going to be a really big challenge for him to uh make a splash at Pinehurst in this event and then I’d be interested in your thoughts on Scotty he’s now going to be playing in I think maybe his 94th or 95th consecutive major which is an an incredible achievement but is he doing anything more other than making up the numbers oh I think it’ll probably depend a little bit around how he’s performing around the greens he’s pretty solid iron player obviously off the team he’s more than competitive and he’ll hold his own there and his pter has been relatively solid as well I think think he’s probably he’s going to be up there with Jason day maybe is Australia’s best chance just depending on how he’s around the greens and I expect to see Scotty putting Martin from around the greens I don’t think that he will be mixing it up taking a lob wedge or a 56 Dee on this tight grass we have seen him do this before in terms of putting on ulating greens from off the green so that will be his plan of attack around Pinehurst and your point is well made about the iron play if he can hit these greens and have more greens in regulation then that puts less pressure on his scrambling game and I think that’s where he gets unstuck for me is his ability to scramble repeatedly where he’s constantly putting that short game under pressure and and that’s why I think we see too many bogeys on the cards apart from the occasional errant t- shot but if you need Scotty to get up and down your life better not depend on it there’d be a lot of other players that you’d want the club in the hands off yeah I think as long as it’s going to come down to where he’s missing it isn’t it with his approach if he’s missing in the right areas he’s going to be able to pull out that Putter and maybe take a bit of pressure off that short game but if he’s short sighting himself or missing in the wrong areas where he can’t use that putter it might get pretty hard for him yeah agree just a few more questions on Pinehurst before we move on we’ve got 12 Live players in the field I think for Valhalla there was 17 and we set the overs and unders live player in the top 10 line at 1 and a half I think we keep it at one and a half and what’s your sort of take this time round I’m not as confident as I was there I don’t know it’s I’d be impressed to see one in the top 10 to be honest if we’re anything more than one so I guess I’m taking the unders take the under’s top live player in the field I think I’ve got to pick one I’m going say Hatton and then top Aussie top Aussie I’ll take Scotty you’ll take Scotty yeah I think the I think unders for Live players in top 10 be one top live player I’m going to say Brooks and then top Aussie as I say I I think it’s Jason day or a red hot minwoo who catches some lightning in a bottle do you have an outsider that’s a good question look I think from an out Outsiders perspective it’s hard to say who’s actually an outsider when that’s right when you don’t see this course played a lot of times and it brings a lot of other players into contention but look I am going to go the real Outsider and say I think DJ’s due for a big big that’s the he’s considered absolutely an out Outsider so yeah I’m happy with that selection and I’m going to take for an out I’m going to take Alex nor now I think that’s a decent sort of look at pinous isn’t it yeah th uh review or pre and just can’t wait for getting it now likewise yeah this is probably my most anticipated US Open for a little while you know what one I was really impressed with was Chambers Bay I like the ball on the ground I like options this style of golf is what I play a lot of down here a lot of lyy style golf but yeah a lot of options so we’re going to see a variety of golf being played so it’s going to be a good weekend yeah it’ll be much different to place like Beth Page black or um those types of courses so I I think it’s going to be a fantastic tournament actually one last thing on that did Adam Scott end up getting in through his final qualifying or was he admitted through the top 60 in the end he finished 61 ingr but I think uh the death of Grayson Murray might have pushed him up potentially I’m not sure that’s my understanding is that he was was brought forward off the alternates list May well have still made it even if he remained on the alternates list but was elevated because Grayson Murray has been removed from the top 60 owgr rankings and that made way for Scotty to get the tournament other event there’s only really the or there’s yeah the other major event really on LP is the Maya classic that’s over in Missouri um who’s playing in that one so we’ve got some notables in the field there Nelly cter Lilia Vu Seline boutier Lexi Thompson and a couple Aussies in Mii Lee and and Grace Kim solid event but it’ll be struggling to gain attention against the US I think maybe is Lilia Vu she’s been offer a little bit hasn’t she I think so this maybe her first tournament tournament in yeah I think they’re right that’s right and return event all right so in other news or other sort of occurrences through the week we had brandle going on the nlu podcast yeah I I haven’t listened to that particular episode yet so I don’t have a lot of context to add have you I believe you have I’ve seen the grabs as we know and suly two of them outspoken golf comment going around had a bit of a Twitter spat earlier in the year where were arguing with each other over advertising and production quality for the broadcast and so it was interesting to see brandle go on the nlu Pod credit to both of them for getting and leaning into the conflict and the controversy we’ve been talking about on this pod where there’s great engagement to be gained from that not surprisingly I understand they bonded over their Mutual disdain or distaste for live and there was quotes running around from brandall talking about how Liv’s a laughable product they play music they don’t play the courses the way the Architects intend them to be and he’s still banging on about the corruption and the blood money from Saudi Arabia he doesn’t seem to realize that the rest of the world has moved on and that the sports washing and blood Money argument is just falling on deaf ears largely there’s a small cohort of people that still get riled up about that but when they look more broadly at what’s happening in global sports like soccer and Formula 1 Etc and even women’s golf the argument just doesn’t stack up anymore for being a reason to avoid the Investments yes they had brandle on the Pod there and afterwards saw Luke Elvie tweeted out that this is what happens when people who exist in a bubble get together and complain to each other which draw a pretty sharp and quick response from Tron at nlu where he said to Luke look I’m shocked that the usgaa have asked you to commentate on the Pinehurst event coming up for the international feed and he tweeted a meme of a shark with a sucker fish attached to it indicating or implying that luk was the sucker fish to the shark always a bit of banter and a bit of fun in and around the nlu guys yeah those two and brandle I guess no brandle is is another story but TR and L Elie seem this is an on- running been running for a long time I think pretty much for since at least since Liv’s come on the scene and Luke started talking about it but yeah I’m not sure what tron’s problem with Luke is because I don’t know listening to Luke’s stuff you it’s controversial in that he’s supporting Liv and whatnot but it doesn’t seem like his way out I don’t know just it’s a weird one to me no and look maybe there’s some backstory to it that we’re not aware of but yeah it’s interesting watching anyway nonetheless and brandle of course he’ll fight with anybody AK is the other one that is getting a few headlines at the moment with him and brandle getting quite personal that’s right yeah I did see that and probably the other really big news for the week was really not snoozing itself anyway really at the end the PJ to a transaction subc committing meeting with a piff in New York much much to do about nothing in the end tiger and Adam Scott I think were the player directors to meet with the piff in person along with the other Senior PGA Tour of brass Rory was playing at Memorial so he wasn’t able to join in person but we understand he joined virtually for the meeting Rory made some interesting comments about the meeting saying that was big boy stuff I think more interestingly were his comments around Liv saying that he doesn’t see Liv slowing down in the next couple of years and that he HED to see more of a collaboration and cross-pollination with players being able to play on both tours now I think that would have irritated a number of the US player directors and players that have been wanting to see sanctions and penalties and reparations against the Live players that defected and also the fans and the players that just want to see live shut down in its entirety so interesting comments from Rory PGA T released a statement after the meeting which uh was just really a lot of words saying absolutely nothing so for me there doesn’t seem to be any meaningful progress Jake are we ever going to see a deal happen and at what point do they call it quits and decide to move on I don’t see I don’t think it’s beneficial at this point for a deal to happen really it maybe an understanding of there’s a few probably points that both sides would like to see conceded but it seems like where we are now is probably where it’s going to fall and maybe there’s just you a little bit of pollination cross-pollination not much I can’t see and it feels like there’s many vested interests working against a deal yeah so it just seems to be dragging on we’re past the 12 month Mark now so we’re a year and 5 days beyond June anniversary and you would think that if a deal was going to be crunched it would have been crunched by now and that gets back to my point of when do you draw a line and then say okay this isn’t not going to happen we’re just not seeing any sort of concessions or any Goodwill at all being made particular a behalf of the PJ maybe we are starting to see that a little bit with the DP World Tour but yeah like the stuff around Blandy not them going out of their way to disinvite Blandy or to make it clear that he’s not in welcome on the champions tour or even some of it was it burn Westberg not being able to play in the co- sanctions or the PGA Tour owned co- invited I wouldn’t call them co-sanctioned but K invited DP World Tour tournaments because he has played in live events in the past so I think they’re still going out of their way to to make sure it’s clear that Le’s not welcome in that was very Petty wasn’t it yeah it was and yeah I think maybe the DP World Tour is waking up a little bit in into what their position is and maybe that’s where Deal’s going to get done and the only concessions that we’re seeing are actually coming from the majors so they’re seeing the writing on the wall in my view but we’ve got the transaction subcommittee and the player directors continuing to maintain the line that things are progressing well and it’s all positive it’s just a complicated thing that takes some time to work out you can merge two massive companies in a very complex corporate deal much much quicker than what’s happening here from my perspective it’s all PID to a side I don’t know there’s so many interests in I think there’s been so many hidden interests in the T and how money is made in and around the T I’ve said it previously about the PJ Superstore and ownership structures there I think there’s a lot of these deals that have happened over the course of time which have funnel money away from the players that it’s just too hard to it’s so intertwined that maybe they’re just afraid of breaking that up what would happen in terms of some of these other people knowing where the bodies are buried I think that’s true and so it’s not surprising that we’re not seeing any progress in that regard and then finally Nate Lashley beat off on Jay Monahan yeah had some Choice words for Jay nothing’s nothing surprising but said that he’s chicken and won’t stand up to a handful of guys not sure who he’s referring to possibly tiger and Co but we know that Nate’s had form before in terms of leaking on the tour where he published the full pip results on count so always good to keep an eye on N top to yeah yeah and I think mostly being hamstr strong maybe he’s protecting himself a little bit by not speaking up and trying to get himself looked potentially but for the most part I think it’s clear that he doesn’t have much power you not at the moment it probably different pre six June last year yeah and he abused that power and he broke the trust of the people that are of his main stakeholder groups I.E the players so the fact that got no power now is just a a function of the way that he exercised that power in the leadup to the framework agreement being announced and I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Jay it would be a difficult position for him to be in that is one of his own creation uh for me I think he’s dead man walking until this is resolved they’re going to let him try and be a caretaker CEO whilst others are um calling the shots he’s there to implement and do as he’s told and once uh a definitive decision’s been made on the way forward for the PGA Tour and and what looks like uh I think Jay will be making way for uh for a new leader all right that’s a good coverage looking forward to this the weekend of golf and hopefully come out with I’d prefer not to see a random winner I’d like to see one of the big names take something yeah it’s going to be a great weekend ahead agree we don’t want a winner we want a worthy winner of a Us open at Pinehurst and I look forward coming back talking all things with you in a recap next week lovely thanks for tuning in guys we’ll speak to you again in seven days time
