Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Sixty Four: Collapse
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to episode number one hundred and sixty four, the Death the Journalism Podcast.
- 0:04My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. I
- 0:06will have some thoughts on an epic US Open golf tournament that you will not
- 0:11here elsewhere. Stop me if you've heard this before. But the Caitlin Clark
- 0:15race and sexuality controversy has escalated yet again. Tom Brady makes an impassioned plea
- 0:23to save football and numerous stories related to the state of the presidential race.
- 0:30Ipe you had a good Father's Day? I did. It was nice to
- 0:35have a half a day of being treated with moderate respect, which is about
- 0:39all fathers in twenty twenty four in the United States of America get these days,
- 0:45largely because the media has enabled this idea that fathers are superfluous and to
- 0:52be mocked. And my children are definitely some of those that have accepted that
- 0:58reality. But for half a day, they pretend because it's Father's Day,
- 1:02to give Dad a little bit of love and respect. Not much as they
- 1:06used to because now they're getting a little bit older at twelve and seven years
- 1:08old, but still they pretend. They fake it, and we had a
- 1:11very nice Father's Day, and I hope you did as well. Part of
- 1:15the Father's Day tradition, at least for people like me who are golfers,
- 1:21is to watch the final round of the US Open golf tournament. Normally,
- 1:25I would not lead the podcast with a sports story. I tend to do
- 1:30the sports stories later on in every episode of the Death of Journalism podcasts.
- 1:34But I'm going to lead with the US Open here for a couple of different
- 1:38reasons, mainly because I have some thoughts on this particular subject that you're not
- 1:45going to hear elsewhere, and I do believe that this is one of the
- 1:48areas in which I'm an expert, as I have not only covered golf,
- 1:53but I've played golf at a fairly high competitive level, at least tried to
- 1:57with some modicum of excess on the amateur playing field, and played in a
- 2:04few USGA national championships and one club championships, what have you. I also
- 2:10made some predictions about the US Open in the last episode of the podcast,
- 2:15so I'm going to start my US Open analysis with evaluating how my predictions went
- 2:21down. The first prediction I made was that the number one player in the
- 2:23world, Scotty Scheffler would not win the US Open, and I was pretty
- 2:29emphatic about this. It turned out that I was not just right. I
- 2:31was, I guess, even more right than I predicted. I thought he
- 2:35would still be a factor, he just wouldn't win, because, as I
- 2:39said, I thought gravity would finally take its toll, and that this remarkable
- 2:44run that Scotti Scheffer's been on would eventually peter out. Well, he barely
- 2:47even made the cut, was a complete non factor, so I was correct
- 2:52about that. Instead of Scottie Scheffler, I said that I thought Xander Schoffley
- 2:57and Colin Moorekawa were the people to keep an eye on. Neither of them
- 3:01won. I although Xander Schoffley somehow finished seventh, played absolutely horrible and only
- 3:07lost by five shots, which is amazing in a remarkable testament of just how
- 3:14good he is. Callin Morikawa also didn't have his best, but he finished
- 3:19fourteenth. So even though neither Xander nor Morrikawa won, those weren't terrible predictions.
- 3:25I also said that Tiger Woods would barely make the cut. Well,
- 3:30he barely missed the cut, and I think that reality is starting to set
- 3:36in for Tiger based upon some of the things he said in his post round
- 3:39press conference, this was a situation where it's not going to set up any
- 3:44better for Tiger Woods than it did this past week, where the temperatures were
- 3:49high, the ground was flat, the golf course was playing fairly difficult,
- 3:54at least difficult enough for scores, and not could get completely out of control
- 4:00where he can still theoretically compete because he can't make nearly as many putts as
- 4:04he used to, and he missed the cut by two shots. Now he
- 4:09easily could have made the cut. He had a couple of power lipouts towards
- 4:13the end, so it wasn't a terrible prediction of my part, but I
- 4:15was wrong. And after his second round, Tiger said it may or may
- 4:20not be his last US Open. There's no chance this is going to be
- 4:24his last US Open barring major inner injury. But it does feel like Tiger's
- 4:30starting to realize, Wait a minute, I'm feeling pretty decent physically. I
- 4:34played pretty well, hit the ball right off the tee. These conditions are
- 4:40as good as I could ask for for me personally, and I didn't even
- 4:43make the cut. That's a problem, especially when you're forty eight years old,
- 4:47and you only have one major championship left to go in this particular year.
- 4:51So I do sense that reality is starting to set in, slowly but
- 4:56surely when it comes to Tiger Woods. I also predicted that the scoring for
- 5:01this US Open was going to be better than a lot of people had predicted.
- 5:05There was a lot of talk of carnage and an even par winner and
- 5:11that Pinehurst was going to show its teeth, And I said, no,
- 5:15I don't believe that, because I think fundamentally the USGA has lost its nerve
- 5:19that the players have way too much power, and you know, they are
- 5:24afraid of offending the players, especially in the era of live where the players
- 5:28have all the leverage, and so the players now you know, running the
- 5:32show. The inmates are running the asylum, and you can't have a US
- 5:36Open, you cannot have a real US Open anymore because the players will get
- 5:41too pissed off. And the media, while they claim to love the golf
- 5:45media it claims to love an old fashioned US Open test, they don't do
- 5:50anything to support the USGA in this particular endeavor. They side with the players
- 5:57because again, the players have all the leverage and all the power and the
- 6:00winning score ended up being six under par. That were just as I predicted
- 6:06a record number of under par players for a US Open at Pinehurst. So
- 6:12I was one hundred percent correct about that. And without getting too deeply involved
- 6:16in the golf aspects of this, the reality of the scoring. This just
- 6:20drives me crazy because it's just it's playing per ten. It's one of my
- 6:25pet peeves in all of life, whether it's politics, media, sports,
- 6:28whatever. I can't stand it when people play per ten. And that's what
- 6:31this whole US Open was about. We were pretending that the winning score was
- 6:35six hunderd par and that that sounds like a US Open. No, it
- 6:40wasn't six hundred par. It was fourteen under par because they were playing two
- 6:44par fives and calling them par fours. So that's eight holes during four rounds
- 6:48where you know it's really a par seventy two when they're calling it a par
- 6:53seventy. So you add eight shots. And if you compare it to the
- 6:57previous week with at the Memorial tourn Jack Nicholas's tournament, it actually played far
- 7:01more difficult scoring wise than the US Open did. But that's a par seventy
- 7:08two as it should be and they should have been calling pineers to par seventy
- 7:11two because they were playing two holes each day that were clearly by yardage standards
- 7:16par fives and just calling them par four so that they could claim that this
- 7:21is a really tough test. And then only six under par won the tournament.
- 7:26So that kind of drives me crazy. But the other prediction I made
- 7:30was that I did not think that Rory McElroy was going to win the tournament,
- 7:35partially because I think he's getting too old. People are very very slow,
- 7:41especially in the golf media, to understand how much golf has changed,
- 7:44and that when you're in your mid thirties, it's almost over now. And
- 7:47that's what's so ridiculous about what Tiger Woods is trying to do with a battered
- 7:51body at forty eight. The game has completely changed, and so the golf
- 7:56media still thinks that Rory McElroy is young. He's not, and he has
- 8:00won a major championship in ten years. And I was right about this.
- 8:05He didn't win this one, but it was a hell a lot closer than
- 8:07I anticipated. And part of the reason why I did not think he was
- 8:11going to win was because of all the disarray in his personal life, which
- 8:15we talked quite a bit about an episode number one hundred and sixty three where
- 8:18he had filed for divorce very publicly, and then a month later says,
- 8:24never mind, We're going to keep staying married with our young child. And
- 8:30I thought, there's something very, very weird going on here. I don't
- 8:33know what the explanation is, but it's not conducive to winning a US Open.
- 8:37Well, Rory played really well for most of the tournament, had it
- 8:41in his grasp, had a two shot lead with just a few holes left,
- 8:46and then completely collapsed, missing two very short putts, one on sixteen
- 8:52and one on eighteen to effectively hand the tournament over to Bryson d Chambeau,
- 8:58who ended up in very dramatic fashion, hitting one of the best bunker shots
- 9:03you ever going to see on the eighteenth hole, although that covered up a
- 9:09hell of a lot of mistakes by Bryson D Chambeau, which you're going to
- 9:11get to momentarily. But Rory really blew it. And it's an amazing thing
- 9:18about life. I mean, in sports this happens all the time, but
- 9:22particularly in golf, where in golf you have no control over what your opponent
- 9:28does at all. And it just seems so strange to me that the media
- 9:33narrative about this US Open is completely different if Rory McElroy simply makes two putts
- 9:41that he never misses. Now, you know one of the things. Again,
- 9:45I don't want to get too deeply into the golf thing, but he
- 9:46missed the put on sixteen, and of course the golf media is so stupid
- 9:50they never mentioned this. He missed the short put on sixteen because Patrick Cantley
- 9:56had tried to make a putt on the exact same line right before Rory putted,
- 10:01and his ball went dead right at the hole, much more so than
- 10:05Cantley had anticipated. And I guarantee you, having been in this situation a
- 10:11million times myself and tournaments, that fucked with Rory's mind. He saw the
- 10:16ball go a way right, he aimed too far left, He hit it
- 10:20left lift and missed the pott. Now I still shouldn't have missed it because
- 10:22it was the shortest, but he's missed all year by far. But that
- 10:26clearly screwed with his head. And then on eighteen he missed a more difficult
- 10:33putt that he I think he basically whiffed on I think he was aimed way
- 10:37too far left, probably knew it, and then opened up the blade and
- 10:41the ball went off off to the right and he lipped out in the other
- 10:43direction. But those two putts, which Rory never misses. If he makes
- 10:48those two putts, he's the champ, he's the hero. And the narrative
- 10:54about Bryson d. Chambeau is that he completely choked. That he played horrible
- 11:00the entire last round, couldn't hit a fairway, got unbelievably lucky every time
- 11:05he hit it into the weeds, and it was a miracle that he was
- 11:07even close. And then on fifteen he three putts, he missed a short
- 11:13putt that no one remembers now, and on eighteen he hit a terrible drive
- 11:18way left and no business hitting driver. He doesn't need hit a driver on
- 11:22eighteen. It's not a very long hole for him. And then this goes
- 11:24back to just I can't stand the golf media. They're so incompetent. But
- 11:28you know, something happened on the eighteenth hole that I haven't heard anybody mentioned,
- 11:33And now I'm not even one hundred percent sure it occurred because the media
- 11:37had just totally dropped the ball. But it is certainly a seemed to me
- 11:41watching Bryson's t shot on eighteen, that it hit a fat ass volunteer couldn't
- 11:48get his butt out of the way, and it caram directly left under that
- 11:54tree. I watched it three or four times, and it certainly appeared to
- 11:58me as if the all karened off a volunteer. But we don't even know
- 12:03that. I mean, that could have been a huge part of this whole
- 12:05In fact, it was a huge part of this whole narrative. It could
- 12:09have cost Bryce in the tournament, or who knows, it could have even
- 12:13helped him depending on where the ball went. But the guy should have been
- 12:16able to get the hell out of the way. He didn't. And then
- 12:20Bryson gets away with hitting a ridiculously stupid second shot. Why he's even trying
- 12:28to go for the green there? When Parr wins the tournament and a bogey
- 12:33gets him in a playoff, the smart move there is to just pitch it
- 12:37out onto the fairway, which will give you a much better chance to get
- 12:43up and down. Now, he got away with it because he hit this
- 12:45ridiculously great long bunker shot but that was a really stupid move. So he
- 12:50chokes off the tee. HiT's a stupid second shot. By the way.
- 12:54The other part of this that the golf beat he never mentions, is he's
- 12:58underneath the tree there and he's and he's trying to figure out how far he
- 13:03can bring back his elongated irons, and he brushes the tree. If a
- 13:09leaf falls from the tree, he loses the tournament. The fucking idiot.
- 13:15He was incredibly lucky that that didn't happen. That would have been a penalty.
- 13:18So Rison does all sorts of things very wrong on the eighteenth hole,
- 13:24but it gets all covered up because he hits one great shot and because Rory
- 13:28McElroy misses two easy potts. If Rory makes two easy potts, then you
- 13:35know this is a completely different narrative. And Bryson isn't the mega hero,
- 13:39He's not the chance, He's not only not the champion, but he goes
- 13:43from being the mega superstar hero in the media's minds to being a complete and
- 13:48total goat. And the subtext of all this, which the golf media and
- 13:54the golf telecast on NBC completely ignored unbelievably, and I think tellingly is the
- 14:03entire Live Golf PGA Tour controversy. It is absolutely astonishing from a media perspective.
- 14:11You know, I'm the biggest media cynic there is. This is the
- 14:15Death of Journalism podcast. But how the fuck do you have basically not just
- 14:22forget just forget about the first three rounds because it could have easily been a
- 14:24major narrative for the first three rounds. But you've got five hours plus of
- 14:31television coverage where the mean storyline is Rory McElroy, who for most of the
- 14:39Live PGA Tour fight has been you know, the banner holder for the PGA
- 14:43Tour. Now, I was a huge Rory fan for a long time on
- 14:48this, and I think Rory basically lost his nerve. He wimped out.
- 14:52John Ron going to Live basically broke Rory. And so I've lost a lot
- 14:56of respect for Rory. But he's still a good guy in this thing.
- 15:00He still tried his best. His best wasn't good enough, But you know,
- 15:03he's still the guy who has been the spokesperson, the leading fighter for
- 15:09the PGA Tour. Going up against the golden child of Live now, you
- 15:16would think that this would be a massive part of the telecast. I mean,
- 15:22for no other reason that it's very compelling. I mean, it's good
- 15:26versus evil, regardless of what your perspective of Live and the PGA Tour is.
- 15:31I mean, if you're a Live fan, you think Rory's evil,
- 15:33and if you're a PGA Tour fan, you think you know Brightler used to
- 15:37you used to think Bryson was evil. And the NBC and the Golf Channel,
- 15:43to a lesser degree, completely ignored this, ignored it so much that
- 15:50I have to conclude there was a reason why they ignored it. Now.
- 15:56To be fair, they mentioned it one time on Saturday, very very briefly
- 16:00in the context of Bryson d Chambeau not likely to make the US Olympic team
- 16:07because he can't get enough points because he's on the Live Tour, and Mike
- 16:11Turrico and Dan Hicks were going off on how unfair and ridiculous this was,
- 16:18and thankfully Randal Chamblee, who has been extremely anti Live for the Golf Channel,
- 16:25although he softened, not quite as much as Worry has softened, but
- 16:27he softened certainly, and he certainly softened once Bryson won the tournament. But
- 16:33you know, he stepped in and say, wait a minute, guys,
- 16:37the live players knew what they were getting into, They knew what the rules
- 16:41were when they took the money. I mean, this is ridiculous to make
- 16:45them into victims. You can't do that. I mean, I'm paraphrasing,
- 16:49but and Tariko and Hicks basically back down. But that was the only reference
- 16:56at all, even intentionally, to to the whole Live PGA Tour controversy,
- 17:03and to me, the most underrated. I mean, I'd even say underrated
- 17:10is ridiculous because I think I'm the only person even mentioning this. It's based
- 17:14upon what I can tell from social media. But to me, the message
- 17:18from the US open broadcast, loud and clear to anybody who's not a moron,
- 17:26is that there is gonna be a Live PGA Tour merger and it is
- 17:33imminent. I mean, this is so obvious based upon the telecast that it's
- 17:40the only thing making me question my analysis because it can't be this obvious and
- 17:44I'm the only one picking up on it. You know, if you're someone
- 17:48who has listened to this podcast for a long time, you probably know that
- 17:52I'm a big believer in reading media tea leaves, and I think I'm pretty
- 17:56darn good at it. I'll make just a couple of examples. I told
- 18:02you that the Titanic submarine was obviously a situation where there was instantaneous implosion and
- 18:11everyone was dead. I know nothing about submarines, nothing, but I understand
- 18:18media tea leaves, and I was right about that. I just read the
- 18:22media tea leaves. They're gone. Probably more importantly and dramatically than that.
- 18:29I told you during the Republican presidential primary process that the conservative media was showing
- 18:37all the signs they were not abandoning Donald Trump, and therefore Ron DeSantis was
- 18:41toast. That was a huge part of why I was way ahead of the
- 18:47curve in telling you that DeSantis did not have a chance to beat Trump because
- 18:51of the tea leaves that were being clearly and overtly shown to the public by
- 18:57significant and and you know, and influential elements of the conservative media. So
- 19:06I read the tea leaves correctly on that one. I told you during last
- 19:11football season that I could read the tea leaves from the way that the NFL
- 19:15broadcasts had changed when it came to dealing with roughing the passer penalties that clearly
- 19:22the word had come down to the NFL announcers, specifically the color analysts,
- 19:29to knock it off when it comes to criticizing roughing the passer penalties. And
- 19:33this was a key indication that the league was going towards total wossification. And
- 19:41I believe I've already been vindicated on that because the rest of the season we
- 19:45heard no major blowback from the color analysts on NFL broadcasts about ridiculous roughing the
- 19:52passer penalties or soft penalties, or just the general wossification of the sport.
- 19:57And now we have the the banning of the hip drop tackle and all sorts
- 20:03of other things that are related to the wussification of the sport. So these
- 20:07are examples, and there are many others. These are examples where if you
- 20:11know what to look for and you keep your eyes open, you can tell
- 20:15what's gonna happen. Not because I mean, you know, I don't believe
- 20:21in conspiracies. I'm an anti conspiracy person, but I do understand how the
- 20:26media works, and I do understand how word travels, and I do understand
- 20:33self interests. And there is absolutely, positively no way, none that NBC
- 20:41would have changed their tune so dramatically about Bryson d Chambeau, who was the
- 20:48only live player who was of any relevance during this entire tournament. In fact,
- 20:53if Bryson d Chambeau had not won, if he had not been playing
- 20:57so well this year Masters and in the PGA Championship, Live would have been
- 21:03perceived as a complete disaster this year. That's what is a live hater.
- 21:08That's frustrating to me because basically lives has one player this year who's been relevant
- 21:15in the major championships. But lucky for them, he's been super relevant and
- 21:19probably been by far now when you consider all three tournaments combined the best player
- 21:26by far. I grant that Riisin d Champbeau is an amazing player. He
- 21:30got awfully lucky I think yesterday. But he is fun to watch and he's
- 21:34very very good. I mean, frankly, parts of him I should like
- 21:38because he's a contrarian and he's super smart. But I don't like the parts
- 21:44where he takes golf, which used to be an art and he makes it
- 21:47into a science and a math equation. I'm not a big fan of that.
- 21:49But look, I think golf needs more characters. Sports needs more characters.
- 21:53He's a character. I was fine with all that until he went to
- 21:59live and sold out the sporty claims to love. And one of the most
- 22:04bizarre things that happened this weekend, and there were so many, was the
- 22:11specter of golf fans who are way more conservative than normal in North Carolina,
- 22:18a red state chanting USA USA for Bryson D. Chambeau. What the fuck
- 22:27is going on? Bryson D. Chambeau is an agent of the Saudi Arabian
- 22:36government doing propaganda work for the Saudi royal family, being paid tens of millions
- 22:44of dollars to do so. And here we are, just over two decades
- 22:49after nine to eleven. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and
- 22:56we have a North Carolina golf crowd chanting USA USAY for an agent of the
- 23:06Saudi Arabian government. What the fuck happened? How the hell is this going
- 23:12on? And by the way, I wasn't the only person that picked up
- 23:17on this, So rich Lerner from the Golf Channel very very subtly, and
- 23:22I mean very subtly, but I have you know, a keen uh you
- 23:26know, radar for this type of stuff. He did his commentary after Bryson
- 23:30D. Chambeau won, and he referenced on a couple of different occasions the
- 23:36surreal nature of Bryson getting the chance of USA USA. He didn't go into
- 23:41anywhere near the detail I did, because he's got a lot more to lose.
- 23:45But I guarantee you he was thinking the exact same thing I am.
- 23:48And you know, rich Lerner is a guy I actually trust. I mean,
- 23:53he's he's basically the Bob Costas of baseball, or I guess you know
- 23:59if you relate Bob Costas to baseball being the soul of the game, and
- 24:02rich Lerner, I think is very similar to golf. He's not perfect,
- 24:06but generally he's in the right place when it comes to the soul of the
- 24:11game. And to me, rich Lerner let it slip. And I can't
- 24:17believe no one in the golf but he picked up on this let it slip
- 24:21on Friday. This is way before you know the the embracing of Bryson D.
- 24:26Chambeau as this heroic champion, when you know, for the last two
- 24:32years he's been the bad guy and Rory's been the good guy, and even
- 24:36the Golf Channel was praising him like he's the second coming of Tiger Woods.
- 24:41I mean, the fillatio that was given to Bryson d Chambeau during the entire
- 24:47tournament was nauseating forgetting the live part. But I want to go back to
- 24:52this tea leaves thing, because this doesn't happen by accident. You don't go
- 25:00in the media world from ignoring the live players as much as you possibly can.
- 25:07During the major championships. Remember last year's Masters, Phil Micholson finished second.
- 25:12Now he finished second, you know, with a late charge and kind
- 25:17of out of nowhere, and he was never really gonna win the tournament,
- 25:21but he was basically ignored by CBS, and there was a lot of criticism
- 25:26because of that, and it was clearly because Phil Micholson's a live guy.
- 25:30And so therefore, if you're a live guy, you no longer get the
- 25:33same benefits you got before you went to live. You don't get the same
- 25:37treatment, you don't get the same love, and basically you're only going to
- 25:42get the coverage that you have to get because you're at the top of the
- 25:47leader board. Anything else ain't coming your way anymore. That's part of the
- 25:51price for going to live. That's the way the media of the sports media,
- 25:55the golf media, and the networks were handling this. Well, all
- 25:57of a sudden, we go one hundred and eighty degrees in a different direction,
- 26:03and they're slobbering all over Bryce in the entire tournament. And not only
- 26:08are they slobbering all over him and given end by the way, Brooks kap
- 26:12Goo is another live guy, the same deal. They're slobbering all over every
- 26:17live guy. But then on Friday afternoon they have Bryson d. Chambeau come
- 26:21out to basically co host the broadcast in this thing they call a you know,
- 26:26happy Hour with Smiley Kaufman. So it's late in the broadcast on Friday,
- 26:33Bryson d. Chambeau has already finished his round. He comes back out
- 26:37to do like a half hour or more of color commentary on the broadcast that
- 26:44it's happening as it's happening, and I'm looking at this going okay, this
- 26:48this has meaning, this didn't happen by accident. There's no way that we
- 26:53have seen one hundred and eighty degrees shift in the way the media is going
- 26:57to handle the live guys unless something dramatic is actually happening behind the scenes.
- 27:04And rich Lerner let that slip, and again I can't believe no one picked
- 27:10up on this. The golf media is such a bunch of fucking morons.
- 27:14They have no imagination, they have no understanding of the way the world really
- 27:17works, and they are also terrified of their own shadow, because no one
- 27:21wants to get bounced from this incredibly cushy and prestigious gig of covering golf for
- 27:26a living. It's the easiest job in the world, and you get to
- 27:29go to all these great places, and it's a fantastic life for these morons.
- 27:33But here was rich Lerner on the Golf Channel Friday evening. Now this
- 27:37is important to point out. This is Friday evening. This is way before
- 27:41Bryson is the story of the tournament, way before he's won the tournament,
- 27:45and rich Lerner, not a live guy at all, is letting it slip.
- 27:52Not so subtly. I believe planting the seed or putting down the marker
- 27:57that something is happening where he basically, in my view, says yeah,
- 28:03there's going to be a live and PGA tour merger and it's gonna be soon
- 28:07and it's going to be imminent. And here's what that sounded like on the
- 28:11Golf Channel. Brodie's at all. We'll say Bryceon finished the second round just
- 28:17after one o'clock. He came back to chatting, swadling around five Brison single
- 28:21handedly with his entertaining golf and on a charm offensive as people be thinking living
- 28:26wonder how they can get him back on a regular basis and that they will
- 28:30have that in Stay tuned, Paige, you followed the Rice. Now the
- 28:33audio on that wasn't great because I taped it off my own television because nobody
- 28:37in the golf media picked up on this. But that's rich Lerner. Let's
- 28:42let's be clear. Rich Lerner the main host on the Golf Channel. The
- 28:47Golf Channel is owned by Universal, NBC is owned by Universal's all the same
- 28:52company. NBC is a huge partner with the PGA Tour. Now, I
- 29:00hate the fact that media in general, news media and sports media is now
- 29:06dripping with conflicts of interest. There's all sorts of corporate conflicts of interest now
- 29:11They're everywhere, and it's one of the reasons why we have the death of
- 29:15journalism. But one of the benefits of these massive conflicts of interest and the
- 29:19incestuous nature of these media entities is that you can more easily tell what's really
- 29:27going on by simply reading the tea leaves. And I don't know why rich
- 29:33Lerner let it slip like that. That was clearly done on purpose. I
- 29:38think he was kind of giving a wink wink, nod nod that hey,
- 29:41I know what's coming down. And for those of you that are confused as
- 29:47to why we have completely shifted our tone on live, that's why. And
- 29:52that was before Bryceon won the tournament. My god, when he won the
- 29:56tournament. Again, we're pretending as if he didn't win because Rory Maceroy missed
- 30:00two short potts. I mean, I'm telling you, if Rory just does
- 30:04what he's supposed to do. The narrative about Bryson is that he's a choker,
- 30:08that he blew the whole tournament, that he was lucky to even stay
- 30:12close, but now he's a conquering hero getting chants of USA USA, the
- 30:21Golf Channel, and even Brandal Chamblee are forced to in his presence slop her
- 30:26all over him. And what was clear on Friday is even more obvious now
- 30:33and Monday morning, as I taped this podcast, there is clearly obviously an
- 30:41intended merger that everybody in the game knows about, but they're just not allowed
- 30:47to say it yet. And even Bryson himself, both in his press conference
- 30:52as well as when he went on the Golf Channel to be interviewed after his
- 30:56victory, when the subject came up, he gave a very dramatic pause and
- 31:00he said, hopefully I'll have the opportunity to, you know, play in
- 31:04front of these people again soon, something to that effect. And I'm like,
- 31:08Okay, this is this is the worst kept secret in the world right
- 31:12now, and yet the golf media is too stupid to pick up on it.
- 31:17There's gonna be a merger, and I'm sure it's gonna be under terrible
- 31:21circumstances. I have said clearly that I've never now, you know, for
- 31:26a very long time, I have not believed that there is any chance of
- 31:30a really good deal being made because the PGA Tour has lost all their goddamn
- 31:36leverage for a number of reasons, and what happened to the US Open is
- 31:40obviously not going to help. Because this is going to create the perception of
- 31:44Okay, come on, we all got to be adults. Now, let's
- 31:48let buy guns be by guns. And you know the guys that sold out
- 31:52and tried to destroy the PGA tour and tried to destroy the game and became
- 31:56agents of the Saudi Arabian government, Let's just all let him back in because
- 32:00one guy, one guy captured the imagination of the public and was lucky enough
- 32:07to win a US Open because Rory McElroy missed two short putts. Those two
- 32:10miss short puts by Rory McElroy might be the most significant missed putts in the
- 32:16history of the game because it goes way beyond the fact that Ry McElroy may
- 32:22never win another major championship. It goes to where the entire sport is headed.
- 32:27And by the way, I did not like that Rory McElroy immediately left
- 32:31the tournament, didn't do a post round interview. I'm sure he'll do one
- 32:36this week if he actually shows up to play in the next tournament. But
- 32:39I've lost a lot of respect for Rory in the last several months with his
- 32:44softening on live and I didn't gain any really with the way he handled not
- 32:52just the losing. The losing part, I mean, everyone's done it.
- 32:53I've missed short putts and critical situations and tournaments that I've regretted my whole life
- 32:59that were not dissimilar to what happened with Rory McElroy. It's incredibly easy to
- 33:04do under the pressure of tournament golf. So I get that, although it's
- 33:07highly unusual to have a player of that level, is two short putts in
- 33:14a three hole span with a tournament on the line, that's almost unprecedented,
- 33:19especially for a player of Rory McElroy's credentials and talent level and fame and everything
- 33:27else. But the fact that he didn't even answer questions afterwards, I thought
- 33:31was telling and not a real great sign with regard to his character. I
- 33:37get that it was a crushing blow, and I think he'll probably address what
- 33:43happened in the next few days. I could be wrong about that, but
- 33:46I just you know, I'm not as big a Rory fan as I used
- 33:50to be. He was given Bryson D. Chambeau handed Rory the tournament,
- 33:54and he handed it right back. But the bigger issue here, the bigger
- 34:00story is that quite obviously the one hundred and eighty degree dramatic shift in the
- 34:07way that NBC handled the live guys in general and specifically Bryson D. Chambeau,
- 34:12even on the Golf Channel, was incredibly telling about what's going to happen
- 34:16here, probably in pretty short order with regard to the live PGA to our
- 34:21issue. And I'm sure that the details and the circumstances of whatever is going
- 34:25to happen are gonna suck, and the bad guys are going to win,
- 34:30and golf is a sport, is going to lose, and it's all typically
- 34:37depressing for everything else that happens in twenty twenty four, for at least for
- 34:42dinosaurs like me who still believe in things and don't understand the insanity of the
- 34:47world that we're currently living in. But golf is not immune either. But
- 34:52I think the biggest issue I have in this whole thing is how is it
- 34:54that the media can be so stupid to not even understand themselves That NBC is
- 35:01telegraphing what's happening and nobody's picking up on it, except you know, some
- 35:08guy running a small podcast called The Death of Journalists. Thanks for listening to
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