1199: 1995 PGA Tour Season Deep Dive

[MUSIC] >> Be the right club today. >> Yes. >> That is better than most. >> How about him? >> Better than most. [MUSIC] >> Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Sully here, 1995 PGA tour season deep dive. Don't need to do a big intro of all of that. We're going to get right into that. Want to give a shout out, though. To our friends at Titleist, you've heard me talk a lot about it. I have gone out 24 times since I've taken the GTS-3, put it in the bag, played some form of nine or 18 holes. Usually it's just nine holes chasing daylight at the end of the day. I am gaining point nine shots per round against a plus two handicap with the GTS-3. That has been a dramatic, dramatic turn around. My driving has been a weakness over the last several years. As soon as I put this head on the shaft that I have, GTS-3, I use it in the D4 setting, 11 degree. My accuracy has gone up a ton. I'm getting more spin on the ball. I'm not hitting it like a crazy far distance. I'm just so much more accurate. It's actually let me take the long, the driving iron out of the bag, put an extra wedge in the bag. My arcos was also telling me that my short game was struggling a little bit. I put a 60 in, a 56 to help my gapping there. There's been a lot of improvements on that part of the bag as well. But, man, I am honestly just having so much fun playing golf again, because I'm in the middle of the fairway a lot more often. Play a course here quite often that has ob water all over the place. I still pull driver and I don't even fear it. I don't think about it anymore, which is just, man, golf is a lot more fun when you look at it that way. Go to tiles.com, find a fitter near you, give the GTS a try. I'm telling you, it's awesome. My buddies that I play with frequently down here are commenting on how much better I'm driving it. And I can't shut up about it if you can't tell. It's a very, very real thing. And there's a reason I've gotten out to the golf course 24 times here since mid-meg, which is might be a record for me in this phase of my life. Thank you for tuning in. Enjoy the podcast. Titles.com to find a fitter near you. Episode two of our PGA Tour season. Deep Dives, our PGA Tour simps. We are obligated to go through these year by year spent hours talking about this. DJ, how are you? What are we doing today? Hey, I'm great, man. We are going to be diving into the 1995 PGA Tour season. A season I know very, very little about. Obviously a lot of these, you know, you know who won the majors. That's kind of about it. You know, the rest of pro golf. It's pre-tiger. There's a lot of sands shifting. It's kind of a blank space for me. So I'm looking forward to filling it in. I've done no research. On this, I'm here. Audience, I am your proxy. I'm your avatar. I'm going to try to ask the questions that you're sitting there asking. You know, Sally just made me smash a protein bar before I got on this. I don't know if it's enough. I'm just, I'm real in right now, but I'm excited to get going. I'm going to be covering the first six months of the year. And the back six months of the year is going to be covered by Mr. Neil Schuster. Hello, Neil. Gentlemen, okay, my head out of the, the wormhole, the deep dark wormhole that I've crawled down the last three days. Wormhole or rabbit hole? Because wormholes are like how you time travel. A lot of people mess this up. Well, I felt like time travel. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to say wormhole. All right. We will go through the minds. Yeah, turn it up, Dej. I got some action for you. I'm going to put you on the spot, Dej. You led this with everybody knows who won the majors. Who won the majors in 95 without looking deep? Can you, can you rattle that off? Ben Crenshaw on the masters. The US open was Leroy Jansen. Is that right? Not. No. 95. Where was it? Well, if that would give it away, I would give it to you. A lot of references to it. Very recently shot of the slide. Wait, oh, Cory Pavan. Yeah, yeah, okay. I thought there was 94. No, that was really else. Okay, Cory Pavan, of course. PGA, yeah, I don't know the PGA. And then the the open was John Bailey. Correct. Who won the PGA? Elk. Oh, right. Riviera. Yeah, sure. Everybody knows that. A man alive can clip me on the back night after eating a custard like that. So some backstory here. Again, we're going to dive into 1995. I always want to do these deep dives on just like a year in golf. And we're kind of focusing on PGA tour or men's professional golf. And back in the day when we started this, I threw a dart at the wall, landed on 95, you know, when we started this. We started doing the research for that. When quickly figured out that like 1994 would make more sense as a starting point. And if you want, and I would recommend this, episode 1117, that is the 1994 deep dive. Because as soon as we started research in 1995, you're like, you're picking up some major storylines mid story, which we're going to continue today. But it was helpful to go back and get to 94. 94, Finchham steps into the PGA tour job. Greg Norman's trying to start his world tour. The FTC is sniffing around. The PGA tour is restrictive release clauses. Things are just happening. All right, they actually relate kind of a ton. I would say that a lot of things mirror what's happened in men's golf the last five years as well, which was what makes this conversation quite made it quite fun to dive into 94. Everything we've done, Neil, and everything we will do. This time is a flat circle. I will say that over and over again, not just spoil anything, but things get wrapped up a lot quicker in 1995. Finchham. So we're going to get into that. Another theme that I'd say 94 was an international takeover. I think at least six of the top 10, like the top six guys in the world were internationals, which kind of was some of the reason Norman was able to get a little momentum on the the world tour idea. U.S. golf was just kind of in a transition phase. And then that starts to flip over pretty quick in 1995. You start to see some names like Furek, some dudes, some guys start to show two tendencies. Others here. Others. So I don't think you have to stop this right now and go back and listen to 1994. You can do them out of order, but if you're looking to pass the time, I see no reason why you wouldn't start with that episode and then do this one. But you can also just pick things up because we're going to get things running full stride here. You know what I'm not going to produce this episode, but I'm going to say let's drop the link to the what episode was it? It's in the description 1117. It's in the description, hopefully here. Link in my adage. That's right. So cause nothing through that link in there. Hopefully you guys know where I was going to start this episode. Same way I started the last one going into 1995. How many can you get? Who are the top 10 players in the world going into 1990? Should I let DJ answer this? Let him get yeah. Let him get going a little bit. I'll try to help fill it in because I probably get five of the 10. These are in no particular order. Greg Norman. Number two, Tom Kite. Not on the list. No, tough start. Steve Alkington. Not on the list. God, I'm so bad. I don't know. Corey Payton. Like I'm just going down the way. Corey Payton's number 10. Again, beginning in 95. You got to think about what you got in 94, like. Domaz and Nick Price is number one player in the world. Yeah. Ernie L's. Ernie L's is number seven. I don't know if you'll help me out. Faldo. Faldo's number three. Yeah. Bernard Longer still. Bernard Longer's number four. That's right. You got the top four. Best best American at this at this love. Not Davis. Love. It's a good guest, but not Davis. Love. Tom Layman. Marco Miro. Fred Couples. His number six. And then, who's a half bitch? He's, he was struggling at this point. Habitual manipulator. One of the most infamous WGR manipulators. The original manipulator. I mean, it's not, it's not Jembo Zaki. It is Jembo Zaki. Still be him, is it? It's still him. Then one more, one more European Scottish. Big order American. Monty. That's it. That's the top 10 in the world. Price, all right. Listen, I let you know, those, those of you who are driving where I'm supposed to be your proxy. Maybe you did better than me. But this is hard, you know? It's hard to turn the lights on you. How many did you guys get, you know? So hard. Look in work. I'm curious how many you got as you're driving your car to work there. Themes, a couple of themes here, John Daley, still everywhere, the needle. I mean, just a bunch of stories about his return to golf after some time off in 1994. Again, history of repeating itself. World tours, greed, legal troubles for the PGA tour. Is the players a major? That was a conversation in 1995. I hope it gets better at the new PGA tour leadership structure changes as it comes to exemptions and the overall number of cards on the PGA tour. TV contract is coming up. Negotiations are set to begin at the end of next season. A ton of parallels to 2026, if I may say so. So like, can I also just a little, a couple stats. So like, just a growth, like kind of good overall growth in progress. Check before the Tiger boom. And as Finchim's taking the helm. So in 1984, under, you know, kind of in the prime or early part of Dean Beaman's leadership, 72 sanctioned PGA tour events. So they didn't count the silly season back there. Some of the fall events didn't have like world ranking and count towards like money list stuff 72 and 94 there's 100 at the end of 94 125 events. So that's champions tour that's either they started to expand out Nike tour. So more playing opportunities, which is a mandate of the you know of the organization purse money for the PJ tour and 84 it was 26.5 million that would be 85 million adjusted inflation in today's money 94 is 107.3 million which is about 235 million inflation adjusted and then total annual charitable contributions which is going to be important as we get into some of this stuff in 84 9.4 million so 30 million inflation adjusted and then in 94 31.7 million so 71.4 million dollars raised for charity at the inflation adjusted number. So big that's all the tours that's for all the tours but just to show you that business is booming it's getting bigger and this is pre-tiger so that's some people are starting to take note of hey yeah maybe a little bit a little bit maybe I need a little extra huh I'm carrying this tour you know maybe some sharks circling if you will you know maybe some the government like hey wait a second we're giving these guys some breaks maybe we shouldn't be doing that so anyway back to you solid. Well in to your point 62.9 million is the the actual purse total on the PGA tour for 1994 and we are going to more than double that in the next four years that's that's what's coming around the corner but if you remember back to 94 again again like Tiger helps a ton with that but there is this there's a massive just sports labor theme going on as well we are in a strike right now the pizza tour yeah yeah oh yeah that's and there's a the the NHL is playing a lockout short and season at this moment as well they do not have baseball figured out by the beginning of the 1995 year replacement players are potentially coming and just there's all kinds of legal shit going on with that you know hearings blah blah blah with with baseball labor so that the attention on the labor aspect as it comes to golf kind of stems out of that of like the the big American sports leagues need to get this kind of figured out and it does we have capable sports getting like is about to take over that was a big thing for Finchham as he kind of sees around the corner of what's about to happen with cable sports the golf channel begins in early 1995 there in January it's not in many homes early we'll get there but we're about to enter again a new TV deal corporate America sponsorship of of American sports and just 24/7 sports is about to boom and I would have to say the PGA tour had the right guy for the job to put them in a position to succeed and capture that boom because Finchham came in last year if you remember we talked about that on on 94 parties like I'm promising bursts are going up the money is going up we're going up here bark my words which is important and he delivers also no new taxes a delivers on a lot of this stuff which like really really really helps him when Greg tries to pull people away like people do not want to give up their PGA tour status like there's no reason to jump off this this boat and yeah man I walked away from all this with an even bigger appreciation for Finchham and how he handled all this so a couple things one I got a I got a quill the amount of times that I'm like wow that sounds just like 2026 because I know that's going to keep keep popping up but it's you talked about all those increases without necessarily even mentioning where we've gotten to today and it's like you know what did you say it was 20 some million for the for the season or adjusted to 60 something it's like they're playing 20 million dollar events 12 times a year 15 times a year at this point I mean it's it's insane and the other thing I would say just if you don't know anything about the PGA tour and the structure and the how the players are organized and or not organized in that regard I think it's just worth counting out or or calling out that there's no player union either right I mean it's the PGA tour is set up very different than the NHL then major league baseball where there's owners and there's players at the PGA tour there is there's just players the players don't go on strike because they'd be striking against themselves you know and so that's why I just contacts for why you see like well maybe we should just start a whole other league rather than like fuck it we're not going out there well I'm not playing until we fix this is like not really how it how it works and yet just the idea that won anybody that ever said in the last five years we need a union and Peter said that one of the dumbest possible things you could say like it's fundamental misunderstanding of the situation and a fundamental misunderstanding honestly if I may like there are tons of beefs and qualms we will have with the PGA tour and have have with the PGA tour in the past they do not do things perfectly but as a professional golfer and a player in this the idea that you could do it better than they do it is a complete fallacy it is a it is the best like use of a gobbling up all the possible market value you can out of a sport that's not the most exciting thing in the world and sharing that with the players like it is not go to anybody else other than employees of the tour charities and to the people that go out on the course and earn it like that it's incredible distribution model for that which if I if I may again fell ash forward to 2021 call it also easy to see how the hubris builds up right of a lot of like what do you mean do it better what do you mean it errates what do you mean change the product like we're you have any fucking idea how good we are at this like I certainly you know I felt a lot of that when I work there there is a lot of like you know we're so dialed look at our balance sheet look at our retirement plan look at our pension look at this is the best pension yeah but what about the NFTs that came after I work there but there's a lot of that there is it's easy to it's not it's not excusable for the hubris building up but I do understand how and why it did you know and I think again it's just kind of table setting for what happens in this time period and then what happens again 20 years later you know I'm curious where what you think of this I remember a takeaway from 94 was just like hey every time I encountered a newspaper like this senior tour was sometimes more prevalent as the PGA tour certain weeks felt a little less so in 95 I didn't feel like the senior tour was making and a lot of my research is just kind of going through all the newspapers and things like that trying to get a vibe for for how things stand but just felt like less of a upfront thing in 95 than it did in 94 I'm curious if you had felt any that in your research I would agree with that I tried to in service of my time in my like sanity I tried to to focus teach how we did it with the project annual pot like I got to pick some one or two tent poles per month instead of like all right I'm gonna go you know if I start searching like what happened in Palm Springs in August I'm like oh god I don't know uh but the czar is only one man but it's I think it's important with those stats I I pulled up the champions tour was still new and it was a big expansion of revenue you know like like these Nike tours and these champions tours were like I think still they weren't like tired entities if that makes sense like they feel like now like now the champion store feels a little tired and dated and and after thought but you know the I think the fact that a lot of the top golfers were international and not so much American made those you know older big names were still driving a lot of attention in in the mid 90s yeah and just the golf world still clinging on to the you know Jack Nicholas Lee Trevino Arnold Palmer era and there's not pre-tiger there's not that one dude that that soaks up and takes a lot a lot of that energy but we all Jim Colbert did make $1.44 million on the senior tour in 1995 which is just 210,000 less than Greg Norman did as the eventual money winner in 1995 on the pizza. What a stat why old good stuff we have the return of Michael Jordan also coming in March which is creates a little bit of an issue for the PJ tour around one of their one of their big events which is interesting but a couple quick highlights we did this last time as well from the 1995 media guide these are some rules officials do you recognize anyone in these pictures of course there's some names there but bottom right corner slugger white live golf slugger white in the bottom right mark rustle is also there on that bottom line but it's a very interesting just moment in time there again not gonna do all these again but your brain will shambly in the media guy Kristen Marco just a picture I've never seen of Kristen Marco in 1995 he's got things. Neil are you are you ever wearing the turtle necks underneath the the golf shirt I feel like that's a very mid 90s floor that as we get into the fall for mock neck I think we can start to experiment didn't realize he was hunting to New York to Marco Long Island man and then went down to University of Florida good stuff David Farrity is now a full-time member of the PJ tour Jim Furek had a good rookie year the year prior Bill glass in our hitter he's back still same photo was last year but as so much like Gary Bucy he's Gary Bucy charity Hoffman crosses what you guys described it last time as Roger Mulpey still PGA tour winner at this time using all of the life of that 1985 NEC World Series of golf victory that which did have a 10 year exemption in it David DuVal is a new member and a rookie of the PGA tour listed in there as well so 44 events we're getting ready to play I'll also have notes, Sam Sneed no longer listed as a full whole time PGA tour member. If you remember, he was, he was in it basically from winning like the 1942 US Open or something like that. He's not listed as a PGA tour member anymore. I know what you're thinking. Did he die? No, he did not. He died in 2002. I see exactly what you're thinking there, DJ. Other way, end of an A. Somebody had to make a tough, tough phone call. Yeah. You no longer exempt on the PGA tour. This is the hardest call I've ever had to make, man. What? Who's on the phone? Netflix was there for all of it, too. And he got to be Ryder Cup captain. Who's this? Oh, yeah. Okay, still should have picked himself. I think that's another story for another day. We're going to play 44 events on the PGA tour this year. Did you ask about this last time about what a golf on TV look like in 1995? And I have a confession to make on this. Because as Neil noted, you can go down a lot of different rabbit holes. You can spend a lot of time doing a lot of things. One thing I did bypass discovering, I go on TV guide week by week in detail on was this distribution. I am relying on some AI help here to help me sort this out. I I spot checked a few of these and it looks right. All the details would be here might not be exactly right. But here's what what it looks like overall CBS has 17 events NBC has seven ABC has seven ESPN has six and golf channel has six events. So CBS gets a lot of of recognizable ones and a ton going from spring through summer Pebble Nissan, Derral, MCI Heritage, the Greensboro Open Bell South Classic, Buick Colonial, Kemper Hartford, St. Jude, Western Buick Open Sprint International World Series of golf. NBC's got the Buick invitation Tory Pines, they got the Bob Hope Price or Classic, they got the Honda Classic, Bay Hill players, and Neil's favorite free port, McMoran Classic, which is in New Orleans. So they also have the U.S. Open for the first time here in 1995 taking that over for ABC ESPN has the early round coverage of that. That's a landmark change on the U.S. Open. I mean, that usher's in one of the great eras of golf on TV, I would say. Yeah, the U.S. Open on NBC. ABC has the Mercedes has Houston, Byron Nelson Memorial, Milwaukee, Torchampage and the British Open. Weird kind of collection here, which I think things are going to get sorted out here in the new TV deal here here shortly. But ESPN has the Northern Telecom Phoenix Open and has a Bush Canadian Open Buick Challenge, the Las Vegas Invitational Golf Channel is getting scraps in their first year, Deposit Guarantee Golf Classic, New England Classic, BC Open Quad City Classic, Disney Golf Classic and the Texas Open. These are all followed in my part of the calendar day. Cafe TV. Also, TBS had the Hawaiian Open and also early round coverage of the PGA. Speculating here, but I wonder how much of this is, I just wonder why, right? Why is all this spread out so much? Is this TV, not quite, or a big network TV, big sports properties, just not quite willing to fully optimize into live sports is the thing, you know, not, not willing to take big enough swings trying to, you know, you know, I mean, it's got to be these people trying to diversify a little bit and it's just interesting to see. I mean, you know, sitcoms are money cashcals in this time. I think some of it's just the, the high cost probably of like, you know, a CBS like, man, I'll do X amount, but I can't take the whole calendar. You know, I don't think it's, it was any easier to broadcast golf in the 90s. Yeah. And then they also have these other, this other programming that was a lot more lucrative than it is now. Which it's just got to be, yeah, it's got to be fascinating to, and I guess I don't know how much talent crossover there is. I don't know how many guys were doing stuff for golf channel and ABC or, you know, whatever, but it's got to be so hard to get, I feel like you get a critical mask going. I feel like you get your feet under you when you're only doing a fourth of the events or whatever. Yeah. It's just a big challenge. And it's also worth noting this is, there's a ton of our expansion going on in this time. Like it, that's a huge thing too, and Finchems like, you know, entire thing. I think they went, in 15 years, they've gone, this was before 94, they'd gone from 110 hours on TV to 617 in 94, which is a massive expansion in there. So it's probably just kind of bolted on, right? As they're expanding hours year by year, it just gets a little bit more bolted on. And there's just a ton of also moving parts of like other sports, you know, like the thing with, we're going to get into the players potentially moving, beginning that conversation in 1995, but the issue with that, it's an NBC product. NBC had NBA, NBA is going, is in the playoffs in May. And that was just a massive hindrance to all of that. So as a Chicago sports fan in 1995, I'm just glad NBC got, they got those right. You know, that was, that was dialed. We needed, we needed them there. We didn't need them at the players. 95 wasn't the best for Chicago, that George does return, but they don't, they didn't win that way. I know you're not allowed to mention the, the years that Jordan didn't win the title. I know that's not allowed. It's true. And it's, it's better to have lost early in the playoffs than to have lost in the finals. Exactly. Save those legs. Little of the world stuff, OJ Simpson trial is beginning in the beginning of January. Alanis Moore set released jagged a little pill. The Macarena is beginning its international spread. Pogs are taking over and the internet is beginning to enter ordinary everyday life. Pogs getting a good slammer. God, I, I was living in Canada at this time. Pogs were hot in the streets outside Toronto. You know, for kids traded. Yeah, playing for keeps, baby. I don't know, I don't know if this was the peak, but it, it can make the case. I don't, I don't know that the internet is getting started. It's like, uh, fuck me. We should have just, this was it. We should have just paused right there. That one, that could have been, I don't know, there's a lot of liking there. I don't know how our jobs would have careers would have worked out if that was the case. Been professional Pog players. Yeah, Pog collection. All right. We're going first tournament of the year. Do you know where we're going and what it's called? Do you remember some Mercedes? Do you remember where? Oh, is it at La Costa or something? You got it. You didn't get it last time, but you got it. Still a dual event with the champion store. It's a great question, Neil. The senior tour, of course. That was the story last year. They didn't like being treated like second-class citizens. So they wanted, the senior tour wanted their own event to start the year. They're going to start the following week in Puerto Rico. And that is going to kick off the senior tour season. If you remember prior to this, this event was a dual event where they played the same tease. Their groups were intertwined on the tee sheet as well. They almost in 1994 had a senior tour beat to win the overall event, which was causing a lot of beef between, you know, just some controversy, sick. I kind of miss it. It was definitely missing a little bit of drama in this. But John Houston had a four shot lead disappear in a brutal three-hull stretch on the front nine. Steve Elkington ended up winning it in a playoff over Bruce Litzky. Houston hit one in a creek, made a double. Bogey the next and putted into the water on seven. It was uphill putt that he putted into the water, which is also sick. It's Kenny's telling him, hey, man, you can give this one a little push. Man, it's up. All right, get it to the hole. Especially tough as earlier in the day. It looked like it was going to get called for weather. Like, Houston's just like waiting it for it to get called for weather. He would have won, but they'd slapped it together and went out and did it. And he ended up gagging it away. I said, everyone in the locker room is like, no way we're going to play today. Sure enough, Elk comes back and goes in with them. They moved tease around and the grounds crew worked overnight to get it ready. Our friend Craig Stadler got a two-shot penalty for showing up late for his tee time. He finished two shots behind Steve Elkington. That was a tough break. Elkington hit a wire on the second hole and got to replay the shot. The same thing happened to him. It looked awesome in '92 when he won. Of course it was that. That's a good one. That's a good one for the trivia. Thousand yards and was completely soaked in 1995. Trevino did, Lee Trevino traveled for the PGA tour awards dinner in Carlsbad. That week to accept his senior tour player of the year award. He had recently ruptured a disc in his neck, had it repaired. He went to a bone donor bank and secured part of a kneecap to repair the ruptured disc in his neck. I didn't know any of those things were a thing. Too many questions. Keep moving. Can't pick just one. Silly season event, same as last year, are causing some issues for Tim Finchum now. He was not the commissioner of the year before. But the PGA says the PGA tour has to re-evaluate some of the competitions in the fourth quarter. Scheduling is getting a little crowded. Basically, no one knows what to do with the competition of the PGA tour season. And the sometimes bigger money guys can get in November and December. Like how can Finchum deny players the opportunity to go make money and argue that it hurts the other players. But again, on the flip side, guys are skipping more events in the early part of the year because of how busy their November and December are. And it's hurting the TV package which is up for negotiation after next year. So Finchum's got to do a little bit of threatening to deny some television releases at a tricky time of doing that as well. So just, and you can kind of sense it in the fields and the news stories. are the early part of the year and kind of where some other guys are popping up in different places around the world. They're not playing the PJ tour in the early part of the year and they're gobbling up up here in his feeds and other places and it's it's not a ton of momentum in the early part of the year for the tour. Are there any YouTube channels popping up at this time, anybody trying to put content on their channel? I haven't seen that. That might be in part two. That might be a Neil's section. You said the internet was getting going. Oh, but Dave's they were trading tapes at this time. So guys out there with camp quarters, you know, like at the concerts, you know, okay, here's all 18 from. Here's Litzky at LaGosta, man, here goes, it goes. There's Bart Bryant's all 18. It's a eat cut film outside the robes, uncut. Bart Bryant goes low, miked up at the ID on classic at Pleasant Valley. Got that Pleasant Valley tape from, from 95 and oh god, forget it, man, did you find it in YouTube? I couldn't find Jack shit on YouTube and from 1995 PGA tour. The best one is is the PGA Elks Elks PGA, that's on there. Talking through his round at the PGA is the best one I found. So we're picking back up again at the end of 94 Norman tries to roll out the world tour at a, you know, at a meeting at Sherwood in November, Finchham front runs him, you know, warns people that, you know, they're not going to be able to do it. Aren't a Palmer shoots it down people, you know, he, Finchham basically says out loud. I'm highly paraphrasing. You can't do both these things blah, blah, blah. A reminder what the world tour is. It's eight events. It's guaranteed money. Top 30 in the rankings plus 10 sponsor exemptions, $600,000. We go to the winner of each event and a million to the overall winner of the series. It was Norman with German in the name of John Montgomery Jr. And David Hill, David Hill is representing Fox Sports, which had just launched months earlier. This is all backed by Robert Murdoch. Of course, Robert Murdoch, excuse me, there's going to be four events held in the US, one in Canada, one in Scotland, one in Spain, and one in Japan, and a tentative schedule reportedly include WGT tournaments before each major kicking off like the March 30th through April 2nd week. So basically running up against PGA Tour events right before majors. It does not get off the ground well. He gets absolutely eviscerated in the press. And of course, this would destroy the PGA Tour. It's everything. It's against everything the PGA Tour is about. He Norman, the big mistake he makes is does not get the support of the players prior to making it public, which absolutely kills him. He accuses the PGA Tour of releasing its propaganda machine against them, getting all the media and the sports writers to say bad things about him in doing it. And it's a mess right from the jump. His time, a couple of things to add, now, you know, when I get to the back half of the year, we can dive back in, but important to understand the context of like we talked about the other sports. So a lot of the articles that I read, it's like, you know, every other sport sucks, strikes, lockouts, like golf's the last batch into this, and here's this egotistical greedy, you know, international pro golf for trying to mess up, you know, the tradition. You know, so it's a little on the nose with like good versus evil. But yeah, he doesn't, he doesn't build consensus is basically how like, you know, he just didn't give his, you know, compadre as any info. And it's just a half-baked plan. So he just, he just, he probably, honestly, the more I read about it and look at it, it's like, I could have gotten a lot closer to getting it done if he just wasn't like such a like megalomaniac. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing here is, and again, it's the entire concept of the PGA tour is like, hey, we need you to, to follow our rules and regulations. If you're going to be a part of this tour, but like, hey, we're going to us that worked here are going to go out and we're going to market your guys collective rights to a bunch of sponsors. We're going to organize it. We're going to find the venues for you. We're going to put up the tournaments. We're going to find the money. We need you guys to just agree to our rules and that you're going to play on this tour. You're going to play 15 events and you're going to do this so I can sell that to TV blah, blah, blah, blah. Like that's professional golf. That's just what that is to go outside of that is never going to go over well. Like, of course, you have to go through the PGA tour on this and we all know where this leads to WGC's here in a few years, and it's not a clean path to getting there. And the Norman Finchum riff, you know, even expands from here. But there was just no way of getting this off the ground against the same chicken and egg problem. Andy Gardner, the PGL talked about of like, we want to work with the PGA tour. We are proposing something drastically different here, but we have to work with you or else you need everybody to jump all at once. And that's a really, really, really, really hard thing to recruit people for as Norman found out and did not handle it. Well, they slipped contracts under the door to people at an event in Jamaica, the Johnny Walker classic. Just like they signed these and and thought I was like, no, and what the fuck? And I mentioned that the timing was both bad and it was actually impeccable because in the fall, late fall of 94 Finchum has taken over the job and a four year FTC investigation into two specific rules of the tour. Antitrust investigation was the first rule is for Bid's golfers to play in a non PGA event without commissioners permission, which is still the case. Even if they want to come play Wild World of Golf, they got to get a release with, you know, with with George Truly here. And the second gives similar veto power over appearances on televised golf programs. But you know, they were the skins game falls in this category, the match like, you know, case by case, the tour relaxes this. But like if you're going to make a like a hostile league, this is where Finchum then lays the gauntlet down and says very directly if you play in this world golf tour, you are suspended. So that he lays that down in late 94 and the player, you know, so it becomes a bit of a showdown. And then that's that's all the Norman stuff and then separate from that, he goes to work on the FTC situation because that's separate. But the timing of Norman's thing kind of makes this an existential threat and it's the combination of both that I think it's important to realize. One of the things that hits me as you guys are talking about this and I'll say a front that maybe probably the PJ tours restructuring and the way that they're doing equity now to the players and changing their their structure of how the business is set up. Maybe this doesn't happen again. But if it does, I'm just thinking like hearing everything I've heard about 94, you mentioned Arnold Palmer. I've heard Peter Jacobson talk about that meeting, you know, Arnold Palmer came in and once he said that this we weren't doing this. We weren't doing this. His voice carried the day yada yada yada. I think you can say a lot of the same about Tiger in the live stuff. I think a lot of like, Oh, if Tiger thinks this is lame, I don't want to be lame. I should I should try to win the tournaments that exist to like I'm not jumping. I need to stick around. If this came up again in 30 years, who's who's that person? Because I don't think there's going to I don't know if there's going to be another one. Is it Rory? I feel like Rory took battle, like took, you know, just barrel fire and all of this is it. Is it Scotty Sheffler? Is Scotty Sheffler interested in doing? Like I just think it's an interesting. Those icons of the game, I don't I don't know. There can always be another one. But it's like, I don't know that they're churning those out the way that they used to. And I just find that part of this. Well, and I want to double it for a second on the players meeting close door with Palmer going up there and like eviscerated Norman from, you know, everything I've read. And then Norman, you know, comes back in a article from 2019 and Sports Illustrated talks about how it was a conspiracy because Arnold Palmer and IMG and IMG and Norman had broken up. Two or three years ago. And so golf was totally corrupt and it's just like, you know, it's, it's a, who do you trust situation? But yes, Palmer in that room. It sounds like today. Answer that question. Who do you trust? Paul. It's not Norman. Yeah. But it's just funny. You know, you get, you get these quotes from Norman. You're like, oh my God. Yeah. So anyway, so I keep, keep going. I don't want to get too bogged down here because we'll get back to it. And I forget, but oh, your point, like you mentioned, you know, like, hey, there's the skins game and there's, you know, guys are getting their beaks wet and the fall and things like that. But like a big part of this and it's a big part with the match and a big part of why Phil Mickelson got pissed off was like, for their $10 million match, Tiger and Phil had to chip off the PGA tour $1 million out of that. And that's the whole thing with like, with these skins game is you guys got to chip off the PGA like we're collective rights group. How do you want me to sell this to the rest of the membership? You guys are getting your, your money over here, but I'm not in charge of like getting a small amount of you guys money. I'm in charge of getting everybody money. So something's got to come into our coffers. It's going to help top up some of these other purses if you want to play outside the rights of this group. Like that's kind of the whole thing that like Norman and Phil just are unable to wrap their heads around because of, to use some Phil's words obnoxious greed. That's, that's like the root of the problem and a lot of this stuff. So to your point, in this week, opening week, again, we're hitting everything right from the jump. The FTCs on Friday said it will seek a complaint officially. So this is rumbling in 94, but officially in 95 kick off the year, the Federal Trade Commission, which has been investigating the PGA tour for possible restraint of trade practices has decided to seek a complaint against the golf organization. The PGA's conflicting event and TV release rules prohibit a member from participating in any other golf event on a date when a PGA tour co-sponsored event is scheduled. Under PGA rules in exchange for TV coverage of most tour events, members agree not to appear on other live or recorded golf programs. programs unless approved by the commissioner. PGA commissioner Tim Fincham has estimated that the legal matter could take as much as five years to resolve. And he says it's our position that our rules are expansive rather than restrictive, who cites an increase of TV televised hours from 118 in 1979 to 1000 in '94. He said that could not occur if we were restricting output. So this is like, this is Fincham just being a total boss. And making it like a very convincing case of like, this is not a restrictive tour, like look at how much money we're paying these players. One, we're making a ton of money for charity as well. We're putting them on television blah, blah, blah. That we are not doing, this is not like a restriction of output. And the article says Fincham was not merely a sports administrator. He had worked in the Carter White House, served as a national staff director of the Carter Mondale campaign and founded a Washington consulting firm. The FTC fight was almost perfectly suited to his background. Drain the swap, just fucking bring it. So of note, like on the convicting events releases, like Jagnick was productions had reason to, and this is written as well, had reason to resent the television release system because it produced independent made for TV golf. Company President Terry Jastro described the tour's regulations as stringent, sometimes arbitrary and difficult for businesses operating in a free enterprise environment. Yet he also accepted that some centralized order was necessary and that universal restrictions at least produced a predictable marketplace. Nicholas voluntarily spoke with FTC attorneys, but publicly supported the tour. And this is where like the important nuance of the entire situation is like opposition to the rules did not necessarily mean there was support for dismantling the tour. As many golf businesses resented Fincham's veto power while also fearing the chaos that might follow if nobody possessed it. So, and he uses a lot, we're not tennis. We're not going to like tennis is at this time is super disorganized and kind of going down this route. Like we are not going down that way and like dismantling all of that would mean less money for everyone, both saying that to tour members as well as government officials of like tear this down, you are hurting the economy and the American, like not ownership of golf, but like the trend going into American golf where the best players in the world are playing here more often. So, it's very, very well said. It's a compelling case. Yeah. And he opens the year again, talking more world tour. Basically it's a, it's up against our official money season. It involves a small number of players. It's a great deal of prize money. The big quote, and it's kind of moved around a little bit. It's gone from eight, you know, there's some places say it's eight events still. Some say it's four now, some say it's six. Fitchhub's big line that gets quoted a lot is the noble cause of a half dozen events and just runs that runs that right up against like his charitable stuff of the great. That's a great line. Yeah. Compare that to, you know, Mottahan saying a series of exhibition events, like another, another point for Fitchhub on this. But yeah. And he says like, dude, look, look, this can happen in the market. You can put this up. Any, this is a free country. Anyone can create a new league, a new sport, a new tour, if the Montgomery's and their sponsors want to go out and put on a series of events, they can do that and our players would have to choose. But the analogy would be that a new football league has started. And rather just higher players, they wanted Troy Ackman and the best players in the NFL to go play in their game. The NFL wouldn't allow that. The NFL doesn't have a has to compete with itself. The NBA doesn't compete with itself and we shouldn't have to compete with ourselves. What you're probably saying, if you're no pounding on the steering wheel, the differences those players are not independent contractors. Troy Ackman's not an independent contractor. He's signed with the Dallas Cowboys as part of the NFL to go play in a set number of games, yada, yada, yada. The, the, the, the tour is trying to have it both ways, right? They're, they're trying to, to be a membership organization of independent contractors for tax exempt purposes, but also trying to make sure that those people can only kind of play on, in one tour, which as you just spell all that out, I'm like, oh, well, that, that does make sense. I do get why it doesn't work in a different scenario because it is a different sport. It's not a team sport. It's not the same set up. I get how the conversation gets off the ground, though, as well. You know, it's just, it's, it's muddy and it's why it continues to be muddy for 30 years. - It is, but I think it, the, the through line here, both for players and for just like the government intervention and it is like tearing it down, who, tearing it down, who's that make it, that, it only makes it better like maybe the cream of the exact, of the very top and you're gonna rebuild and restructure that in a way, in what way? And that's gonna lead to a different set of problems and that's, that's just a whole different can of worms that I think is. - Well, leave that for me, 'cause I got, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fucking throw a heater right down the middle and about an hour. - Oh, it gets so good. It gets so good in the back. I accidentally came across, I sent it over to you. I've just like the summary of all that Finchham does. It's, it's incredible. He's a boss, he is an alpha. - Only other thing I would add, I don't think this is stepping on anything is just to underscore what you're saying. So I'll be like in, in my NFL versus PJ Tour, there's also no owners, right? So to your point on like what's the point of tearing it down? I would understand tearing it down if there's some owner of, you know, there's some stakeholder who's not, doesn't have a golf club in their hands, who is making 20 times what the players are making and you're restraining the trade in order to like, prop up that person's income, but there's not. Some people like to poke point at like PJ Tour executives and they're, yes, the commissioner, it makes a lot of money in the very, very top level brass, makes a lot of money, but not in comparison to, it's pretty commensurate with what's going on at other leagues, with what's going on, you know, in leadership. - What's going on at other like mass charities? - Exactly. And so it's, I just, yeah, I think that's worth pointing out too, is like the government doesn't need to step in in order to keep a Jerry Jones from popping up here. It does make sense to more, like, let the middle hold and make sure that the whole thing kind of stays propped up. - Glenn Sheehy writes as well, "Where's the World Tour now?" Basically, on hold, hoping to stage an event in late 1995, but currently possessing nobody other than Norman willing to risk his PGA standing to participate, although the prospect of playing more big money tournaments worldwide against the best in the world and Trees prominent PGA Tour players, the threat of suspensions by Commissioner Tim Fincham is hardly appealing. Did the World Tour presume that a sizeable number of top players would jump to its side and force Fincham to either suspend them or look the other way? If so, it badly misjudged the response. Fred Couples said, "The World Tour right now is nothing that isn't to say in two years, it won't be, but right now there is no World Tour." - There was some big time fence sitting from the international player, so some quotes, Nick Price, "Hey, man, I'm interested, but I gotta see," a lot of, like, "Keep me posted." Hemmenet, or no, "All Thobble" same thing, you know? So, because, and I think it would speak to those guys, I'm like, "Man, I'm not even living in my own country." And so, but from the American players, with especially with that Palmer meeting, I think it was kind of like NAS, you know? - A little bit frostier. - But Price's was like, "Hey, you got the, you got Fincham figured out, right?" Like, I'm interested in this. - Of course, as long as I'm not at risk here, and it's like, "No, well, you are at risk." He's like, "Okay, well, no." Like, I said, I was interested, but I'm not interested in breaking off with you here, man, I'm not taking that on. - Also interesting is that Norman's doing all this stuff, whipping up this, you know, this hoopla. He doesn't get suspended. He goes, "He balls out, balls out in 95, gentlemen." So, like, this is all going on, and he is just killing on the PGA tour, while he's trying to blow it up. - I think in, like, my heart of hearts, I don't think Norman's trying to blow it up. Like, this time around, I don't think he's trying to blow it up. I think he is, like, there is more international golf going on in this time period, and guys are playing more total, you know, the money is relatively, you know, with appearance fees and places they're able to go outside of the US. They're making a similar amount of money to what they're making on the PGA tour, right? So, that changes now into the late, you know, current day, like, there's just, the most money can be made on the PGA tour, now that Piff is out of the picture here, and the, to Norman, it's almost like, dude, I don't know if I need you PGA tour. I'd rather just play like these eight events and then go collect my piece around the world. - Well, no, he's quoted as saying, I just have to play 15 events to keep my card. I just want to play my 15, and then I want to go play these other eight. - Yeah. - And, you know, which is a, like, you know, valid or like makes sense? Yeah, that makes sense if it's like, "Yo, you, the world revolves around you." - Yes, extremely ignorant to think that it wouldn't massively affect the PGA tour and that people wouldn't have issues with it. John Daly's back after five months off, a picture on the front page of a newspaper smoking a cigarette. Daly is a recovering alcoholic, but he's not going to part with his other vice. He said, "I'm not gonna sit there and quit smoking just because there's some kids out there. I feel I'm a good role model. If I'm not one, I want to be one." He's got a new gym in his house and is more fit, but it has a lot of work to do on the belly. He's gained 15 pounds, but he's got a New Year's resolution to forget about the past. That's what I'm gonna do in 1995. - I'm not haunted by what has been. - Unburp. - Phil is there at the Mercedes to defend his title from the prior year. He's no longer skiing, but he's working on getting his pilot license so that he should be able to get it the next time he's home. I don't know if I've ever heard that Phil has a pilot license. I don't know if he followed through on this or. - I don't know. I don't remember this. - I don't remember this. I know he had a good curiosity and aviation, but I'll put that on my takeaways to look into. - Our header again, Larry Bohannon. he pinned a column this morning. We talked about it, talking about some, he said, there's expect more lawsuits than you can shake a three wood at, which I don't know what that means. The Federal Trade Commission this week began lowering a potential boom on the PGA tour announcing it would seek blah, blah, blah. The tour will vigorously fight the FTC complaint. That means Finchham and PGA tour players might get as much court time as Robert Shapiro and Al Cowling. Winner lose. The distraction of such legal actions can't help the tour in 1995, Finchham sounding off. The FTC has been looking at our rules for four and a half years. It's taken almost five years now to determine they ought to ask the commission for action. If the commission goes against us, I look forward to defending those rules in court. If we fail in court, I would look forward to asking the Congress to take action to allow us to continue to be structured the way we are. Finchham said, is our position that our rules are expansive rather than restrictive sites to TV hours and increasing, not restricting output as out there? So this is Finchham's play. Like, hey, we're going to fight you for many, many, many, many years on this. I'm getting out in front of this in public. Not only that, I'm going to be like backroom dealing here with a lot of important people in Washington. I'm going to put a spotlight on this for the American people to say, is this a good use of the commission's time? Like, is this, is this how you want to be doing this? Getting some politicians involved, getting their constituents whipped up as well throughout the course of this? So that's all in the first week of the year, which I promise is about to go a lot faster here. John Morse wins the Hawaiian Open, his first one on the PGA tour, Jim Colbert won a tournament champions there as mentioned in Puerto Rico. Super Bowl is coming up at this time, the 49ers are 17 and a half point favorites in that one. Again, January 17th is coming week, the golf channel officially launches Arnold Palmer and cable entrepreneur Joe Gibbs, not the owner of the Washington Redskins at the time. Flip the ceremonial switch on January 17th at debuted as the first single sport cable network and initially reached only about 10,000 homes, but it did at its first live tournament was the Dubai Desert Classic. The timing was just perfect. Well, the tour is, you know, was defending its power to approve televised golf experience appearances. An entire 24 hour channel devoted to golf appeared. Was it just, I mean, it's just the infomercials and stuff, the whole rest of the time? It's pure castler and reviews are good news and stuff. Accentral golf talk live with Peter Kessler, there's golf academy on there, a lot of reruns of a lot of these, a lot of that infomercials, cable outlets with three and a half years and more than $80 million in investment capital before hitting the airwaves, $80 million in 95. That's a lot of money, man. The Kessler interviews are electric, I know, I know our guy kind of maybe lost it on Twitter some years ago, but the early stuff, I mean, it's, I miss it so much. I wish Brando had a long form interview show golf channel if you're listening. Why are we not, why are we not doing that? Faraday stuff was great, but then it got really goofy and silly and I was not sent in. Just get Brando sitting down like, I don't know. Brando might not be the guy. Or Rich. Or Rich. Yeah. Yeah. Shot. I mean, Rich is a pro. Come on. I love it. But just, yeah, I don't know if all the tiger ones like with Butch Harmon in there and they're hitting balls into the net and talking about, oh, it's great and Norman stuff was really good on golf, I think Kessler has all those on a website somewhere. I don't know how he got the actual rights to those, but anyways, they are airing the Dubai Desert Classic. It's like the first time the American audiences have gotten, you know, their eyes on Dubai in the 90s and then what was taking off there and whatnot. So it was, that one hit pretty hard. Northern telecom open. Phil Nicholson wins this to become the first player to win at the event as a pro and an amateur. And beat Jim Gallagher Jr. by one stroke as Gallagher bogie the 18th, more on Gallagher later. Jim Gallagher Jr. That boy was, that boy was him in 1995. He was. Fred Couples becomes the first American to win the Dubai Desert Classic. He's over there playing on the European tour. John Daley had, had a shot strike and official left him bloodied. He missed the cut, which was getting everywhere in the papers. Vijay Singh wins the Phoenix Open on January 29th in a playoff over Billy Mayfair. He credits his swing coach, Mack O'Grady for the victory. Gotta do it. Mack O'Grady deep dive. That's, that's, I'm itchy for that one. Articles written about how the Phoenix Open keeps getting bigger and bigger week long total of 392,000 people attend here in 1995. It is well over 500,000 now just a few years later. But all kinds of stuff up the Thunderbirds, what they've done to grow the tournament. Again, all still the same here in 2026. So during this week. No stadium at 16 yet still just very informal, informal gathering. Come through. Come through this week January 26th through 28th Tim Fincham meets for two days with members of the Senate and House of Representatives regarding the FTC probe into the PGA tour release rules. January 28th. Tim Fincham is photographed on a four mile run with President Bill Clinton. The only picture I could find of this is super distorted black and white picture from a newspaper and I couldn't find it anywhere else, but come on Tim, let's go for it. But the optics of that of like, yeah, I'm going to win this like I'm literally, you know, I know everybody in Washington. I know how this city works. I'm going to take care of this. Fred Couples wins the Johnny Walker classic in the Philippines back to back international wins for couples, but again, you can sense the slow start to the year. Couples, the top ranked American is playing internationally instead of a lot of these West Coast events. Pebble Beach Peter Jacobson wins his fifth PGA tour event. We are, and if you haven't noticed yet, we are on, we are on a heater of winners that's going to go on for a long, long, long time through basically through my entire section of this show. Jacobson's in his 40s. He had tried TV a bit and 93 didn't like it. This is only win number five in his 17th year on tour. Jacobson popular player. He's been on the policy board for six years. He's got, quote unquote, aura, according to the press Democrats, yeah, he does have the rids. Got fluff on the bag. Fluff's been on the bag for 17 years now. And David Duvall played as in the final pairing for the first time at a PGA tour event. Shot 67 in the final pairing, but did not win at Duvall's 23 years old and a rookie on the PGA tour. Remember things we didn't weren't going great with Dean Beeman and Bill Murray in the prior year. Bill Murray had called the PGA tour a Nazi state among other things. Finch him did write two letters to Bill Murray to persuade him to play in it. Murray, of course, dragged an elderly woman into the bunker a year prior to dance with her until she fell. Finch him would describe it that he's using his artistic capabilities to create interest. That's just another, I'd fall in love with Tim Finch him, by the way, if you can't tell. Nick Fowdo is here this week and is now a full timer on the PGA tour for the first time since 1989. It's found interesting. Jack Nicholson, Tom Watson, our set to play as Shell's wonderful roller golf the next day at Pebble. The public was free to come out and watch. Parking was like six dollars for it, but you can just come watch them play a wonderful World of Golf on that Monday after the Pebble Beach program. That sounds great. A simpler time. Yeah. John Stockton passed Magic Johnson this week for career assists as well. I think they passed away. I don't think that's right. I might be a J. B. T. I don't think I don't think that's right. John Stockton got HIV. I told me, God, God Peter Jacobs wins again. The next week at the Buick Invitational of California going back to back as a Tory Pines picks up his wife afterward and like the jokes that he is acts like he's going to throw her in the pond at Tory. But he doesn't do it. And you don't get that Buick Invitational confused with the Buick Classic or the Buick Open. You open. No. No, don't. Don't get twisted. Almost reminds me, like, everyone's due sync on finished business went on just a weird heater. You know, what was that? Five, six years ago. Yeah, it's kind of like the best player in the world at like 49, 51, whatever he was. Yeah. He helped me to similar. What's the one run? Yeah. He won by four over Calc and Mike Holbert, one more Holbert here and a little bit as well. He said the Pebble victory had allowed him to recognize he was operating in a completely new competitive reality. Next week, Bob Hope Chrysler, Classic Kenny Perry wins just two weeks after he blew a three shot lead at Pebble. Duval finishes second again. Of course, Duval is going to make some history at this event a little later. He is knocking on the door. Kenny Perry's building a golf course back home in Franklin, Kentucky County Creek golf club. He says the debt from the course has him rededicated and focused said, can you borrow a million and a half dollars? Would you borrow a million and a half dollars from the bank? It gets you focused that he was signing the check away right away over to the bank. The course concepts sounds good. It does exist till I look this up as well. The Greens, Greens Fees at the course will be $12, the cart will cost eight. So it's a public golf course, despite it being called a golf club that the Kenny's building back in his hometown. How about that? You would double click on that for a sec. You imagine? I don't know who would be Russell Henley or someone just be like, you know what? I'm going to build a affordable public golf course in public. It's like Zack, you know, I think I could see a lot of players building like a high and rich. But shout out to Kenny Perry. I had no idea. You would check that place out if I remember it. I don't know the full history. Maybe it was supposed to be a country club and didn't end up working out. I don't know exactly, but it does still exist on Kenny Perry Lane or drive or something like that. Oh, that's convenient. I found it. Yeah. It's great. Duval's second on the money list, again, as rookie on the pd tour, T 14 and a Y T six, the northern telecom runner up at Pebble and Bob Hogue had T 17 at Derral, as well. I'll say it. Get them on the team for sure. Maybe not the charisma, not the risk, but whiffs of the kid coming from Duval here. 1995, they were not looking very fondly on rookies. Unfortunately, I think for our guy a little later on. That's gonna play safe. Play safe, safe, Steve, for that one. One of the groups at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic sitting president, Bill Clinton, former president, George H. W. Bush, former president Gerald Ford and Bob Hope, playing as a five-some with defending champion Scott Hogue. George Bush hit a spectator, Norma Early, in the face, breaking her glasses and requiring 10 stitches. Also hit another spectator in the backside. Gerald Ford hit a woman's finger as well. The group took six hours to finish. Tom Kite was in the group behind them and laid down in the fairway in protest. And officials tried to bribe the 91 year old Bob Hope with some ice cream to get him to leave, but he insisted on finishing if all the presidents were going to finish as well. So, she says. And worth noting, we're recording this the week after president Trump's 70 at the at the member guest, where he was apparently playing off like, of course, handicapped zero. So, you know, maybe, you know, maybe you could have got him out there to speed things up. I could see him and Biden playing again. Do you see the spinny put on that wedge? I was saying, what if he was, yeah, well, you don't have to get into it, but what if he was just playing the golf course? What if he did shoot 70, but he was playing the golf course from like 900 yards? Like, what if that was his T shot, you know, that little green side pitch? I don't know. I don't know. I'd like to explore this space. Summer golf is here. Our closets are looking a lot like the rowback website. Right now, this lightweight technical hoodie is another one of my favorites. Great for summer. Rowbacks lightweight. Looper short. This is exactly what you need for hot weather golf. It feels exactly like a gym short, but it looks like a proper golf short. It's got a stretch waistband. It's got belt loops. It's got a real button fly. It's very lightweight. If you guys swamp ass problem, these are for you. They got a ton of different colors. I haven't found a bad one of those. Yeah, we have also follows quickly approaching. That means it's time for rowbacks game day collection. Same favorites as well as new styles available. They got some new schools added Boston college. You see Berkeley University of Central Florida, creating you Oregon State Rutgers, USC Stanford University of Washington, Washington State University of Wisconsin. You can check out all of their official licensed offerings at rowback.com. If your school isn't on the list yet, just use their selector tool. Let them know. They would get on it. That's a collective list of schools. They've got their rowback.com. R-H-O-B-A-C-K dot com code N-L-U for 20% off your first order through the end of the week. That's R-H-O-B-A-C-K dot com code N-L-U rowback. We thank you back to the pod. This week was the Alfred Dunhill challenge as a team event. In this team event, Greg Norman and Nick Price are playing each other. It turns into a little bit of a joke because they both conceded long puts to each other on 17 so their TV match would reach the 18th hole. Ken Schofield from the European Tour, not happy about that. It becomes a pretty mocking line. Like Lanny Watkins started railing on it of like how important the Ryder Cup is and how silly a lot of these team events are that are popping up. So more on the FTC investigation this week, Finchham calls it the bureaucratic momentum at its zenith. He's expecting a ruling with in days. He said if the commissioners vote to continue has already been a five year investigation, could start another legal proceeding. They'll stretch three more years. If they lose, they'll appeal drawing on their two years. This is the rhetoric that Finchham's going with. We are going to drag this out if you rule against this. That week defended the rules by saying abandoning them could mean an explosion of big money, limited field events that would help a handful of players and promoters but hurt the game and a majority of players. Sounds familiar. He also says in recent interviews that the investigation is making conversation with sponsors much more difficult and that they use the rules to maintain the allure of the support to their sponsors and their networks. And he said that Norman is the only one that has called him to say, Hey, maybe we should think about these rules. As in all the other players agree to the rules and Norman's the only one that is spoken to Finchham about maybe not agreeing with them. So also an interesting card to play of like, yeah, you are hurting our industry by looking into this right now, like ramping up the pressure of like shit or get off the pot here. You're doing this or not. Like we I'm ready to take this head on, but you guys got to make a move here. Nissan open Corey Pave and wins for the second consecutive year. He wins by three over Kenny Perry, collecting that money to turn over to the bank and Jay Don Blake. Of course, the PJ championship will be returning to Riviera in August as well. Greg Norman's in South Africa this week. He says about the world tour. It will happen. The majority of the people around the world would like to see it happen, which yeah, that would mean I don't know how many there's eight billion people now. Maybe there's six billion and 95. So over three billion people want this world tour to happen. Uh, it's kind of Scott O'Neill rhetoric that we heard recently. So next week, the derral rider open Nick Fowdo wins for just the second time in an actual PJ Tour event, ignoring the five majors that he's won. Fowdo drives it in the water on 18 leading by a shot, but he saved Bogey with a miraculous three wood and uh, hold a 20 foot putt. Norman just needed a part of tie, but hit it six iron from 179. And again, this is heavily emphasized. Hit it into the middle of the lake. Like he didn't just hit in the water. He like chunks it out of the rough into the middle of the lake, 50 yards from his target. And articles are written afterwards about how Fowdo is trying to work to change his image in the US, blah, blah, blah. Peter Jacobsen almost almost made a 60 footer on the 18th to tie as well. Uh, and go into a playoff which would have been his third win of the spring or the winter. So Honda classic little drama Mark O'Meara wins the ninth his ninth tour event is that Western hills winning wins it by a shot. O'Meara played out of turn to finish up on the one foot putt because he was so nervous and didn't want to wait for it. O'Meara wouldn't have played this week. Had he not forgotten to enter the Nissan open two weeks earlier. He showed up at Riviera ready to play a practice round. Problem was he had not phoned in to enter the tournament and it was too late. Fowdo finished runner up this week as well. Mike Holbert finishes 13th Mike Holbert. He puts one handed. He's got the Yip so bad. He is on the PJ tour putting one handed. I can only find one clip of him doing it the memorial later that year, but he puts his left hand on his hip and puts entirely with his right hand, which is again, the second top finish of the year so far. That's something to track the whole bear report. That's jarring. Okay. File that under the, you know, when we compare errors, it's not the entire thing. Well, some of those guys were putting what he had. Got to remember firemen, one handed putters. They're really good. They're really, really, really good. I promise, but like, you know, some of them objectively were putting Glenn Day is assessed a one-shot penalty. This is my trivia question. Is assessed a one-shot penalty for slow play in the third round earned him the nickname? It was going to be a trivia question. The last slow play penalty issued on the PJs. It's crazy. Nobody has played slow since then. I was getting ready to say it's like finished that sentence. Neil, I was getting ready to say it. The last penalty stroke given out in the PJ tour for blank years. How many years? Until the 14-year-old at that was the master's, that was in the count. This is a non-major. Yeah. Dude, I don't, I don't know if there's 12 years. 22 years. It came in the 2017, the Zurich, I think, in a team format. And I don't, again, that might be bad. I've heard me right. But I think, I think it took until 2017 for the next slow play penalty to be dished out in the PJ tour. So folks, so questions, loom about where the tournament's going to be played next year, whether it will stay or move to its new long-term home in Coral Springs at Harren Bay. It actually ends up going to TPC Eagle Trace for a year before going to Harren Bay. They claimed Harren Bay was going to be ready, but the golf course was not ready in time. It was brand new golf course, and they didn't get it built in time to host the Honda Classic in '96. So Bay Hill, Lauren Roberts wins his second PJ tour event defending his title. Awesome one, Bay Hill, the year prior format. Every situation. Yeah, exactly. It's just like, it's just a horse for the course, man. He had to go back to Q-school three times. Again, when's it Bay Hill? Again, feeling like the top 24 players in the Sony World Rankings, Palmer had that Rizman. He was getting people to come to his tournament. During this week, Palmer does call his own meeting. When the tour arrived at Bay Hill, some in Norman, Davis loved recounts it that he said, I was told to go tell Greg. He had to go to the meeting, as he was afraid to do so. Norman couples love and finch him, huddled in Palmer's office that overlooked the putting green at Bay Hill. The line was drawn right there. Arnold said, look, it's over. This is not the way we set the PJ tour. Jack and I set this up to run the way it's run. We could have taken ownership, but we set it up to benefit everyone, not just certain players. If I was in that meeting, I would have maybe reminded Palmer of his breakaway attempt in '83 with that Jack tried to talk him into. It's a little bit of a revisionist history from Palmer, but he stood up and said, you don't think Jack and Gary and I could have done this once those guys stepped up and they were against it, especially Arnold. It was over fast. They left the room and it was over. So brings us to the players. March 26, just two weeks before one of the masters is when the players was at this time and big like reviews are in for Finchum. This is a big, you know, it's kind of a state of the Union week, always for the PGA tour commissioner. He is in every newspaper I could find just getting rave remarks in public as most of the first time commissioners get communication skills, open this with the players handling of the world golf tour, listening to strong foundation of support among the players. That's the Jacksonville Times Union. Even Greg Norman says I've probably had more communication with him in the first five or six weeks than I had in Dean Beaman in 12 years. He said since November, he and I have had wonderful communication. There has never been any animosity between the two of us, neither one of us wants to see anyone get hurt. We'll see about that. Which again, sounds a lot like the roll lap stuff, yeah, I mean, it's just a lot. We've got to finally adult in the room here. But sounds like Monahan's first year, too, everybody's the greatest guy ever. Yeah, purse up to $3 million for the players winner is going to get $540,000. David Devall, not eligible for the event as Nike tour graduates were not automatically qualified, but he gets a special exemption, the hometown kid gets a special exemption into the players. It was not very controversial. It is a it was a players decision in this and the players on the board were like, this dude should be in the tournament like this is, it was it was an easy one. Davis love Brad Faxon. I think we're on the board at this time and they're like, let's get this guy in tournament, there was five other special exemptions as well. So it's not just a completely special thing for him, but for it sounds great. I want to find some footage from this Thursday, 41 balls in the water on 17 on Thursday. The wind blew Tom Watson's hat into the lake, Omira and Fowdo. Each put two balls in the water, both made sevens. There's 23 scores in the 80s and only 20 subpar rounds, PTI, Randy would have loved this day. 50 scores of double or worse on the last two holes alone. And Cory Pave and jot 66 with 22 puts. Syringes were brought out with a cooling spray on the greens at one point because of how hard the wind was blind. It's like those soccer is cool off the earth. It's not sad, brov, not fat. Who won? I'm trying to lead it. Janssen wins by one over Bernard Longer, big win for Janssen. I've been mocked for changing equipment and caddies after quote, flukishly winning the 1993 U.S. open. It was just his second win since then. Little full circle moment three years prior at the 92 players. Janssen had chucked his putter into the water on the sixth hole. He had the wear with all in that moment after the round to go back out and fish it out of the pond. And wouldn't you know it that week he used the same putter to come up and $40,000 prize. How about that? What a story. That is. Fifth major talk really ramping up. There's an article in the Palm Beach Post that also says the player has an identity crisis. But a lot of articles saying, like, why isn't this a major? It's got it blah blah blah. And again, what's not helping this year, Michael Jordan is returning this week to the Chicago Bulls. And foul. So foul shoots 80 in the opening round was asked about it and says, I've got your fucking story. Bridgestone put the wrong balls in my locker driver sucks. Yeah. That's good. That sounds familiar. Fowler uses wreck star 40 bladas, but was accidentally given 50s, which do not perform as well in the wind. So that was the reason everybody shot 80s. So again, talks of it moving to may not immediately, but the advantages of moving the players to may. One is it would better align the players with the four recognized majors. It would shift the players away from the master's shadow. Again, this advantages are that television, NBC's got the rights to the players and the NBA, the NBA playoffs are going on in May. It would take another 12 years before the players would officially move to may in 2007. Of note, Dean Beeman's back out in the senior tour. If you remember, Dean Beeman, part of the reason he rolled off a commissioner is he wanted to play, uh, back get back to playing right in his own right, great player in his own right. He's made four starts so far, T 72, T 29, T 64. And I think a T 14. If I remember right, I miss that up, but, uh, he gets two top 10s on the year, makes $154,000. They should make money and play the champion's tour. No, man. You got to play. Same tease. Same everything. It's part of the job, man. You got to go play for a full year and then you could get this exit, this exit package that you could, that you could have it, but you got to grind it out. No cut either. Those, those, those tapes of, uh, of Beeman's 95 campaign, indeed, that's, that's, uh, I, just listen to those as well as bone by grass the other day. Yeah. Neil, did you come across anything on the Anderson Consulting World Championship of golf? I didn't. Okay. I, I, I flag this because I, it's, it's, it's, I don't really remember this, but, uh, so this is a, this, this event is announced. I remember this name, Anderson Consulting World Championship of golf. And I remember the commercials for it. I remember the sound of that. I didn't know what it was, though, but it says the run to the title starts April 10th and 11th just after the masters, the fake dirt of it was all just on the ballad sheet. It might have been. It's Arthur Anderson and, you know, the, uh, yeah, it was complete Ponzi scheme of, yeah, of Enron fame. It could be it's 16 players, eight Americans and eight representing the world. All matches are single elimination match play. And so the first match is going to be right after the masters, layman against Mark McCumber and Fuzzy Zeller against Paul Azinger. And then Frank Nobolo and, uh, is going to play Steve Elkington, VJ is going to play Robert Allenby. Uh, and then Tuesday, Tom Kite against Lauren Roberts, Cory Pave and verse Phil Mickelson, Mark McNulty against Craig Perry and David Frost against Eduardo Romero. And from there, this is going to play right after the masters Monday and Tuesday, I think after the masters from there, the foreign survivors are going to play in Oxfordshire two days after the British open and the Americans are going to play on July 31st and August 1st in Coler, Wisconsin. And I, I didn't know if you came across. I don't know if that was black wolf run or if they're, uh, whisking straights wouldn't didn't exist yet. I don't know what they were doing up there. I didn't know if you, if that came across your desk. But the golf, four golfers are going to advance to the finals December 30th and 31st at Greyhawk ESPN televised 49 and a half hours of this event because this is just a special made for TV event that I, I, I, if you'd ask me what the interest in consulting world championship of golf was, I, I would not have been able to, to list it off for you. But I was focused in my research on like PGA tour. So that's what probably, you know, uh, bent it off. But yeah. Um, interesting foreshadowing here, the heads of the five families meet in Panavidra this week, the US tour, the European tour, Australia, Japan and South Africa to celebrate the death of the world golf tour. No, they formed the world forum of PGA tours, which would of course later become the international federation of PGA tours, League of Nations. You can see where this is going to be heading towards the events. They're going to put together here. But this is the, the first meeting of all of them here, um, and probably a, an offshoot and take away from the world golf tour talks of like Finchham's trying to get his arms around basically all the other tours as well. So WGCs. When were they wet, Sierra girl, two dudes, there were a lot of issues in it. It was a very regionalized joke there, uh, an article from Ron Syrac highlights how America is where the big money is and golf clearly, he says, quote, clearly the European tour is serving as a very nice developmental league for the US PGA tour, sort of a triple A in Nickers, Bolt, uh, in the night again, I was kind of associated the, the tours being somewhat even at this time, but it's kind of fading pretty quickly for the European tour in the mid 90s. So all right, I'm pausing the PGA tour action here to give a little bit of an update for the golf world as a whole, you guys have any idea, any, any guesses as to what this might be? Um, any, any developments, forgot, it affects pro golf as well. It's going to affect the recreational golfers as well, but do you remember kind of what happens early 1995? It's not square grooves. Is it? It's not square grooves, but it is, uh, you're fishing in the right pond. It's not really rules related. It's just a big development, uh, on the equipment front, not the Probe one. It's not the Probe one, um, something similar, new, new innovation, something great, and it's big. Oh, sure. A great big berth. Yeah. Okay. That's by the way, if you can't tell here, but we're going to, we're going to cover a little, a little news here, uh, titanium drivers had been in existence since the early 90s, but they were expensive availability wasn't high and it just really hadn't caught on yet. And Callaway breaks through with the great big bertha and this from golf WRX, it's the full titanium construction allowed for a significantly larger head at, how many CCs was the significantly larger head? Like three 70 or 390, two 50, two hundred and fifty three CCs for more forgiveness, uh, which must have looked huge compared to the original big bertha driver at a mere 190 CCs. It is now twice the size of a conventional persimmon driver, but I think the cost of this was in 1995. I'm going to say a hundred and fifty dollars. Yeah. I had a hundred ninety nine in my head. $200. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. - Wow, seriously. - GTS is a good deal. People get out and buy a title of GTS. The cost is driven by the Ruger Titanium Clubhead made exclusively for Calaway by Firearmaker Stern, Ruger and Company. The Ruger Titanium had cost more than four times as much as Calaway paid any foundry for any other clubhead. The Titanium weighs substantially less than stainless steel drivers. And with over 250,000 drivers sold in its first year, it became the best-selling driver of its time. Proving the Titanium wasn't just viable, it was revolutionary. Pro's like Phil Mickelson on a casseroent day and put it in play. What made it great was how well it worked for the average golf or Calaway-turned-Titanium from a cool idea into a category disruptor and the ripple effect was immediate. Competitors scrambled to catch up. Titanium quickly became the standard and driver design would never be the same. It changed the trajectory of modern driver technology. Taylor made Hustle and launched the-- - Burner. - The burner was out, but the bubble shaft. - Oh yeah. - With it, that was also $500. Driving distance is about to increase by 26 yards on average in the next 10 years. - Guys are doing sit-ups like crazy. - Okay. - I didn't realize a firearm coming in with that ballistic face technology. By 2005, 97 players would be hitting it farther than John Daley hit it in 1995. It wouldn't, of course, lead the tour. Again, just quick pause here to say like, Daley was the needle in the '90s for how far he hit it. It was like 289 or something like that and everyone was in all of that because of course distance is relative and it doesn't matter if the ball goes 340 or 290 distance is relative and we lost our weight with that one. - You think it's cool, Sammy Sousa, Mark McGuire hit a bunch of home runs? - What if everybody hit home runs? Wouldn't that be way better? - Listen, I've never made it to March in any one year without a Ryder Cup update. So a quick Ryder Cup any. We're gonna be playing the Ryder Cup this fall at Oak Hill. I think it's kind of funny like the narrative around the event at the time. The U.S. is coming off back-to-back wins at Kiowa and the Belfry and they've got a home win coming up at Oak Hill in September, complete opposite of what we've got going here in 2026. But Balanty says, if America keeps winning, the Ryder Cup will lose what it has gained. Europe must win in sooner rather than later. If we are not careful, the Ryder Cup will cease to be the great event that it is now. - Don't worry about that. - All kinds of weird articles written. The Sparse crowds on the European tour and how big they own the PGA tour gives the Americans a big advantage. Some real leadership is shown by Tom Watson early on. Laney Watkins is the captain. But Watson says, quote, he said that if he qualified for the team, he would want to play as well. I told him no way. I thought the same, but when I got into the job, I knew that to be captain and play well was impossible. It wouldn't be fair to them nor to his own golf. Just interesting. So presented without comment. (laughing) - It's interesting, that's all. - Yeah, it's interesting. I'm sure the Ryder Cup's got as a much smaller deal though, it is probably way easier to peak after. - Ryder Cup prices are $200 for general admission. It's not a new thing that Ryder Cup tickets are very expensive. They're expecting 1,500 media credentials to be issued. Tickets are hot. They're just eight years after they fail to sell out 25,000 tickets at Mirafold Village in '87. Hospitality tents are up to 56 from just the 15 in '87. Golf's booming, man. Golf is booming. - Yeah. - Gonna move quickly through this next part. Davis Loves wins his ninth PJ Tour event at the free port McMurrin Classic. He needed a win to get in the masters, which kind of amazed me for Davis Loves, but he did it. Duval, another great finish, he finished third. Duval at the fifth on the money list. A weird note that Tim Finchum stops by Springfield, Missouri to present John Q. Hammons with an artist rendering of the World Golf Village, which is set to be the new international home for the game of golf, or the love of golf. You need to go. - How many fucking hours I spent at the car because of that meeting? Driving down to St. Augustine to that hellhole. - Not a hellhole, dude. Not a hellhole. Hammons will be building a massive resort hotel in Convention Center at World Golf Village, just outside St. Augustine, which will include a 75,000 square foot golf hall of fame. Construction to begin in September is anticipated open in September, 1997. And Finchum says, it's not going to be a static. Once you've seen it, you've done it kind of facility. It's going to be a living, breathing, highly interactive audio visual experience, which everything I've ever heard about that is literally the exact opposite of how that ended up working out. - God, it could be. It is a good idea. - Genuinely. Like golfers love golf. They would love a space like this. It's just not, it's just not that. Didn't get the virtual mats in the middle of nowhere. You know, it's just hard to draw people in. I maxed theater was sick. I did go there a lot. - Similar to how we did 1994, we're not going to be covering the majors in detail here. You can check out the 1995 major championships in episode 669 of this here podcast. Going to great detail of all those, but of course Ben Crenshaw wins the Masters. Next week in 1995, Bob Twey, wins the MCI Classic at Heritage at Tarbottown, seventh career title defeats Nolan Henke in two playoff holes. First win for Twey since 1990. Jim Gallagher Jr. breaks through, wins his fourth PJ Tour event, wins by one over Slamon and Peter Jacobson. Again, Jacobson absolutely fucking people up back then. Gallagher was seven shots back, shot 66 to win the K-Mart Greater Greensboro. Some world news that week, that was the week of the Oklahoma City bombing and players were wearing pins on their hats, or ribbons on their hats for that one. Neil, we were surprised in '94, the name pain Stewart didn't come up a whole heck of a lot. Kind of struggle with this game in this time period, but he wins the Shell Houston Open, his ninth career PJ Tour event came from six shots down, beating Scott Hoke in a playoff. It snapped a four year win the streak for Stewart. Hoke had a seven shot lead at one point and said afterward, quote, "You can print it now, Hoke, as in choke." (laughs) That's good stuff. Oh, man, how about that? I mean, he was already called that after the 1989 Masters. His lead was six shots with seven holes to go over Stewart. He also made a 35 footer for Birdie on 18, just to get into the playoff. That's how badly it went on the previous five holes. Fulton Alumn. Do we have less chokers in golf these days? Technology, man. Right? Yeah, I think it's truly, like I think that's outside. It's just less downside. Right. Just as every time we go through this, I was like, man, people used to really explode. And butter technology. Do you remember trying to make three footers with like a ping answer like back in the day? Oh my God, you could not close the club face on that. It was a disaster. Yeah, so that's a very good point. Fulton Alumn was de-cute. He did not show up for his tee time. He did not get his wake-up call. That was tough. Come on, man. Calc wins the Bell South Classic by two shots over. Jim Gallagher, Jr., who would win twice this year, two-bunner ups and a third all in 1995. One of the third round co-leaders was Stephen Kepler. He was bidding to become the first club pro to win on the PJ Tour since 1974. Played a good, fine around, finished in third place. The British citizen played college golf at FSU. Ernie Ls wins the GT Byron Nelson Golf Classic. It's just his second PJ Tour win, but it's his 15th worldwide victory. This is at TPC four seasons. Vijay Singh wins the Buick Classic the next week. His third career title second of the year, five whole playoff over Doug Martin. It's his second win in three years at Westchester for Vijay. Vijay's 32 years old. A lot here about only 70,000 fans showed up for this week. New York golf fans are just taking a beating for this one. The schedule change, which we talked about in the '94 episode, going from one week before the US Open to Mid-May, absolutely crushed the field. That switch came after Jack Nicholas pressured the tour for lead to the Memorial and the Kemper Open who wanted later dates on the calendar as well. Trivia question again, the Buick Classic. What tournament is this now? Truist? It's not. You got to think outside the box on this. I know I'm trying to, I'm trying to trace all this. It wouldn't, I mean, it's not like the, like the rocket. No, it's, it's trying to think like did it move to higher level than that? And then, oh, well, that's what I was going to say. Is it like it was the Barclays and then the Northern Trust and now FedEx? It's exactly right. I should know my gut. That was my first, my first thought. Weirdest tournament with Wikipedia page ever of just, yeah, that was, those two do not feel like the same event from the big classic. Yeah, but there is a, like my, my section kick kicks off with the FedEx St. Jude Classic. Say what? My, my section kicks off July 2nd FedEx St. Jude Classic. But different tournament, that's, that's the Harrison Frazier and, you know, things, I think Daniel Berger, things of that nature. Different, different tournament. Because yeah, that, that, I don't know why you think the two tournaments admitted to the same tournament. They're both hot FedEx. Yeah, I don't know why you would think that. I know. My bad. Also, just another little, you know, from 30 years ago, look at big markets. We're all chasing big markets here. And here's an article about, man, there's just a lot more to do in these big markets. It might not be the only game in town this time of year. Yeah. Yep. On to Colonial. Tom Lehman wins a second. Just his second career PGA tour event makes a 24 foot birdie on 18 to win by one over Craig Perry. It's just the third birdie on the 18th to win the tournament in the events 49 year history. This is where I'm going to pause to just call out the consecutive winners on tour that we've gone through this year. Bill Nicholson, Vijay Singh, Peter Jacobson, Peter Jacobson, Kenny Perry, Cory Pavan, Nick Fowdo, Marco Mira, Lauren Roberts, Lee Jansson, Davis Love, Ben Crenshaw, Bob Twey, Jim Gallagher Junior, Payne Stewart, Mark Calcivec, Ernie Ls, Vijay Singh, and now Tom Lehman. Fourteen of those 19 events were won by major champions and we're not done with this run as well. And help one to start the year. Heavies. Right. Right. And being international players, that's a heavy duty list of Americans. So what's we credit that's a strength of the Euro tour, but also just like, maybe not brand names, but still a lot of depth in the U.S. ranks this year. This is the only event. Not to do all, also, sorry, but to do all is a 23 year old guy that's like about to break the door down. This is the only event on the PGA tour counter that's not sponsored. The Southwestern bell declined to renew its agreement after the 94 tournament, but the tour is committed to colonial through at least the next three years and would eventually be Mastercard that takes over in a masterful sale time is a black circle shout out to Dean and Deluca. That's a Schwab. I mean, good Lord. Chrome Plaza. That's incredible. This is, I'm curious if you found a follow up to this part, Neil. In this time period, Finchham said he would support a trim of exempt players on the tour from 125 players to 115 for the 1997 season. It will be voted on here shortly, but I think that vote does eventually pass here in just a couple of weeks, but needed to go, I think I'll get there. And this would basically the idea here to help more graduates from tour school. The policy board has passed the three changes on the meeting on the six, which proposed reducing those exempt cards, restricting graduates from Q school from top 40 in ties to just the top 40 and reducing PGA section openings in each tournament from five down to three. But it's thus be reviewed by the PAC and membership before requests is made for board ratification later in this year. Because I don't think this ever happened. I don't think they moved down to 2015. Anything here. Okay. Memorial tournament. I would have been here for this Greg Norman wins his 15th PGA tour title, second memorial. He won this after a six week layoff with an injury. I won by four over DuVal, Calc and Steve Elkington, a big rain week in Dublin, Ohio, which you might imagine. Chief leather. Curse of leather lips for the cicadas out. No. Every 17 years. There was a four. And I guess that would have been what, 87 before that, where the cast cicadas. Yeah. So my graduation summer was filled with cicadas. That's how I remember that. Lee Janssen wins his sixth career. He won again, won the Kemper Open, second of the year, won a playoff over Corey Paving at TBC Potomac. Finch him. In this time, you're talking about the Philly market, loved to get an event in Philly. Found that pretty roll up, say on the same thing, love the Philly market, loved to get an event there. So takes us to US Open, Corey Paving wins that at Shinnecock and in the last event in my coverage, Greg Norman, again, wins in Hartford, wins his 16th PGA tour event after finishing runner up the previous week at Shinnecock, won by two over Kirk Triplet and Dave Stockton and Grant Wait, chipped in for an eagle in the 15th hole. I could not find if it was stopped by the rough left of that green or not, but did chipped in for eagle on 15. Ryder Cup points to ends at this point. Corey Paving, Tom Layman, Davis Love, Phil Mickelson, Lauren Roberts, Ben Crenshaw, Peter Jacobson, Jay Haas, Mark Calcivek, Kenny Perry, Faxon and Janssen are tied at 11th Curtis Stranges in 20th. Fred Couples not in the top 20 at this point. And what's the selection process at this time, Sally? Top 10 on the points. Let's get in and two captains picks. Captains picks. Okay. Now is the time to visit Pinehurst Resort at the cradle of American golf Pinehurst is more than the fame number two, an anchor site of the US Open. It's Tom Doke's masterful number 10 for historic hotels and newly built luxury cottages at Pinehurst number eight, the one of a kind title of shop at Pinehurst, a trio of dynamic experiences in station 21 plate and wire grass. Pinehurst blends timeless charm with the very best in the game today. We are excited to get down to Pinehurst here in a couple of months for something. I think you guys are going to really love visit Pinehurst.com to plan your next day Pinehurst.com. Tell them we sent you back to the pot. All right, deal with that. I hand the reins over to you for the second half of 1995. Turn it up. Let's go. It's good stuff, Sally, you know, listen, there's going to be some, there's some patterns developing. Some names we're going to see early. Just some scene setting for what's going on in the summer of 95 biggest movie this summer. What is it, Dege? I don't know. Jurassic Park. No, that's too late or two independence day. Batman forever. Oh, sure. Tommy Lee. Wow. Kilmer. Jim Carries. The Ridler. Tommy Lee Jones. In 2016, then record $52.8 million a weekend, $184 million domestic haul. Good stuff. Song in the summer. It's all he tipped the macarena earlier. No, it's not yet. It takes off at 96. Oh, does it kiss from a rose? That's one of them. It's another song in the song. I mean, that's from the movie. Right? Yeah. See you'll don't call me sting. Yeah. But from Batman, but waterfalls by TLC. Sure. And his left eye and chili were kind of, we're doing it. A lot of people thought about a guy named Jason Waterfalls, which it was not, uh, yeah. Best selling book. It's got to be Michael Crichton, close, close. You're in the right. John Grisham. The Rainmaker. Okay. Uh, and then Windows 95 was launched August 24th. Amazon.com sold its very first, uh, book and developers, I love this company. Hey, Amazon sold its first book in July of 95. Jerry Garcia dies, grateful dead August 9th, 1995 at 53, just a cultural gut punch, Dege. Yeah. You know, so yeah. And then sports backdrop. Talk about baseball's just kind of in, in the, the throes of, uh, of labor disagreement. So that's, that's kind of the background. So start in July, uh, as we just learned, FedEx, St. Jude Classic, not the current FedEx, St. Jude Classic, but there was a FedEx, St. Jude Classic, uh, it's won by Jim Gallagher, Jr. Just a quick apology. Jim was not familiar with the game. I see you ball in in 1995. And this is, this is now ready to watch July. July 2nd. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds hot as hell. Yes, it does. Uh, this is Jim's, uh, fifth and final, uh, PGA tour win, eight nine total professional wins, uh, one tour championship in 1993, uh, I need to give TPC Southwind some credit here. That is like some course that was built 10 years ago, but around a while for sure, uh, kind of an OG tour stop TPC Southwind was designed by Rob Ron Pritchard with consulting from Hubert Green and fuzzy Zeller, uh, uh, Guy Berger's 59 was, was there, I think, was, I think it was in Memphis, um, we don't have to spend a lot of time on that. But I was going to reinforce your point that the place has been around for a while. I was the Memphis classic in 1977 at Colonial Country Club, uh, Gova, Tennessee, if, if, if, if, if, throughout my, uh, overview of, of Google is correct, yes, throw a whole testimony. And I should preface this by saying, you know, shout out to Dan Carter. I'm not a historian. Sure. Yeah. You know, so we're approaching two hours. We're, it's going to start to get loose here. I, I just sold Puckman on the Great War. Uh, all right. So next up, Motorola Western Open, don't call me the B&W championship at Cog Hill. I've been running Illinois, uh, shout out to the WGA and Evan scholars everywhere. Uh, Billy Mayfair wins by one at minus nine on the 72nd hole in a five way tie. He stuffs a seven iron, uh, from 178, hold out a five footer to win closing with a 67. Uh, despite winning one of the oldest non majors on tour, or maybe the oldest, um, Mayfair was not exempted into the open. Um, so he skipped St. Andrews and he says, quote, after the round, yeah, good, good week for me to take off. Uh, more on Billy, uh, just keep him in mind as we keep going, say what you will about the problems of pro golf these days, I, I don't, I feel like we've squashed a lot of these qualification issues. I, I'm trying to remember the last time that we really had it like, how is that guy not in X, Y and Z event? I feel like we've, you know, we don't shout out a lot of the, the slow progress, but shout out to that one. I thought you were going to say squashed a lot of the Billy Mayfair's because that's also happened to. No, I was going to, we had Glenn all day. We have Billy play fair, we've got all the, yeah, there's a cast of characters popping up right now. Moving right along here in to mid July, we've got the Senator, I like beer classic. The Anahezer Bush golf classic in King's middle, uh, yeah Williamsburg, Virginia, Ted Trebaugh break through wind for the big hitting Pennsylvania. His first of two career titles, uh, it's a birdie fest week before the open, uh, kind of the original maybe John Deere here. I would say legitimately the first quote, like, I know the name. Ted Treba, but the first quote, no name winner since since January 15th with John Morse winning the Hawaiian Open. That ends the run of like extremely recognizable names. And if you listen back to the 94 pod, very different year. 94 was just like all these olds winning and some really random stuff like 95 was like dude, we got some dudes now. So then we're right along to the open. 124th Open Championship played at the old course, St. Andrews, July 20th, 23rd. Winner is John Daley, score of 282, 6 under. One in the playoff, four hole aggregate playoff over at Constantino Roca. For more on this reference, NLU deep dive, we can dive deep into this one. This one kind of had everything. Home of golf, in Icarito, a reverse Icarito, a playoff, memorable pair of butt cheeks. St. Andrews, you know, a lot going out. Good interview, just just good stuff at this open. I was thinking about this during research. Is there a bigger contrast in winner vibe and course vibe? You know, you got the home of the RNA and then he got daily recovery, alcoholic butt cheeks, all that stuff. It's an interesting contrast there. It is. Gosh, I feel like I had something. Patrick Reed winning the master. Yeah, I'll say like Sam Johnson laying up at the master's, but Patrick Reed's probably a better example of that. But this one's up there. I think it's funny. Bryson, it pined her, it's a little, but also kind of not. Yeah, it's a really interesting, interesting question. I also think that I'm, I'm thankful we did the 94 episode and you guys reheated it at the beginning of this one, but you know, I'm seven years old at this one. I know John Daley. I know he smashes it, but like I didn't remember the leave of absence and like all of that stuff, just to set that context of coming back and winning at the open at the old course. Well, and after validating the like Cinderella overnight drive to Crooked stick, like, you know, more, that's almost more of like a, who the hell is this guy? And I was like, oh, now he's got two majors. That's a, uh, it's real deal stuff. Always noted too. I think he's one of it. I have to double check this, but I remember looking this up at some point, like one of if not the only American to like win a major in a rider cup year and not make the rider cup team and he did it twice. I have to double check that, but there's something a lot. Maybe he's the only one that had done it twice, but yeah, I mean, there's one more I can think of recently, somewhat recently. What was that fill? Oh, yeah, I think that was ahead of that. I might have looked back in the day. I think it was what it was. Yeah. And just to yeah, the Icarito. So Konstantino roca, sorry, refresh my memory, he, he chunked a chip, chunked the chip and then he makes a long putt from the valley of sin, yeah, from the valley. So a reversal career to go into the playoff, Michael Campbell, 26 year old from New Zealand was the 54 whole leader shot 76 on Sunday, tie for third with Mark Brooks, and then Norman, kind of favorite, Fowdo favorite. Norman was T 15 Fowdo T 39, never really in it. This was also Arnold Palmer's final open championship. And Tiger Woods is first open championship as the reigning US Am champ. He was T 68 plus seven as the, I think he was the low Am though. Yeah. Again, go back to the 95 majors episode, episode 669 for a ton, ton more details on 95, Michael Campbell got boned by a helicopter, a helicopter issue and like it was almost late for the tea time and ended up him contributing to him, not winning the, the open championship. So episode 669. All right. So that's the open. We're going to spend more time on the opposite feel that the deposit guarantee golf classic in Anandale golf golf. You know, as we remember, Mississippi winner is Ed doc Dordy, first and only tour wind. You guys know anything about Ed about the dog. No, I can't. Zero point zero. All right. Good. Uh, the event spent 26 years kind of on the JV squad. It was nicknamed the Mississippi Masters before it became a fully sanctioned tour stop. Uh, as I said, opposite field event, uh, Kirk triplet was T for this week. And he was quoted as saying this, this money spins the same as the stuff one at St. Andrews. Kirk, great. Like that. Uh, so Dordy was a Vietnam veteran and received a purple heart and two bronze stars. So he was drafted in the army after high school, uh, and did one tour in Vietnam. And I found two great profiles on him, uh, on, on doc, one from, uh, Trenham golf history. This, shout out to the, he's got this great website spelled T R E N H A M. I come across them on the last deep dive, uh, just kind of like fun off the wall history stuff, uh, about golf figures. And then another site called hashtag veteran of the day. So from Trenham, after graduating from St. James Catholic high school, Ed Dordy went to work at his local post office in Marcus hook, Pennsylvania. One day while delivering the mail, he had to deliver his own U S army draft notice. Hmm. So that of the day goes on to highlight. He was a stud baseball player in high school grew up in Chester, PA. Sounds like he was getting some sniffs, uh, and was, was going to go to spring training. I think for the pirates. Uh, he had a, a trial was going to be in 1968, he gets drafted. And by February of 60, 80 stationed on the Cambodian border at a place called cum duck, uh, in May of 68, his unit was attacked, overrun in a battle that lasted three days. The battle was part of the famed TED offensive. Um, listen, this is a, this is a rabbit hole. If you want more, I, I implore you to go check out the battle of cum duck with a PDF page. It's robust. Um, anyway, better than the day, uh, wraps up. A quote, in an escape attempt, uh, Doherty found a fallen sergeant carried him onto an aircraft that was about to take off. The sergeant had been injured without help. Uh, he, uh, he would likely have died as the aircraft was taking off. It was hit by enemy fire, went into a spiral Doherty miraculously got himself and the sergeant off carried him across the one right under enemy fire upon reaching the medic office. The sergeant was treated. Doherty suffered minor injuries. So he's awarded the, the two bronze stars for valor and purple heart after the battle, Doherty and his, uh, his squad are, are stationed at landing zone, Ross, LZ Ross, brother. Uh, the squadron has been, uh, given 144 baseballs from the Boston Red Sox. So in between on duty shifts, uh, Doherty and his team would pitch into ammo pits. Uh, and then he is, is love of baseball is reignited when Chicago Cubs player Ernie Banks came to visit LZ Ross, uh, Mr. Cup, Mr. Cup, and one of the highlights for Doherty have his services playing catch with banks. So back to my hitters at Tranham, Doherty was sent back to the States for duty at Fort Lewis in Washington in 1969. So he did one tour. He volunteered for the baseball team, but he was told baseball required, uh, he was too much time. And since he saw a combat, I, I think they needed him for training, uh, for soldiers heading overseas. So the base also had a golf course, Ed picks up golf. He hadn't really played. So he, he kind of gets the bug. So he's discharged in 69, a friend took him out to Edgemont Country Club back home in Pennsylvania. He gets a job at the course and, uh, it just, you know, starts grinding. So once winter rolls around, he lands a job at St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, works for golf professional Mike Reynolds down there, uh, who also kind of coaches him up. And so now he's working on his game 12 months a year. So that's 69 by 74 Doherty became a PGA tour member in March of, uh, I guess he was kind of a PGA professional. And then PGA touring member by March 75, uh, and he began playing PGA tour events Monday qualifiers. He finishes T 22nd at the 1975, 1975, 1975. So we're 20 years before he's winning on the PGA. Yes. And, and, and five years after he picked up the game, right? So both of those to me were like, whoa, okay. So you hit in these T 22 at the PGA championship at 75, uh, most years he was able to earn enough money to stay exempt, but there were numerous interruptions due to elbow and shoulder surgeries. Um, okay. So again, he gets his first and only career PGA tour went at the age of 47 in 1995, uh, opposite the British open, uh, he did lose in a playoff at the Greater Milwaukee Open in 1990, uh, who is it? And hint. It's very relevant to, uh, some names we've been throwing out today. Uh, Jim Gallagher, Jr. Boom. Jim Gallagher. I'll see you ballad, Jim. Got a pull. Uh, okay. So he never played in the open, um, but because of this, when he did play in the Masters in 96, missed the cut. In 1998, Doherty became, uh, began to play on the senior tour. He, uh, he won $5.8 million in official earnings after he reached the age of 50. So he's kind of, uh, uh, what's his name, um, like Scott Parell or someone like this? Yes. Yeah. And, uh, and the, uh, the guy from New Zealand or, uh, what's his name? Stephen Alker. Yeah, just like late, late bloomer. I love this, um, so he enjoyed a far greater degree of success on the, uh, the senior, the champion's tour senior circuit than regular career, uh, shares the record for best 54 whole driving accuracy in champion's tour history, uh, he hit 42, 42 fairways at the ace group classic at night and 2005. Who are the other two guys tied? Who, who else is hit 42, 42 fairways for a good guess? But no, Calvin Pete. Yes. Calvin Pete did it at the 1996 VFW Senior Championship and Hale Irwin did it at the 2010 insure classic at rock barn. Great sponsorship by insure there, there, there target market like that, um, best season ever of driving accuracy on the champion's tour is Joe Durant, 86% in 2014. Think about hitting 36% of your fairways, I don't think it'd be so fun. I don't even, or it wouldn't be fun. It's just, you know, yeah, you're just in the middle of fairway every time. I don't know. Maybe electricity. I landed this playing at a three point turn out of this digression after his PGA. career. He began a more intentional. He was, he's always been in the train model trains his whole life. I just when I thought I couldn't get any better. I know. So then he opened up after he stopped playing or maybe during, he opens up a model train shop in Garnett Valley, Pennsylvania, specializing in Lionel and American flyer trains. He often runs the largest set with his grandchildren, putting up five trains on the eight by 16 track. He also has an extensive collection of guitars and pinball machines. And he's still a lot. I was like, yo, maybe we could, I could be a podcast. Sure. Yeah. So he's just my new best friend. He had some issues with where to live with cancer, age and orange from his Vietnam stuff. But he's still alive. I think he lives in Port St. Lucy now in Florida. And I just kind of just sum it all up. It feels like Doc went pro in retirement activities as a 24 year old. Yeah, I just like got really good at golf, trains, guitars, pinballs. I mean, this guy's, this is my dude. So shout out to Doc. That's one of the best dives. One of the best digressions. I think we've ever had on this podcast. That's good stuff. I will send a text before done recording to see if we can get in touch with this guy. Sounds like a ledge. All right, moving on. IDR classic, a pleasant valley in Sutton, Massachusetts, Fred Funkster winner, second career, Torwin. This is New England's longest running summer. Stop the old New England classic win number one of two for for funk in this like back half of the season. So he'll go on a win later in the year. Not much didn't have much here. I'm going to keep moving. I'm trying to try to keep us moving like kind of one big feature each month. So let's get to August. Buick open, not to be confused with the blue classic or the view of invitational. But the buick open is in Michigan. Grand Blanc at Warwick Hills Golf and Country Club. Woody Austin. First career, Torwin in a playoff. The kind of the coming out. He's the 1995 PGA tour rookie of the year. So Austin starts to starts to buck his head here up in Michigan. Controversially wins it over David Duval. David Duval. Yes. House of this win. Duval had a, it was higher on the money list like had better terms, but did not have a win. We lost this is like what would it be? Eric Cole Ludwig kind of situation. Were they in the same year? Eric Cole and somebody I can't remember who it was, but Benny Booms. Yeah. So Woody Austin's on the scene. Quick pause kind of on the schedule here to discuss an associated press article from August eighth titled Revenge eight years later. Stadler hacks at tree. Quote. Craig Stadler used to chain saw instead of a golf club when he decided to take a swing at an old nemesis, a large Leland Cypress tree, which contributed to Stadler's disqualification from the 1987 Leland brothers, Solomon brothers, whatever classic at Torrey Ponds in San Diego. For more on this, check our rules scandals podcast and our podcast with Craig Stadler and and from the wall or some self, he's quoted in this article saying it's been eight years time to put it to rest. So he chopped that thing down. No, I protection famously, you know, but Stadler, you know, he's handling his business out there hacking this tree down in August and in August of 1995. This is the perfect time to tell you about our friends at East Sands Golf East Sands helps bridge the gap between playing, you know, famous golf courses like Royal Trune, Royal Dornick and discovering the hidden gems of Western Scotland or wherever you might be traveling. Haley and Nick, some friends of ours and fellow nest members, they built East Sands specifically to help golf sickos put together the perfect trip across Great Britain and Ireland or any number of places, whether you want something big and ambitious or small and straightforward, they can build the trip around exactly what you're looking for. We're also excited to announce we're working with East Sands on some exclusive trips for nest members next year as well. So if you want to join a great group of friendlies on awesome golf trip that's already been planned and organized for you, keep an eye out for those and when it's time to start planning your next golf trip, go to EastSandsGolf.co/NLU. Nest members, you save $500 per person on any trip. They book and repeat users of that offer are allowed. So if you're not a nest member, consider joining our crew of sickos. Make sure Nick and Haley know that you're a nest member when you book your trip to England, Scotland or Ireland, wherever that might be. EastSandsGolf.co/NLU. Go have some fun. These are great people and they're going to help you have a great golf experience. Back to the pub. All right. Next up, we've got August 10th, Riviera Country Club. It is the PGA Championship. Steve Elkington continues a good season. He wins at 17 under, first playoff hole over Monty. Talk about this one a little bit in our PGA Championship draft episode. Elks starts six shots back of 54-hole leader Ernie Elks. And I'm just going to implore people, there's a great video on, I think it's Elks' secret golf YouTube channel of him just, I mean, talking through, like, recounting the tourney and recounting his final round. It's like a two or three minute video, but it's awesome. And he's talking about how he's worried about hitting draws on the T-shot on five and the T-shot on 13. He's just so such a good storyteller. Monty one puts the last three holes to tie Elk, making a really long one on 18. And then they go back to the playoff. Elk decides to walk back, kind of controls the pace, and Monty's back there like, what are they doing? You know, he's kind of flummixes. Kevin Cherry's freaking nice. I love this move here. I love this move right here. He's staying in rhythm. I love this right here. Yeah, it sounds like just an awesome course, awesome finish, awesome tournament all the way around. You know, they're playing Riv twice, but I got to think Riv's a little more interesting this time of year from a condition standpoint. Yeah, this year, though, the greens were like completely almost lost them. Like in the cleat marks were horrible. It was a it was fresh off of renovation and they did not take very well and they really struggled with the greens that that year. There was a lot of bitching from the players and Elk wanted 1700 bars. Yeah, well, it makes a big boy bird here when when the playoff goes out and goes out and gets it from Monty. Can't still can't believe Rich Beams dog in my PGA championship draft. I mean, this seems like it was a good selection. Anyway, well, yeah. Yeah, moving on sprint international castle pines out in Colorado. This is of course stable for scoring. Guys, I want to bring back a stable for event. I think it's, you know, if it was, if it had a better spot on the calendar or something, you guys don't you don't agree with that. I agree in theory. I feel I'm hesitant to wait into these waters after being so publicly wrong about the Zurich. We need to change these formats up that I'm like, what do you think of the Zurich? It's like, I there's nothing I want to watch less than the Zurich. You know, so I in theory, I'm with you. And maybe if it's like one of the if it's one of the signature events or something, you know, it's like, but I don't think they're going to do that, right? And so I would be with you if it was like, we're making the truest stable for it. Or we're making the truest a three club. That's what I'm that's what I'm getting at. But they're not going to do that. So the stable for it's going to be like, here's all the worst players that you already don't want to watch playing a different format. You don't actually care about when it's players. You don't want to watch it. Well, if it was presented properly, I think it's interesting format. But the problem with it is when like when Phil wanted, he literally wanted it like on 16. Right. He couldn't go backwards enough on 17 and 18. And as we've learned at the NIT, it is a it causes problems. But when there's light speeds, dad Lee Johnson, he popping up again. Uh, he wins with a score 23 episode. What seven of the trap drop? He'd like a backstory of that one. So third win of the year for Lee Johnson. Yes. Exactly. The big sleaze. He's bucketing and playing well back to back weeks. That's Ernie else. Uh, this is Janssen's third win of 1995 with the players and the Kemper open. Uh, he and Norman lead the tour with three wins a piece. Norman's got about to get another one. So, um, as far as the season goes. So Janssen, eight PGA tour wins, two US opens, one player, 16 professional wins, got up to 13th in the OWGR in his career. That's finished the master's T 12. I don't know. I that's a really strong career. I don't think we talk a lot about Lee Janssen. I just was kind of, you know, uh, perusing that literature. When I'm clerk, I've took the words out of my mouth. Really good comp. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, really good comp. Uh, all right. US amateur, uh, August 22nd Tiger Woods wins over George Buddy. Mary Uchi Jr. Two up in a 36 hole final wins a second consecutive, uh, US Am title. This is the one new work. Yeah. Yeah. I hit some glitch. Uh, buddy comes out swinging. Kind of get some, you know, he's up early and then Tiger Tiger, uh, comes back. So I, by all accounts, a great, uh, great US Am course. That is the, the year that, uh, Earl said, how do you like this Bobby Jones? A black man is the best golfer who ever lived. Bobby Jones can kiss my son black ass. I like these out there doing it. I like his foot. I like that he's put his name on some quotes. Hell yeah. So next up, this is where things get interesting. NEC World Series a golf firestone country club up in Akron, Ohio. So I super quick. If you haven't read the, uh, the Tiger was Jeff Benedict's arm and container book. There's great stuff about those US Am's in there. That would be like, if you're kind of like, oh, I, I started watching Tiger in 1997. I know everything about Tiger. Go back and read that book. It's, it's, it's very worth while. And listen, I, I kind of was like, I should dig in the US. But it's not the PGA tour. So it's, you know, just want to make sure we are, we're keeping it, we're keeping the trains running. Uh, winner here is Greg Norman, uh, one of the first playoff hole over Nick Price and Billy Mayfare. So this is a career. I got you off where are we here? We are at the end of the yeah, any sea world series of golf at firestone. So so Norman wins it at minus two. So play, you know, tough tournament wins over Nick Price and Billy Mayfair. Norman, who almost withdrew on Thursday more on this at a moment, shipped in for birdie from 60 feet on the first playoff hole to beat the number two player in the world price and Billy Mayfair. He's quoted on shark.com. There's a good write up of this win. He owns shark.com. Well, I assumed he did because it's just fluffing the shark. What are you are? Oh my God. It is as URL. That's sick. I did not know that shark.com. Good for him. That's good stuff. He is out there doing it. He was visualizing his chip in his 1990 chip in at Darrell, which is just like kind of a sick quote of like I was visualizing something that happened five years ago. Like I it's very specific and that caught my eye. It was visualizing the other time I shipped into win a PGA tour event. The $360,000 check made Norman the all time leading money winner on the PGA in PGA tour history. So 9.5 just around 9.5 million passing Tom Kite. And again, this is Norman's third win of the year. Kind of got a slow start was battling some injuries. So they're memorial Hartford and then and then here a 10 year exemption comes with this one. Let's re-eat that world tour. Baby you guys can't kick me off this tour. I got 10 years out here and again, we're about to get in. I mean, while all this is going on, he's trying to build a breakaway tour. And he's like, oh yeah, I'm just going to like take over the all time money list best player in the world. You know, number one player in the world. So again, like I said shark.com. Good good good source here. And this is from shark.com. Norman said his biggest motivation came from his place Saturday where he posted four straight bogies without hitting a bad shot. I thought that was such a TC quote. I had to bring that one up and he goes on to say, I said, this is just ridiculous. And from then on, I was very positive and determined. Which is like, yeah, I made four. I just didn't even bad shot any bad shots. Absolutely. So then back to that Thursday withdrawal situation. Norman accused playing partner of Mark McCumber of a rules and fraction on Thursday. He charged that McCumber pulled a blade of grass away from his ball prior to attempting a seventh foot par putt on the seventh hole. He reported the incident to a PGA tours of PGA tour official. But McCumber claimed he was swatting at an insect. Norman goes on to say, I felt very strongly about the issue. And I required it required a lot of convincing not to withdraw. Norman said, everybody around me told me not to compromise myself and my chances to win. And it turned out to be the right thing to do. It's just that quote. It's just big eye roll for me. It's like, just sounds like megalomania. Like I just can't compromise me. Just this the drama of it. And I don't know. So maybe who knows what happened there with McCumber, but he didn't get penalized. Do you remember the when I was we were doing the the players championship trivia? And I was referencing those YouTube videos. Like maybe AI generated YouTube videos of Mark McCumber. It's how it was like Mark McCumber names five players. He absolutely hates it. All caps like a big fiery kind of like thumbnail. I think Greg Norbert was number one on this list. And this is part of it. And I think the other video is Mark McCumber's players. He quote actually respects. Actually, yeah, you know what Billy Mayfer. I'm cool with him. All day, you know, Glenn all day. Yeah, he's cool with me. So this happened. This again, this tournament was last week August. So August 27th. So September 1st, let's let's let's tie a bow on the FTC investigation. So just think about this. Norman wins in dramatic fashion. So the timing is almost like a movie. And then the next week, they kind of other shoe drops. And any, you know, kind of gets buried by Finchham. So a couple sources here. There's an LA Times article from that was a kind of a really good recap and overview of the whole situation that was written in late 95. That's by David Wilman. Excellent piece. And then there's an article from 2019, a look back by David Siener at Sports Illustrated. And the title of that is a man and an idea ahead of their time. So we're going to reference both of these. But just to remind people, I don't want to, it's solid covered a lot of this. But Finchham had two specific issues with the FTC. The first is the rule that forbids golfers to play in non PGA tour events without the commissioner's permission. The second gives similar veto power over appearances and televised golf programs. So Finchham had a couple of options on how he can handle this as the new commissioner. He could quietly plead his case with the FTC directly, which would kind of be the more traditional way that the, you know, PGA tour, like let's do this behind closed doors. Or he could launch a more vigorous full frontal attack, you know, aka, he could lobby, which is his experience. And again, I do want to emphasize this FTC investigation was confidential. It was going on behind the scenes for years. And so he probably knew about it going into the job, but like it's just kind of been in the background and all of a sudden it's like at that's time when this breakaway tour happens, just the timing is really interesting. So I'm a novice on how business gets done in Washington lobbyists. So this was a really good case study. I'm an expert. Ask me anything. So first, here's Finchham's quote to Wilman kind of about set things up. Quote, we decided to raise the profile a little bit. So he's going the lobby route said Finchham, a lawyer who served in the Carter White House. We just wanted the FTC commissioners to understand that this was a very important matter. And again, his argument as quoted by Finchham is, while the tours disputed policy controls players, the restraints are necessary to short TV networks and sponsors are a reliable supply of quality golfers. He also pointed out that the PGA tours growth helps charitable organizations, which receive $31.7 million from tournaments from tournament generated revenue in 1994. So laying out his case and let's go, we're going to charity route, baby. Great. So what he did, step one, lays down the law, suspensions, threat with players, solid covered that. That's early late 94 early 95 step two, messages to the PGA tour, messages the PGA tours case with the public. And he does this very clearly. Finchham is pretty dialed on his comms here and leaning on some sympathetic arguments. Step three, contact the FTC with an all star team of lobbyists and PR reps. One of those was a former White House press secretary. So in other words, let's get the gang back together. We're going to Washington, baby. Step four, go to work. So he leaned on the turn at first. One thing he did, he leaned on tournament sponsors all over the country, the executives of travelers of, you know, let's say modern day FedEx AT&T. He pressed his, sorry, he pressed his case directly with specific congressman. Wilman reports that 26, he had all these, these CEOs write letters to their, you know, you don't like the rule, call your congressman, but they're all saying, like, hey, man, this is good for the local economy. You know, just go, go press these congressmen. And then he in states that are hosting PGA tour events and that there's local benefits to charities and things that it's directly affecting their constituents as well. Yes. And then he and his team of lobbyists, they press specific congressmen who have control over houseways means like the specific committees where this stuff could get legislated or that have influence and will get to over the FTC. So he reports, Wilman reports that 26 members of congress wrote letters to the FTC in support of the PGA tour, including Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, Trent Lot of Mississippi, Dick army of Texas and Vic Fazio, not sure if he's related to the Tom of Sacramento. Bob Dole took the extra step of making his point on the Senate floor. I understand that the FTC is considering filing a complaint challenging the PGA tours rules. Dole said on February 15th, I question whether the public interest would be served by eliminating the foundation for the success of the tour. So there's a new FTC commissioner or chairman coming in. Clinton's nomination is Robert Pitofsky and he got an earful at his confirmation hearing from Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina. I kind of was going to do a little Southern draw on this one, but I understand for four or five years now, you've got a bunch of lawyers wanted to mess up this sport said Senator Ernest F Hollings of South Carolina adding the FTC is still fiddle faddling around trying to find trouble. And that is what I will be interested in. So he ends up getting confirmed blah blah blah. Another guy, Michael Oxley of Ohio wrote multiple letters and chaired the subcommittee that oversaw FTC budgets. And Oxley was one of 20 members of Congress that was an annual a mainstay at the program at the Kemper Open. You know, come on man, what are we doing? You don't mess this up. So the result. Yeah, this is from Willem and again, Finchham's campaign took several months, but it worked really, and I'm going to add another really, really, really well. The FTC announced on September 1st real quick. The the controversy with Oxley was he also his, his spot, which I believe was a $3,200 entry fee spot into the program was waived, like they were waiving fees for lawmakers in this process, which also a spotlight was shined on that part as well, but it was also like just really good. We want to deal in for Finchham. So the FTC announced on September 1st that the commissioners had voted four to zero to kill the PGA. To hold out hosting, hosting, like events at the president's golf course. Just just for what it's, just for what it's worth. Yeah. Imagine $3,200. Can you imagine? It was, yeah, it was, it was he's oxley said he did not consider the playing privilege of reportable gift and maintain the FTC intervention was based solely on his belief that the investigation was worth. So basically, it's like, they didn't bribe me with this, like, you know, it's that's so small. It's not a portable gift, but they tried that. So if unanimous decision, the commissioners of the FTC kill the PGA tour investigation, rejecting the staff anti-trust lawyers recommendations, take legal action. You're off the case. You're up to stand down. I don't think that happens super often, at least back in, in this time, the announcement was, this is great. The announcement was made late Friday afternoon before Labor Day. And receive little attention. So just, you know, that's, that's interesting. FTC investigations are kept confidential, but agency officials said the commissioners and an overwhelming number of cases have voted to follow the anti-trust units recommendations. According to the people familiar with the unfolding of the PGA tour investigation, the congressional overtures injected attention. That could not be ignored, set an official at the FTC who spoke on the condition of anonymity. I can tell you that those ladders were taken very seriously. Just this like finch him, I would say expertly navigating the politics of America and monahan going on TV and just being again, 9/11 families, man. And like his inability to flex like, he said they, the, the Senate and everything left him out to dry completely before fighting it all on our own, versus Finchim's expert navigation of this. That, that, that those two parallels were not lost on me. Unfair. But Jimmy Dunn, if anybody of these guys had anything to do with 9/11, I'll kill him myself. God, that's a lot. All right, you know, it's, it's a, it's different times. Well, so here's a bit of a scalpel versus a sledgehammer kind of situation. This is kind of, this kind of ties it all together, though, the FTC. So you got to remember, Newt Gingrich is bucking his head around this, these, this time, contract with America. We're trying to balance the budget, guys. So the FTC was facing new congressional leadership and a congressional leadership that was eager to downsize and eliminate government regulatory agencies. Legislation approved by the Senate subcommittee, threatened to slash by the FTC's existing budget by 20%. So about a hundred million dollars. Now soon after the PGA case died, FTC officials found a new ally. As their proposed budget appropriation had moved behind closed doors at the Senate House Conference Committee. Hollings of South Carolina, who was, who was getting up in Patoffsky's grill at the, at the hearing, pledged to carry the agency's fight for the full $98.9 million appropriation. So, you know, listen, once you kill this case and I'll get you a hundred million dollars, kind of how that worked. So one question I had was whether or not Norman knew about this probe and if that had, you know, you know, does he deserve credit for the timing, you know, he kind of botched the rollout, but the timing was good. He said to a senior in that, that SI article in 2019, I knew about the FTC probe. He said, I knew about all the stuff going on behind the scenes. And I thought it was kind of interesting to tell you the truth, but I didn't want to get injected into that probe. I had my own battle to fight. So, yeah, I guess not. But I find that 2019 interview interesting. People should go read it because Norman reflects in a big way and it, I don't want to be conspiratorial. But it's almost like, hey, maybe I should go back to that, because it's like, okay, about a two years later. It's like, yeah, actually, you're right. That was a good idea. And it kind of seems like how Norman just like lives his life. Like, actually, like, why don't we just wreck some shit again? So that's hope he doesn't listen to this pod. I'm like, yeah, I'm not giving a third try, you know, I know what I draw. There's no way. Yeah, no way. I make those savings takes again. So yeah, that's, let's, we tie a bow on the FTC. But I mean, Finch and by September 1st, it's like, it's dead. And then Sally, as you said, he starts to be like, Finch, it seemed to have a really good ability to be like, I'm going to kill this, but there's also some decent ideas here. And so to make sure it doesn't come back while I'm running things, I'm going to start the WGC stuff and, and do like a very controlled vanilla version of this world golf tour. So which again, back to Norman's thing, like, it was not a bad idea. You just have to involve the PGA tour. Like, you can't, you're going to lose if you go up against that machine, unless you have sovereign wealth money. Even then that runs out like that you had like, they're bullies, whatever. If you want to take that approach into it or that view into it, sure. But like, there was just no world, you were going to be able to do this without like a approval of the PGA tour. Yeah, or such overwhelming support that every player is on board, which I won't even consider being a reasonable option. Like it just wasn't going to happen. So moving on here, Greater Milwaukee open up in Wisconsin. That's first week of September, Scott Hoke wins this one. It is not not much going on here this year. I guess Hoke kind of comes back from Scott choke based on some of what Solid One over Tiger Woods, the famously term pro here a year later, big one next year. So you'll learn next year. That's right. You'll learn then that we got the bell Canadian open at Glen Abbey in Oakville, former hometown for yours truly. Mark Omira gets it done. Mark Omira at this point is kind of becoming the nice guy who hadn't won a major yet. That'll come in a couple of year, I guess, three years later. But he adds a national open to his resume. So TC's got to love that. And then you have the 95 Walker Cup. So the 35th Walker Cup is played at royal port call in in Wales. And the event is won by Great Britain and Ireland, 14 to 10. So the notables on this team, notably gay, obviously Tiger, Trip Keeney, Buddy Maryucci, Chris Riley, Chris Cox, John Harris, John Kerrville, Jr. Alan Bratton, Tim Jackson, or on this squad. So a few big names. And then GB and I, not a ton, Stephen Gallagher's on this team, Patrick Harrington's on this team, a lot of other names. I'm not super familiar with, but this is from a gamer in the independent by Tim Glover. Quote, Great Britain and Ireland competed, completed the resounding victory of the United States in the 35th Walker Cup match yesterday. It was made all the sweeter for its rarity value. This was one, this is only the fourth time since the competition began in 1922 that GB and Ireland had beaten the Americans. And they struck a great blow for that unfashionable concept amateur sports. So you know, a lot of labor disputes, all the stuff going on the pro tour. Everyone wants to celebrate the just tradition and glory of amateur golf, another, another knock on Tiger's team record there. So GB and I worth noting they were massacred, according to Tim Glover and Minnesota two years before they went into the final session of singles, needing three and a half points out of eight to secure a victory to achieve a minimum fuss. Clive Brown, the captain, a Welshman, perhaps deserves as much credit as his team Brown. The only captain never to have played in the Walker Cup came up with a perfect batting order for singles. Downing Gray, the US captain kind of botched this one. He played his two aces, John Harris and Tiger Woods, seven and eight in the lineup. And although both one, it didn't matter. The game was already up. Downing Gray. Yeah, I need to need to get up on downing Gray, Florida man, downing Gray. All right. Moving on BC open September 14th to 17, how a moanie, how Sutton is your winner? A comeback marker for Sutton. So kind of the former, I never knew that he was branded this the next Nicholas, but kind of splashy as a young book. But he was kind of the wilderness, rebuild his game and confidence through the early mid 90s. And then kind of has a resurgence in the late 98 to 2000, enjoy golf club and end to caught New York. The old IBM BC comic strip event upstate New York fan favorite now home of the Dick sporting goods open on the champions tour. Guys, I didn't know the history of this. I this kind of put this on the list of like places. I kind of want to see the tournament uniquely brought this from PGA tours website. The tournament, the old BC open brought the grades of the comic strip game to the area. Thanks to the participation of Johnny Hart, Hart was a native of endocott and the cartoonist behind BC. One of the most popular comic strips in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The PGA tour event was named after the comic and Hart provided logos for the event for free. Hart also invited the best cartoonist of the day to come for the tournament and play a pro am the likes of Garfields, creator Jim Davis, shoe creator Jeff McNeely, where among Hart's contemporaries who visited to swap stories, talk, talk artwork, play golf, and I think they had like a little comic, comic con up there throughout the 90s. Can I be honest, I had no earthly idea that that was the case. I had just always assumed BC was like an insurance company or something. Yeah, I did. And I be, I think IBM had a big campus up there. So anyway, an interesting, interesting stop on tour, no longer PGA tour stop. Bit of a woodstock for the cartoonists up there. That's right. I don't know what the list of these events would be, but if you would say like name some 90s PGA tour events, I'd be like, Oh, Buick blah, blah, blah, the Bell South classic and the BC open. I don't know why like that's just one of the first ones that was Alan would roll off the tongue. Disney, I don't know, but BC is on the list of just like, yeah, this should be part of a deep dive in some way. That's a, yeah, that's a good thread to pull rider cup. This is September 22nd to 24th at Oak Hill Country Club, staying in New York. Europe wins it 14 and a half to 13 and a half on team Europe. You've got Sevy Howard Clark, Nick Fowdo, David Guilford, Mark James per Ulrich, Johansson, Langer, Montgomery, column Montgomery, Constantino Roca, Sam Torrance, Philip Walton and Ian Wusman. For the US squad, you got Fred Couples, Ben Crenshaw, Brad Farrantino. - I figured for it there that we're talking about. - No, who's done, who's done, who's done, who's done. - Sorry, who's he, excuse me. - That's a Wilbert Wallberg, what, yeah, listen, I'm not as mean as I'm going to worry about that shit. - We're going to be honest. - You mentioned me, you didn't do a ton of Ryder Cup stuff, but asked me just to do a little bit to top you up. I'd honestly, until this morning, I'd never heard of Howard Clark or Phillip Walden. And that's on me, that's fine. But to find Ryder Cuppers in the last 31 years, that I had never heard of was shocking to me. - So you got a pretty stout, based on this season, to US team Fred Couples, Crenshaw, Brad Fax, and J. Haas, Peter Jacobson, Tom Lame, and Davis Love III, Jeff Maggard, Phil Mickelson, Corey Pave, and Lauren Roberts, and Curtis Strange. Interesting to see Lee Jansen's not on this list. John Daly's not on this list. Billy Mayfair's not on this list. - Gallagher. - Gallagher, so, you know, that was very interesting to me. - So, it's very controversial. I mean, Couples gets a happens pick. - Boy, he's cool. - You know, he won a couple of times in Europe, which is not counting the points list. And like he's, you know, different couples. - And Thailand. - Yeah, yeah, one twice or only European tour. Curtis Strange gets the other happens pick. And Curtis has missed four of the last seven cuts coming into this, and is like, oh man, this is, you know, if you thought J.T. and Rome was an issue, this was like, he's a little past his prime, it's name only, and you're bypassing Duval, and a lot of other names here to go down the list here, and take Curtis Strange. This better, not backfire on you. It backfired big time. He went, oh, and three, lost his singles match, and the US lost by one point overall, and lost a 97 lead in singles. The quotes afterwards from Strange. Sorry if I'm jumping you on this, Neil, but it's frightening thought of what I'll face tomorrow. 11 guys fought their hearts out, and I didn't play well. I knew what would happen if I didn't perform. I deserve whatever I get in the press the next couple of days, but it won't compare to how I beat myself up. - And you mentioned Gallagher, Captain. What was he, Owen? - So Gallagher, he was Owen's sixth as a player in the Ryder Cup, meaning he'd been a part of six teams that never won the Ryder Cup. I believe it was an assistant captain for two. Ryder cups, both of those teams lost. He was the captain, the most two recent ones in '91 and '93. The Europe lost both of those. He was Owen 10 in Ryder cups. He was convinced to captain it a third time here in '95. The US, so Corey Pave and Chips in on Saturday, for the last point of the day to go up 97, and the US celebrated a bit too much. And Gallagher turned to his wife and has a quote there and says they were celebrating tonight, Europe would celebrate tomorrow. - Turned to his wife and said I got a feeling. - So that was the original I got a feeling kind of thing here. But you never beat Bernard Gallagher 11 times in a row. And he makes it happen. Now the US will be trying that approach with Jim Furek this upcoming year, so we'll see how that goes. - Yeah, so as you mentioned, Nick Fowdo beats Curtis Strange, deciding point there. And Philip Walton, last man to qualify for Europe, closed out Jay Haas on 18. Gallagher's quoted his saying, "I put my 18 right in the middle," and it came right in the middle of it and it came through. There are also two hole in ones for Europe that week. Howard Clark on Sunday on the 11th in Constantino Roca, Saturday for some fun little wrinkle. - I'm trying to do the math. How old would Curtis Strange be? I'm not trying to be an ageist here. But I'm tying a couple threads together. I mean, famously the next year in Milwaukee, he's doing the Tiger, he looks old in that video. - This is a year before that, 40. - There's only one US player under the age of 30 on the team. It's of course, Philip Alfred, Michelson. - I was happy. - I was thinking of Walker God. - Yeah. - And he went 3-0, Phil went 3-0. - One other fun wrinkle I found. Lanny Watkins, Captain. He was reportedly so stunned after the loss that he pulled out the wrong speech. He pulled out his victory speech, the closing ceremonies. He kind of started down that track. And oh, wow, wrong piece of paper. And all I just call it the history's most underrated rider cup, a template for kind of what happened at Brookline in 1999 and Medina in 2012. - Oh my God, that's bleak. - One thing I found during four ball play, Peter Jacobson and Brad Faxon are playing together. I think it's on the seventh hole. Faxon hits the ball right. It goes into a unbeknownst to Jacobson. It goes into a creek. Faxon takes a drop. It ends up holding out, makes a bogey. And Jacobson, his green side, hits a chip well past the hole. Goes up, scoops his ball, thinking that Faxon's already in for four. He was not in for five. He comes back to him and says, "Hey, yeah, nice four." Faxon's like, "I took a drop. I made five." And they end up losing the hole and losing that match. And it's noted in there, ironically, Jacobson had been bickering with golf world writers about what he felt were two harsh criticisms of the US team, included in that criticism, was suggestion that Jacobson's concentration was suspect. So the US has been criticized the bunch leading up into this writer cup, and he just plays directly into the hands right there of, you know, poor communication or concentration, I should say. So come out of that, back into the PGA tour, kind of rounding into the tour championship. So we're in October. Buick challenge in the Buick event, Cali Gardens down in Pine Mountain, Georgia. It had a good, good overview of this. It kind of remote court, but stop on the PGA tour. On the 94 episode, but Fred Funk wins here. So second win, both in the back half of the year. Let's say also there was an opposite field event to the writer cup. It was the Quad City classic in DA Y bring one, that one. So Quad City was opposite the writer cup in 1995 was a shocker to me. Then the Walt Disney poor old Oldsmobile classic. We go right from Buick to Oldsmobile. Disney courses down in Lake Boinevista, Florida. DJ's favorite place. Got married up on the water slide nearby. Winner Brad, Dr. Dirt Bryant, first and only tour win. Oh, and the 18 under rain short and 54 whole tournament. It wins over house Sutton and Ted Trebaugh. So, you know, some guy stayed hot. In the tournament of champion. Yeah. First win for Bryant age 40. One is his 18th season and 475th career start. I think he, we did a profile on him from the tour championship in 94. So he gets it done the next year, but he was kind of in the running for a win. Who's a heartbreaker in 94? His younger brother, Bart Bryant, also a tour pro. Later won the Memorial Memorial in 05. 05. Rest in peace. So Dr. Dirt gets it done. You know, DJ, as we said earlier, those tapes of Bart and Brad Bryant. Those are, I love trading for this. That's right. It was unimaginable that a guy by the name of Bart Bryant could win the Memorial. It was like hitters only that ever won the Memorial. Like in the Tiger era too. And he just like wanted out of nowhere. And everybody in Dublin was completely stunned. It's the original William McGarry. Exactly. Then we go to Las Vegas Indivitational TPC Summerland. Jim Furek, first career PGA tour win. Go wins my one over Billy Mayfair, who continues to stay hot. Great photos from that one. Awesome photos. I actually have one dialed up, but it's not not up in the studio right now. But the showgirls with for the young Furek. Good good stuff. Go seek that out. Furek shared the third round lead after 65. And then in 4th, around 67, tied him with Mayfair before he closed it out. It's a five round format. So this is a 90 hole event, which I thought was just that. Yeah. And then Furek goes on to win in Vegas again in 98 and 99. So a happy Vegas, a happy place for Jim Furek. Yeah. Desert guy, Arizona state. Yeah. And then La Cantera, Texas open in San Antonio at La Cantera golf course. Duffy Waldorf gets his first career win. Colorful tie dye. We're sure it's Duffy. Yeah, he'll be kind of a staple on tour for the next 10, 15 years. Okay, interesting stuff here. Torch Championship. It is at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1995, late October. Again, just want to call out. We can move the Torch Championship around. We used to. So that's let's just get that out of the way. The winner is Billy Mayfair. He wins by three over Cory Pave and Steve Elkington. Guys, absolutely brutal, brutal tournament. It nobody. So it's gusting up to 40 miles an hour, hard setup. Only 14 of 120 rounds all week broke par. Mayfair wins at even par. Only player to reach even par over four rounds wins by three. ABC broadcast balloon literally blew into the trees. The field finished to combine a 322 over par. 157 shots higher than the top 30 shot at the same at the US Open that year. So proper test indexes off the charts here. Mayfair shoots 73 in the final round. And as I said, even par over four rounds, he was one of only two golfers who collected more than one subpar round on the week. So guys, just kidding. absolutely vaporized at Southern Hills. It remains the highest winning score in Torch Championship history. A couple notable things or one other notable thing, PGA champion, Steve Elkington missed a three foot par putt on 18. That cost him $58,500 dropped dropping him into a tie for second with Cory Pavan. So two major winners both finished second. I just found that interesting because of my, my guy Stu Sink unfinished business, missing short putts on 18 just time as a flat circle. The win, which is May fair, second of the year was worth $540,000. It vaulted him in just second on the money list at 1.54 million for the year, about 111 K behind Greg Norman. So I, I, this took me on a little deep dive on Billy Mayfair. So who won the pub links in 1986 in the US AM in 1987. So kind of balled out Arizona State graduate and won the Haskins Award in 1987 as well. He has a very interesting PGA tour record. What do you guys know what that is? Recording quotes. That was nine hole score. Maybe, but that's not what I'm going at because he's shot. Oh, he'd one putt it every green in nine holes, I think. Maybe, but that's not what I want for. He's the only guy to be Tiger Woods in a playoff on the PGA tour in history. Yeah. Out of 12 tires 11 and one any beat Tiger at the 1998 Nissan open in a playoff. I just never wanted L.A. Yeah. And I, I didn't actually even realize you got that close at L.A. But that's just, I thought that was just a wild stat. So it's also just weird. Billy, Billy Mayfair, this is a me thing. Billy Mayfair is just impossible to picture as a younger person. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of these guys. I'm like, okay, I see how you, Corey Haven. I see how you used to use the ball out. Billy Mayfair, I'm like, I, you just look like you were 50, like the. It's kind of a brand brand name on the PGA tour forever. But I don't know that much about him. And the highest he ever was ranked was 25th on the, in the OWGR, which I found surprising. You won the tour championship like whiffs of Ryan Moore. I think a lot of people like to say, you know, similar kind of junior, amateur career. Yeah, just like an absolute stud college player won everything in amateur golf. And then just had a super nice career, you know? So a couple of other facts, he got testicular cancer in 2006. He had a successful surgery in August of that year and returned to the PGA tour two weeks later. Guys, a grinder ends up finishing as the medalist of the 2010 PGA tour, Q school. So loses his car, goes back to Q school, wins his car back. It's back on the PGA tour at age 44, finishes 109th on the money list and 2010 keeps conditional status in 2011. Okay. So then things get interesting. I didn't know any of this 2019. He was diagnosed with autism. So stick with me here. Oh, he said, and then I watched, I ended up watching like a 30 minute podcast with him on like some autism website. So he's diagnosed, he says the diagnosis changes life on this 2019 podcast. He said his wife, this is a second wife. Both his wives were named Tammy spelled differently. First wife, I think with a Y second one with an eye, Ron Swanson situation. So he said his wife demanded that he get tested. And then the host, they weren't great hosts, but they were like, why'd you get tested? And he goes on to say that's unnecessary shot. Sorry. It was just that. I was all over the place. No, that they're right. That's a drive by. Sorry about that. He goes on to say that a couple months before fucking podcast host, the rear. I know. Now that's bad stuff. All right. So he saw just say that a couple of months before his diagnosis, he had a situation with the PGA tour rules of fishers. There was a ruling that he felt and he felt they quote, he got bullied by them. He didn't understand the ruling or the disqualification. It all happened a lot quicker than his brain could comprehend it. Two or three weeks later, he got tested and diagnosed and a diagnosis brought a lot of clarity to why he struggled in school. Why have been labeled as he said weird or cocky or standoffish. He's like, I'm not rainman, but I'm a highly functioning, you know, autist. So I was like, okay. So then along with his family, Mayfair started nonprofit foundation, providing support for both amateur and professional athletes and their families who struggle with spectrum related disorder. I'm like, all right. This is great. So now then I'm like, well, what's the DQ situation? I got to go look at this. So it happened in November of 2019, Michael Bamberger wrote a really long article about this that I would curse everyone. I remember this being a big deal. Yeah. And the headline is the anatomy of a DQ. Billy Mayfair broke two rules and seven holes and things got really weird. And it's just Bamberger at his finest. He just breaks this thing down over. It's like 5,000 words. It's awesome. It's a golf.com article from 2019. So it's on the champion's tour, second to last champion's tour event at Sherwood Country Club, finals in Phoenix, where Mayfair wins. So Billy, you know, he was a staple on the champion's tour in this during this time. He's tied for the lead on Saturday and he's playing with the mechanic Miguel on hell, him and his Mayfair hits a drive on the left for rough. They can't find it for a while. Finally, they find it Mayfair is certain that they search for less than three minutes. He tries to get embedded ball relief. It doesn't get it ends up making seven moves on. It's one left. Then later in the round, he hits one left of the green on 17 while addressing the ball. It moves in the rough about six inches, like significantly. He calls in the rules guy says the ball moved, but he didn't put his club down or cause the move rules guys like he wasn't there. He's like, all right. Well, if you didn't cause the move, you're all good. But there's a golf channel camera directly behind him. Lanny walkings is on the call. He's apoplectic. He's like, that's not what happened. So before he signs after the round, they call him in the TV compound. He admits that he did cause the ball to move. So it's a two stroke penalty instead of a one stroke penalty, which would have been one stroke move the ball back to the original position. Signs for a 74 with two stroke penalty. By the time he shows up for Sunday's round, a walking score in the group had called in to say that Mayfair took well over three minutes back on the 11th hole and that and find to find his ball on 11 PJ tour officials review the tape overnight. And they timed the search at four minutes and 55 seconds. So and the rules are keep in mind, Sally 2019. You used to be five minutes. Just change. Now it's three. Billy don't do himself any favors because in the Mayfair rest about two hours later on the range, this all from Bamberger to warm up the third round. Rules guy a car goes up and says, hey, Billy, like, you know, did you know the rules three minutes? Like, yeah, of course, I know that rule. And then it's like, it's what you took, you know, you took just under five and he's like, it's now three. So that, you know, he's like, and then he says, well, I have five minutes to search. So he starts to like get his, you know, it seems like it starts to get a little messy with the rules guy. And the guys like, well, the rule changes here. You don't have three minutes. I didn't, and he says, I didn't realize that then the rules official explained to him that then you played the wrong ball because your ball technically is deemed lost after three minutes. So the minute you finish the eleventh hole, the minute you teed off on the twelfth hole, you are now like, you played the wrong ball and you can't fix it. You were decweeted. Like the last six holes don't even count. So I think they even wiped away his score from from from Saturday because he was supposed to go back and play from the tee because of three minutes were up. So he gets decued for this. And this is what leads to the, the, uh, the autism diagnosis, which I just just like, whoa, now Bamberger's article is a little less sympathetic. So he interviews Mayfair for this. Mayfair has a lawyer on the phone with Bamberger. You know, he's, it's kind of a, you know, uh, very tasty. And, and to be honest, I, you know, in talking to champions, Tora, it seems like he's, it's not the first time that Billy's had this situation. I don't think he'd ever been really dinged for, for rules and fraction, but it feels like it was, there was chatter around this. So I didn't know anything about that. Another little digression that I, I wanted to, uh, to hit on. It's a good, it's a good one. Good dive. Not only that, if you remember this diet leading this to this diagnosis for Billy Mayfair ultimately led to friend of the program Joel Beale, he wrote about this for golf digest of like after this diagnosis came out for Mayfair, it led to Joel being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Like it, as a result of this incident, he wrote about that in great detail for golf digest. It was an excellent, excellent eye-opening article of that, but he, he had not known that to that point in his life until this incident. So yeah, so Billy Mayfair is your, uh, is your tour champion in 1995. Uh, fall series, November, December, these are tour sanctioned events, but unofficial so they carry no official money or, you know, wins. Uh, not really a real story of this. It still spends the same. Yeah, that money spends the same. So you got the Sarah, a lot of, a lot of Mickey Mouse stuff going on, Sarah's in world open at Chateauilan, uh, side of the great lady. Oh, I think she's, I think she's, I think she's actually heard. Oh no. Uh, so Frank novel, oh, it's this one. So this was a short lived gene, Sarah's and branded international event at Chateauilan. Sure. Uh, Lincoln Mercury, Cavaloo, a classic, uh, out in Maui, Jim Furek wins here. Uh, so second title of the fall, um, obviously unofficial, but, um, you know, hot rookie, kind of rookie or, or potent, you know, second, sophomore season for Jim Furek. And you got the master card, PGA grand slam of golf in, uh, on Kauaii, Ben Crenshaw wins this. So it's a 36 hole exhibition among the years for major champions. You got Crenshaw, Paven daily in Elkington. Crenshaw wins this one. Uh, Maybe a good I think is a feel good story. Maybe a good candidate for a little medium dive at some point. The grand slam of golf. And especially particularly like when it got off the rails and shadow hair played in one or something like that. We have something like Mike did get played in one of them because one of the guys dropped out and he was there on vacation or something. It's some good stuff. Then you've got the World Cup of golf and this is at Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen, China. Should be a cool event. What about China? November 2012. This is the two man, right? Yeah. Fred Couples and Davis love the third win this one at 33 under par by 14 over Australians, ogle and Allen B. First international golf tournament ever held on mainland China, a new Nicholas design, a real, you know, love of golf. We're going to globalize. And couples and love won it a record for four straight times as a pairing. So these guys used to beat up this tournament. And then you got the the shark shootout at Sherwood Country Club in California, Mark Calcovechia and Steve Elkington. When this team event hosted by Greg Norman, that kind of takes us all the way back around to where where we started, Zolly with the with the world tour stuff. Skins game at big horn battle at big horn. Fred Couples wins this one. And then the JC Penny classic is the Grant Thornton, basically, at in his brook, Davis love and Beth Daniels take this one. What a weird year for Fred Couples is kind of my takeaway at the end of this two and a half hours. So he wins. He wins a bunch, but just nothing that really matters. Right? I mean, wins, wins over. Yeah, right. Wins overseas wins overseas wins this great wins the world cup wins the, you know, it's that's just very funny. His his Wikipedia page is wild of 15 career PGA tour wins two players and a major in there, you know, gets gets his gets good there has the three DP world European tour wins the two this year Dubai and Johnny Walker. 33 other wins. 33 with the we have the Jay JC Penny mixed team classic, the Northwest open, the Northwest open again, a Johnny Walker World Golf championship, the World Cup, tell us skins game Lincoln Mercury, Kapilu invitation on another World Cup of golf, another Kapilu invitation. They're all in November. He is like eight straight wins in November between 93 and 95. And this is relevant. I feel like couples has got to be saying to Norman, like, dude, just don't play. You can just get the sign off, man. Like why we got to blow it all up. Totally. He is Nick Day, Mr. Skins is also, look at the page, which is just fit. Skins. So I tried to come up with like, what are my big takeaways? I got, I think I got two of them. I think another year, the shark, nor he doesn't win a major, but Norman dominates. Can I close the book on one thing? The Anderson Consulting World Championship of golf was finalized on December 31st, Barry Lane ended up winning that one, which I don't think he was in the original field that I listed off there. So I don't know, we might need to dive into what happened there. Not to be confused with Kenny Perry Lane, which we covered earlier. I truly, they don't, this have only happened three years, 95, 97 and 98. Kenny Perry Lane. Barry Lane had to replace somebody in the field. I don't know who that was. All right. So I got the year of the shark. And, you know, I mean, it kind of is just a, the shark's ball until next year. And then it's just kind of, the shark gets, gets got, what four months later, 96 masters. So Greg Norm is the wins three times, doesn't win a major, but tops the money list, tops the career money list. He's the PGA tour and PGA of America player of the year, won the Byron Nelson Award for the lowest scoring average at 69.06 finishes the year at takes back world number one title from Nick Price. He lost us open by two to Corey Pave and it's Shinnecock. So yeah, balls out. And then I think the other one that's interesting, you have a bunch of guys playing really well, but you've got the four major winners, Crenshaw, Pave and daily Elkington, other than Elk, just those are the only tournaments they won. It's not like Crenshaw went on some big run after this. Pave and played well. I had some good finishes, but didn't win again. Elk won twice, and then Pave and Elkington, these are their only majors of their career. So I just thought that was kind of interesting where you had guys that were really hot Jim Galer Jr. Billy Mayfair, but the major winners were kind of one off. Yeah, potentially similar to this year. Yeah, Monelist Norman Mayfair, Janssen 3rd, Pave and 4th, Elkington 5th, Davis Love 6th, Jacobson 7th, Gallagher 8th, VJ 9th, Marco Mira 10th, average driving distance, as mentioned, 262.7 yards. It is 305.3 here in the year of our Lord 2026. That is up 43 yards in 31 years. 155 of the current 159 players in the PJ tour have a longer driving average than John Daily did at 289. That's Brian Campbell, Andrew Putnam, Davis Chatfield, and Brent Snettaker, the only ones not having it farther than really did in 1995. That's a stark stat. Yeah, it's yeah, I don't know. That's all I got. DJ, what do you think? That's great. That was a whirlwind, guys. Learned a lot. We had lobbyists, we had course building, we had Vietnam dive I wasn't expecting. It's really good stuff. Really good stuff. Excited for the next one. I got to figure out what the hell happened in this interesting consulting world championship golf and how we got there. Yeah, I got a little fairy lane Wikipedia that I'm kind of trying to dive into as well. Yeah, he lost in a playoff that you're the smurf it European open. He didn't qualify for the rider company. He passed away in 2022. Very lane did. I'll get back to you guys on that one. Thank you for being with us for another dive into another PGA tour season. Well, you guys join me for 1996. Sign me up. We must. We got a lot of years to go. A lot of work to do. Thank you everyone for tuning in. We'll see you See you back here next time, cheers.