Recapping the PGA Championship with Gabby Herzig
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This week on the golf course, on the logistical problems of Valhalla, on Scotty's arrest, on the magic of Bryson. You know, I thought this week was pretty strange and pretty indelible and certainly one that I will not forget for quite some time. I wanted to bring in somebody new.

That was actually there that did some excellent reporting all week to break down what it was actually like on site when the Scotty thing went down, watching the crowd get completely behind Bryson, what some of the players were saying about the golf course and everything in between. So without further ado, let's bring on Gabby. All right. Gabby Herzig is here from The Athletic. You have spent the entire week at Valhalla. Are you still there right now?

Yes, I'm still here. I have, for whatever reason, I booked myself an 8 p.m. flight, so that's not going to happen next tournament. But yeah, I've been in Louisville for seven days now, and it's been quite the week, to say the least. I was going to say, from a narrative standpoint, probably one of...

the more fascinating major championships that we've had in, in quite some time that I think both of us will remember for a while. Let's start big picture. When you remember this major in five years from now, what are the, what are the major takeaways from your week in Louisville?

takeaways I mean I still need to process this week to be honest with you there has just been something new to worry about wonder about contemplate every single day like in the beginning of the week it was what is this golf course going to give us then it was on Thursday is this major not going to have any juice whatsoever then on Friday the number one player in the world gets arrested and that's

We thought we were going to be thinking about only that for the rest of the week. Then it kind of takes a backseat. And then the Xander stuff is on the forefront of our minds. Is he going to pull it off? Is he going to poke again, not really go out and get it like, you know, everyone's been talking about for the last year or so. And then you have like Bryson DeChambeau just emerging as the showman that we've been missing so much.

And people kind of start to turn around and think about him in a new light. So, so far, my takeaways are there are some big themes to consider here. Obviously, like one of the most chaotic days in major championship history, probably that Friday, I've said to multiple people that it

It was the craziest day I've had so far as being a golf journalist. So as of now, what I will take away from this week is I just don't think that anything's going to top that in terms of just the bizarre, strange nature of our reporting and what we were focusing on this week at a golf tournament, which we never could have expected.

imagined or expected in any possible way. So, so actually let's start there then. And let's start with the Scotty situation and we can work our way to, uh, to Bryson and Xander and maybe a little bit on the golf course as well. But you did some great reporting that day on like talking to some of the other players like will Zalatoris about, um,

the broader picture of some of the logistical challenges that some of the players were facing at Valhalla that week, which of course was one of the undertones of what ended up happening with Scottie.

What was it like on the, I imagine that whole day must've been surreal. Like what was the vibe on the golf course that morning? What was the vibe with some of the players? What was it like just being on the grounds that day in such a uniquely singular situation? Yeah. I just to start off, I mean, first of all, the, the fatal accident, it's just like unimaginable what that family is probably is going through right now. And

And I will say that at the start of the week, like it was pretty apparent to most people that the logistics were a little bit of a mess. I personally, I only covered a handful of majors so far in my career, but I've never once, you know, had to take a 30 minute shuttle ride to the golf course. And I've never seen it where there's just one road going in and out of, of the club, same road for media fans, players,

everyone involved in the tournament. And like, there's the two way street Shelbyville road and there's just like rows and rows of cones and like, no one knows where to turn basically. And there's just a few traffic traffic cops figuring it out as they go. So from the get go, it was a little bit like, Hmm, like how is this going to be once the actual tournament starts? And then, um,

On Thursday, and I don't know how many people even have talked about this, but there was an accident outside of the club that also halted traffic for a significant amount of time. I'm not sure if there were any injuries or anything, but there was a car accident that caused huge backup. And then obviously on Friday, like it escalated to an entirely different level. So.

The reporting with Will was actually, I'm so glad I got to talk to him because he provided some really good perspective on like what the players thought about this. And that is that

like typically they have their own way to get into the golf course like this usually shouldn't be a problem there there are a bunch of tournaments where yes it's it's been logistically difficult and usually the cops just like let them go around um like you stick your credential out your window or they see your courtesy vehicle and they just wave you through like even at this year's at the waste management they had a lot of logistical issues because of the capacity stuff and they like shut down the gates for a while and if i don't know if you remember but like

Spieth was directed to another entrance and like could barely get into the golf course and this stuff kind of happens like a lot of the time but I think obviously that accident in the morning made it so much more everyone was on edge clearly those cops were on edge and that's ultimately what led to the Scottie situation so it was like a bunch of dominoes falling to make that like

crazy, crazy story happen where the number one player in the world is, like, stretching for his round in his jail cell. And it's just so surreal that, like, Will kind of, like, predicted something crazy like this would happen. And so much so that he told his parents not to come to the tournament. So that was really...

honestly jarring to hear and like it was it was he went on for a while with us there was like me it was me ryan laffner from golf channel and one other reporter and will spoke to us for about 15 minutes of just about how disappointing it was and how he doesn't fault valhalla he actually made a point to say that this is not valhalla's fault it's like he didn't say it outright but it's the pj of america's fault for not finding a better way to set this thing up um

And yeah, it was just a crazy day all around. There were so many factors that led to it. There were so many different things to focus on. And I just don't think we'll ever see a day like that again in golf. It's not surprising that Will was super candid about some of that stuff. I did a podcast with his caddy a couple of weeks ago and have gotten to know him a little bit. And

He just strikes me as the type of guy that is learning to become incredibly insightful and not just on the golf course has been up to some incredible things, but he's become one of my favorite interviews in golf. And obviously his results on the course speak for himself. Was it easy for you to be able to focus on the golf for the rest of that day? After the Scotty thing happened-

What did you follow Scotty on the course? Like how hard was it to compartmentalize focusing on the golf after all that stuff went down? Yeah, it was extremely typical. I like didn't focus on the golf. I actually really interesting because I just started at the athletic club.

Two months ago. Congratulations. Thank you. And it was really, it was honestly incredible to see like the behind the scenes of what the, how the company handled a day like this. And I applaud like my editors and,

even the editor in chief of the athletic and the editorial directors that got involved that day, really directing us and like figuring out what we were, how we were going to handle it and what each of us on site we're going to do. It was me, Brody Miller and Jim Trotter, those three of us on site. So basically we, um,

We knew that this was going to be the story of the day. There wasn't going to be anything else worth writing about, especially for our audience, which is like bigger, broader, you know, that kind of storyline is what's prioritized. So we all were out there watching Scotty first. Actually, I might have been the only one who was out there watching him warm up and waiting for him to emerge from the clubhouse once he was released and arrived on site at Valhalla. So I spent about an hour just like following him everywhere he went and

And so what the energy was like walking out of the clubhouse with all those people waiting for him, all the cameras, you know, his entire team surrounding him, like he's, you know, the president, like arriving on the property. And it was a lot of like, you know, just everyone back away, like leave this guy alone. And then he goes to the range and like,

this surreal scene of him walking over the player bridge and onto the range and everyone kind of turns their head and looks and he gets a couple like you know are you okay from players or Brendan and Todd came up to him on the range in the middle of his practice session and he actually told me what I don't know if you saw this on tv when he walked up to him and like showed him something and then walked away but I asked Brendan what happened and it's kind of a funny story I

I didn't put this in any of my coverage, but he goes, apparently, I guess Brendan Todd won twice on the Corn Fairy Tour in a row, same time as when Scotty was on Corn Fairy Tour. And Scotty gave him the nickname of Tiger. He just started calling him Tiger. And then once Scotty started winning a bunch, now Brendan...

gave Scotty the nickname of Tiger. So he goes up to Scotty on the range and goes, now we can really call you Tiger Woods because he's in trouble with the law. And Scotty got a great laugh out of that. And it kind of like lightened the mood of his practice session. And then we all followed him for the first tee. To the first tee, the roars were insane. It was like he had won the golf tournament, basically, you know, the free Scotty chance. Like you'd hear people from the crowd being like,

can I have your lawyer or like, I'll do your community service for you. Like they were actually, some of them were really funny. But Scotty was like, so the most locked in I've ever seen him, which says a lot because I watched him in the final round of the masters when he like literally didn't take his eyes away from the ground ahead of him, unless he was hitting a dot, he was just carrying his umbrella and,

He walked with Brian Harmon and Wyndham Clark a little bit, clearly like recounting the morning to them. You could see that he was like,

telling the story, making hand gestures, like kind of bewildered at what had just happened. But when he was once he got in a couple holes in he was like very, very focused. And it was really cool to see. And at that point, we just knew that Scotty was just going to be the priority for the rest of the day. So we kind of took shifts, bracing the weather and watching him out there and kind of getting the color of the of the day on the ground. And then afterwards, like,

I wanted to see what other people were saying about it, what their reactions were, if other people had trouble getting in in the morning and what that was like. I talked to a couple caddies, a couple coaches who said it was the worst they've ever seen at a tournament, like getting some context about what it's like to evade police at the end of a golf tournament. Like everyone I talked to said it's beyond standard to do that. And that now this is going to make them think a little bit when they, you know,

just bypass police officers in the future. And yeah, it was clearly on the forefront of everyone's minds that day and the golf was just kind of playing out in the background. Secondary. Yeah. I talked about this a little bit on the podcast that I did yesterday, but I think actually one of the unintentional consequences slash benefits of everything that happened is

Kind of felt like this is what needed to happen for Scotty to break through into the larger cultural lexicon. Like it felt like oddly enough, it wasn't winning the players in the masters in the same year. It wasn't winning the masters for the second time. It wasn't winning four out of five starts. And over the last couple of months, like,

it was actually this that made Scotty a star in a really strange way. And I'm sure you were having the same experience, but I got more texts. The only other day that I can think of in recent memory in terms of the amount of texts that I got from non-golf fans was maybe the June 6th. Yeah, exactly. Maybe the June 6th. It had a little bit of that June 6th energy, but I feel like

One of the odd things that happened with all the stuff that went down with Scottie this week is that it felt like he sort of permeated the larger culture and kind of became like a star that day in a weird way. Yeah, you definitely, definitely felt that on the grounds. Like if you, you already have something to root for seeing someone dominate a sport by a significant margin. And now he, uh,

does something that lights up the internet, gives, you know, the frat. All time, all time day on golf. Yeah. All the time. Like I've never laughed harder. The one that I had, the one that I remember.

just dying at was like, I don't know if you saw this. It was like the gif of like all the people at the slot machines, like going like this. And it's like me liking all the Scotty content. There's, there's so much good stuff. It was so much good stuff. Yeah. It would just, it definitely, it was like the biggest, it might've been the biggest news story of the day. Like, I don't know if anything else,

like permeated people's feeds like as much as this in in sports let alone like just you know united states news but um it was it was cool to see honestly i was very very impressed with how he handled the press conference after yeah were you there at that um yeah that was such a that was such a fascinating press conference because usually when when they stopped it happened to

the middle of action on Friday. And usually when they stop to go full box on a press conference, everyone's up in arms. But I was totally captivated by what Scott had to say. And it was interesting because he started it off saying,

you know, I'm not really going to go into the details. I don't really feel comfortable discussing. And then he did. Then he ended up giving us a lot. Yeah. No, one of the behind the scenes things, I don't know if they showed that any of the

when cameras were following him, but he came off the golf course and then what you come off the, I think it was, he teed off on 10. So he came off the ninth hole, walked into the scoring area, obviously had to sign a scorecard. And we kind of get this little area where we can wait outside the scoring tent to see like, if there are any people to grab, that's where I got Will's Altorus. And you could kind of peer into the scoring tent and you could see him having like this mini meeting with his agent, Blake. Yeah.

And like Scotty and Blake stood in a corner in the scoring tent for like a solid three, four minutes. I imagine just discussing what he can and cannot say, how to start the press conference, like what tone to go with. And it was just like super interesting, honestly, to see the lead up to that. And then they immediately took him into the player interview area, which is like, have you been to a PGA before? It's like this open air interview.

Yeah, I went to Oak Hill last year.

Obviously, PJ of America asks him the first question or just to open up things and he immediately goes into the accident and John Mills and honestly handled it just with so much grace. And he started off very serious and saying he's not going to go into the details, but then

I thought it was kind of nice that he made light of it a little bit, like the stretching in the jail cell, the trying the sandwich, like the getting the cop to like sit with him to calm him down. Obviously, like there was a lot of great content out of that, but it also just showed how like,

How surreal this was for him watching, seeing ESPN on in the corner, seeing him, a video of him getting handcuffed, like on national television. And he said he was shaking the entire time and he had no idea what was happening and just trying to like go through the motions. I just can't imagine what he was feeling.

During that moment, but he kind of allowed us in to that scene, which I thought was really cool. And he could have easily been like, I don't want to talk about it. Like, I just want to focus on golf. He could have easily told them, like, I'm only going to answer golf questions. And that's what we were all expecting. But we got so much more out of it than I think anyone imagined. And it was it honestly made me.

It way easier to write about and talk about because Scotty was so open about it. Yeah. And I think that's his openness about it, I think, is what actually ended up endearing him to to most casuals as well.

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That's Indeed.com slash BlueWire.

Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much?

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. I want to switch gears to where I said. Okay. Actually,

Should we do Xander first? I feel like we're 20 minutes into this and we haven't said one word about Xander. Let's do Xander first and then we'll go to Bryson. So I'm curious about your perspective on Xander and how it's changed because I'm deeper into the data community. And so for people like me, this was a massive win for data.

Right. Because, you know, you have the the casual golf fans, the golf betters that are used to seeing Xander struggle every single week on Sunday and not being able to close some major golf tournaments. We're coming off a week at Quail Hollow where Rory totally just slammed the door on him.

And so there was a pretty strong narrative going in about Xander being this elite, well-rounded player that always shows up as one of the best bets you'll ever find to finish in the top 10, but still never being able to close the big one. What was your perspective on Xander as a player heading into this week and how did it change seeing him finally get over the hump this week?

Yeah, I'm definitely not as deep into the data stuff as you guys are. But yeah,

My perspective on Xander is obviously we've seen it on Sundays. Like we've seen the story repeat itself, um, where he's in the mix and he just basically does nothing like goes out, shoots a couple under even, even par just kind of disappears. Um, I've always really liked Xander as a player in person. Um, and,

He's a, he's very nice in interviews. Um, I actually think he's kind of like underratedly a funny guy. Really underrated. Like I agree with you. I've never, I've never met Xander personally, but I've gotten to know Austin, his caddy a little bit. And that is the word from everybody that is in his circle is that he's really sneaky, funny, and has some really fun stuff to say. If you can get him talking. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. He like sneaks in these like pretty funny one liners into his press conferences. And I feel like not that many people pick up on it. But when whenever I see his Xander press conference, I like immediately click on it and see what he comes up with that day. But something I've always noticed about Xander, which, again, not a data related thing whatsoever, more of like an eye testing is like when he sets up to the ball.

he does this thing where he like adjusts his hands a million times yes like adjusts his grip and I actually have asked him about that before I think it was maybe in Phoenix a couple years ago and I just asked him like hey Xander like what what's up with that like what's going on with that and he was basically like yeah I I wish I didn't do it like it's not in my control um and he said that basically like it happens when he gets nervous and it's like a nervous tick and

And like, if you ever met someone or known someone who has the hips, like it kind of has that energy of like trying to get comfortable over the ball and like doing whatever you can to get comfortable. So in terms of just viewing him as a player, like that has always scared me as someone who like can contend or passively go out and, and just do something in a final round. Like if you can't get comfortable over the ball, like,

In a normal round of golf. Like, how are you going to do that? It's like the opposite of watching Ludwig play golf. Exactly. He just steps up to the ball and hits it. Whereas Xander, like usually what mental coaches say is you have to, you have to get comfortable with the shot before you even step up to it. Whereas like, it looks like Xander is still trying to get comfortable when he's like set up to the ball. So that has always been something that I'm like,

in my household like we don't bet on zander because of that and because of like this is track record so this week honestly like i feel like he proved us all wrong um i feel like his ability to succeed definitely was a bit golf course dependent here um like you can tell me more about the data but he's like he's just a straight hitter like he his misses aren't aren't big right like he he

he's one of those guys like middle of the fairway middle of the green and he's picked up a ton of distance this year too like another very underrated storyline is how much distance xander's picked up like he drives the ball 30 yards longer than maracala now at this point a lot of holes

Exactly. And that's what like that was literally the key to success at Valhalla laid out from day one of the week. Like when Justin Thomas said that about how you basically just have to hit it long and straight and play and like that's all you can do out here. So it was perfect for Xander the whole week. And he proved that his mental game held up basically like maybe maybe he did need to lose to Rory like that last week.

to really give him something to fight for. Maybe it did take two years of runner-up finishes and top tens and majors for him to find something within him to just stay in it and go out and get it. So I feel like this maybe could open the floodgates for Xander. I'm not ready to say, oh, he's going to go win the US Open or go on a crazy run just yet. But I think he's over that hump of just...

people doubting him and i bet the commentary gets to him way more than he lets on i mean like some of these guys pretend like they don't read anything but they read stuff like they see it a hundred percent yeah like it's it's kind of it's just funny to me when some people are like oh i don't have social media like i don't see anything which xander has said and i just i bet it's something in the back of his mind constantly like he knew if he had missed that putt

on the lap on 18 he i think he said he was like i was a little scared of having to play bryson yeah he said he didn't want to go to a playoff with bryson exactly like even that like even that admission just kind of tells you that like that narrative is in the back of his mind so he did prove to me at least that he can do it i mean obviously he's a major champion now so i'm curious to see how the rest of the season goes for him i'm still not like

I'm still not like we can count on Xander every week, but he's up there now. Yeah. Well, speaking of Bryson too, I want to make sure we get enough time to talk about this because you wrote about Bryson for the athletic last night and you were actually, I

Um, you said to me right before we went on air here, but you missed a lot of Xander coming down the stretch because you were so locked into Bryson and you went with him to the range to watch him warm up during that, uh, expected potential playoffs. So what was that like falling Bryson for the final couple of hours on Sunday? Um,

It was unreal. Honestly, it was so fun to watch. I actually thought I was writing, I was going to write something on Victor up until about like the 15th or 16th hole. And then he kind of started disappearing and,

And I have a relationship with Joe Mayo. I've talked to him several times and I was kind of excited to write the story about how Victor managed to pull this off in the middle of crazy swing struggles. But then clearly the narrative shifted and you could just tell that

on the property and on the grounds, like Bryson was the clear favorite or not favorite, but like he was the one who was winning over the crowd. And I, I wasn't, again, I walked the entire back nine with Bryson and Victor. I didn't really see what the energy was like around Xander.

group my colleague brody was with them the entire time and but i've heard i heard that the like there weren't nearly as many media members with xander's group the crowd wasn't as loud like there wasn't as many you know shouts in between holes like bryson was getting like a like a winner's treatment to be honest with you um does that surprise you

Yeah, it did. I mean, I saw it at the Masters a bit. Like, you hear teenagers yelling at him, like the YouTube...

stuff like what's up brother like that kind of stuff and it's clearly like there's like an off course movement happening here that he has this like rallying cry around him and he's very much transformed his image like he's not the cringy Bryson anymore honestly love that he's wearing a normal hat too like yeah the fact that he's wearing a normal hat and not that what I don't even know what it's called like it makes it like immediately like a little bit more likable but um

Yeah, so I saw the Masters a bit and I was definitely surprised. So I kind of like assumed that it would carry over here. But I was blown away by how, you know, hyped he got the crowd at Valhalla. He was fist pumping every chance he got. Like when he when he got that crazy bounce off the tree on 16, he like, I don't know if they showed this on the broadcast, but he walked up and he like thanked the tree. He was like blowing kisses to the tree.

Oh my goodness. They didn't show that. I wish they did. Two hands like blowing kisses to the tree. Um, and everyone laughed and then he like murders that eight iron. It was 220 yards that shot. Um,

Sticks it, walks after it, like just eyes on the pen, straight ahead. He was, he was like full on showman on Sunday. And he does that on purpose. Like, I think he makes an additional effort to like, to wow people. And he. Did you hear what he said? Yeah. After he was like, I think the question was asked, do you.

Are you conscious of being more of an entertainer out there? And he said, yeah, content creations really helped me with that, which I think if anyone else said that we would be cringing. But now again, like there's there's yeah, there's a little more of an endearing piece to him.

No. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I asked him like about what kind of facilitated this run. You know, he has the equipment changes. He's got YouTube. Like what does he think led to this stretch of golf for him? And he like, I should have expected this answer from him, but he attributed it to like having more time in between tournaments with, with live and yeah,

the kind of through line of his press conference was that he gave like absolutely everything he could at this tournament. And he tends to do that. Like he empties the tank is how he described it. So when he said he has more time between tournaments, it allows him to like recuperate better. And also like,

do other things like make YouTube videos and post on his Snapchat story and like 3d print irons and like everything you can imagine. So it is interesting, like how live golf has allowed Bryson to kind of blossom as like this likable and lovable, like,

villain slash showman slash just like star that you just can't take your eyes off of. And I don't think Liv has done that for anyone else. I would say like he kind of stands alone in that. But it's that's a cool example for other Liv players. Like maybe that's kind of the vibe that they should really

Like embrace. Lean into. Yeah. Lean into like the showmanship. Lean into like the highlight reels and doing things that you know the fans will love. Not just like being locked in on golf. If you're, you know, if you're playing 54 holes with like music playing in the background, you might as well like have a good celebration when you pull up.

putter or whatever it might be. So it was cool to hear him talk about that. And yeah, like, like I wrote in my piece for the athletic, I just think it made the final round so much better. And like golf deserves a Bryson and it, it obviously is unfortunate that we don't get him on like the main stage more than four times a year and

But like I saw, I forget who tweeted it, but someone was like, that's the perfect amount of time we can do throughout the year, which is I think kind of right. But yeah, I just thought we made the day so much more entertaining and I loved it. Yeah. We need a little competitive starvation with Bryson, right? Like you don't want to overdose on Bryson. He's perfect the amount that we get him. But I do think one of the...

One of the other things I was thinking about with Bryson, he talked about how in that quote that you're referencing in the press conference about how he's an entertainer and he tries to play some good golf in between, which I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but that was along the lines of what he said. And I think if...

Like if you heard Rory McIlroy say something like that, people would be at that guy's throats. But there's something, there's something that Bryson's been able to figure out where he actually is part of it. Part of the reason I think people didn't like Bryson over the years is because it felt like he was just cringy without really being in on the joke.

Um, and now, now it kind of almost feels like he is in on the joke. Like it, it actually feels like he has some perspective and understanding of what he's doing here as an entertainer. And like, you know, my mom works for Snapchat and she knows exactly who Bryson is. Oh, wow. And so I think that,

It cannot go understated, the impact that Bryson is having on the younger generation. And I think that's starting to bleed through at some of these events where when at first I heard that Bryson was the crowd favorite at the Hall of this week, because you're not the only person that's told me that. It's like, huh, that's interesting because I've been to a bunch of majors specifically

Since all of the web stuff went down and I don't think the divide and the hatred for web players in the larger, broader community.

consciousness is as much as people make it on Twitter. But I still, you know, I've still never felt like any of those guys were massive, tremendously fan favorites in the majors that I've gone to recently at the masters this year. Okay. Last year, LACC, but it felt like something absolutely shifted with, with Bryson this year. And I do think a lot of that was like

Oddly enough, based on the things I know we make the joke, like, thank you for what you do online, Bryson. But I really do feel like it's made a difference. I think he's in the 8 million range on YouTube views this year. He's got over 500,000 YouTube subscribers that he's just added since January. I was thinking about this last night.

This is kind of a silly question, but in a phone call between the PGA tour and live, if somebody offers the other party, Scotty Scheffler for Bryson, who do you think hangs up first? Straight up, straight up. Just like you have, you have Scotty. We'll all take Bryson straight up trade.

Yeah, that's a tough one. It's kind of harder than you think. Like I know the obvious answer is Scotty. Scotty is the number one player in the world. He's playing for history every single time that he tees it up. And maybe that conversation changes a little bit more to Scotty after this week with him kind of permeating the larger cultural ecosystem. But I really do not think that you can understate like,

what Bryson is doing for the next generation. And if, if like Bryson was ranked properly, like what do you think he'd be right now? Oh, at worst a top five player in the world. Yeah. Five or six. And you can't overstate like the marketing value that he has. So like, what's more important to the PGA tour right now?

Like they need younger fans. They need the, they need the allure. Social media. Yeah. Media. Like that's exactly what like PGA tour enterprises is working on right now. I don't know. I'm like, maybe because it's a trade, but, um, that's a really, it's a tough one, right? Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Did you see the video of Bryson yelling at the guy who like intercepted

him like tossing a ball at that little kid. I did another W for him. Just another endearing moment for him. Yeah. How do you not, how do you not love that? That was incredible. I mean, like in the middle of a final round of a major, you're like yelling at the ball to the kid. Yeah. That was incredible. And yeah, I was going to say about the YouTube stuff, like

He interacts with all the other, like, big YouTubers out there. Like, he's done videos with, like, GoodGood and Grant Horvat and the rest of them. And they have a cult following, those guys. Like, it's... I don't think, like, golf media understands it at all. And I'm actually working on, like, a project to kind of, like, put that all into perspective. But...

He has like cornered this like generation that has way more power than anyone thinks they do. Like even at Oak Hill last year, remember when Bryce and Brooks were paired together and like Saturday round, I wrote an article about that pairing and like followed them the entire day.

And you had like the kind of Bills mafia type fans like pulling for Brooks. But then there are these like groups of 12 year old boys who are like dying to see Bryson like dying ball. And I like stopped to talk to them like a couple times. And I was like, why do you guys like him? And they're like, we love his tick tock. Like, my kids great tips. I was like, okay.

This is great. So it's been happening for a while. It's been building. And I think like we're honestly late to the party and realizing that this was going to happen because he's been doing this for a while.

Even when he was on the PGA Tour, he started to become friends with some of those long drive competitors who had a big following. But he couldn't really do much because of the media restrictions on the PGA Tour. So him going to live has honestly served him so well on that front, if you want to talk about the interest he's garnered on the internet. So it's really cool to see, I will say.

Final thing that I want to close on, the golf course. Pretty controversial golf course, I would say. Us in the architecture and data community have our qualms, which I've spoken about extensively. You wrote a pretty good piece too at the beginning of the week about some of the controversy of the golf course and actually trying to get into the weeds with

Great leaderboards versus great golf courses and great major venues versus great moments being there all week on the grounds. How did your opinion change on Valhalla over the course of the week?

I think I could have been even meaner in my first story. I mean, you were very civil. I was civil. I was civil. I didn't want to shit on it because sorry, excuse my language. I didn't want to like knock it because number one, I haven't played the golf course. I think it's kind of hard to like do that when you've never played it. Then it's,

In addition to that, like we didn't know what the conditions were going to look like. I we weren't sure how soft how soft it was going to be. We knew it was going to get soft. But I think that was I honestly, if it was firm and fast, like they intended it to be with the Zoysia. That was like the whole purpose behind changing the fairways. Like, yeah, I wonder if people wouldn't have hated it so much.

What do you think on that? Yeah. I mean, it definitely wouldn't. Yeah. It definitely like, I was looking at this tweet, this from Justin Ray. He tweeted this last night. You know what I'm talking about here? This one's done the rounds this morning. The combined score to par of the field was minus two 14. That beat the next course in PGA history by 260 shots.

So this PGA championship was 260 shots easier than any other major. And I think what, what I keep coming back to as it pertains to the golf course, I talked about this on a podcast recently, but to me, because we only get four majors a year and because so many of these great players that we love are now playing on the web tour, and you've got a bit of a fractured golf world right now,

The majors really need to elevate for us and feel different and feel singular for us. And let's just take the architecture out of the golf course. And it's not even necessarily a scoring thing for me either. I need these majors to be like a mental examination. I need these majors to feel different. Like if you watch playoff basketball right now or playoff hockey right now,

The game changes. Like the game slows down. The strategy is different.

Players get tight. There's real consequences, it feels like. And to me, I think Valhalla would be like a wonderful PGA Tour golf course. I thought the energy was great. I think Louisville is a great town for golf. It's pretty scenic in some spots. There are some fun holes. But it was exactly like any of those backgrass long BMW championship venues, Caves Valley, Wilmington.

And I just, if we're only going to get these guys four times a year playing together, I just needed a little bit more in terms of the test, in terms of shots of consequence. And I know the back nine was really fun and exciting, but the problem that I had with it a little bit was like,

Like, was there ever a time and, you know, the announcers tried to talk themselves into it a couple of times, but was there an ever time where you didn't expect a guy to get up and down? Right. Like, you think about what Xander did. You think about what Xander did on two.

I mean, Xander hits two crazy off the planet golf shots and he's not even, he's not even sweating for, for par there. I mean, that happened so many times where they'd be like, ah, this is a really tough, tough up and down for Xander. Yeah.

It's like, is it? Are we sure? Are we sure? Because these guys have been getting it up and down all week from that spot. So I think that was just my major problem with the golf course. I needed to feel less like a BMW championship, and there needed to be more of a mental test for these guys on Sunday. Yeah.

completely yeah the one one now that you say that about it being it could be a great pj tour course like i will say incredible spectating golf yes like every single hole has is the green is kind of like carved into the side of a hill so you can like sit on the slopes and see everything good high points yeah oh my god it's amazing like 18th hole incredible even like

even like 14 i thought 14 was honestly one of the better holes the the long par three yeah i don't know i mean it was hard it was hard it was hard it was like it felt like a u.s open par three in a way yeah um like that was where that crazy justin thomas chip was which was like one of the most underrated like good shots of the week like that was that was nuts when he was tipping from the high grass like if we had more of that it honestly like wouldn't have been as tough of a like

I guess you could say like the one thing, the one problem that I had with it is there was nowhere where you were really going to screw up. Like, yeah, there was the variance on there, right? The variance on every hole was par birdie. You had to do some really dumb stuff to make bogey.

Yeah, really dumb. And like seven, I saw Wyndham Clark totally botch like the split fairway. He like was way left of the left side route and like then hit the next one in the water. But it's really hard to like put yourself in a position where you're struggling to make par bogey. So that was one of the things that obviously facilitates like a close, a tight leaderboard, like everyone was saying from the start of the week. And yeah,

Yeah. I mean, like that I saw, did you also see the Mark Hubbard tweet where he was like, it was 5% set up for his golf course, which, which I think is totally true. Like, yeah, definitely. And I talked about this too, is it just seemed like the PGA kind of realized what they were working with this week and kind of came to the conclusion quickly that this was never going to be a golf tournament that was going to be able to, uh,

be able to be one at like nine under par, like, Oh, kill last year. They even, they talk some pins and, and there was still no real defense that this golf course had. So it kind of felt like the PGA was just like, all right, you know what? Screw it. This is the canvas that we're working with this week. Like let's, let's have it be an absolute shootout. Yeah, maybe honestly about the tuck pins. Super interesting. I can't remember if I tweeted about this or not, but, um,

I was talking to like a PJ tour stats guy who worked like specifically with a few players and he was showing me some of the scatter plots around the greens from 2014 about like where you can get up and down, which was even before they changed to Zoysia and yeah.

You can see that like even with the tucked pins, like honestly being short-sighted, it's easier to get up and down while being short-sighted at Valhalla for whatever reason. Well, the greens have no slope. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, so it's like it makes it so that not going for the pin is honestly really stupid. Like you're costing yourself shots.

If you're not playing aggressive because the up and down is so easy that like, it's just not a hundred percent. There's no probability during your paper. Totally agree. I was talking about this with a friend the other day, the consequence of misses is just not there. Right. So that induces this completely homogenized strategy where everybody's going to hit the exact same shot. And it all just comes down to whether or not you make the 12 to 15, but putt,

Or you don't. Total punting contest. Yeah. You know, I will reserve the right to say that like our criticisms on the golf course and the homogeneity of the test and the strategy has absolutely nothing to do with.

Louisville. Right. Or, and I do think that great fans, the fans were amazing. Like I heard the exact same thing all week. And, and I felt, I felt the same way last year in Rochester, which is another town that doesn't have a professional sports team. I mean, like if you live in Rochester, the biggest thing you probably have going for yourself is,

maybe Syracuse basketball and Bill's football. But I think, I think the concept of going to these golf starved towns, like,

Louisville, Rochester, Tulsa, Oklahoma is another pretty good one. The fans were great there too. I think they're on the right track with that. I just don't really know what this major championship is trying to be. Like if I was to ask you, go back across the 10 years and look at PGA championship venues, PGA championship courses, and create a through line for me. Like, tell me what the identity of this major championship is.

I don't know what I would say. No, there really isn't one. They try to make it like you have the club pros, like it's about the PGA of America, like the Michael Block thing last year. I mean, I feel like it tries to be like this, it rewards aggressive play. Sure. But at the end of the day, so does every PGA Tour event, basically. Right.

Yeah, it's one of those weird ones where they're still trying to fit in and also moving from different parts of the calendar. Like, I think makes it more difficult to place the PGA Championship. Like, I think it honestly used to be maybe more identifiable because it was like the last major of the year, like the last chance. So they did the Glorious Last Shot branding. Exactly. But now that's not a thing anymore. So yeah.

Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, when I think of the PGA Championship, I think of like Bethpage Black. Yeah. I mean, like that's kind of like the closest thing to like, I don't know, like an image in my mind, but I don't know. Like this didn't, people were saying it feels like Bethpage Black to walk Valhalla, but it doesn't.

doesn't feel like it didn't play like Beth page back. Yeah. Um, all right, Gabby, this has been a blast. You've been incredibly generous with your time. I know you've got a busy day. Where are you traveling back to New York? Yep. Back to New York, have some like kind of post tournament stuff to wrap up. And even actually I'm, I'm starting to look forward to the U U S women's open, which I'll be at next week, um, in Lancaster. So, um,

Switching gears to Nelly world. Yeah. And I'm excited for it. Yeah. And then that's open. Yeah. What's your schedule for the rest of the summer? So are you hitting, you're definitely hitting Pinehurst and Lancaster. Are they, are they sending you out to Troon as well?

As of now, no, I'm not going to be at that one, but I'll be like, I actually have kind of a little lull over the summer to focus on some, some other stuff. The nice, the cool thing about the athletic is I feel like I can do stories about just like golf in general, not necessarily about personal golf. So I'm really excited to get into that. Potentially might try to go to the USM, which is in at Hazeltine this year. And I have, I have a bunch of family in Minnesota, so could work out nicely. And then yeah,

I'll be at the president's cup in Montreal. I'll be at the Solheim cup. I'll be at the tour championship. So that's on my schedule right now. Very fun. Well, you've been an incredible addition to the athletic. I've enjoyed every single piece that you've done for them, particularly this week. And this was a blast. We'll do it again soon. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Andy.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Special thanks to Gabby. Special thanks to Rumpier Sports. Special thanks to BetSports Golf and The Rabbit Hole. And we will be back on this podcast feed next week, breaking down the Canadian Open. So enjoy the golf this week. Best of luck with your bets. And we will see you next time. Cheers.

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