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Published on:

24th Dec 2024

Gary Christian - Golfer/Broadcaster - End Of Year Wrap Afterhours

This special edition of "Grilling at the Green After Hours" dives deep into the ongoing tensions between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, highlighting the challenges and complexities involved in their negotiations. JT and Gary discuss key figures such as Greg Norman and the impact of Tiger Woods on these discussions, emphasizing the difficulty of reaching a consensus when one side aims to eliminate the other. The conversation also touches on recent changes within the golf broadcasting landscape, including NBC's potential spin-off of Golf Channel and the implications for tournament coverage. As they explore the future of professional golf, they consider the need for innovative formats and the importance of keeping audiences engaged, especially during off-peak seasons. With insights into the shifting dynamics of golf, this episode offers a thought-provoking look at what lies ahead for the sport.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

  • Painted Hills Natural Beef
  • NBC
  • Golf Channel
  • USA Networks
  • Peacock
  • TNT


This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcript
JT:

Welcome to Grilling at the Green After Hours.

Gary:

The conversation that took place after the show ended.

JT:

Hi, everybody, it's JT and this is a special version of Grilling at the Green.

JT:

Grilling at the Green is brought to you in part by Painted Hills Natural Beef.

JT:

Beef you can be proud to serve your family and friends.

JT:

That's Painted Hills Natural Beef.

JT:

Welcome to After Hours here on Grilling at the Green.

JT:

We welcome you and thank you for sharing your earlobes with us or ear canals or whatever it is.

JT:

We were talking about Greg Norman when we finished the show.

JT:

Gary Norman out.

JT:

I think, you know, like you said, contract expired.

JT:

Get him out of there.

JT:

I think that.

JT:

I actually think that that was probably one of the sticking points for any type of, what do I want to say?

JT:

Agreement going forward.

JT:

Because I don't think, you know, Tiger can't stand him and Tiger's on that committee.

JT:

And Monahan probably listens to Tiger, I would think, and among other people, yeah.

Gary:

Greg led the rebellion.

Gary:

So Monahan and all the Tour guys, you know, are 100% against him, too.

Gary:

And I'm not sure a lot of the lib guys don't trust Monahan as far as they can throw him.

Gary:

So he might need to be out of the way before any deal is reached.

Gary:

I mean, you've heard the rumors that they're thinking about letting the Saudis invest in the PGA Tour.

Gary:

Like, well, it'll be interesting to see what Brando Chambly says about that since the Tour effectively employees him at Golf Channel if he's going to keep up his non stop diatribe against the Saudis.

Gary:

You know, Rory goes and plays in the UAE and wins the race to Dubai and all that.

Gary:

And that seems to be okay.

Gary:

I don't hear any complaints about that.

Gary:

But yeah, the whole live thing was Randall stood on what he considered the moral high ground.

Gary:

And it's hard to say he's wrong, but he harped on it for a long time.

Gary:

So I don't know what's going to happen.

Gary:

To me, it's hard to see there ever being an agreement because one side wants to.

Gary:

Their only goal is to eliminate the other side.

JT:

Right.

Gary:

The Tour wants to eliminate live.

Gary:

And they're not going to be happy until they're in a live free world.

Gary:

And so that kind of makes negotiating that's kind of a sticking point.

Gary:

That's not.

Gary:

It's a stopper in negotiations.

JT:

Well, one of the things, too, and you touched on it, and this was on my chat list today, is my side of the ledger here.

JT:

The bets are that, of course, NBC is spinning off Golf Channel in USA Networks and all that stuff.

JT:

My, my guess, and we'll talk about this later and see what happens, but it'll probably be a year from now, is they'll strip the rights out of Golf Channel, the PGA and LPGA Tour rights.

JT:

And if they did that, that's a sure walk on for live to get their reach on far better than the cw.

JT:

The numbers aren't that much better, but they do have a bigger reach than the cw.

JT:

And that would be my guess is that NBC retains the rights because they've got Peacock, and Peacock's doing very well for them in certain areas.

JT:

And that I think that's probably what will happen.

Gary:

Well, they need content, you know, and to go a step further, it seems like I think the PGA Tour already owns a piece of Golf Channel.

Gary:

Golf Channel's not making much in the way of money.

Gary:

They might even be losing money, I'm not sure.

Gary:

But if they spin it off, the PGA Tour built this new.

Gary:

We call it the Death Star is new big headquarters, production facility, everything starting next year, I believe, or unless they're already doing it.

Gary:

It's one of the reasons Lanny Watkins is leaving the Senior Tour announcing booth is because instead of sending the announcers out to the tournament sites, they're going to have to go to the Death Star in Ponte Vedra and sit in a little room and watch monitors and call the action from there.

JT:

Right?

Gary:

And he told me four or five years ago, I was like, I'm not.

Gary:

When they do that, I'm done.

Gary:

I'm not doing that.

Gary:

So it makes sense that the PGA Tour winds up being the majority owner of Golf Channel and maybe just keeping the rights themselves and doing their own production and Golf Channels out and a PGA Tour produces PGA Tournaments, and then Golf Channel needs something to show.

Gary:

So there's a lot of possibilities.

Gary:

But you're going to have the same people who made should make sure the announcers are boring.

Gary:

They're going to be in charge of the entire production of the telecast.

Gary:

So if there's a fist fight breaks out among a couple players on the seventh tee, you can be sure that you won't see that on tv.

JT:

Right?

Gary:

Because that's not good for the brand.

Gary:

It's going to be propaganda.

Gary:

So that's the problem with having something like that happen.

Gary:

But yeah, that's.

Gary:

I don't know about.

Gary:

I don't know where Liv's gonna land.

Gary:

I.

Gary:

I think if they're Going to be on Peacock.

Gary:

NBC is going to want a more interesting format.

Gary:

That team thing, even though it's different, is impossible to show and make interesting when the players are all in different groups.

JT:

Right.

Gary:

And they're not playing matches against each other.

Gary:

It's not like the Ryder Cup.

Gary:

You got five.

Gary:

You got four guys.

Gary:

Five guys.

Gary:

And oh, Bubba Watson just made a bogey, but Mark Leishman made a birdie over, you know, like what's.

Gary:

It's hard to keep up.

Gary:

I think, I think if they had just made that a team league, like a franchises in baseball and had trades and a draft, maybe that would have been more interesting.

Gary:

But you still left with a problem.

Gary:

It's like, you know, if you've watched college golf and NCAA championship, the guys are all in different holes.

Gary:

It's hard to team golf does not televise well.

Gary:

So I think if I was at NBC and I wanted to show live, I'd tell live.

Gary:

You got to kiss that team stuff goodbye.

Gary:

It's.

Gary:

It's buzzkill.

Gary:

We're going to focus on the individual thing like everybody else, and maybe we'll have a couple other wrinkles and just 54 holes of stroke play and maybe we should have a cut.

Gary:

Maybe that makes it more exciting.

JT:

Yeah.

Gary:

You know, maybe these guys would, who are also fat and happy, might have a little more sense of urgency if they get cut and only get paid a $20,000 appearance fee for showing up, because nobody wants that.

Gary:

Have to go halfway around the world.

Gary:

So I don't know what the answer is, but I, I've always thought there's room for another tour in golf.

Gary:

They just need to be more selective about when and where they play it.

Gary:

You know, certainly September, October, November, December, yes.

Gary:

Not a lot of PGA Tour events that are drawn big numbers.

Gary:

That is a, that is a weak spot in the PGA Tour blanket.

Gary:

And if I was live, I'd try to exploit that.

Gary:

But that's.

Gary:

I don't know.

Gary:

We'll see.

Gary:

We'll see where that goes.

Gary:

But I.

Gary:

We could see some big changes.

Gary:

I agree with what you said.

Gary:

Any.

Gary:

I don't say anything could happen.

JT:

You know, a successful business model.

JT:

Things that I've seen is that instead of doing what Norman did, which was to come in and poke the bear and do this, they do something like you just explained, which was there's room for another tour.

JT:

You can expand it and you do it gradually and you just keep building and building and building.

JT:

Well, when you've got the Saudi's, you know, oil money on A spigot in your back of your car.

JT:

You're not going to run out.

JT:

So you, you know, go big or go home type thing, but with all the hype and everything, how you're not holding anything, meaning you're not holding the audience, you're not holding the interest in the press.

JT:

You've done stuff already to tick people off, like here out of Pumpkin Ridge, the first years live, you know, and they came to town here in Portland and they made changes and they actually had to use both courses to make their 18 work for them and that.

JT:

And when they left town, it was like, see ya.

JT:

And Pumpkin lost members over that.

JT:

A lot of people resigned their membership and stuff for whatever reason.

JT:

That's their reasoning.

JT:

But, you know, you took the money, you altered the course, and now they're gone and they're not coming back to Portland.

JT:

All right.

Gary:

Didn't leave, didn't leave any money for charity.

JT:

No.

Gary:

Didn't do anything.

Gary:

You know, and they don't have a business model.

Gary:

They just rely on billions.

Gary:

You know, basically you're running a business at a deficit of who knows how many hundreds of million every year.

Gary:

So if they had to compete as a business, they aren't any.

Gary:

They aren't even in the ballpark.

JT:

No.

Gary:

So I don't, I don't know.

Gary:

But they don't have to because they've got unlimited funds.

Gary:

It's the perks of having a sugar daddy with rich pockets.

JT:

I was going to say it's just like having your great.

JT:

Your uncle paying for you to go to private school, college, med school, whatever, and you never see the bill.

JT:

You know what I mean?

JT:

It's just that type of thing.

Gary:

In my mind, you're a starving artist, but you're.

Gary:

Your rich daddy's dropping a half a million on you to be a starving otters, and he's supporting you, but yeah, all you can paint is stick figures.

Gary:

But that's, that's.

Gary:

You're making money from your daddy.

Gary:

Yay.

JT:

Yeah, you're eating at Ruth Chris every other Saturday night.

JT:

So, yeah, I feel for you, you know, type thing.

JT:

I, I just.

JT:

We've had a lot of changes in the world of professional golf and we talked about that in the first show.

JT:

There's a lot of.

JT:

There's some rule changes.

JT:

You know what I would like to see?

JT:

Everybody complains about slow play.

JT:

Okay.

JT:

And now they've got stuff in there where you can be penalized for slow play.

JT:

And I think we saw maybe one instance of it this year that I was aware of put that, put that stuff on the screen, put it out there.

JT:

You know, if they, if they, like in soccer, you know, you get a warning card and then after the second one you get the red card and you're penalized or whatever and do that.

JT:

I would like to see things like that to actually show that they're serious about this as far as at the competition level.

JT:

And I don't think they'll do it, but I'd like to see it.

Gary:

Well, the answer, every, every major sport has a shot clock now.

Gary:

Now that baseball's gotten in there and they've all worked incredibly well.

Gary:

And people say, oh, you can never do that in golf.

Gary:

Well, I just had a story on the first call.

Gary:

You can see it on substack.

Gary:

It's already been done.

Gary:

Golf needs a shot clock.

Gary:

had the shot clock Masters in:

Gary:

And it follows the guidelines.

Gary:

The first guy to hit had 40 or 50 seconds.

Gary:

The next person had 40 seconds.

Gary:

And once everybody was alerted to that and they have somebody with a shot with a clock taking around on each hole, once the players were alerted to that, guess what?

Gary:

They all got their shots off inside of 30 to 40 seconds.

JT:

Yeah.

Gary:

And they knocked 35 minutes off the pace of play even in the first two rounds.

Gary:

So instead of a four hour and 45 minute round, they had played in 410, just like in baseball.

Gary:

Knock off.

Gary:

I know, 30 or 40 minutes.

Gary:

It's a simple solution to tour RPG.

Gary:

Tour already has half the, half the army out on there with a sign, boards and this and that.

Gary:

And you have a special scorekeeper.

Gary:

I don't know, do we need a walking score anymore?

Gary:

I'm not sure why it's easily done.

Gary:

And only two players in the shot clock Masters got penalties and they both are maybe four.

Gary:

Think it was four.

Gary:

And all of them said, you know why they got penalties?

Gary:

They forgot there was a shot caught because it was the first time.

JT:

Right.

Gary:

How many guy, how many pitchers got, got a ball called because they didn't get a pitch off in time?

Gary:

I don't think I ever saw it happen.

Gary:

I'm sure it did a few times.

Gary:

But it's a problem that's solvable.

Gary:

And it's not the size of the field that's really the main cause of slow play in the Tour.

Gary:

It's the kabuki dance on the greens, lining up putts where they take forever and it's how far they hit the ball.

Gary:

Almost every par five is reachable for more than half the field in Two.

Gary:

And all this trendy thing of we got to have a drivable par 4.

Gary:

Well, what does that do to the pace of play?

Gary:

It stacks everybody up on the tee.

JT:

Sure.

Gary:

And it's not even so much that the pace of play is slow, that the players have log jams that are forced to wait to play because the ball goes too far.

Gary:

So either move all the par fives back to 680 yards, get rid of this fakie drivable par 4.

Gary:

It's a par 4.

Gary:

It's not supposed to be drivable.

Gary:

That would.

Gary:

But you know, we don't have the land, so that's not fixable.

Gary:

So a shot clock solves a lot of the problems.

Gary:

You should go to that before you start shutting the door and shrinking the field and keeping tomorrow's stars out of the game because there's no room.

Gary:

And oh yeah, the guys who are already rich are afraid some of these guys might be able to beat them.

Gary:

Yep, that's shot clock Masters.

Gary:

That's what we want.

JT:

You know what, the other thing, I think they should do the Tour, I think they should.

JT:

In the Senior Tour, I think they should move the age to 45.

JT:

Give them an option.

Gary:

Okay, well, that would be an interesting experiment.

Gary:

I think at that point the guys at 45 will dominate.

Gary:

And anybody over the age of 50, 52 is kind of, you're just going to move the window opportunity lower.

Gary:

But I just played golf at a friend's outing in, at the Cricket Club in Philadelphia.

Gary:

And in my pair, we walked 18 holes.

Gary:

It was a fun thing.

Gary:

I played with Jim Herman, a three time winner on the PGA Tour.

Gary:

He's 47.

Gary:

He had no place to play unless he gets in on his past champion status, which is like twice a year.

Gary:

This guy still plays great.

Gary:

So to your point, Jeff, if he was on the Senior tour at age 47, he'd be, he'd be winning a lot of money.

Gary:

But he's a man without a country unless he wants to go play in some Corn Ferry events.

Gary:

So I don't know if that's a solution, but I think the problem with senior golf is we're out of superstars who are playing it.

Gary:

I don't know that Tiger can physically get around 18 holes, even in a cartoon, four days in a row or three days in a row.

JT:

Right.

Gary:

That's one of the things we're going to find out here in the PNC Championship and maybe early in the year and at Riviera.

Gary:

But I don't, I don't know the answer, but we know what the questions are.

JT:

Yeah, well, we're good at that, asking the questions, you know, but if we knew the answers, they would be calling you for a television gig and me.

Gary:

You know, we're going to find out how much Tiger has left.

Gary:

He's going to play in the tgl, the simulator thing.

Gary:

There was some video online on Twitter showed Tiger hitting into this big jumbotron screen, and then he watched the arc, the tracer of his ball flight on the screen.

Gary:

If you saw that and didn't kind of think, oh, that's kind of cool, then I'll be surprised, because I tell people all this simulator think could be big.

Gary:

And they're like, I'm not gonna.

Gary:

Not.

Gary:

No, I'm out.

Gary:

I'm not gonna watch.

Gary:

I'm not gonna watch a video game.

Gary:

It's not a video game.

Gary:

Yeah, simulator golf is better than you think if you haven't played it.

Gary:

And the bed where simulator golf falls down is chipping and putting.

Gary:

But they're gonna have a real green there.

JT:

We're gonna.

Gary:

They really got a chip, and they're really gonna putt on grass.

Gary:

So.

Gary:

And ESPN is gonna.

Gary:

The kings of promotion running it.

Gary:

So, yeah, I think it might be pretty successful.

Gary:

We'll see.

JT:

I hope so.

JT:

I hope so, because one thing, and then we'll.

JT:

We'll wrap this up, Gary.

JT:

But one thing.

JT:

Since the tour kind of changed its schedule, moved all the majors earlier in the year, for the most part, kind of dies off in August, if you will.

JT:

And, yeah, we got the FedEx thing.

JT:

But.

JT:

But things that's easy, you know, things that's entertaining to watch.

Gary:

Dare you criticize the holy FedEx cup, which is the greatest championship in the world?

Gary:

Jeff, I'm shocked.

JT:

I think they should just put ATMs out there and say, okay, here, you take 10 million, here's your annuity for 10 million, and go home.

Gary:

Yeah, there should be on one on every tee box.

Gary:

Oh, you made a birdie.

Gary:

Here's $10,000 in $100 bills.

JT:

Yeah.

Gary:

Yeah, that would be.

Gary:

That's the equivalent.

Gary:

But, yeah, no, I'm sorry to interrupt.

JT:

But no, but it's true.

Gary:

Criticize the FedEx cup, which is based entirely on money.

Gary:

I mean, it's the ultimate American tournament.

JT:

Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way.

Gary:

That's all the PGA Tour has.

Gary:

You know, they'd like to make the Players Championship a major, but they don't have enough history.

Gary:

The only thing the Tour has to entice players to play is more money.

Gary:

And now these top guys have so much money, the money's not even enticement.

Gary:

So get back to your point about the Ryder Cup.

Gary:

What do they care about $500,000 for, right?

Gary:

I mean, yeah, they already got more money than they'll ever spend.

Gary:

The money's not an enticement for them.

Gary:

For the top players, you know, it is for you and I.

Gary:

We're available.

JT:

Yeah.

Gary:

I mentioned Holiday Inn earlier.

Gary:

I got room on my logo right here.

JT:

Yeah, yeah.

JT:

I can.

JT:

I can do one on the sweater or get a different hat.

JT:

I just would like to see the broadcast.

JT:

That's why I'm excited about the tgl.

JT:

Okay.

JT:

I am.

JT:

And I am kind of interested to see what happens with getting rid of the.

JT:

Not getting rid of it, but Golf Channel leaving NBC.

JT:

And I know they'll push more on Peacock, but like I said, they've already got stuff set up with the Golf Channel in USA and TNT and those types of things.

JT:

So there might, at some point, more golf television come in the fall.

JT:

And because it's interesting.

JT:

And the other thing is, people can't go outside.

JT:

I mean, you've got a fairly nice day in Pittsburgh today, and I've got a normal northwest gray, grimy day here.

JT:

But the point is, a lot of days we can't go out and play golf this time of year.

JT:

So maybe we could watch something that's entertaining.

JT:

I don't know.

Gary:

Call me crazy.

Gary:

It's a very expensive experiment, and it's got Tiger woods involved, and it's got espn, and it's got more than a billion dollars invested into it.

Gary:

It might be too big to fail, pardon the expression.

Gary:

So I'm somewhere between excited and really curious.

Gary:

I think it's going to work, but I'm not.

Gary:

You know, I play some.

Gary:

A lot of simulator golf in the winter, so I'm not your average fan, but I think it's got a chance.

JT:

Well, I.

JT:

I'm.

JT:

I'm interested to see it and.

JT:

Excuse me.

JT:

Gosh.

JT:

I think it'll work, too.

JT:

I think it's got a good chance myself.

JT:

Anyway, Gary, along with you.

JT:

Merry Christmas, my friend.

Gary:

Merry Christmas to you, Jeff.

JT:

And when it snows back there, just think of me out here in the rain.

JT:

So there you go.

JT:

It's equally as annoying.

Gary:

You don't have to shovel rain, I'll give you that.

JT:

No, no.

JT:

But sometimes they have to get a canoe to get to the car.

JT:

So that's the deal here.

JT:

Anyway, we're gonna get out of here.

JT:

Gary Van Sickle Gary, tell them about your podcast real quick.

JT:

Before we go.

Gary:

I have a podcast on YouTube, the Golf Show 2.0.

Gary:

Co host is Kathy Bissell, who founded the original golf show in the 80s and early 90s.

Gary:

She had a national syndicated show.

Gary:

Really?

Gary:

PGA Tour.

Gary:

Kind of borrowed their idea for her idea for Inside the PGA Tour.

Gary:

It was a half hour show and we were looking for something to do and she thought about doing a podcast.

Gary:

And I came up.

Gary:

It's like, well, I just call it revive your show.

Gary:

We have people on like you and I on.

Gary:

We have somebody on, we talk for half an hour and we get out.

Gary:

So, yeah, we've had Joe Theisman promoting the celebrity golf and Lake Tahoe and a lot of other interesting guests.

Gary:

So some authors, you name it, some had a couple of former players, Larry Mize, Tom Pertzer.

JT:

Sure.

Gary:

All the big names of golf and some equipment people.

Gary:

You never know who's going to turn up.

JT:

Maybe we get her and you on this show in the near future.

Gary:

You can just get her, have her, just have her on and talk about how she got that show on the air and how she kept it going because she really did it by herself.

Gary:

And she had Jay Randolph as the host.

Gary:

Yeah, well, he was behind the scenes, really.

Gary:

So she's actually done some things in golf and we're both on the back ends of our career.

Gary:

She lives in Ponte Vedra, I live in Pittsburgh, and we just thought it'd be fun.

JT:

All right, we'll do that and I'll get her on.

JT:

But then we'll get a double header with the both of you.

JT:

See if I can get you guys going at each other a little bit.

Gary:

Well, we'll be on different screens, so I don't know.

JT:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

JT:

Gary.

JT:

Thank you, everybody.

JT:

Go out there.

JT:

Have a great Christmas from all the folks here, which is me and Marvin, my cat today.

JT:

But have a great Christmas and a great New Year's and we'll talk soon.

JT:

Take.

JT:

Take care, everybody.

JT:

Cool.

JT:

Let me turn this off.

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Grilling At The Green
Podcast by JT
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Jeff Tracy

Radio host and TV personality. Host of BBQ Nation and Grilling at the Green radio shows and podcasts. Known as The Cowboy Cook on TV for over 25 years. Golf fanatic, history buff and family guy. 2 million + miles in the air with a sore backside.