KVV Mailbag: The Swilcan Patio and The LIV Newsroom | No Laying Up

Welcome to the No Laying Up bi-weekly mailbag! In this space, we’ll address topics big and small, smart and dumb, irreverent and serious. You need to be a member of The Nest to submit a question to the mailbag, but the mailbag itself will be free to read (as long as you behave yourselves). Most of our questions are submitted via our message board, The Refuge, but if you’re not a message board person, please send me an email at kvv@nolayingup.com with your Nest handle and your question. As a bonus, if your question gets picked, we’ll send you a free NLU towel.

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CKaneb: Are you going to be a guest/host on the Sunday Recap Pods/Liveshows now? Will your involvement on the Trap Draw be larger than it already is? Are there now three Strapped boys? New competitor on Tourist Sauce?

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This is four questions you sneaky devil. I feel like Phil Mickelson, scolding the media at the U.S. Open for asking double-barrelled multi-part questions. I’ll field them as one because it gives me an opportunity to riff a little on my role at NLU. You will definitely see me and hear me on the Sunday Recap Pods and live shows. (In fact, check out our Sunday night discussion from Pebble.) It’s something I’ve done as a guest many times and I’m excited to continue doing it. One thing we’ve learned is, if you have a rotating cast (with Soly playing point guard), people tend to bring their best when it’s their turn to be on the Sunday show. So I won’t be on every week, but I will be on frequently. One aspect I’m excited about is that I’m going to be on the ground at the majors, so I’ll be checking in each night from the course, trying to offer a little insight from the venue before I go work on a column.

As for the TrapDraw, I think it’s fair to say I’ll be frequently welcomed into the space. Tron and I have talked about how much we want to do mini-deep dives into every professional sports owner and how they came into their money. It’s kind of mysterious, especially if you don’t live in the city where that team resides. I think we may make that a recurring segment. I’ll be steering the ship on Perfect Clubs, trying to make sure we’re landing at least one per month, whether I’m on the panel or not. D.J. and Randy and friend of the program Tim Simons will tackle the Oscars pod as there is no chance I will be able to watch all 10 Best Picture Nominations in time. (I think I may write something about Top Gun: Maverick, though, so look for that.)

Are there now three Strapped boys? I can confidently say no to this. First of all, we don’t know if Strapped will ever return! It might have been the ultimate walk-off homer. I teared up a little during “The Kid,” the last episode of South Carolina, which felt like the culmination of ten incredible seasons. If the show continues, I think you’ll see some changes, but I wouldn’t want to mess with its perfect chemistry. If you added a third person to Andre 3000 and Big Boi, would it still be Outkast? No, it would be a third guy everyone wishes would STFU so they could listen to Outkast. (I think Randy is Big Boi in this analogy, Neil is Andre, but your mileage may vary.) Neil and Randy might also be Simon and Garfunkel. Who can say.

As for Tourist Sauce… we’ll see. Adding this thicc boi to an already-crowded rental car in a foreign land seems like one more logistical headache, but maybe there is a written element of Tourist Sauce that might justify my inclusion. Watch this space, as we so frequently say.

Tdogg21: Professional golf has completely splintered in a way most people probably never thought possible just a few years ago. Now that sides have been drawn and lines have been drawn, where do you see professional golf one year from now? Do you think someone is going to blink and compromise or do you think this is going to be a fight to the death?

I probably should have learned my lesson at the PGA Championship to stay out of the prediction game, but I’ll take a swing at this one for the sake of entertainment. I think the most likely scenario is the Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gradually loses interest in funding LIV Golf, an enterprise that isn’t generating revenue, and one day the spigot of funding gets turned off. We’ll hear plenty of spin about how they accomplished everything they ever hoped to accomplish, and now it’s an appropriate time to disrupt other industries. If you’re one of the lucky guys who was paid in full, you’ll shrug your shoulders and move on. But I suspect some players will never be made whole. And in that scenario, what are you going to do? Demand a meeting with Mohammed bin Salman? Send him an invoice? Good luck with that.

Here is the hard truth about LIV: There are some things about the format that are appealing, like shotgun starts and team competition and 54 holes. But none of that is dramatically different from PGA Tour golf. It’s still golf, a sport that is never going to feel disruptive or rebellious or cool. It doesn’t matter if you blare rock music on the first tee and let people wear shorts, it only conjures up the image of Steve Buscemi holding a skateboard over his shoulder saying “How do you do, fellow kids?”

Part of LIV’s biggest problem is, it’s not cool enough to appeal to a younger generation, and it’s too tacky to appeal to traditional golf fans. It would have a better chance at disruption if it was either less serious or more serious, but it can’t be either. At least if it was a show on Nickelodeon where golfers got slimed for double bogeys, it would be easy to differentiate.

I don’t think there will be a compromise because I think, outside a small audience that spends too much time on Twitter, no one cares about the players who left. And that’s going to become apparent once major season revs up. It’s not like Cam Smith or Dustin Johnson or even Patrick Reed and Bryson DeChambeau have been banished to YouTube or the CW forever. We still get to see them at majors. And therein lies a flaw in LIV’s plan. Casual golf fans only care about the majors. You’re never going to get them worked up about OWGR points. LIV players might have a more compelling argument if they were being barred from majors, but for the most part, they aren’t. Smith can play the Open until he’s 60. DeChambeau is in the U.S. Open until 2030. Johnson, Reed, Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia can play the Masters until they turn 65. Brooks Koepka’s exemption into the U.S. Open runs until 2028, and like Mickelson, he can play the PGA Championship for life.

If you’re expecting people to take up pitchforks and torches on behalf of Talor Gooch or Paul Casey, you’ve badly misjudged the paying customer.

I think there is a good chance that Smith or Johnson or Reed wins another major in the next few years, but that won’t change public sentiment outside some initial bluster. All it will do is underline the point. You mean I still get to watch them compete in majors? Great, then why should I care if they can’t play the 3M or the Valspar?

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