Mailbag: 72 Holes of LIV Golf, Raising a Young Golfer, Legacy vs. New Media

Hello Friends! Welcome back to The KVV Mailbag at The Fried Egg, the place where I will attempt to answer your smartest, your dumbest, your funniest, and your weirdest questions, whether they are golf-related or only tangentially related. If you have a question you’d like to have answered in a future mailbag, please send it to kvv@thefriedegg.com. 

What do you make of LIV switching its format from 54 holes to 72 holes? It seems like a number of guys (Bryson DeChambeau, Paul Casey, Louis Oosthuizen, Bubba Watson) don’t love it. 

It seems fair to say LIV has often been stuck between trying to be two things at the same time, and failing to fully succeed at either. If the primary selling point of LIV was that it offered a different product than the PGA Tour — three rounds of team golf — then why spend so much time and energy trying to find a way to get OWGR points? 

The answer is, several of the top players (namely Jon Rahm and Joaquin Niemann) wanted to make sure they would have a guaranteed pathway into the majors. Rahm is, by any objective assessment, one of the top players in the world. Niemann once was as well, although a recent slump has dented his argument a bit. When they looked at a ranking system that did not reflect that, there was an element of pride that could not be satiated by money. With the OWGR board announcing this week that the top-10 finishers in each LIV event will receive points going forward, some of that has been rectified, although the points will still reflect the strength of the field. LIV Riyadh has a projected strength of field of 108.3, about the equivalent of a standard DP World Tour event. The 2025 Puerto Rico Open, by contrast, had a strength of field rating of 117.5. 

DeChambeau’s pride was initially wounded like Rahm’s was, but it feels like YouTube golf has filled that hole. Winning golf tournaments is still a goal for Bryson, but gaining millions of followers and creating content that people enjoy seems to be just as fulfilling to him. 

Every interview DeChambeau has given of late, even ones with LIV’s in-house media, has had the energy and excitement of a hostage video. Rahm, by contrast, called the change "absolutely massive” for the league. 

By trying to satisfy Rahm, has LIV further alienated DeChambeau? It’s starting to feel that way. 

"I’ve got a contract for this year, and we’ll go through it there and see what happens after that," DeChambeau told Today’s Golfer. "Look, it’s 72 holes, it’s changed, but we’re still excited to play professionally and play for what we’re doing and go across the world. I think it’s going to be great for our [Crushers GC] team. Is it what we ultimately signed up for? No. So I think we’re supposed to be different, so I’m a little indifferent to it right now.”

The conundrum for LIV is it cannot afford to lose DeChambeau. He’s become a bigger magnet for attention than Rahm by a factor that’s hard to measure. Getting OWGR points does feel like a win for LIV, but if DeChambeau cites it as a reason to bail after his contract is up, it might ultimately feel like a Pyrrhic victory. 

Do you think Rahm would have come back to the PGA Tour if he could have, assuming his contract situation didn’t make it impossible? 

It’s probably pointless to speculate about what’s truly going on in Rahm’s heart. All we can do is look at his public statements. “I’m not planning on going anywhere,” Rahm said when asked about whether he might be interested in the PGA Tour’s Returning Member Program. 

I think it is fair to say that Rahm left for LIV assuming it would only be a temporary goodbye. He even went so far as to say he still felt like he was “a member of the PGA Tour,” preferring to view his status as suspended as opposed to terminated. If Rahm could do so without violating his LIV contract, there is no doubt in my mind he would compete in PGA Tour events. There is a lot of “I would really like to stay friends with my ex” energy going on every time he talks about the PGA Tour. But ultimately, I think Rahm has made peace with it all. He knows he’s in the majors until 2028, and I think there is a good chance LIV will either be dead by then or thriving with its OWGR points. Rahm is young enough that he has to know this will pass and he’ll have collected $500 million in exchange for giving LIV the prime of his career. 

Is that a trade Rahm once insisted he’d never entertain? Yup, but he still made it. One thing I feel like people aren’t accounting for in this is how prideful Rahm is. To return not only would he be giving up a lot of money, but he’d also have to admit that he made a mistake. I just don’t see that happening. 

If you were going to play one Fried Egg Golf event which would you play?

My bucket list answer? The Scottish Highlands trip. I’ve never been to the Highlands, and every single one of the courses on that itinerary gives me the feels. Don’t think that’s in the cards this year, but someday, I’m going to beg Will to let me tag along for that one. Maybe in 2027. Realistically? I really would love to do the Colorado trip, which features rounds at Colorado Golf Club and Rodeo Dunes. I’m fascinated by the Rodeo Dunes development. Obviously it’s just getting started, and in a decade, there will be a handful of courses there. It’s become so hard to get selected for the Bandon lottery, I’m wondering if Rodeo Dunes’ proximity to a major airport will make it an even harder ticket to punch. Our trip seems like a nice way to sneak in before its popularity explodes. 

EVENTS HUB: Everything you need to know about Fried Egg Golf Events

Do you have any plans for the historical or narrative pods you’ve done in the past?

Definitely. We have some narrative pods we’re working on now, including one where I’ve already banked a big interview. I think there’ll be a mix of historical stuff and current issues. The historical pods are fun because there is so much about the past we’ve already forgotten as golf fans, or we were too young to experience in real time. I want to make sure we make some narrative pods about issues related to public golf because I can sense the frustration some people are starting to have about seeing so much content focused on elite private golf courses. That’s not the world most people live in, and I’m going to try to make sure we serve the daily fee golfer in ways they may not feel heard right now. 

If you could go back in history and cover one golf tournament, what would it be and why?

My not-so-funny answer here would be the 2019 Masters, because ESPN took me off the golf beat right before that one, and at the time, I was devastated. But I got to watch it with my kids and my parents, which took on a special resonance as time went by. The 1986 Masters seems like an obvious pick, but we’ve got some content we’re working on related to this, so I’m going to pick another. I think the 1978 Masters is incredibly underrated. Gary Player shot 64 in the final round! As a 42-year-old! He started the final round in 10th place, seven shots off the lead, and came back and won. And it’s not like he beat a bunch of bums. He vaulted past Seve Ballesteros and Tom Watson and Lee Trevino and Hale Irwin to win, among others. And then he gave a truly legendary press conference where he basically scolded everyone for not being dedicated to fitness and said he was going to go out and lift weights that night. I think Nicklaus winning four years later kind of overshadowed this performance in history. I’ve gotten some mileage out of Gary as a character, but I would love to have been there to write about his final major victory.

Unrelated to any of your work, is there an outside-the-box life goal you have (e.g., being a ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant, climbing a mountain, etc.)?

I love scripted television shows, and I think — even acknowledging how unlikely it is — I would love to write an episode of television at some point. I think I know storytelling, I know what makes for good TV, and if it were a show about sports or media, I think I could write a half-decent script. I’ve been catching up on AppleTV’s “Stick,” which is about a golf prodigy, and while I think the show is decent, I think I could have made it 10 percent better just by getting some of the golf stuff right that it brushes past. But I suspect there are a couple thousand struggling TV writers who feel the same.

I used to long for the time and dedication to learn the guitar, like virtually every white dude in his 40s who thinks there is a singer/songwriter inside him just itching to get out, but I think that ship has sailed. I recently tried to bribe two of my three daughters $100 a month to learn the guitar (they play the violin and the cello) but neither was interested. 

How are you navigating golf parenthood with a pretty skilled junior golfer?

What a complicated question. On good days, there is nothing better in the world than seeing my daughter bomb a drive and stuff an iron close. On bad days, when she beats herself up and will barely speak to me between shots because she’s not playing well, I wonder why I ever introduced her to this stupid, beautiful game. I’m comforted sometimes when I read stories about how Scottie Scheffler and Brooks Koepka used to wrestle with rage on the course because that’s definitely my daughter, and it’s pretty easy to see where she inherited it from. She improved this year to the point where she had to start giving adult women strokes in matches at our club, and this pissed her off immensely, no matter how many times I explained that’s how the handicap system works. I have caddied for her a few times and it is a tremendous test of my patience as a dad. But I also know I’m really lucky to have this thing we can share for the next 30 years. I get a lot of notes from dads who want to know how I got her hooked on golf, and I’m working on writing something that explains that journey. 

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I have always enjoyed whenever your work wades into the realm of media criticism, since you’ve worked at both legacy media and independent shops. How has your ability to develop relationships with subjects and sources changed, if at all, since being at FEG and NLU vs. The Sun or ESPN?

I think the easiest way to build sources is to show up all the time, ask questions that are respectful but curious, and let your work be your advocate. That was easy to do when I worked at a newspaper because I was at the Ravens facility almost every day, and you build trust over time. When I moved to ESPN, it was a little harder because I was mostly a national reporter who worked on features. I would spend a few days with an athlete (often prearranged by an agent) and then write a long feature where I might never speak to them again. When I went to work for NLU, and now Fried Egg Golf, the lines between journalism, commentary, and media got a little bit blurry. Some players know who I am and are happy to chat when I see them, while other players have never heard of the Fried Egg. Koepka’s on-again, off-again coach Claude Harmon III once spent 20 minutes lecturing me on what a divisive figure I was, telling me I was one of the most divisive figures in media and partially responsible for LIV’s reputation (pretty sure that’s giving me far too much credit), and yet Brooks and I have never had anything but friendly, pleasant exchanges. So it’s a strange world to navigate sometimes. 

One thing that does make me roll my eyes these days is how frequently you see exchanges posted on Twitter where a reporter asks a question, and a coach gives a terse or combative answer, and this gets framed as the reporter getting “owned” or as a “blow up.” These are normal exchanges on any beat! People disagree, and tensions can flare up occasionally. Sometimes you’re going to write stuff or ask questions that annoy a subject, and if you don’t, you’re probably acting like a PR person instead of the media. 

Love your long form and narrative stuff. Your passion shines through everything you do, but on a personal level, do you get more excited to cover greatness/redemption stories (e.g. Tiger, Scottie, Rory, etc.) or new or unexpected stories (Harman, Spaun, etc.)? Narratives aside, what gets your creative juices flowing more?

I think when covering an event, you have to be open to every possibility and embrace it equally. This might be weird to admit, but I like covering stories of disappointment sometimes, because that’s a very human element of sports. That’s why I loved writing about Justin Thomas looking out the window, watching the European team celebrate, during the Ryder Cup. For the most part, I look for scenes when I’m writing, and I try to use those scenes to support the larger narrative (whatever that may be). 

When Scottie Scheffler won the Masters two years ago, I happened to overhear his sister, Molly, asking him during the trophy ceremony if he got a new jacket for his second Masters win. “No, it’s the same one,” he said. “I only get one. But it still fits.” 

I thought that was a good kicker to the story because it implied bigger things about history. I think no matter who wins, you’re trying to find little scenes that will feel memorable, even if you come to the piece months or years later.  

If you have a question for a future mailbag, send a question to kvv@thefriedegg.com