Take 1

Ray Vargas is a senior at the University of Arizona who is passionate about golf. He started playing golf during the COVID-19 pandemic and developed a love for the sport. He became a fan of professional golfer Brooks Koepka and started watching PGA Tour tournaments. However, he also became interested in a new golf tour called Live Golf, which offered a different format and more guaranteed money for players. Greg Norman, a former PGA pro, organized Live Golf with the intention of challenging the PGA Tour and providing better opportunities for golfers. Koepka eventually left the PGA Tour to join Live Golf and received a guaranteed contract worth $200 million. Live Golf offered larger purses and team competitions, giving players the chance to earn even more money. How's it going, guys? My name is Ray Vargas. I'm currently a senior at the University of Arizona. I am planning on graduating in the spring of 2023. I'm majoring in ESoC and I am minoring in communications. What I'm going to be doing for my final project for ESoC 300 is going to be a podcast on kind of the split and divided, I guess, two groups that are going on right now in the professional sport of golf. When COVID-19 hit, I really needed something to just keep me active and kind of stay involved in sports and competitive sports. I played college baseball and played baseball my whole life. So when I finally got done, I really wanted something that I could keep that competitive edge. And my buddies asked me to go out to golf one day. And honestly, it was the most fun I've ever had. Not essentially like the first time. Obviously, I sucked pretty bad. It is a really hard game, to be honest. I did not think it would ever be that hard. The ball's not moving. It's just a swing from baseball that I had used so much. But it never goes really where you want it to, unless you're just a really good player. So for me, because I am so competitive and because I really felt like I needed to be good at it, I put all my time and effort into the game of golf. I even got a job at a golf store. I used to work at Club Champion, which is, if you guys don't know, it is a golf store, essentially, where people come in to get fit. I know a lot of people don't really know what getting fit means. What that means is you are getting fit for golf clubs. So we look at a bunch of various numbers that go into a golf swing and fit you into the right clubs that are good for your game, whether it's size, length, how heavy something is, how forgiving, how hard something is to hit, how not hard something is to hit. It's kind of what we talk about and stuff like that. And so we use a lot of data and stuff to really gain access into how good someone's swing can be. But through this all, I really gained a love for watching professional golf. All the golf tournaments were four-day tournaments on the PGA Tour. And they start on Thursday, and they usually end on Sunday, honestly, barring any bad weather and stuff like that. But for me, I really found a love for a particular player who also used to play college baseball. And he's a really good golfer. And he was just someone I had a pretty similar swing to. So I really started to like and to watch him all the time. And that golfer was Brooks Koepka. Brooks Koepka is a four-time major winner. And if you don't know, that's a lot of majors in the game of golf. Obviously, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, players like that have a lot. But then Brooks Koepka, in two years, won four, which is crazy in the game of golf. That's not very hard, because there are so many players that go to these tournaments. To be the last one standing, obviously, in a major, which is the best competition you can find in the world, is something to really, it's like something you can't really wrap your head around how he did it. His rise to the number one in the game of golf was so quick that not a lot of people are used to that. But for me, I really liked it, because he had this type of competitiveness to him, where he didn't care who you were. He didn't care if you were his friend on the course, off the course. He was there to beat you. And I think that's because I've been playing organized sports for so long. That's where I saw in him what I used to do. It didn't matter if you were my friend once we touched the field, or we're enemies, we're not friends anymore for however long that game is. And he really showed that in his game, and in his interviews, and stuff like that. So through it all, I obviously have all been playing golf for a little over two years now. Through it all, I've watched the PGA Tour, whenever he played. He didn't play a lot, because they have tournaments every week. Obviously, not all the players play every week, because it can be a lot. So I would watch, most of the time, the majors. And then whenever I knew Brooks was playing, and stuff like that, I would watch those tournaments. And for the longest time, he was hurt. He was in and out of injuries. And there was a big buzz going around about a new tour that was going to be like a rival to the PGA Tour. And that was a golf, I guess, tour. Because it's not really a tour yet, but it essentially acts as one. A golf tour by the name of Live Golf. What that was going to be, it was going to be a complete change to the whole game of golf. Live Golf is essentially 54 players in a three-day tournament. So all these players that have been playing PGA, on the PGA Tour, are used to four-day tournaments. This certain tour wanted to make them three-day tournaments. And on top of that, a shotgun start. What a shotgun start means is you have essentially a foursome. Or in this case, what they're doing is twosomes. So two people go on each hole, and they start on opposite holes, or different holes. So what that means is everyone starts at the same exact time, but they all start on a different hole. Well, in the PGA Tour, everyone, it's usually three players. They start on hole one, and they go from there. It's nine minutes apart. So let's say this group of three goes at 6.06 AM, and then the next group will go at 6.15 AM, and then 6.23, and obviously so on and so forth. But it was never a shotgun start. Everyone started from the hole one. And in the lid golf, they wanted to make it where everyone starts exactly the same time, just on different holes. So that's how it was for them. And it was kind of cool to see the fast-paced way of golf. A lot of people did not like that about the PGA Tour, is that these tournaments, you would be sitting and watching on TV for hours and hours. Some tournaments were five, six, seven hours. Not just tournaments, but days for a single player. I would watch Bruce Koepka in the majors. I'd watch him for 18 holes. And those 18 holes would be, it could be four and a half hours. It could be six and a half hours. You would never know. But with live golf, the big thing is that, essentially, these tournaments lasted three hours, and you would get on with your day. It was also a big thing, in the game of golf on the PGA Tour, you're not supposed to talk. It's not supposed to be rowdy. It's supposed to be really, it's called a gentleman's game. People don't talk when you're about to swing, stuff like that. It's not as rowdy. If you've ever been to the Waste Management Open here in Scottsdale, that is a completely different environment for the PGA Tour. That's why it's one of the best tournaments on tour throughout the whole year, is because it's so rowdy. The environment is so crazy. And a lot of the players like it. Some players don't, obviously, because they like the subtle and the quiet and all this. But at live golf, it's just craziness the whole time. Every tournament really is. But the organizer of it is Greg Norman, who is an ex-PGA pro. An ex-PGA pro, had won some majors, who was a great player on the PGA Tour when he was playing. In his time, obviously, he's a lot older now, doesn't play anymore, but he, obviously, wanted to start this kind of secondary tour. Not secondary, because, obviously, they want to be bigger than the PGA, but it's just so small, so far. He wanted to completely tear, essentially, the PGA Tour up. And the reason why is because Greg Norman had thought for a very long time that the PGA Tour had been stealing money from its players. And by that, meaning that these purses that are on the tour, if you make the cut, obviously, you get a certain amount of money, but if you get first, it's honestly, you get $1.2 million, which sounds like a lot to us. But because the PGA Tour is so big, you would think these purses would be a lot bigger. Well, he had came out and claimed that the PGA Tour was stealing money from its players. They should be getting paid more. Essentially, on the PGA Tour, you're an individual contractor. You work for yourself, essentially, and if you don't make the cut, you don't make money. So it can be tough for not such big names. And so when the PGA, or when the Live Tour came out, there was a minimum, there was an actual signing bonus for you signing with the tour, which the PGA Tour, like I said, there was none of that. There was no guaranteed money. You either played good and made the cut, placed top five or 10, and then made some good money there, or you don't make money at all. Well, with Live, essentially, they gave you an absolute contract. So for me, so my favorite golfer, Bruce Koepka, actually ended up leaving the PGA Tour for Live Golf. When he did that, they gave him guaranteed money of $200 million. To put that in perspective, he had made in, throughout all his majors, throughout all the tournaments he's ever won, throughout his whole lifetime winnings on the PGA Tour, had only won 78 million. I say only, obviously, that's a lot to people like us. But to him being such a big name, such a huge name with all these endorsement deals, he had only made 78 million, which doesn't, it sounds like a lot, like I said, but when you go and put it into the perspective of guaranteed money that Live Golf gave him, 100 and, or $200 million is completely, blows it out of the world, or blows it out of the water. But the crazy thing about it is, is that he had a chance to earn way more money than that. If you win a tour, a tournament on the Live Golf Tour, you win $4 million. The game, or the Live Tour also has it where there's teams, teams of four. There's 12 teams of four. Essentially what that means is if you're, like let's say you're four players in your tournament, or in your team are playing really, really well, and you end up winning the team aspect of it, of each tournament, that's another $4 million. So he could win, place first as an individual, and place first as a team, and he wins 8 million just off that one, off that one tournament for three days. So, three days to win $8 million is really crazy. The worst thing about it, and I think the biggest political reason why so many people on the PGA Tour are coming out and speaking out about it, I don't know if you guys know, but Tyra Woods, Roy McIlroy, John Rahm, these are some of the biggest names on the PGA Tour, are coming out and really talking about their dislike of the Live Tour. I think the biggest thing is, and the biggest reason why I don't think they like it, is because of where the money is coming from. If you guys don't know, Greg Norman had the Saudi Arabians back up the tour with a lot of the money. They have been able to put $3.7 billion into this tour, which is why, and how they're going out and spending big, big money to get these big names is because they had a very big pool of money to come from. A lot of people don't like it because they consider it blood money, from where the money is coming from, obviously with the Saudis and stuff like that. It's just a big thing. It didn't just gain traction in the golf industry, in the golf world, it gained big traction throughout all political websites, political channels on TV, political news sites. It gained huge traction on where this money was coming from and how they were getting it. Obviously, it's great to see these people, it's great to see these people obviously make a better future for them and their family. But a lot of people were skeptic because of where the money is coming from. And I think the big thing about it and the big reason why a lot of people are so mad at it is because it was, like I said, coming from the Saudis.