00:00the Olympics.
00:06Keith, let's start with the format. Only the third year
00:08that Olympic golf has really been back in our lives since the
00:11very early days of the Olympiad 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. It was
00:15Justin Rose taking home gold 2021 in Tokyo. It was Xander
00:21Schauffele's first major career event, of course, two major
00:24championships this year during 2024. So what is the format of
00:29the men's side that we are going to see over in Paris?
00:33Well, I'll tell you what. We haven't reinvented the wheel
00:36here. It's four days of individual stroke play. It is
00:39very similar to a PGA Tour event. Starts on Thursday. It's
00:42going to end on Sunday. It's 60 players and it's actually very
00:46close to a PGA Tour event these days because it's a limited
00:49field with no cut. So they're going to get four days and
00:52they're going to play for three places and that's kind of the
00:54unique aspect of all of this is that first place does get you
00:58gold. For a lot of these guys, though, just winning a medal
01:00would be a big deal. If you remember back in 2021 in Japan,
01:04there was a seven-way tie for the bronze medal and CT Pan
01:08ended up winning. But in that in that playoff in Japan, you
01:11had Hideki, you had Colin Morikawa, you had Rory, you
01:14had Paul Casey, you had a bunch of names and it's not often
01:17that you see you see a seven-man playoff for third place. So
01:20there is some uniqueness to the event this week. Taking a look
01:24at the actual event itself where it's being played. Keith, tell
01:27us a little bit about the event and also how this golf course
01:30plays into it and maybe some of the players that might benefit
01:33from this golf course. Well, we are going to Le Golf National,
01:37which is a staple on the DP World Tour. Every fall, they
01:40play the Open to France there. It is the French Open per se,
01:44as we would say over here. It is also the host of the 2018
01:48Ryder Cup. Now, I wouldn't put a lot of stock in those matches
01:51or who played well there. The design of the golf course and
01:53the way that they set it up was to try to hamper the Americans
01:56from playing well. I mean, they grew the rough really high.
01:59They pinched a bunch of fairways. This is going to be set up much
02:02more like a DP World Tour event. I think that scoring will be
02:05prevalent. Over the last five years, the average winning score
02:08has been 12 to 13 under par in the Open to France. So people
02:12that have played in the French Open and our stalwarts over there
02:16on the DP World Tour are definitely folks that I'd be favoring
02:19Donnie. We have 30 rookies in this event and that's half the
02:23field. Four of whom are the American players. Scotty, Zander,
02:27Colin, and Wyndham Clark have not played a competition here
02:30before.
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