00:00The PGA Tour, how condensed the schedule has gotten, how competitive the schedule is to be able to keep your card year in, year out.
00:08I'm curious to ask you from a burnout standpoint and your recollection of what it was like on the PGA Tour when you were playing.
00:15And as far as the amount of cards that were available, where the travel schedule went to as far as just bouncing around to different places.
00:23And did you feel like the schedule was maybe laid out better for the professional players to where you wouldn't get quite as burnt out as maybe some of these players get in today's game?
00:36There's so many ideas and thoughts to unpack there for me.
00:46If I talk about the first 10 years of my playing, I was playing elsewhere around the world.
00:51And in 1988, I wanted to play in the U.S. in 89, so I added four more tournaments to my schedule.
00:58I played 40 tournaments in 1988.
01:01Oh, man.
01:02I was exempt in Europe.
01:03I had to play nine in Europe.
01:05I had to play 16 in Japan.
01:07I played 10 in Australia.
01:09I went and played four in the U.S. and the Dunhill Cup.
01:13So I played 40 tournaments.
01:15My gosh.
01:17It was...
01:18Yeah, and I always played 36 every year.
01:23So people that talk about I'm burnt out, I've played 22 events this year, flying net jets and wheels up.
01:31Sorry.
01:32Don't complain to me about being burnt out.
01:33We got Sungjae Finch over here.
01:36Sungjae Baker Finch.
01:37Yeah, exactly.
01:39I just did what I had to do, and we were playing for a living.
01:42And it was just so much difference, two different worlds.
01:48The PGA Tour has condensed their season, which has made it very difficult for the players to play their, say, 20 events in that shortened period, January 1 to August 30, say.
02:01So now you've only got really eight months to play those events.
02:05You've got four months where you can go do what you want to do, have an off-season, play a couple of funny-season events, travel to Australia for the Australian PGA Championship.
02:13That's right.
02:13That's right.
02:13Something, right?
02:14But for me, it was I played all the way through the U.S. schedule until it finished, usually end of October.
02:23Then I went back and played 10 tournaments in Australia, November, December, January.
02:28And I would usually start back at the Genesis in L.A., the L.A. Open, was the last event of the West Coast, or I'd start in Doral, the first event of the East Coast.
02:38So I had four months off in Australia, and then I came back and played probably 25 events in the U.S. in the next eight months.
02:46Open Championship, Scottish Open maybe as well.
02:50I wasn't looking at, at the start of the year now, and golf is so much more competitive.
02:55You know, give all credit to the fact that now there's 5,000 really accomplished young players on both the men's and women's tours around the world.
03:07The competitive nature of the game now is so much deeper.
03:12Tiger changed that because of the fitness needed and the amount of money that we're playing for.
03:18So one tournament in the U.S. is more than our entire schedule in Australia of 16 major tournaments.
03:25And then we have eight or nine LPGA events in Australia as well.
03:29So we play for more money in one tournament.
03:32This week, for instance, they're playing for $20 million, I believe.
03:34Yeah.
03:35We don't play for that for the whole year in Australia.
03:38So there's so much more money to play for.
03:41That's why it's so much more competitive.
03:43So I understand all of the people on the teams, you know what it's like.
03:46You've been doing it for a decade yourself.
03:50You've got to work on when you're up and when you're down.
03:54You've got to work on, am I better three in a row or two, week off two.
03:58Then, you know, it's all of this programming through the year.
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