00:00But, of course, the headline, Smiley, this week was the news that live, which, by the way, LIV, Roman numeral, which stands for 54, is scrapping 54 hole events and moving their regular season tournaments to 72 holes of stroke play beginning next season.
00:16As of now, there are no other major format changes, still no cuts, still shotgun starts, still team and individual scoring.
00:25There's a lot to unpack here, Smiley, and we're going to kind of go piece by piece on this thing.
00:29But I just want to start with your reaction to that decision from LIV.
00:35Oh, gosh, I'm surprised, a little bit surprised, because I never really did feel like 72 holes was going to be a difference between them getting official world golf ranking points or not.
00:47There's plenty of tours like the International Series Asian Tour that play 54 holes that get official world golf ranking points.
00:54So there's there's plenty of tours in the world that have played 54 holes that get points.
01:00The problem is with, you know, the the issue of getting players on and off the league.
01:05You got the same players playing every single week for actually not just every single week for pretty much like three years.
01:12Nobody really changed with any of the teams.
01:14So I know that's something that they're working on.
01:18Trevor Immelman, of course, is the new chairman of the OWGR.
01:22It seems to be working hand in hand with the Live Golf League to try to help in them getting points.
01:27But to me, this is a step in.
01:30OK, we're going to go to 72 holes.
01:32This is going to be more like traditional golf.
01:34We want our players to feel ready by playing 72 holes so that when they do play in these events that it transfers a little bit, maybe better to major championships to see better play there.
01:47But still, there's there's just so much of the conversation about it.
01:52You've seen it, too, how much the fans and how much the players have talked about 54 holes, how different it is, how new it is and how they don't want to be like traditional golf.
02:04And here we are making a pretty big leap.
02:08I know it's just 18 holes, but to me, over a course of 14 events that they play, that's a lot more golf that these guys are playing that at one point, one of the talking points was, well, we actually don't want to play as much golf.
02:21We want to spend more time with our families.
02:22And now you see that they have to play two extra Asian tour events every year.
02:27So all this at the beginning, which I know things change, it's what it's been five years now that these players now are having to figure out ways in which to get into into major championships.
02:40Yeah.
02:41And I think that there are a couple of points you made there that are just worth kind of reinforcing with thoughts from guys like John Rahm, DJ Bryson, who echoed the sentiment of, yeah, this feels like it's better prepares us for major events.
02:53You know, there's no problem with that logic.
02:57It's more so the points you're making about this was your whole branding, like this is your whole deal.
03:04And now you're departing from that for, you know, a number of different reasons, some of which are out of your control to a certain degree.
03:09But, you know, many of those could have also be foreseen to kind of tee up the discussion about getting into majors, OWGR points, which has been the sticking point for Liv this entire time.
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