Ned Michaels: Providing Commentary Both On And Off The Course

**Danny Moses** (0:01)
In this episode of On The Tape, I welcome Ned Michaels back to the pod. Ned is a professional golfer, turned broadcaster and has been on the tape a few times. Most recently in late March, to give us a preview of the Masters, and to share his thoughts on the changes both inside and outside the boardroom of the PGA, and the challenges that live golf was facing. Well, we have a lot to talk about. I would also note that back on that same episode in March, I brought up the impact that the war in Iran was already having on oil prices and global bond yields, and how global central banks, namely Japan, would be challenged. The dollar yen was trading around 160 Then, it's the same today, and yields keep making new highs. We will get into that in the recent US Treasury response, as well as a preview of Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole event, and of course the price action and goal.
And of course, we will get to my Kalshi picks of the week, which will include a selection at the Tour Championship Golf Event this week in Atlanta.
All right, Ned, welcome back to On The Tape, my man.

**Ned Michaels** (0:59)
It's good to be back with you, Danny. Thanks for having me.

**Danny Moses** (1:02)
You got it. All right. For those not familiar with you, that maybe don't watch holes 15 and 16 at the Masters, can you please give the listeners a little bit of your background?

**Ned Michaels** (1:12)
Sure. Played professionally. Played at Vanderbilt University, then played professionally on the Asian Tour, European Tour. Got hurt, taught for a little while, and somehow lucked my way into golf commentary. And I've been fortunate enough for the last decade now to call golf for a living. I worked for PGA Tour on their PGA Tour Live product on ESPN. Get to do the Masters, holes 15 and 16
Do the open, do all four majors, the Ryder Cup. I mean, just been, I don't know, blessed or lucky, however you like to look at it. And man, do I love this game. So to be able to get to talk about it is just a gift every day.

**Danny Moses** (1:51)
That's great. And you've been on here a few times and we've talked about changes that have been going on, but some big changes were just announced for starting in the 2028 PGA golf season, makes it look more like professional soccer leagues with relegation, promotions. Can you elaborate on it? And I assume that you like it.

**Ned Michaels** (2:09)
Yeah, you know, I actually, I do like it. The first reason I like it is because Brian Rolap and his team are making changes, right? They've identified what the fans are saying, that hey, this doesn't make a ton of sense. It's not as exciting. You call it the playoffs.
And so just two years ago, instead of having that starting strokes system at the beginning of the Tour Championship where, again, this is the fifth time in a row that Scottie Scheffler's come in ranked number one, he would have a 10 shot lead. And it was a little odd. So now what they've done is they're going to take the top 90 players. They're going to have a tournament to determine the seeding essentially for the next 32 players. And then they're going to have two weeks of match play. And the courses, Danny, and you and I have talked about the great old school golf courses around the world, but especially here in the United States, they become a little bit obsolete, not just from the golf perspective, but from the infrastructure perspective. When you have a PGA Tour event, and I think most fans don't think about it, it's not just the golf course that has to be able to stand up. You need the ingress and egress. You need to be able to have the locker rooms. You need to be able to support all the thousands of people that come to these events. And so now some of these smaller old school golf courses that can't handle the infrastructure are back in play because you're going to have fewer players and it's going to be match play. Now match play can get a little tricky because you might end up with a couple of players and it's still going to be the top 30 They're going to be world-class players, but it might not be Scotty versus Rory, like everybody wants. So that's going to be something that they're going to have to work through. They're talking about adding consolation brackets and all these kind of elements, just to make sure, especially from a TV standpoint, that you don't end up with a whitewash or just two players who aren't playing well, or not the two players that everybody wants to see. And so they're leaving themselves open to be able to make these changes. And so I get excited about thinking of Seminole. Or they were talking about Los Angeles Country Club, they had the US Open a few years ago.