Kevin Van Valkenburg
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
He's the top 30 player in the world right now, I would say.
I think he's 30th right now and
strokes gained on the pga tour so you know you could put him you know top 40 somewhere top 50 in the world kind of when the as the season plays out it's just a great story and i just i love that some the simple thing like that not a simple thing obviously but a complicated thing like that was able to help him play better golf yeah i mean this is just
I just was going to say one little anecdote.
When he came back first from the lesion, the brain surgery stuff, I just happened to be walking past him on like a Monday at Riviera.
And we kind of made eye contact.
And I was like, hey, Garrett, it's just great to see you back out here.
And he kind of like almost got teared up.
He was just like, hey, thanks.
Like, we don't know each other.
But it was just like a simple act of somebody saying like, hey, we really it's great to see you back.
Just made him kind of emotional and made me kind of want to root for him that much more.
I think that Andy brought up Tiger and sort of the mental health stuff.
We talk a lot about the influence that Tiger had on a generation of golfers.
They all wanted to be like him.
They were all willing to start working out like him.
I don't know that we have ever really talked a lot about the influence that Tiger had on a lot of people in dealing with the media and treating it sort of like it was combat.
And I covered Michael Phelps for a long time when he was sort of at the height of his career.
And everything that he did was sort of from the Tiger playbook of trying to deflect, trying not to sort of say anything ever controversial, trying to be super boring.
And I think as Tiger kind of continues to fade a little bit from the scene, you see more people who are kind of like, I don't know, I just find that sort of whole cloak and dagger routine to be a little bit exhausting.