Jeff played with a guy who put two, sometimes three balls in play off every tee and then got irritated with the group about it. His whole defense was that he's better than this. Jeff's answer, which he ends up repeating three separate times over the next twenty minutes: if you have to ask whether you can hit another one, you already know you're wasting my time. I'm not here to watch you golf all day. Play your shot. That kicks off a segment James named live on the air — What Grinds My Gears — and it takes over almost half the episode. Five things he's been fed by his own algorithm all week, and he brings them one at a time. Are breakfast balls and mulligans okay. Should white stakes just be played as a lateral instead of stroke and distance. The divot rule. The gallery drop, where everybody swears they watched it land in bounds and then nobody can find it. And the one the internet will not let go of, that golf takes too long. Here's the thing about that block: they agree on all five, and it still runs almost half an hour, because the person they're arguing with isn't in the room. Jeff eventually says out loud who it is. Every one of those complaints, he says, is a bad golfer asking not to be penalized so much. Hit the ball in the fairway. If you can't hit driver, hit the next club and stop pretending. And if you don't like the way the game is built, go make your own sport. The best part is James arguing against himself. He hates the white stake. He has lost real money to it. He thinks the penalty is genuinely brutal — and he wants it kept exactly as it is, because fifteen years of never taking a mulligan is the reason he can end up on a downslope under a tree on 18 with no backswing, punch out sideways, and run it all the way onto the green instead of blowing up and carrying it to the next hole. He's got a name for it, and it's the thing Jeff has been saying to him since they started: just don't hit it there. The Path to Par regular season is finished. Randall Oaks closed it, and the sixteenth and final playoff spot out of a twenty-six player field came down to nine points. A lot of the guys who were already safe skipped it, which left the day wide open for the people who had nothing to lose — including a guy who picked that Sunday, of all Sundays, to post what's probably his personal best. Jenny shot a 78 and James was riding in her group and had no clue until he pulled up the app afterward. And Tom, who needed the day, was one over on the back nine through sixteen, took a 3-wood, hit a little baby fade, and put it in the water. James was in the cart with him, and James was cheering on the inside. That one swing handed him the regular season, the number one seed, and the bye. Playoff one is August 16th at Seven Bridges. Fifteen guys play, seven advance, James sits it out. Jeff has already named three players he thinks are getting knocked out, said they'd all be surprises, and pointed out that one of them is not him. That's on the record now, and there's a scoreboard coming. Plus: LIV might be filing, and the brothers get into which player actually gets burned when your contract is backloaded instead of front-loaded. Jeff makes the case that LIV should have built something new instead of a second PGA Tour and pitches the Grass League as the model. He coached a friend to a win by re-simulating all eighteen holes on a screen the night before and never touched a club himself. And the turf samples for Simmies Golf are finally in hand — the bay is going black, the stance area has to be green because nobody makes it black, and the hat guy still will not return a phone call. So settle it. How long is too long for a round of golf? Jeff's number is five and a half hours, and he'll tell you why four is not even mathematically possible. Two Off the Tee — two Korean American brothers arguing about golf. Follow the show so you're around when Seven Bridges settles Jeff's three-name prediction.
