The post Will PGA Tour-LIV Golf battle be resolved in 2025? | Kostis & McCord appeared first on Golf.

The post Will PGA Tour-LIV Golf battle be resolved in 2025? | Kostis & McCord appeared first on Golf.

The PGA Tour and LIV Golf have been working to iron out a deal to bring the game back together for over 18 months. But there hasn’t been much movement on the merger front in some time.

Adam Scott, who is part of the PGA Tour Enterprises transaction subcommittee with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, which is negotiating with LIV’s Saudi backers, says there’s a reason things have ground to a halt.

“Same as always. It sucks,” Scott told the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson this week at the Sony Open. “It’s not worth talking about. Obviously, it’s so complex and when the [U.S Department of Justice] is involved, I think we sit and just wait for them.”

Scott told Ferguson there should be some movement “soon.” But what that will look like is still anyone’s guess.

The potential end of the PGA Tour-LIV battle was a topic on the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers,” a GOLF production, with both co-hosts giving their crystal ball prediction for the state of golf in 2025.

“I predict there will be a resolution to the LIV-PGA Tour conflict in 2025,” Kostis said. “It will not go on any longer past 2025. What that solution is going to be remains open.”

Kostis went on to speculate that the PGA Tour will have to give up its desire to be the lone home for elite men’s professional golf in 2025.

“There’s a bunch of reasons why we are where we are in professional golf,” Kostis said. “Not the least of which is the PGA Tour’s desire to have a monopoly on professional golf. They want to be the end-all and be-all for professional golf. That’s going to go away in 2025. They are going to have to learn to exist in an ecosystem that includes more worldwide golf whether that’s LIV or the DP World Tour or whatever the case may be.”

McCord believes the two tours will end up not merging in 2025, and that LIV’s rumored interest to buy the DP World Tour will play a role.

“The whole thing is LIV vs. PGA Tour. That’s it. Everything else resides around that. Are they going to get together? Or are they going to exist apart? I think they will exist apart,” McCord said. “From what we are hearing, [LIV] are going to go buy the DP World Tour. It’s already there. They already get [Official World Golf Ranking] points. They can go get their 20 events that they are going to play there. Now these guys get world rankings points, so they can literally go and play in the majors and do what they want to do. [They can] be in these big tournaments now that they get world-rankings points.”

McCord added that having two tours might not necessarily be a negative for golf.

“Now, you got two tours. Is that bad?” McCord said. “I don’t know if that’s bad. Because as I see it, if you’re trying to market this and get your T.V. ratings up, there’s nothing better than to have two distinct entities that hate each other. I mean hate each other. Look at the Ryder Cup, those guys don’t necessarily hate each other. They are neighbors in Florida. But that particular week they get pissed off at each other and go on tirades. What if we had that as a constant? And you would have these guys playing against each other. There’s benefits to it.”

For more on the topic, or to watch the entire episode, click on the video below.

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The post Peter Kostis’ easy drill to practice the ‘heartbeat’ of the golf swing appeared first on Golf.

The post Peter Kostis’ easy drill to practice the ‘heartbeat’ of the golf swing appeared first on Golf.

Kostis broke this down in the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers,” a GOLF production, and also offered a drill to practice the first technique.

For starters, Kostis says the golf swing consists of three levers:

1) The wrist to the club head

“If you don’t know how to use your wrist and hands correctly, then you are missing the heartbeat of the golf swing,” Kostis says. “So you have to learn how to hinge the club properly, learn to release the club properly and learn to strike down on the golf ball to make it go up in the air.”

2) The shoulder socket to the wrist (the length of the arm)

“You have to learn how to swing this arm from your shoulder socket,” he says.

3) Your collarbone, from your lead shoulder to your sternum.

“You have to learn to rotate that around your body,” Kostis says.

A drill to nail down your wrist action

Doing all three of these things together produces the golf swing, although this is where Kostis says your beginning golfer might think it’s just one simple body rotation, but he says it’s crucial to learn how to do the three elements individually before doing them together.

The key is the starting point: wrist to club head. He practices it by chipping simple 15- or 20-yard shots. You can also make a drill out of this by placing a towel about 5 inches behind your ball and hitting chips without touching the towel (if you are a “scooper,” you’ll clip the towel).

“It may seem elementary but great players learned how to use their hands at a young age,” he says. “You must train your hands to work properly so that you can forget about them in the golf swing when you are playing, but if you don’t have good hand action, have a good grip, everything else in the golf swing doesn’t count.”

You can watch the entire video in this article to learn more, and you can watch the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers” below.

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The post Gary McCord explains his player ‘uprising’ that transformed the PGA Tour in the ’80s appeared first on Golf.

The post Gary McCord explains his player ‘uprising’ that transformed the PGA Tour in the ’80s appeared first on Golf.

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It was a system that provided little security to anyone outside of the most successful Tour pros. At the Doral Tour event in 1983, McCord had finished his qualifying round when the problems with the existing exemption system began to crystalize.
 
“I was at Doral qualifying, we’re sitting in there and they’re posting the scores, and I’m looking, and I’m starting to look at the names that are there,” McCord began.
 
In those names McCord saw plenty of proven Tour winners, identifying Miller Barber, owner of 11 PGA Tour wins, and 10-time winner Don January, as two examples.
 
“I started adding them up, and there were 54 tournament wins by guys who were qualifying on Monday for Doral. And I went, ‘This is an awful system.'” McCord explained. “You’ve got literally a bunch of guys, I mean 200 guys, traveling every week with nowhere to go, other than trying to get into this. And not making a penny. What are we doing? Why don’t we expand this thing?”
 
McCord then related how he looked up the roster of NFL players at the time, and found there were 1,078 players.
 
“I made the top 60 in my second year, 1975, and I made $58,000 — had to spend 100 to get the 58,” McCord continued. “We were just going nowhere as a sport.”
 
With that McCord decided things needed to change, so he headed home and took four weeks off. In that time, he did a deep-dive into all of the various exemptions used by the Tour to create 144-player fields.
 
From his research, he determined the Tour and its players would be much better off increasing the number of fully-exempt spots each year. So what next? He decided the first group of people he should run it by were the players outside the top 60 who were forced to qualify every week.

“I want to do this like a union uprising,” McCord joked. “I want to go to the guys that are going to get kicked off the Tour, and if they like it, then in mass bring it up.”
 
So McCord traveled to an opposite-field Tour event in Tallahassee and called a meeting at the banquet room of the Holiday Inn where many players were staying, putting up posters in the area to try and convince players to come. He’d hoped to get 30 players to participate, but he was way off. More than a hundred pros showed up.
 
He stood up in front of the large crowd and sold his idea.

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“Guys look I think we need a change, expansion, give everyone a chance to plan a living and try to make a living in the 80s,” McCord shared. “Here’s the deal. We’ve got 105 guys. If I get 50 or more saying ‘yea’, I will go to the Tour and say ‘hey, I’ve got this program here that we think should be looked at for the PGA Tour to operate underneath.'”
 
He ended up getting 80 players supporting his plan. “More than the majority, way more.” Two weeks after running his plan up the PGA Tour chain, then-commissioner Dean Beaman called him up and asked McCord to meet with him at PGA Tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra, Fla.
 
When he got there, McCord gave Beaman his spiel, before sitting back and expecting to receive a punishment, even a suspension, for his player “uprising.” Instead, he was surprised to find the commissioner was already on the same page.
 
“[Beaman] says, ‘We need a change, and you’re the guy who can do it,'” McCord shared.
 
Beaman then opened a safe and introduced McCord to a massive Tour change they were already considering. In short, it involved splitting the Tour into a National and American League, having a draft to fill each league, then holding separate 15-event seasons for each league. The next year, the players would swap leagues so each player would visit a particular tournament every two years.
 
The commissioner then asked McCord to go to an upcoming board meeting, and present both the National-American league idea and his own fully-exempt Tour plan to the board members, including luminaries like Jack Nicklaus.
 
When he did, one major issue arose with the duel-league concept, one brought up by Lanny Wadkins. If a player had a hometown Tour event, they’d have to skip it every other year. That tanked the plan.
 
Instead, they all voted and approved McCord’s concept of a Tour featuring 125 fully-exempt players, a huge increase from the existing 60 fully-exempt player system.
 
To hear McCord’s full story from the horse’s mouth, watch the video at the top of the page. You can watch to the entire episode of Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers on YouTube here.

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The post Here’s a great drill to help you recover from the shanks, per Peter Kostis appeared first on Golf.

The post Here’s a great drill to help you recover from the shanks, per Peter Kostis appeared first on Golf.

More than just the errant shots, the shanks cause you to lose confidence in yourself, which can lead to a decrease in mental strength anytime you’ve got a golf club in your hads. You fidget with everything, try to rework your swing fundamentals, read and watch all sorts of tips from GOLF.com, and, generally, feel like you’ve lost the ability to hit a golf ball.

As someone who had this happen to him last summer, I can tell you it’s no quick-fix.

But before driving yourself crazy by digesting all sorts of tips and trying everything you can to recover, first take a look at the video above — which comes from Peter Kostis and Gary McCord’s “Off Their Rockers” podcast, a GOLF Production — where Kostis walks through a great drill to help you get over the shanks for good.

Do this drill to finally eliminate infuriating shanks

To the delight of the small group in the video, Kostis grabs a bottle of vodka, saying it’s one way to help cure the shanks.

“This is a bottle of vodka, and a sip or two might not hurt [to alleviate the shanks],” Kostis quips. “But imagine this is a [wooden] 2×4 or a box that new golf balls come in.”

Kostis places the bottle on the ground, resting it just to the outside of his ball.

“There’s two different ways to shank the ball,” Kostis explains. “You can come so much from the inside, that the hosel gets [to the ball] first, or you can come so much from the outside that the hosel gets [to the ball] first — with both leading to the same result — so it’s a path problem in 90 percent of the cases.”

He then explains why something like a vodka bottle can help lead to a better club path — thus improving your ball-striking.

“If you get a 2×4 down here [or, in this case, an empty bottle of vodka], and your shank comes from inside too much, you’re going to hit the board after impact — which won’t feel good. So you’ll gradually learn to swing down the line,” Kostis adds.

“If you have the over-the-top or outside-to-in shank, you’re going to hit the back of the [bottle or board], and that hurts even worse — and you don’t even hit the ball, because the club’s going to bounce right over it.”

Whether it’s an empty bottle of vodka, a wooden board, or a cardboard box, Kostis says that visualizing the club path as you come to impact will help cure the shanks, leading to improved contact.

“Get [something that teaches you] to learn how to swing inside, to on the line, to inside,” Kostis says.

To hear more from Kostis and McCord, you can watch to the entire episode below.

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The post Do golf handicaps undervalue this key skill differentiator? appeared first on Golf.

The post Do golf handicaps undervalue this key skill differentiator? appeared first on Golf.

But according to Peter Kostis, there’s one glaring flaw in the handicap system that he’d like to see rectified.

In the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers,” a GOLF production, Kostis laid out his case.

“Let’s take a 12-handicap,” Kostis said. “Not all 12-handicappers are the same. If you take a 12-handicapper who cannot hit the ball 200 yards — if the hole is 401, they’re not gonna get there. And so they’re limited. They have to rely on a great short game, but they’re never gonna be able to get down to a lower handicap just from the length.

“Now you take a 12-handicap who hits it 300 — obviously, that person, if they can hit it 300 they must have a sh—y short game, or can’t putt or whatever,” he continued. “But on a given day, they’re gonna be able to chip and putt, they can find a chipping stroke, they can find a putting stroke, and with their 300-yard distance capabilities, they can play to a 4-handicap.”

Kostis said he thinks there has to be a way to incorporate max driving distance into a handicap calculation.

“There’s gotta be a way — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — there’s gotta be a way of constructing a new handicap system that takes into consideration how far you can hit the ball,” he said.

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Gary McCord agreed.

“It should be swing speed for the handicap,” he said.

According to Kostis and McCord, another problem with the current handicap system is that is doesn’t go low enough for elite players.

“[Jon] Rahm is a plus 7.6,” McCord said.

“That’s garbage,” Kostis responded.

“So he gives me 8, and literally I have no chance,” McCord said.

“There’s gotta be a new way of using today’s statistical approach to everything, to organize a handicap system that is fairer for everybody concerned,” Kostis said.

For more from the entertaining duo, check out the full episode of Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers, a GOLF production, below.

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The post How Tom Watson’s letter led to Gary McCord’s Masters broadcast team firing appeared first on Golf.

The post How Tom Watson’s letter led to Gary McCord’s Masters broadcast team firing appeared first on Golf.

How did it all go down? McCord relived the story alongside his longtime CBS broadcast partner Peter Kostis in the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers,” a GOLF production.

“What happened was, we’ve got Jose Maria Olazabal, he’s down the fairway, he’s talking to his caddie about what the next shot is and, the pin’s back right the last day. And I said, let me interpret. I said, the caddie — now they’re talking Spanish, obviously — and I said, the caddie, his brother, is telling him, ‘Don’t hit it over the green because there’s body bags down there.’ A cliche, it’s a euphemism for he’s dead. That’s it. Okay. No big deal. That was earlier in the show.

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“Now we go to later, and we go to commercial break, and we’re late in the telecast,” McCord continued. “We’re on the 17th hole. I’ve got the president of CBS Sports sitting next to me with the bat phone. It’s a red phone that goes right to [Augusta National chairman] Hord Hardin. So, he’s in the catacombs down below, and that’s the phone he can get right to the telecast and he’s sitting right next to me.”

McCord then explained that he liked to keep magazines in the booth, and saw an advertisement for the Golden Door spa in Escondido, Calif. A bikini wax was among the treatments offered on the menu.

“Now, as you know, at Augusta, the one thing they’re deathly afraid of is the speed of these greens,” McCord said. “So Jose hits it over here to the left and he’s gonna putt over to the right, and you know that putt, and it’s just faster than hell. So I said, you know, this putt that Jose’s got here is really, really delicate. Once he gets to the top of that hill, it’s a speed freak all the way down. In fact, I don’t think they mow these greens. I think they bikini wax them.

“Neal Pilson is laughing his a– off next to me. He’s the president of CBS Sports. The phone’s not going off. Anyway, that was it. [CBS Sports golf producer] Frank [Chirkinian] never said anything. Nobody said anything!”

The next week’s tournament was in Hilton Head, S.C., and McCord and Kostis recalled being called into Chirkinian’s office on the Wednesday before the tournament began.

“I get called into Frank’s office and he goes, ‘Close the door.’ So I close the door, and he throws me a letter, and it’s written in pencil,” McCord said. “And I look at the letter, it says addressed to Augusta National. And it says, ‘We need to eradicate this lesion on golf. He is the Howard Stern of golf and we need to pay attention to this and what he said,’ signed Tom Watson.

“I looked at Frank and I said, ‘What the hell is this?’ He goes, ‘I don’t know. I got it from Augusta, and they sent it to me.’ And I go, ‘What’s this mean?’ He goes, ‘I don’t know yet.’ And I went, ‘All right, keep me posted.’

Two days later, McCord was summoned back to Chirkinian’s office.

“So Friday, Frank goes, ‘Get in here,'” McCord says. “And I go, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘Augusta now is getting ready.’ I said, ‘For what?’ ‘For your death.'”

McCord said Chirkinian told him that the network would not defend him and he would have to handle the issue himself. Chirkinian did give him one word of advice, though: “Stay above the process.”

A couple of months later, McCord was officially fired from the Masters broadcast, but remained on the CBS roster for the rest of network’s tournaments.

Ultimately, McCord said he respected Augusta National’s decision to get rid of him but did not like the fact that Watson didn’t confront him personally about his grievances before taking the issue to Augusta.

Instruction

McCord said he did have the chance to confront Watson the following year at Pebble Beach when he spotted Watson at check-in.

“Tom registers in front of me and he turns around to walk out and I said, ‘Have you got a second?’ McCord said. “He goes, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘I’m gonna meet you right there in the alcove.’

“So I go in there, and he’s sitting there. And next thing I know, he’s poking me in the chest and I’m poking him in the chest and I kind of look over and you guys are sitting there laughing your ass off because we’re gonna get in a fight over there.

“And I just told him that I don’t understand why he didn’t do this and man up and come to talk to me first. He was trying to be God in this whole thing. That was the intent of the conversation.”

In the years since, McCord said he and Watson have played the Champions Tour together and have gotten along. In fact, McCord now credits Watson for giving him so much attention.

“I got more publicity for doing this than anything I ever did in golf,” McCord said.

“It’s conceivable that not only did he not hurt your income, he enhanced it,” Kostis noted.

“I should pay him a retainer fee,” McCord said.

For more great anecdotes from golf’s master storytellers, check out the latest episode of Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers, a GOLF production, below.

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The post How to organize your golf practice to discover your ideal golf swing appeared first on Golf.

The post How to organize your golf practice to discover your ideal golf swing appeared first on Golf.

So how can you organize your golf practice in order to focus on all aspects? By understanding how to control the environment.

In the video above — which comes from Peter Kostis and Gary McCord on their “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers” podcast, a GOLF Production — Kostis shares how organizing a practice station can help improve your golf swing and ensure better ball contact. Whether that’s using training aids or simply trying drills that create feels to produce great results, it’s on you as a golfer to grind out the improvement.

How to organize your golf practice

“If you want to improve the quality and technique of your golf swing, you have to practice from a controlled environment,” Kostis says. “That means you have to know that your ball position, posture, and aim [are all correct and consistent before you even take the club back].”

So how can an amateur player like you or me accomplish that? Kostis says it requires some sort of practice station, one that isn’t just beating ball after ball on the driving range.

“A practice station can take many different forms,” he adds.

Next, he shows one practice station that uses alignment rods to help with both aim and ball position — although he prefers using a rope to help with those elements instead.

“When I put my clubface down, I can see it’s squared to the rope and I’m aimed where I want to go,” he says.

Approach Shots

But just because Kostis doesn’t like using alignment rods on the ground doesn’t mean he never uses them. So he demonstrates how these training aids can be used in other ways.

“I often take [alignment rods and put them into the ground in front of my ball], so I can see the trajectory that my golf ball’s going to take off on,” Kostis says. “I can also take the stick and put it out even farther to learn to hit cuts and draws.”

Even if you don’t have a rope or alignment rods, Kostis says the simplest way to practice your ball-striking is to use a few golf balls, putting them in a line, and working on your swing path and attack angle.

“Put one golf ball about 2- to 3-feet behind, and another one 2- to 3-feet in front of the ball you’re going to hit, which will form a line,” he says.

By working on varying your practice stations and use the resources at your disposal, you’ll be able to make better contact by improving your swing.

“It’s easy, but you’ve to to make the effort,” Kostis adds. “So find yourself a practice station and organize yourself before starting your swing. You’ll find that your in-swing motions are going to get better.”

You can listen to the entire episode from Kostis & McCord below.

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The post Will this upcoming event generate more interest than the Presidents Cup? appeared first on Golf.

The post Will this upcoming event generate more interest than the Presidents Cup? appeared first on Golf.

“Everybody’s looking right now to December to see the match between LIV and the [PGA Tour], with the four best players,” said Gary McCord on the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers,” a GOLF production. “I think that’s taking precedent over everything at this point.”

McCord was referring to the previously announced Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler vs. Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka match, which will take place on a December date to be announced in Las Vegas. While McCord’s assertion that the upcoming match consists of the game’s four best players is obviously his opinion, it’s certainly not far off, especially when it comes to star power and name recognition. But it’s also the first time these made-for-TV matches will have a PGA Tour vs. LIV angle.

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“I realize it’s not apples and oranges because one is an 18-hole match and the other is over [four] days, but I’m going to be really interested to see what the TV ratings are between those two,” Peter Kostis said. “We’ll see how much interest there is.”

McCord said he thinks part of the reason December’s match was scheduled was due to players’ frustration over golf’s divide, and the fact that a deal is still not in place to bring the sport together.

“I think basically the four best players in the world are getting tired of this crap going on,” McCord said. “We don’t know what happened a couple of weeks ago when everybody met in New York to see if they could hammer out something. No one has heard anything, as always. So I think these four guys are like, alright, the hell with that, we are going to do this match and see how it goes. And we’re also going to go and have TNT do it, who is not really one of the title sponsors on the PGA Tour. And if I was a sponsor on the PGA Tour and I saw my TV ratings go down and now I saw the four best players in the world getting ready to do a made-for-television event with TNT doing it — and if these numbers did anywhere near the last-day numbers of any of the four majors — there is going to be some hooting and hollering about what are you guys doing at PGA Tour headquarters at Ponte Vedra.”

At the Irish Open a few weeks ago, McIlroy said the match wasn’t meant to send a message.

“You’ve got the best player in the world. You’ve got two guys in Bryson and Brooks that have won majors in the last two years. You’ve got me in there who, I haven’t done what those guys have done the last couple years, but I’ve definitely been I feel one of the best players in the world,” McIlroy said. “It’s a way to show golf fans in the world that this is what could happen or these are the possibilities going forward. I’ve been saying this for a long time: I think golf and golf fans get to see us together more than four times a year.”

McCord put a bow on his thoughts, saying, “I think these four guys are just pressing a pedal right now to get something done.”

You can check out the entire episode below.

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The post Peter Kostis, Gary McCord recall gambling hijinks at 1998 Presidents Cup appeared first on Golf.

The post Peter Kostis, Gary McCord recall gambling hijinks at 1998 Presidents Cup appeared first on Golf.

What was going on with Team USA? Longtime broadcasters Peter Kostis and Gary McCord may have some clues. On the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers,” a GOLF production, the duo revisited their memories from Down Under.

According to Kostis, the U.S. team’s proximity to a casino that week didn’t do them any favors.

“[Captain Jack Nicklaus] kinda suspended a few players from the Friday morning matches because he found them in the casino at our hotel rather late into the night,” Kostis said. “And so I’m walking down the fairway — I think it was the 10th fairway, somewhere around there. And I’m following Mickelson’s group. And Phil walks up, he goes, he yells at me, ‘Peter!’, and he flips me a chip, and I look down and it’s a $25,000 chip from the casino. So I said thanks and I put it in my pocket and started walking.”

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Kostis said Mickelson ran after him to reclaim the chip, but the story jogged McCord’s memory for another wild anecdote from that Presidents Cup. McCord and Kostis recalled the weather taking a wild swing, with temperatures soaring into the hundreds one day and dropping down into the 60s the next.

“There were flies, and somebody from the gallery gave me this hat with wine corks hanging from it to walk down the fairways,” Kostis said. “They said they would keep the flies away.”

“I remember the first day when it was 100 and whatever,” McCord said. “We had to do the booth and ESPN was our partner there, and I had an ESPN announcer up there. You know how hot it was. We had to wear a coat and tie. So I remember, commercial break after about the first half hour, I went, the hell with this.

“I got up, I took my pants, everything off except my underwear, and I had my coat and my tie on, and he looked at me. He goes, what are you doing? I said, it’s hot. I’m not going anywhere. I’m sitting right here and I’m gonna cool off. And those flies attacked me with vengeance.

“And all I could do is, I was sitting there trying to hold on, and I’m goin’ like this and they’re goin’ up my underwear, and it was quite comical. Thank God we didn’t show us up there doing it.”

“TMI!” Kostis said with a smile.

As if that story weren’t exciting enough, McCord had one more gambling story to share.

“You and me, leaving the hotel. We didn’t gamble or something like that, and we put down all the money we had left, and we won!” McCord said. “We won and went out to the car to go to the airport, to go back to the States. That’s all I remember about that place.”

For more from Kostis and McCord, check out the full clip above.

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The post ‘Absolutely frightening’: Gary McCord recalls terrifying commercial shoot appeared first on Golf.

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And on the latest “Rockers” episode, McCord delivered a doozy by revisiting his experience filming a golf commercial for FootJoy underwater. Wait, what? Yes, it’s true. Readers of a certain age may remember the first iteration of FootJoys DryJoys golf shoes, which, true to their name, were waterproof. To highlight the technology with a comedic spin, McCord was tapped to promote the shoe while underwater.

“The idea was, I was gonna be immersed in the water with shoes on and then talking to the camera underwater about how dry my feet were,” McCord said.

While the concept sounds simple enough, according to McCord, the shoot was no picnic. Not only did McCord have to venture 22 feet below the surface with a Navy Seal on hand for potential rescue purposes, the DryJoys he was wearing were made of lead to keep him anchored to the pool floor.

How was the shoot supposed to work? McCord would take a gulp of air from a respirator, then the Navy Seal would swim off the the side with the respirator, allowing McCord to say his lines for the camera, then he would return with oxygen when McCord needed it.

“So we start this thing, and now I’m a little claustrophobic,” McCord said. “I’m sitting there and I’m waiting, I’m hearing guys underwater. It’s amazing. Camera’s there, camera’s over here.

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“So they go, OK, Gary, go. And so the guy goes, OK, hold on, Gary, take a deep breath, now! And he swims off. Navy Seal swims off. Camera, action. I go blah, blah, blah, blah. You gotta say it really loud because they yelled at me for a while. And I’d say it, and I’m out of breath. And he is 30 feet away.

“So the first time that happened, I panicked, and I tried to leave the bottom of the pool, but I got lead shoes on. Lead FootJoy shoes. They don’t make those, by the way, for golf.”

The Navy Seal came to McCord’s rescue and brought him to the surface, where McCord said he couldn’t go through with the shoot.

“I get on the side of the pool and I go, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it,'” McCord said. “I said, ‘that was absolutely frightening.’ He goes, ‘Gary, it’ll be fine.’ So he finally talked me down, I went down and did it again, and I panicked again.

“When there’s nobody around you and you’re out of breath, it’s fight or flight,” McCord continued. “And you are gonna go straight up, and you can’t push off the bottom of the pool. And my guy is over there hiding behind a camera somewhere with my oxygen.”

McCord ultimately made peace with the unorthodox nature of the shoot, giving the story a happy ending.

“I was in that pool and got it done for seven and a half hours,” he said. “I never left the bottom of the pool. I finally just went — I did the whole Zen thing like, OK, I don’t think I’m gonna die. Let’s do it. We’ll do it right.”

For more entertaining stories from McCord and his podcast cohort Kostis, check out the full video of the latest episode below.

The post ‘Absolutely frightening’: Gary McCord recalls terrifying commercial shoot appeared first on Golf.