But first!

Thank you to Meridian for presenting today’s newsletter.

I had a Golf Media Person text me this week to ask about how our partnership was going. I told him it was great, and this person — currently affiliated with a different, bigger equipment company — told me how much he enjoyed their putters.

I thought that said a lot about the product Meridian is building and how much work goes into every single version that they make. It’s probably one big reason they recently earned gold from the 2025 Golf Digest hot list on both their blade series and mallet series. And one big reason we wanted (and decided) to partner with them.

OK, onto the Q&A.

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Q&A: Josh Scobee

KP: Okay, this is a weird place to start, but what is a Tiger Woods moment that you think about all the time?

Josh: Oh, gosh. It depends on the context. I've been around him a few times because I used to be a marshal escort at the Players Championship, and I had his group quite a few times so I got to chat with him a little bit. There's that. There's the tweet that I infamously put out in 2015 that went viral about challenging him to $100,000 a hole, and he gets two shots aside. That was a complete joke, obviously. Golf Twitter did not take that as a joke. That's probably the one that I think about just about every day.

KP: As somebody that was probably a fan of his for so long, what do you say to Tiger when you are a Players Championship escort with his group?

Josh: There were multiple times where between holes, we'd be walking in areas where fans can't get to. So that's when I took the opportunity to just chat him up a little bit.

There were a few funny things. One of them, we were walking through the woods and no one was around. And this dude out of nowhere is yelling from behind. He's like, “Tiger, you better step it up. Derek Jeter's got five World Series wins!”

And Tiger turns around and he's like, “What the heck am I supposed to do with that information?” So I'm like, “Well, maybe you should tell him about your …” I think I said 12 major wins or something. And he kept walking and he had to get to the tee, so I had to stop. He turns around, looks at me, he's like, “You mean 13, right?” I was like, “Oh, crap.” There were a few conversations like that that were stuff that as a huge Tiger fan, I'll always remember.

KP: I believe your father-in-law is the one that introduced you to golf. How did that change or affect your relationship with him?

Josh: It made it even tighter. It still is to this day, because my dad died whenever I was 12 so he's been like a father figure to me. We get along great, and we're very similar people. He's getting to the point, now he's 72 so he can't play as much whenever they come in town or whenever we go to Louisiana. But yeah, he was a huge influence on getting me started because I think he was the first person to buy me lessons with a pro and get me started that way. He'll always be the person that I say got me started.

KP: What is one golf phrase that should be used more sparingly?

Josh: “Nice miss.” That's a pet peeve of mine. And playing football, coach would say that. It's either “nice miss” or “save that one for the game.” I'm like, “What?” If we're on the driving range, am I going to try and hit them bad? No, I'm trying to hit them good the whole time and carry that to the course.

KP: A lot of people in the media, myself included, never played sports professionally. I played but never played professionally. And I’m curious about what you think is one perspective that the media just gets wrong about pro sports.

Josh: I don't know if they necessarily get it wrong, but it's getting to the point right now with especially kickers where [the media thinks] it's just easy. You watch these golfers that are world-class, and they make these shots look extremely easy, but don't understand how much work goes on behind the scenes.

Just little things that they're not there to cover … and saying, Well, yeah, he stayed after the round and hit 50 balls, and that's why he's better. It's like, No, he woke up this morning at and started warming up and had more done by 7:30 than most of us have done in the entire day. 

I think it's what you don't see behind the scenes because of how hard it is.

KP: Yeah, that's good. Do you look at kickers the same way that golfers look at golf swings and say, “Man, that guy's leg, that kick is so much prettier than these other guys?”

Josh: Oh, absolutely. That's why kickers, if they play golf, they're typically pretty good because everything translates in so many ways. There's guys that I watch in the NFL that I love to watch because it looks so effortless and it's so powerful without effort. Then there's other guys that I watch that you can tell that they have to try a little bit harder to get something out of their swing.

KP: Who's the Ludvig of kicking right now, just in the sense that it looks so repeatable and it looks so easy?

Josh: It's probably Brandon Aubrey, the Cowboys kicker. He's probably 6'3, 215, so he's a big kicker. He just started kicking two years ago, and he was a soccer player. But if you watch his swing, it's so effortless. He has no yippie action whatsoever with his upper body. It looks so repeatable.

His holder, Bryan Anger, the punter, was my holder for a few years. So I've been texting with him, just ask him, “What does it look like on a normal day-to-day basis?” He's like, “It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. It looks like he's barely swinging and the ball goes 70 yards.” So I would say that's a pretty good comparison to Ludvig.

KP: I like that. Okay, so everybody's tied going to the back nine at Augusta. Who are you rooting for?

Josh: That's a good question. Who do I want to see win there? I mean, who hasn't won there is Rory, obviously. That would be a fun one to see him win there because of all the baggage he has from that place. I've been to the spot quite a few times where he hit it on 10 the first time. It blew my mind how hard it would be to actually hit the ball there, but to actually make whatever he made triple from there. So I'd say, Rory.

KP: You almost have to miss the ball to hit it over there.

Josh: He must have been so nervous because the crazy part is I almost hit it over there one time playing from the tips, and I was like, “Wait a minute. He's like 100 yards behind me, and I whiffed the crap out of mine.”

KP: I know you've gotten into playing more competitive golf after football. Was there a “welcome to competitive golf” moment for you?

Josh: I stopped doing it a few years ago, but I used to do the U.S. Open local qualifiers. And I remember playing with this one kid, Jordan Batchelor is his name. He played golf at University of North Florida here in Jacksonville.

He was like maybe a sophomore in high school, and I'm in the NFL.

He beat the brakes off of me.

I'm like, “OK, this is different than what I thought it was going to be.” Now, come full circle, he's a member at the club where I'm a member at in Jacksonville. There's no way I'm ever winning a club championship if he's playing in it.

KP: What's one thing the PGA Tour should steal from the NFL to make its product better?

Josh: Enforcing certain rules more, I would think. I mean, golf has way too many dumb rules, in my opinion. But obviously, pace of play is a major issue. So maybe get a shot clock and have guys, if you pull this shot off within 40 seconds, you have essentially a mulligan per nine where you can hit a button and say, All right, extra 20 seconds. But there needs to be some physical shot clock of some sort.

Because a five and a half hour round of golf is not fun for anyone.

KP: No, not even the people that are playing. When you talk about being a sicko or following golf, is it more so your your game, or are you following at the professional level as well?

Josh: It's both. I'm obsessed with it because I want to be really good at golf and I get to play in a lot of fun celebrity tournaments. So I want to be as good as I can be. But I watch golf anytime it's on because I definitely have the free time to do it. But there's certain tournaments that I watch more than others. For me, it's more so about getting better at the game for myself.

KP: How much are your kids into golf?

Josh: I wish they were more into golf, but my older son, he's 13. I had him play in junior tournaments and whatnot, and he had one meltdown, one tournament, and said he never wanted to play again. I haven't pushed for him to play tournaments anymore because I want him to want to play golf whenever he gets older.

So, yeah, neither one of them play, but I have a simulator in my house. So every now and again, I'll turn it on, hit some balls, and go away for a little while, and I'll hear one of them hitting on it. It's still in there.

Someone told me a while back, Would you rather them never play golf again or not play golf right now and then want to play with you later in life? I was like, Yeah, the latter. So I'm going to let them play baseball, soccer, flag football, and golf can come at a later date.

KP: What's one thing you want your kids to learn about life from the sport, from golf?

Josh: To have patience because if they're like me, they don't have a ton of patience. That's why neither one of them wants to play golf right now. It's one thing that golf can teach you is to be patient and to not overreact to little things that really don't matter. And I'm trying to get better about that with my golf game.

I have gotten better at that, but my golf game has suffered because of it, because I'm not playing the way I used to play, which was mad at every single bad shot, which would motivate me for the next shot. So I might have to figure something out with that.

KP: Is there anything you're reading, watching, or listening to that you would like to recommend?

Josh: Yeah, I read a lot of Bob Rotella books for more of the mental side. I love his insight and just how he can relate it to everyday life. The one that I really liked the most was Golf is a Game of Confidence. I read that before I got done playing football. That actually helped me in the mental side of football as well.