Both Sides of the Ball

Bo and Farrell react to the response of professional sports to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. While the NFL, the NBA and WNBA, Major League Baseball and the NHL engaged the moment with boycotts and statements of player solidarity around addressing social justice issues and police brutality, PGA Tour players at the BMW Championship mostly said very little and continued business as usual. The PGA Tour did issue a press release but it wasn't enough for Farrell, who is disappointed that the golfers didn't act en masse as many of the other athletes had in other sports. Bo offers reasons why his colleagues didn't say more and is hopeful that the PGA Tour's legacy of charity will carry over into social justice issues. Both Bo and Farrell agree that the game's past response to the social justice and civil rights issues have already bore perhaps the greatest fruit of the game to this generation: Tiger Woods.

In episode No.2 of Both Sides of the Ball, Bo and Farrell have wide-ranging conversations with Jeff Champ, the father of rising PGA Tour star, Cameron Champ, and Michael Collins, an ESPN golf personality. Bo and Farrell learn what the Champ’s are doing through their foundation to grow the game and help underserved youth. A former comedian and caddie, Collins serves up a hefty dose of funny stories of his escapades as a tour caddie, as well as some perspective on the decline of the black caddie.

In this premiere episode of Both Sides of the Ball, co-hosts and long-time friends Bo Van Pelt and Farrell Evans explain how the social unrest in America during the Pandemic led them to start this podcast that will use the game of golf as a platform to ask deeper questions about our society and culture. The show's first two guests, both PGA Professionals, Mark Wood and Earl Cooper, demonstrate the breadth of the show's reach. Wood, who has been Bo's teacher for 20 years, brings a seasoned insider's perspective to equipment technology, instruction, and the PGA Tour over the last 40 years, while Cooper, an African-American millennial, is charged to shake the foundation of the game to make it a more accessible place for all people. "Silence is not ok, Cooper says. "We need to vocalize where we stand on (racial injustice and equity).

With stints at Newsday, the New York Times and Sports Illustrated, where he covered the NFL and the PGA Tour, Damon Hack is one of the most respected sportswriters in America. At the Golf Channel since 2012, the Los Angeles native and father of triplet boys has responded to the current social unrest with a weekly segment on the Morning Drive that places golf at the center of the conversation about race in America.

When Sean Foley speaks it's a window into the mind of a man equally at home with both The Golfing Machine and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The 46-year-old Canadian native has been an instructor to some of the best players in the world, including Tiger Woods and Justin Rose. Often waxing eloquent in the lyrical cadences of some of his favorite rappers and civil rights heroes, Foley is destined to use his stature to make an impact on the world larger than the game. With Bo and Farrell, he is at his best — at once explaining the evolution of his teaching methods and then expounding on the nature of race in America.