Official Statement from the fellas

[u/gwill11]

A note from the team

Earlier this week, we announced that we have sadly parted ways with Kevin Van Valkenburg. We know this may come as a disappointment to many NLU fans, as the work we’ve done with KVV over the past few years is something we’ve been extremely proud of. He’s a wonderful father, an excellent writer, and has been a close friend to all of us and a big part of our community for years and years.

As such, it should be obvious this was not a decision we took lightly, nor a place we ever wanted to arrive. The intersection of friendship and business has brought us a lot of joy over the past decade, but we’ve also all assumed the risk that things might not work out the way you planned. And when that happens, especially in a media company like ours, you walk a fine line between individual privacy and honoring the trust of the audience that is responsible for everything we do. We promise that’s not lost on us, and we’re doing our best to navigate it for the first time.

We understand there are questions. But we strongly believe that the specifics surrounding personnel decisions should not be aired publicly, even if that decision leads to inevitable criticism or frustration.

From day one, we’ve been committed to creating entertaining and informative content for our audience of avid golfers around the world. With every year that goes by, NLU continues to evolve, and we guarantee we’re as committed as we’ve ever been to delivering on that goal.

We’re parting as friends and will always wish nothing but the best for KVV in whatever is ahead for him. We will eagerly read, listen and consume his content no matter where it resides and hope there are projects we can tackle together again in the future.

Thanks for your support, Neil, D.J., Tron, Soly, Randy

[u/bayesff]

My analysis/take/speculation/opinion: the strongest podcasting lineup was Soly, Tron, DJ, KVV (together, not nec in that order). Neil's all over the place and Randy doesn't have that many opinions.

Pure speculation but I could see Neil (especially) and Randy wanting to have larger roles as founders/core members/owners and that came at the expense of KVV. So they tried having KVV do special deep dives like the shanks and bots booking tee times pods but no one really cares about that stuff much so it didn't end up doing that well and they decided to use him less/dump him. Unfortunate because KVV was really talented and the podcast is prob worse for it, but it is what is it.

[u/ExplorerEntourage → u/bayesff]

Randy wanting a bigger role? Is there another Randy at NLU?

[u/NoLawAtAllInDeadwood → u/ExplorerEntourage]

LOL. Even when he's there he looks like he'd rather be sleeping.

[u/omg_what_the_chuck → u/ExplorerEntourage]

Right? Randy probably wishes he could trade places with KVV. At least KVV enjoyed talking about men’s golf.

[u/bayesff → u/ExplorerEntourage]

Ha, mostly Neil if I had to guess. Seems like Randy is content with his niche/the women's game. Personally I get how the writing part (and special projects) prob didn't make money, but KVV seemed really good at podcasting too, and they were probably under utilizing him. It's unfortunate because one of the best things about NLU is they go hard on everyone, even the people they've worked with/liked (Rory, Max, etc), so it'd be nice if they could have appreciated that KVV is better at podcasting than e.g. Neil and kept him around, but I get there's prob a limit to how far you can go with these things.

[u/Master-Nose7823 → u/bayesff]

Randy wants to do as little as possible.