Dave Portnoy defends The Duke after Internet Invitational

Since Episode 5 dropped, part of the internet has decided The Duke should never get another Internet Invitational invite. Prez answered them directly.

That's the useful part. Prez isn't pretending The Duke played well. He says the round got away from him because of the money, which is a pretty human reason to hit it sideways. But he's also clear that he doesn't build or trim the invite list, and that nobody has made a call. So The Duke hasn't been banished. A bunch of people in the replies just want him to be.

Here's why the replies got so loud. The Duke's team was playing for a ton of money, and they came up short. After the episode aired, The Duke posted an apology to his teammates, saying "I wish I had played better on our round and I cost us the match." Ryan Ruffels and Marissa Wenzler would each have won $1.3 million if they'd advanced. Both took it well. Ruffels told him "Chin up Duke!" Prez's "he played nervous" defense lines up with what The Duke already admitted himself.

Some perspective helps. This year's Invitational was filmed in August at Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri. The field grew to 64 players fighting over a $4 million pot, and it mixed YouTube golfers with ex-athletes and internet personalities like The Duke. Put a non-golfer in a match worth 7 figures and sometimes he folds. That's part of what makes the show work.

Prez also talked about the other big storyline of the season, Big John Golfs, and how the event has gone overall.

Barstool Sports

@barstoolsports

Prez weighs in on Big John Golfs and how the Internet Invitational has gone so far:

Dave Portnoy

@stoolpresidente

For the people saying it should be The Duke’s last @Internetinvite t.co/p6FU6yO4Jr

The Big John storyline started well before anyone teed off. He and Prez spent months going at each other on social media, and then Big John showed up and holed a birdie putt on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff on Day 1 to send Team Ruffels through. On Fore Play, Frankie Borrelli said that's the part nobody could have written.

Fore Play Podcast

@ForePlayPodcast

“He was a villain at one point... being a villain to Dave making that putt is just you couldn't script it.” – Frankie Borrelli

0:45

So the two stories end up in the same place. The guy who got hammered online for skipping flights turned into the hero of the season, and the guy getting hammered online now gets a defense from the boss. Nothing has been decided about next year's field, by Prez's own account. With 1 episode left and a pile of money still on the table, expect the invite-list arguments to keep going.