[Photo: Justin Edmonds]
Eight days ago, Michael Brennan won his first-ever PGA Tour title in his first professional PGA Tour start by four strokes. Afterwards, he told The Loop podcast he wasn’t even that nervous coming down the stretch thanks to his extensive experience playing on the PGA Tour Americas. At the time, that claim seemed a bit dubious. Of course he must have been nervous! How could the PGA Tour Americas be more intimidating than the white-hot lights of the PGA Tour? Now we have our answer.
On Monday, Brennan continued his post-win pod rota with a stop on the The Smylie Kaufman Podcast. Host Smylie Kaufman asked Brennan to share his craziest travel story from his time on the PGA Tour’s lower circuit, and he didn’t disappoint, delivering this wild retelling of his experience driving through the Rio favelas with a sketchy Uber driver. Fasten those seatbelts, folks.
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What a journey it’s been from @pgatouramericas to @pgatour for Michael Brennan … figuratively and literally🚗‼️@SmylieKaufman10 had some interesting travel stories from his time on @KornFerryTour, and had to ask for Michael’s best one … boy did he deliver 😂
Our conversation… pic.twitter.com/m1raVkKHUO
— The Smylie Show (@thesmylieshow) November 3, 2025
“I thought I was getting abducted in Rio,” Brennan said. “I’m getting told as I’m getting into Rio, ‘If you go into the favelas [Rio de Janeiro’s gang-controlled slums], you’re dead,’ and we’re driving kind of through one. I’m freaking out… I’m sitting in the passenger seat so I can kind of see the driver and he starts voice-to-texting. Then he goes into the Uber app – I have a video on my phone – and starts screenshotting our route and final destination and sending it to someone on his phone. I start texting everyone I know. I start sharing my location. I send them the video. I’m freaking out.”
Thankfully Brennan had his caddie, Jeff Kirkpatrick, in the car with him, who was completely unbothered by the situation. There are two types of travellers in this world – the over-stresser and the under-stresser – and when paired together, they average each other out just like a good player-caddie combo. In this case, that was for the best, because Brennan and Kirkpatrick arrived at their intended destination on time and completely unscathed.
“It was a false alarm,” Brennan said. “But I thought we were dead.”
