Hello fellow “Wait is September-November on the Euro Tour secretly the best part of the golf calendar” sickos. There are dozens of us.

Name drops today: Sangmoon Bae, Thomas the Tank Engine, giraffes, Brian Rolapp, Donald Trump and Shane Ryan.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Holdereness and Bourne.

Fall finally (sort of) arrived here in Texas, and it will eventually bring with it all the colors we associate with these months. Those colors will last approximately two days before H&B has to carry the torch for the rest of the season.

Holderness and Bourne puts so much time and an outrageous amount of thought into its colors (which you can read about here) to keep fall around long after the leaves have fallen and the plants and grass have turned.

We’ll talk more about narrative arcs below, but first … here is how I feel about H&B’s, especially when it comes to the colors and patterns it produces.

This sounds like a ridiculous — and honestly kind of normal sport thing — a golf attire company’s color schemes?

But every decision implies a level of care and thoughtfulness, and H&B’s decisions convey not only wonderful colors that all fit together but also a care for their current and future customers that goes above and beyond what is … well … normal.

Alright, now on to the news.

Young Grown Up Tom Kim

Every star athlete goes through some version of this fan social reception at some point (usually early to middle) in their career.

Most go through it, though, at an older age than Tom Kim has gone through it.

Remember when he popped on the scene, winning PGA Tour events and explaining that he named himself after Thomas the Tank Engine. What fun!

Then we got the era of wearing an ankle brace at The Open, playing in the mud at the PGA and being declared a global superstar despite a resume that didn’t match that phrase.

It was all … a lot. Especially when the underlying numbers — and this is very much Part 2 of the entire process — never backed up that he was actually great in the way a modern player needs to be great (short off the tee with a good but not extraordinary short game).

I think Part 3 started unfolding for me at the Scottish Open this summer. He had this great quote after taking down Bob Mac, Min Woo, Matt Fitz and Rory McIlroy at the Renaissance Club.

Sounds like someone who has been spending time with Scottie Scheffler.

And then I had a mini epiphany during the Presidents Cup: I think I really like Tom Kim.

There are a couple of reasons for this.

1. His maturation (see above).
2. He is an excellent character in a sport that doesn’t have many.
3. (To combine those first two) He seems to have found his spot in the constellation of good and great characters in pro golf.
4. He hits nasty iron shots.
5. He’s kind of a gamer.

We got bits and pieces of all of those during the Presidents Cup where he went 4-1-0 and took down Wyndham Clark in singles on Sunday. But it was in a much quieter setting (albeit with much higher stakes) the following weekend at the Asian Games — just two days ago — that solidified my delight in Tom Kim the golfer.

After expending an incomprehensible amount of energy taunting the entire city of Chicago alongside Si Woo Kim, TK skipped the post-Presidents Cup festivities, got on a plane to Japan and played arguably the most intense tournament of his life.

South Korea famously requires its men to participate in 18 months of military service unless they have brought pride to their country by winning any Olympic medal or gold at the Asian Games. I’m not here to get into a geopolitical debate about that 18-month service time requirement, only to say that it has upended players like Sang Moon Bae, who was not quite at Tom Kim’s level but not that far off.

So what did TK do after emptying the tank for a week at the Presidents Cup? He went out and shot 64 in the final round on Sunday — with the entire weight of his career hanging over the day — and won the event by three.

His reaction reminded me of Rory at the 2025 Masters.

The Asian Games, like the Olympics, is played every four years. Think about that pressure. TK would have had, what, two more rips at exemption (2028 Olympics and 2030 Asian Games) before he probably would have had to enter in to the mandatory service.

That is a different pressure than, say, earning an extra $75,000 at the Memorial in June. And while it’s true that he was not playing against Scottie, Xander and Ludvig, I have a tremendous amount of respect for what it takes to throw a 64 on the table on Sunday with your professional existence hanging in the balance.

Which means we have now fully arrived at Part 3 of the star athlete arc.

Tom Kim is still relatively young, but he is playing and acting more like Grown Up Tom Kim now. He has matured from novelty who found some win luck early to an above-average PGA Tour player who was crazily overexposed and finally to someone who has become easy to love and root for at pretty much every turn.

… I guess we'll never know".

He will never be a four-time major champion, and that’s OK.

Because what he is is what golf needs: A character whose golf game has real substance. A flusher who is growing up on a global stage and relaying everything he’s learning in real time. A player who doesn’t take himself too seriously but who, when all the chips are on the table, is absolutely someone you want hitting the shots. That is a rarity, indeed, and someone I have grown to appreciate and maybe even love rooting for.

Bits and Bobs from the Weekend

• The most powerful man in golf petitioning the most powerful man in the world to change time (literal time) for the sake of the golf industry is absolutely normal sport.

• Good (and amusing) piece here by Eamon Lynch on the future of current LIV players.

• 😐️😐️😐️ 

• Speaking of amusing, I cackled when I read this on how the PGA Tour might be interested in equity in Ryder Cup Europe. Would be incredible.

• This response to a response to me about Cam Young’s greatness was pretty hilarious.

• [Jason here] Can we all take a second and appreciate the generational talent and historic performance of Tom Kim Shane Ryan? Just an all-time great that shows up in the biggest of moments.

• Yes!

Thank you for reading this newsletter. While I will continue to fight for slowing down in my own life, we will also fight for it in the life of our business here at Normal Sport. It is the way forward for so many reasons. Two of the best being: 1. Everyone making content seems to be going in the other direction and 2. We are susceptible to completely burning out otherwise.

Greetings all my “still theorizing about the Presidents Cup and already thinking about the Ryder Cup rosters” sickos. Welcome to another edition of a newsletter built very specifically for you.

On Monday, we talked about the team side of things. Today, we’re going to focus on individuals. Let’s jump right into it.

Name drops today: Geoff Ogilvy, Zach Bauchou, Austin Eckroat, Ian Poulter, the Fitzpatricks and the Kims.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Charlie Golf Co.

We all love sport at the highest level, and I have built a professional career around this very thing. But to me there is still nothing better — not experiencing the Ryder Cup up close, the Masters, nothing — better than sharing sports-related moments with my kids.

I am embroiled in this right now with my fall flag football and 13U tournament baseball coaching duties. And Charlie Golf Co. started a business geared toward this very thing — getting all of us out on the field of play more often with our kids.

There are a million ways to build a company. Cheap hype, quick profit. We all know what that looks like. But Charlie Golf Co. bags have a top-shelf quality with prices that parents can (and want to) actually afford.

In a world focused on optimization, growth and bigger profits, Charlie Golf Co. is focused on moments and the people who make them. Check out their bags right here.

And now, onto the news.

11 Thoughts on the 2026 Presidents Cup

1. We should start with Scottie. I think we have already determined that he is a marathon runner, not a sprinter. And the 3-1-0 record will obscure just how mediocre he was (for him) throughout this event. Yes, he played well against Nico Echavarria on Sunday, but before that, he …

• Made two birdies in his first four ball match and watched Sam Burns carry them to a 1UP win.

• Lost in alternate shot 1 down while gaining 1.3 shots, which was pretty decent.

• Lost 2.5 shots in Saturday four ball on two birdies (he may have had a conceded birdie in there that didn’t count). That’s four total birdies in 35 holes (and two in his last 32) for someone who was averaging nearly five per 18-hole round this season.

• Was benched for alternate shot on Saturday.

Overall, he was about 0.0 SG for the week outside of the individual match on Sunday. That’s just not good enough for the best player in the world and the best player anyone has seen since Tiger Woods.

People were furious at Brandt Snedeker for benching him (we’ll get there), but they should have been more upset that Scottie made himself so bench-able.

The weird part for me is that these seem like the exact types of events Scottie would crush at. He’s a sociopathic competitor who played team sports growing up and loves taking it to guys right in front of them. But for whatever reason — probably several of them — he hasn’t grown into the sprinter we thought he would be.

2. All of that means this will be a massive talking point at Adare Manor next year, which will infuriate him. I think Scottie — like most multi standard deviations performers — is constantly trying to do things on his terms. Prep, play, talk. All of it. Look at some of his answers to questions this year.

Look at his answer to Cara on Sunday. His terms, not hers.

And team events are about constantly being pliable to different situations.

This actually makes me appreciate players who can adapt to it well — Rory and Rahm come to mind — because I think team golf is actually more different than I have maybe considered it to be over the last 10-15 years.

It’s not a different sport, but it is very different. Different things to think about. Where should I play this based on where those two guys are and also where my partner normally hits a shot from 220? What’s the right leave here for my guy? I know I can hit this leave, but can he? 

Not his terms.

Again, that’s OK. Tiger was the same way. But I think it might mean we have to think of Scottie as an above average team golf player and not the perma-No. 1 that he is on the individual side. I’m not positive people will do this … mostly because it feels insane. But it speaks to just how different these weeks are. And also, please remind me of this when he goes 4-0-1 at Adare Manor and baptizes Tommy on Sunday in that little pond up by 18.

3. There is an interesting flatness across the board on this U.S. side. I don’t mean energy, either. I talked about this re: captains and players on Monday, but it’s also true within the hierarchy of players. You could argue that Europe and the International team both have a pretty clear pecking order when it comes to alphas in these weeks.

Rory
Rahm
Tommy

Si Woo
Tom Kim

They all know they’re going all five. They all take on the mantle of leadership, take the arrows for everyone else. Step into the role and seem to relish it. They blend in to the humility of the team overall but also everyone knows where to look when everything is going sideways. Who is that for the U.S.?

Scottie?
Wyndham?
Cam Young?
Gotterup?
JT?
Cantlay?!

Honestly … it was supposed to be Spieth. I remember Phil talking about this. The next generation of U.S. superstars built to take this on. The Rory role. Unfortunately, Spieth has been worse at golf than Mac Meissner (literally) over the last 12 months, and the U.S. struggles in these weeks with who to look to. This is probably something the U.S. has always struggled with a little bit — even when Tiger was peak Tiger — which is bizarre to say considering it routinely produces most of the best players in the world.

Gimme a P, for Problem.

4. Si Woo and Tom Kim are incredible for this event. The perfect blend of great golf and performative nonsense throughout the week. I can’t get enough because it seems like they can’t get enough.

via Dylan Dethier

Here’s Geoff Ogilvy.

They aren’t as good at golf as Adam Scott and Hideki have been over the years, but they make this event far better because, well … Adam Scott and Hideki aren’t doing stuff like this. At these events, this is half the fun. Maybe more.

via No Laying Up

I have more below on how the International team has turned this event into must see golf TV every year, and these two are an enormous part of that. Think about how boring and listless the Internationals would be without them. I said this on the pod, but Tom Kim has turned me all the way back around on him. I’m in.

Presidents Cup Bowl awarded to the Dog of The Week

5. Couple of things here. The first is that Jackson Koivun played … good. He didn’t carry the U.S. like Cam Young did, but I would say after his OB ball on Thursday, he was very solid. We don’t need to make the overall performance into something that it’s not.

However!

Data Golf doesn’t have a category for what went down over those last few holes on Sunday. Consider how much the event was in the balance in the last hour of the day …

And Koivun tied the 17th with a par and then did this on No. 18.

Here’s the full video.

So yeah, we shouldn’t use a couple of twirls as evidence to send him out first at Adare Manor, but within the context of this moment — with the cup very much still up in the air as he’s finishing up the last two holes — as he stared at the best player on the International team and hit those two shots? I mean, come on.

The Always Online golf crowd definitely over-indexes on club twirling and anything generally related, but when the twirling is clearly an overflow of how locked in you are and how thrilled you are to have hit this shot in that moment, I do think it says something about the type of player you are on big stages. It is not nothing.

Also, not all shots are created equal. We can argue whether that’s fair or not, but I won’t be debating whether it’s true or a reality. Because when we think about Jackson Koivun as a future member of Team USA, we’re going to think about how he closed out Si Woo and effectively the Presidents Cup (though technically Jacob Bridgeman made the winning putt) as a 21 year old who was facing someone named Baylor Larrabee in the NCAA finals just four months ago.

Far Future members of Team USA

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,050 of them) and includes some JT thoughts, more on Cam Young’s greatness and a closer look at some of the U.S. alphas.

By becoming a member, you will receive the following …

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6. I would like to announce that I’m not taking any questions on JT right now. I have written extensively — like extensively extensively — on the importance of JT in the U.S. team room at these events. However, his play was so bad at times this week and the U.S. has developed so many other guys that I’m just not positive anymore.

He’s still a solid player, but we’re a long way from top five in the world JT, and he’s almost unplayable in alternate shot.

What do you do with him if the Ryder Cup started tomorrow? You probably take him because I think the value he adds as a team leader is greater than the difference in value you would add with J.J. Spaun playing better golf than JT. But I will admit that this position is also getting more difficult to defend.

He lost 5 shots to the field this week. The worst U.S. player, worse than Ryo Hisatsune and equivalent to C-Bez. And again, you’re not taking him because the golf is great, but the question is just how bad the golf has to get to not take him at all?

I need a winter to think it over.

Somewhere in Dallas

7. Any longtime Normal Sport reader knows that Cam Young has not always been my favorite player. He has seemed joyless and maybe even surly, though I think JLM has talked me into the fact that he’s nobody other than himself, which is a very likable thing to be, especially in the oft-performative arena of professional sports.

I should note, though, that I have grown to love him at these team events. He’s engaged, locked in, yelling for his teammates, fist pumping all over the yard and — at least this week — he was the best golfer in the field.

Eight golfers played in both this year’s Presidents Cup and last year’s Ryder Cup. Here’s how they rank by SG in both events.

1. Cam Young: 15.6
2. Scottie Scheffler: 2.8
3. Xander Schauffele: 0.3
4. Collin Morikawa: 0.0
5. Russell Henley: -0.1
6. Patrick Cantlay: -1.3
7. Justin Thomas: -4.2
8. Sam Burns: -7.2

There’s probably a lot to talk about in that bottom group. But we’re definitely not talking enough about Cam Young at the top. The unquestionable best player for the U.S. going to Ireland next year.

8. Hayden Martin brought this up on the Normal Sport Show on Tuesday (click below to watch), but should these team events be on three-year cycles?

Here’s what he proposed …

Year 1: Americans vs. Internationals (Presidents Cup)
Year 2: Internationals vs. Europeans (TBD Cup)
Year 3: Europeans vs. Americans (Ryder Cup)

This would be cool for multiple reasons.

1. It would take the game to more global arenas.
2. It would give the U.S. a year to regroup.
3. It would give us a chance to see the European machine more often.
4. It might (?) help the Internationals attract more young people the same way the Ryder Cup did on the European side (how many of those guys grew up dreaming of winning cups?)

It won’t happen for one reason.

1. It is not as commercially lucrative without the Americans.

I am for it for all the reasons above. And while I think the Presidents Cup is probably disadvantageous to the U.S. because it’s such a lose-lose proposition, I also think the Europeans would spin it into a dry run for the Ryder Cup and convince themselves it’s an advantage in ways the Americans just don’t.

Way into it. Won’t ever happen.

9. Question: Is Chris Gotterup an alpha or the alpha?

It doesn’t look pretty, but I think that is often the point. It never looked pretty with Pat Reed or Ian Poulter either. They just … won.

I was so impressed with how badly Gotterup and also Wyndham seemed to want the ball. Gotterup definitely got a “if he’s even close to the team, you have to take him because I know what I watched this week” boost for future cup teams.

Honestly, Wyndham kind of did, too.

He was the U.S.’ second-best player in terms of SG, even though he went 1-4-0. Again don’t always trust SG in these weeks obviously because of losses like this one.

I think Wyndham was probably a little worse than his SG suggests — his Saturday performance was a little dodgy — but he still instilled confidence in me both in how he played, how he called out the crowds and in how engaged he seemed in every single match.

10. I was terrified to say it, but I agreed with Scottie sitting on Saturday afternoon in alternate shot. On paper, this was very stupid. But the matches aren’t played on paper, and I think part of the point of having depth on a team is to be physically, mentally and emotionally ready for Sunday. As these weeks get bigger and bigger with more pomp and circumstance, this becomes even more important because of how draining the whole thing is.

KVV indirectly noted this here …

There are a million factors, but the (probably very noisy) math seems to support sitting one match vs. pushing it to the limit. I don’t know. You could probably talk me into different directions here, but I definitely didn’t think it was a slam dunk, no brainer to play Scottie given these numbers and how he had been playing to that point on his own ball.

Twitter tweet

11. It will probably go unnoticed, but this International team was bad bad. A reminder that if you pulled U.S. players who were the equivalent of the Internationals in terms of Data Golf ranking, this is what the team would have looked like.

Wyndham Clark
J.J. Spaun
Ryan Gerard
Patrick Reed
Keegan Bradley
Michael Thorbjornsen
Harris English
Jordan Spieth
Johnny Keefer
Zach Bauchou
Blades Brown
Austin Eckroat

Ignore briefly that this team may have actually beaten the real U.S. team and consider how weak that 12-man lineup is. And this is the equivalent of the squad that had the U.S. down three going into Sunday singles.

Two things are true ..

• The U.S. was awful the first three days. This is a team it should rout.
• The Internationals have built something meaningful.

So much of the Presidents Cup is “what does this mean for the Ryder Cup?” which is unfair to an International side that has legit nearly won three of the last six of these events.

They deserve credit for what they have put together. It sometimes feels like the U.S. struggles to put together good culture and chemistry even though they have the stars and stripes as the thing that unites.

The International team has nothing except each other.

The biggest compliment I can pay the International side is that they have turned this event from a sometimes laughingstock into a must-see tournament. Not the Ryder Cup, no, and it never will be. But something that, over the last decade, has gotten better every time it has been played.

Thank you as always for supporting Normal Sport. In a world obsessed with constantly providing more and more and more stuff, we remain handmade, bot-free and immensely invested in the craft of creating something great for our community.

Greetings to fellow over-analyzers of team events!

Here’s the #content plan for this week.

Monday — Today’s newsletter: Some thoughts on the teams (mostly the U.S. side) from the Presidents Cup. Critiques, observations and notes.

Tuesday — Podcast: Takeaways from the event and the teams going forward.

Wednesday or Thursday — Newsletter: A deeper dive into some of the individuals that make them up. JT, Koivun, Scottie, Si Woo and plenty more. If we don’t mention those guys today it’s because we’re saving them for part 2 of our look at the Presidents Cup.

Let’s get right to work!

Name drops today: Annie Duke, Darren Rovell, Luke Donald, Cara Banks, Jackson Koivun and Nico Echavarria.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Sap’s Original, which we are guessing some of the Americans — and definitely Chris Gotterup — could be in need of the day after celebrating a come-from-behind Presidents Cup victory.

Why?

Well Sap’s Original provides an ingredient stack that actually works together. Does Gotterup need electrolytes for hydration following Sunday’s celly? Guessing yes!

Does he need adaptogens for stress and balance? Probably!

What about aminos to help his body recover faster? Given what it looked like he was about to put away on Sunday evening? 💯 

Thankfully, Sap’s is easy to drink, hard-working fuel. Light, crushable, and — similar to that other stuff that was being consumed on Sunday — still refreshing in a can.

It delivers serious hydration and performance support, and you can pick some up on Amazon right here.

And now, onto the news.

12 Thoughts on the 2026 Presidents Cup

1. I sent this text to another Golf Media Person on Saturday afternoon when the U.S. led all four alternate shot matches, and it appeared as if the Miracle at Medinah™️ was well underway.

I think this is more or less how things played out over the weekend (as KVV also noted in his terrific recap for the International side).

For some reason, as I write this, I am reminded of 2016 at Hazeltine. The Euros got stomped — just absolutely routed — went on to held a tremendous press conference on Sunday evening and then promptly returned to their process.

They have lost one time since then.

Why does this come to mind when the U.S. just … won?

Because I believe that the U.S. teams believe that results matter more than process — or at least enough that they haven’t implemented a consistent process to date — and I don’t think that’s a very good way to look at these events.

In other words, I think some folks on the U.S. side could stand to read Annie Duke’s book, Thinking in Bets or something similar.

Here’s the summary of that book …

We cannot and should not look at results — a win! — and believe that the process was good. Just as the Europeans did not look at results in 2016 — an obliteration! — and believe that the process was the problem.

2. I am also reminded of when Jim Furyk went on the NLU pod after losing Paris in 2018 and said the following.

I wrote recently about how much I loved this quote, and I do. I think it shows a ton of humility and is probably true.

However, I also think it’s emblematic of the fact that the U.S. just has bad processes or worse, no consistently present processes at all. They seem to have little to hold onto. No playbook to turn back to when things are going poorly. It very much feels like they’re making it up as they go, especially from one year to the next.

Throw in the difference in makeup of the PGA Tour and PGA of America, and the entire thing seems to be blown about by the wind, but the U.S. often gets crowned in the end because they have most of the best players in the world.

3. To be clear, this is not necessarily the captain’s fault. It’s really nobody’s fault. The U.S. — for a lot of different reasons — just doesn’t have the infrastructure or system as the Europeans (and, I believe, the International team).

This is why you get Snedeker…

1. Forgetting who he put out on the course.

2. Apologizing for continually putting Scottie/Burns out first because it let Ogilvy react to the best U.S. duo on paper. To repeatedly make this mistake and immediately regret it reads like not knowing how the Presidents Cup matchups were put together, which is odd.

3. Not really totally knowing why they put certain pairings together (?) like Bridgeman and Henley.

4. AGAIN offering Scottie up in singles and letting Ogilvy feed him Nico.*

*The argument for this is that the U.S. was trying to bait the Internationals into playing all their bad players first to get momentum. I will concede that could have been the strategy, but given Sneds’ explanation in other areas, I’m unconvinced that it definitely was the strategy.

4. Here’s the argument Data Golf made, though, that none of this even matters.

I hear that from a statistical standpoint. But I think it underindexes on the idea that good processes and systems lead to trust and comfortability from all parties because they provide stability. Anyone who has ever parented young kids understands this intimately. Do your kids respond better to a good system or an ambiguous one year over year?

I think the U.S. has some pretty ambiguous systems (see above), and that leads to some real lack of trust and comfort, neither of which can be measured in a spreadsheet.

The famous line — which was dropped in our Slack over the weekend — of, “You don't rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your systems” definitely comes to mind.

Also: I think it’s unfair to critique without offering at least some solutions. If you’re looking for those, I laid them out right here.

5. I thought it was a little bizarre that Snedeker was running around for most of the week telling anyone with a microphone some version of, I screwed up. I let these guys down. Blame me. It’s my fault. All while the U.S. team was only 3-4 points down and with as much as half the competition left.

Almost as if he was operating out of fear and trying to get out ahead of post-event criticism from either inside or outside the U.S. organization.

It made me think about how there are a couple different schools of thought on how these organizations should be run. This is how I would sum them up when it comes to team events.

Europeans (and Internationals): Traditional hierarchy, top down leadership.
Americans: Very flat organization, captains and players have similar power.

On the Euro side, you have Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm publicly and privately submitting their careers and their legacies to [checks notes] Luke Donald. Think about how much humility that takes. This also seems like what’s taking place on the International side as well.

On the American side, it sometimes feels like the captain is technically running everything, but everything is just flatter. You know how when you’re coaching youth sports and everyone asks you to play shortstop and quarterback? That’s how some of these teams feel like they’re run some of the time.

Because there is change between the PGA and PGA Tour between Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup and seemingly no super consistent process, it makes sense that the players would try and take charge. But this so often leads to weak leadership, bad vision and little accountability (see: how the PGA Tour has been run over the last 10 years!)

6. To be fair to everyone involved, I should note that the U.S. might have an amazing process and be executing it behind the scenes far better than I understand.

I will own that.

However, after observing and taking in everything this week (and in previous cup weeks), you have to suspend quite a bit of disbelief and basically squint with your eyes closed to think this is true.

They don’t really seem to adhere to statistics at all at times (see: Henley and Scheffler teeing off on the wrong holes at Bethpage and the caddies figuring that one out), and if there was even a basic explanation of the process of putting pairings together this week, I missed it.

This clip right here bothered me on that front. Here’s Snedeker explaining why Bridgeman and Henley played together …

Again, what is the detailed process here? Looking at a sheet of paper and saying “those guys are good and like each other”? Surely not, right? That sounds like something out of the 1990s at these events.

Surely the U.S. has its own detailed process, but I haven’t really heard it articulated or explained coherently in a while. This leads me to believe the behind-the-scenes work is a bit dodgy as well, which — like I’ve been proselytizing — can lead to a lack of trust from everyone involved.

At the very least — even if the process is in fact guys who like each other — give them some confidence boost by saying, Well Russ the way the course is set up, Russ is going to hit a lot of drives into that 100-150 range, and Jacob is elite from 100-150 yards (which is true). Again, maybe this is happening behind the scenes but it’s definitely not happening in front of them.

But because we won on Sunday and Jackson Koivun twirled his club a few times (which, objectively was sick) and the final was 17-13, I am unconvinced that the U.S. will implement any meaningful overhaul going forward.

To be fair, I would have — for a variety of reasons — been unconvinced it would have done this even if the International team had won.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes more interesting U.S. quotes, an Adare Manor prediction (!!) and ending where we always end, with humility.

By becoming a member, you will receive the following …

• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
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7. I almost laughed out loud at this Snedeker quote after the U.S. won on Sunday.

Brother, these U.S. teams have played 68 team golf matches (four ball and alternate shot) in the last four Presidents Cups and Ryder Cups and their record is …

26 wins
37 losses
5 halves

… despite having better or equivalent teams compared to their opponents. Let’s not sweep that under the rug just because of a good singles session on Sunday.

Also, more broadly, I feel like the U.S. side was pretty impatient and short with media in general this week. Between Sneds saying “Good Lord, guys” when asked about why he paired Henley and Bridgeman and Scottie popping Cara for asking the question everyone was talking about throughout Saturday and Sunday (why he sat), it just feels a bit like these guys are not used to criticism or questioning at all and often caught off guard when it happens at these team events (and I’m not the only one who thinks this).

8. If we want to talk about positives, let’s talk about how I do believe the first part of that Sneds quote. I think this generation of players does care pretty deeply about one another and is legit close. I think they are probably as exasperated as the rest of us at the four ball and alternate shot stuff.

And they deserve a ton of credit for answering the bell on Sunday when they had to have it. We’ll do 1,500 words on talk about Jackson Koivun later this week, but my gosh. To hit those shots under that pressure is insane. And he wasn’t the only one.

It would have been so easy to crumble, and it took everyone on Sunday to win. There’s a lot of “I hate these guys they don’t care and they suck and they don’t show emotion” from U.S. fans. But you don’t do what they did on Sunday if you don’t care.

Both about the event and for one another.

9. If you’re interested in any of what I’ve been writing about, you should go watch the postgame presser with the entire team. It … didn’t seem very joyful. Once the work was done, it seemed like they were more relieved about the win and tired of talking to the media than anything else.

Scottie gesticulating every other question. Sneds making halfhearted jokes. Nobody really truly backing him and his captaincy. The most passionate thing anyone does is JT talking about Jackson Koivun, and then Furyk jumps in at the end and opines on the future. The whole thing is just a little uneven.

Which … whatever. You don’t need to win the presser, and I don’t think it contrasts my previous point. But it’s another data point in the case against the U.S. having a truly great system and everyone pulling on the same rope in the same direction.

Joel Beall’s article was pretty devastating on this front as well.

10. DJ Pie had a good take that was basically, These events rule because we can’t spreadsheet them. Can’t optimize them. Can’t figure them out. 

It pairs nicely with my take that the Ryder Cup (and apparently now Presidents Cup) is amazing because it’s just long enough to find some patterns but far too short for any of them to be meaningful statistically.

So when you have a theory about why a team does well or does poorly, it definitely could be true because basically anything can be true in events this short.

Here’s Data Golf.

Again, this discounts the importance of solidarity and working together as one tremendous machine (see No. 4), but it also gets at what DJ is saying (and I have said) above.

This noise is responsible for fans freaking out, thinking they have the answers and wanting everything to change after nearly every session. Which, yes, must be tiresome for these teams but to again quote Darren Rovell, makes for the most tremendous content.

11. Oh no.

Just … why would you do this?

12. We’ll end where I always like to end with these things: With humility. I wrote about this on Saturday morning, and I will continue writing about it in the future.

Here’s what Sneds said about sitting Scottie on Saturday afternoon.

The quote is not good, but the bigger picture problem is that U.S. players often see the pressure of these events as a weight and a burden when the reality should be that it is an opportunity and a joy.

The reason — in my opinion — that they see the pressure here as a weight and a burden is because they are told to “remember who you are.” Go out there and be who everyone thinks you are!

This burden can be devastatingly heavy (see above).

In contrast, Europe is forgetful. Forget who you are. We are all one this week. That is it.

I don’t think the U.S. understands this, and I’m not sure it ever will.

In all of this, I don’t believe there are more than five people — who are not actually involved in the event — who care about this stuff as much as I do.

Which means I am for sure over-analyzing everything at a microscopic level. But if you can’t do what you love — I would literally write about these events in every single edition if I thought people would read them — inside a golf media business that you own, then there is no point in owning a golf media business.

So thank you as always for supporting us with your time and attention. We will continue giving everything we have when it comes to these tournaments and these simultaneously meaningless but also incredibly meaningful events.

We appreciate you reading.

Greetings!

Friday morning lede: Is the Presidents Cup actually going to be … interesting this year?
Saturday morning lede: It might not be, but definitely in a different way than we thought!

Friday was a disaster. Let’s get right into it.

Name drops today: C Bez, Y2K, Fred Couples, Jon Rahm, Abe Ancer and Bethpage.

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And now, onto the news.

11 Thoughts on Day 2 of the Presidents Cup

1. Friday at the Presidents Cup — where the U.S. got swept and is now down 7-3 — reminded me of this incredible Darren Rovell tweet that has been memed for a full decade now.

As a fan of the U.S. team at these events, Friday’s matches were a travesty. As a fan of sports intrigue, content, consequential things happening and an actually interesting Presidents Cup?

They absolutely could not have gone any better than they did.

2. Where do we even begin? The No. 1 player in the world seems like a good place to start. Scottie was dialed early and hit three nasty approaches in the first seven holes from …

202 yards —> 3 feet
69 yards —> 4 feet
187 yards —> 7 feet

But he and Burns made exactly 0 birdies on the back nine and got closed out in the most gut-wrenching way imaginable: Watching Nick Taylor get up and down from 148 yards and then seeing Burns’ 18-foot birdie power lip the left side.

Scottie is now … this is kind of unbelievable … 1-8-0 in alternate shot at Presidents Cups and Ryder Cups. That’s one total point in nine matches.

He’s lost …

9 and 7 😬 
5 and 3
4 and 3
2 down
2 and 1
1 down (3x)

I believe that is hitting for the cycle in alternate shot losses. He has as many 9 and 7 losses as he has wins. And the worst part is, I have no idea what there is to be done about it.

3. Surely the other matches went better? No. Wrong. They went worse.

JT and Cam Young made [triple checks notes] two bogeys and no birdies through the first 15 holes and then got closed out on a 30-footer by someone (C Bez) who has two top 10s this calendar year (Myrtle Beach and Puerto Rico). Sure.

And even that duo may have been better than Cantlay and Xander, who hit some of the worst shots I’ve ever seen hit in a team competition. Cantlay left an approach from 70 yards a full 50 feet short at one point, and Xander missed a 5-footer to lose the match.

Perfect ending to a miserable day. No notes.

4. The lone bright spot for the U.S. was Wyndham Clark — of all people — who wasn’t even on last year’s Ryder Cup team and had exactly zero top 10s at the halfway point of the PGA Tour season. He is the overall leader in strokes gained for the event thus far and pretty clearly the U.S.’ best player.

And he lost his match after Collin Morikawa missed his own 5-footer on No. 17 and then flew the green on 18 when they needed to make birdie. That duo got matched up against the only pairing that played better than they did on Friday (per Data Golf). Of course.

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This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes an alternate shot stat for the ages, some quotes I’m not loving out of the U.S. camp about pairings and a theory I have about the U.S. in these events in general.

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5. The U.S. is now — I cannot believe this is real — 6-24 in its last 30 alternate shot matches across the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup.

2023 and 2025 Ryder Cup: 3-13
2024 and 2026 Presidents Cup: 3-11

That’s unbelievable. The worrisome part for me is two-fold and extends beyond whatever happens the rest of this week.

1. On Friday, Paul McGinley gave a peek at how the Euros prep for these events. Reverse engineering, deep statistical analysis, things of that nature. I’m curious if the U.S. does the same. It … doesn’t seem that way, does it?

2. I haven’t heard a lot from Sneds about deep prep work in terms of really breaking down the golf course. That doesn’t mean they’re not doing it, but here was an interesting quote on Scottie and Burns on Friday evening.

I refuse to believe we’re just pairing best friends because they’re best friends, but … I mean, are we? Couple that with this quote from before the matches started, and I’m … not totally sure?

I would love an in-depth explanation of exactly how the U.S. pairings come together.

To be fair, I’m not saying that every team needs to do it the way the Europeans do it. Maybe it makes the Americans more comfortable to be paired with buddies. Maybe that’s actually the best way for them. I don’t know. I think the bottom line for me is that there doesn’t seem to be a consistent process in place that is followed by every team and every captain the way there is with the Europeans in the Ryder Cup.

Having that process doesn’t mean it will always work (2021 at Whistling), doesn’t mean you’ll always win (2016 Hazeltine). But at least there is some consistency and continuity across competitions that you can trust in. Good processes lead to trust from all parties because they provide stability, and the U.S. seems to have lost some trust in itself over the last several years, which leads me to believe their process is lacking.

Same rake, different Nikes

6. One quote I have thought about recently as I raise young kids who have high highs and low lows is that nothing is ever as good as it seems and nothing is ever as bad as it seems. If you’re a U.S. fan and want to remain that way, I would advise avoiding Twitter right now. People want heads to roll. They are demanding the blood of 1,000 captains. People are irrationally angry in ways that make college football fans seem normal.

I’ll avoid absolutely crushing them right now because I think the reality is that U.S. will light up both sessions on Saturday and still win on Sunday (Data Golf says 46 percent the U.S. wins or ties).

I think cooler heads (and more talent) will prevail. But if not, then all of this is obviously worth a full dissection at some point after the event.

For now, it’s enough to say that the best possible outcome — the best possible outcome — is a narrow, dramatic U.S. victory followed by 12 straight months of constant and intense questioning about alternate shot methods, pairings processes and Scottie Scheffler struggles leading into the Ryder Cup.

Again, this is the outcome the U.S. is longing for right now, which should tell you everything you need to know about the first two days at Medinah.

7. Is now a good time to remind you that 10 of the 12 U.S. players are ranked higher than every single player on the International team other than Si Woo. Per Data Golf …

Average U.S. ranking: 10.7
Average International ranking: 52.6

I still think the U.S. will win out because talent usually wins out by the end of the week (non-Ryder Cup edition), but now they are not only carrying a 7-3 deficit into Saturday but also the potential embarrassment of being the first U.S. team since before Y2K (before Y2K!) to lose one of these things.

8. Min Woo and Ryan Fox were electric together and also one of the most hilarious pairings imaginable. They are only 11 years apart, but it feels both socially and culturally as if they are separated by five generations.

Min Woo could easily fit into whatever generation is in college right now (alpha?) and Foxy could blend in with the boomers. The unlikeliest duo that made six birdies in the first 18 holes and beat the second best pairing on the entire course on Friday. Golf rules.

9. The U.S. has (kind of) been here before. At Royal Melbourne in 2019, it went down 6.5-3.5 after the first two days and clawed back to win 16-14 on Sunday in one of the more thrilling events I’ve ever covered.

Here’s what those first two days looked like.

I think this U.S. team is probably better than that one and this International team is definitely worse, but there has been absolutely zero juice from the Americans following the first few hours on Thursday. I don’t know how Saturday is going to go, but it certainly feels pretty bleak sitting here on Friday evening.

And that’s kind of the beauty of these events. Emotions change so much day to day, hour to hour. Then they can flip in a hurry (see: Sunday at Bethpage). Saturday morning will probably decide who wins the event so it will be fascinating to see who pounds the table and hits the shots for the U.S. against this completely outclassed International side that suddenly believes in doing something crazy.

The Miracle at Medinah, but for which team?

10. I feel for the U.S. side in this way: There is so little upside and so much downside to these Presidents Cups. If you win, cool. If you lose, the house is burning. That’s a tough arena to enter into, which is not an excuse as much as it is a reality for these teams.

The real interesting thing here is that if you believe fundamental change is needed for the U.S., rooting for a horrific loss won’t help that because there is no one person or entity in charge of the U.S. team.

This week, it’s the PGA Tour. Next year at the Ryder Cup, the PGA of America. So if you’re a U.S. fan who wants them to bottom out and is demanding change, who do you even demand it from? Who is there to hold accountable other than … a captain who won’t be the captain the next time around?

It’s a bizarre thing. I know some people probably want the U.S. to get routed to help speed up change and improve process. But I’m unconvinced a loss would affect anything because of this sort of shared ownership (if you want to call it that) of Team USA between the Tour and the PGA of America. It’s an odd position to be in.

11. I didn’t get a chance to comment on this, but it seems relevant now. Brandt Snedeker had a quote about Scottie that caught my eye earlier in the week.

Here’s the quote.

This is maybe unfair to Sneds and to that quote, but I think the Americans in general — across Presidents Cups and Ryder Cups — think of themselves as 12 individuals that make up a team. That’s not derogatory. It’s just how they do it. Europe, on the other hand, thinks of themselves as a team made up of 12 individuals. I don’t know what the International team thinks, and to this point it hasn’t really mattered a ton.

The distinction above is important though.

I think back to this Jon Rahm quote from Rome all the time. All the time!

I don’t think the Americans have ever truly thought this way. They think about walking through those gates and remembering who they are — the best players in the world. This is mostly fine, but when they struggle, it can become such a burden. And it is maddening to watch. It’s sometimes as if they’re all pulling on the same rope but in different directions.

And every two years, they get fooled into believing this mindset is working because they (normally) house a team made up of Nico Echavarrias and Ryo Hisatsunes.

This is maybe a small thing that I am blowing out of proportion, but I do think it matters, and I would be curious to talk to some guys after their careers are over to see if they feel (or felt) the same way.

Other Notes from Day 2

• Gary Woodland and Fred Couples walk the same. Woodland was walking up No. 18 with the Burns/Scheffler group, and I though, “Hmm, I didn’t know Freddie was a vice captain.” Very swagger-y, lots of amble.

• Great tweet here.

• Xander looks completely lost, which is pretty wild. Xander rarely — maybe never — looks like that, which I admit does give me some pause overall about the rest of the week despite my bravado above.

• Bones said the line, "What he got was an unbelievable bounce off of corporate hospitality ..." at one point on Friday. Which is sick. And resulted in Conners and Taylor winning the hole.

• I thought Scottie having to putt this on No. 8 was absurd. Get out of here with that.

• The International team hasn't lost (or tied) a Friday match at the Presidents Cup since before Covid. How is that possible? That seems even more impossible than the U.S. being 6-24 in its last 30 alternate shot matches.

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Greetings!

Is the Presidents Cup actually going to be … interesting this year?

The International team has been down a combined 9-1 after the last two Thursdays at this event so trailing 3-2 might feel like they’re leading. It’s their best first day since 2019 when they actually led 4-1 after Thursday, and the U.S. had to win singles 8-4 to avoid its first loss in this event this century.

Let’s get to what happened on Thursday and what’s in store for Friday’s round.

Name drops today: Anderson Varejao, AI (the basketball player, not the machine learning experience), Eliud Kipchoge, Noah Lyles, Brad Pitt, Duff Foreman, K.H. Lee and Jon Rahm.

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According to Wyndham Clark, crowds at Medinah lacked juice on Thursday.

The noise “just kind of dissipated as the day went on,” said U.S. captain, Brandt Snedeker. It was quiet all over the golf course, which means you could probably hear some sounds we love to hear.

Like Si Woo Kim flushing his Cobra OPTM LS Titanium fairway wood to the tune of a 3 and 2 victory over Patrick Cantlay and Chris Gotterup.

Or Hideki hitting his Cobra King RadSpeed Tour 5-wood (which Jason tells me is club is based on the the legendary Cobra Baffler from 1975) and beating Cam Young and Xander Schauffele 3 and 1 in their match on Day 1.

I’m not going to look up whether anyone else in the P Cup is using a one-off Cobra club like these two. Instead, I’m going to choose to believe that Cobra was the only undefeated entity on Thursday, going 2-0 in its matches — both against the U.S. side.

May it hold up over the next three days, and may you also also take a gander at that fairway wood Si Woo was gaming. So good you’re gonna be doing the night night in your own matches the rest of this fall.

And now, onto the news.

Nine Thoughts on Day 1 of the Presidents Cup

1. Early on, I though the U.S. looked extremely comfortable, especially compared to early on at the last two Ryder Cups. This is not surprising. The Presidents Cup is a much less competitive environment than the Ryder Cup.

But the difference between the two is a bit shocking.

There are still nerves in the Prez Cup because you don’t want to be the first time since 1998 to lose. You don’t want to go full Allen Iverson and 2004 Dream Team, which lost to Puerto Rico, Lithuania and Argentina en route to a bronze medal. Its third, fourth and fifth losses in Olympics history.

On the flip side, the U.S. should still be relatively confident in the Ryder Cup. They get guys like Bernd Wiesberger and Rasmus Højgaard on the back end of those teams.

And yet, they could not look more different in their overall disposition at these two events.

2. I thought this from the Data Golf live blog on Thursday summed that up quite well.

That ended at just a 3.75 SG advantage, but it is emblematic of the entire thing. Europe just makes more putts! But ask yourself why. When is it difficult to make putts? When you’re uncomfortable. When is it easier to make putts? When you’re comfortable.

That is my entire point here.

One probably-too-deep theory I have is that the Presidents Cup feels more like a regular PGA Tour event than the Ryder Cup does because … the PGA Tour runs the Presidents Cup. Same media people they see at Memorial or Quail Hollow. Same officials. Same all of it. The advantage Europe always has on the Ryder Cup side is that it has the same folks running things as it does week to week on the DP World Tour.

And while I only halfheartedly believe this theory, it’s still interesting to consider because — as with all team events — the sample size is so small that almost anything could be the reason a team struggles or doesn’t.

3. I enjoyed the Scottie match on Thursday even if the idea that the broadcast put forth that this match was “one of those classics” did not exactly come to fruition. Regardless, I felt invested in it. Which is not always the case when it comes to the Presidents Cup.

I love golf that makes us even a little bit nervous, and for some reason I felt nervous watching the last 4-5 holes in this match. Some of the reason is probably because Scottie has a wide variance (maybe the widest variance of anyone) when it comes to what he has to gain and what he has to lose this week. I definitely sensed and felt that. Surely he does, too.

But some of it was probably because the International team had a real chance to win Day 1 and put just a sliver of doubt into the U.S. side going into Friday’s matches. That is thrilling and consequential, and thrilling and consequential almost always lead to nervousness, even from afar.

4. (As a reminder — and something I should probably say more often — we are dissecting tiny, tiny sample sizes here, which is part of the fun but also sometimes slightly unfair to players on some level).

Another reason I was probably feeling this match has to do with Scottie and his ongoing legacy at team events. In that first match out, he won the first hole and didn’t win another. He birdied two of the first three and then didn’t make another.

Though he hit the ball decently and gained strokes from tee to green, Scottie was — all things considered — not very good on Thursday relative to how good he actually is, especially down the stretch.

Burns was a bit better and saved them with two birdies on the back that flipped their match and kept the U.S. from being down 3-2 (which they should have been).

Why should they have been down 3-2? Well, it took an almost historically bad putting performance from Sungjae and Min Woo, who lost nearly four shots on the greens. If they make anything, that match is a tie or a loss for the U.S.

This isn’t exactly novel, but this tweet got me thinking about how Scottie and Tiger play golf so similarly and how much both have struggled relative to their overall status at these team events.

Scottie is a marathon runner. He grinds your soul down, doesn’t make mistakes, manages the golf course incredibly well and mentally punishes you over and over again. But he needs 72 holes for this to play out. And I’m convinced if tournaments were 90 or 108 holes, he would have 40 wins and 10 majors by now.

Match play is different. The decisions are different. The shots are not the same ones you would hit in regular tournament. Different lines. Different choices.

In one sense, Eliud Kipchoge is the fastest runner in the world. However, if he faced Noah Lyles in the 200, he would get destroyed. It would be difficult to watch.

That’s obviously an extreme example, but I think it gets at the idea of how different team match play is compared to a 72-hole stroke play event.

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This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes a JT take, a wild Scottie stat, the best hole from Day 1 and my favorite duo at this event ...

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5. Shout out to @golframble for this next stat. Scottie is 1-7-0 in foursomes play at Presidents Cups and Ryder Cups, which is what we’ll see today.

Here are his results.

Si Woo/Cam Davis 2UP over Scheffler/Burns
Tom Kim/K.H. Lee 2 and 1 over Scheffler/Burns
Rahm/Hatton 4 and 3 over Scheffler/Burns
Ludvig/Hovland 9 and 7 over Scheffler/Koepka
Si Woo/Ben An 1UP over Scheffler/Henley
Scheffler/Henley 3 and 2 over Hideki/Sungjae
Ludvig/Fitz 5 and 3 over Scheffler/Henley
Bob Mac/Hovland 1UP over Scheffler/Henley

This should just not be the case. And unless Scottie absolutely runs the table or comes close to running the table this week, his team event play is for sure going to be a talking point at Adare Manor next September.

As Paul Hodowanic pointed out to me on the podcast this week, Scottie hates it when narratives follow him around and hates how much he gets dissected. But it’s impossible to ignore 1-7-0 in foursomes and now 7-11-4 overall (even with the win on Thursday).

A chance to erase all that over the next three days by completely dominating, but otherwise it’s going to persist.

6. Imagine not taking JT for these events.

LeBron did less work dragging Eric Snow and Anderson Varejao to the 2007 finals than JT did carrying Koivun around the course on Thursday.

Koivun was the best putter in the field on Day 1, and he walked in a couple that had me feeling very Spiethy things. But JT made four birdies on his own ball, led the field in total strokes gained and never let a listless Conners/Echavarria team get in the mix.

Nobody wants to hear it, but boys clubs win cups.

7. This is a small thing, but Golf Channel, we cannot be running Rugiet commercials during a tournament like this. As someone who loves watching games and events with his kids, these commercials are insane to try and manage during a golf tournament in the middle of the day.

I get it, money is tight. We’re all in that boat together, but I’d rather you hire Duff Foreman’s name, image and likeness than continue running those commercials.

Be better.

8. Hayden and I were texting about this, but the 12th hole is sick, and as was pointed out on the broadcast, is so, so money for match play.

You have the entire planet to the left, but if you go left, you’re probably going to make four unless you lay up way back to give yourself an angle.

Then the closer and closer you move your line to the left side of the green or even at the pin, the easier it is to make three. But also the easier it becomes to hit it in the penalty area or the water and make five. Tons of decisions and a tricky shot to hit.

Tremendous golf hole.

9. I appreciated this from Wyndham, although I also thought it was pretty hilarious coming from him: You New Yorkers are going to boo and jeer me all weekend, fine, I’m going to take it out on everyone from … Chicago.

As was pointed out by many people, this will improve over the weekend. Thursday is a difficult day for a rowdy crowd at an event like this one.

Other Notes from Day 1

• I got this text on Thursday evening: The reason Derrick Rose was on the first tee is because he owns a flower shop and delivered the floral arrangement. Sure.

• The score bug highlighting the U.S. in red and the International team in gold but also boxing the match in the same gold color is crazy to me (see below). Just box it in any color other than red or gold.

• Name a funnier duo.

• Xander and Cantlay struggling and both losing their matches is not something I saw coming. A combined 20-8-0 going into Thursday’s four ball.

• Terry Gannon is so good. We do a lot of complaining about Golf Channel and NBC, but he is absolutely tremendous at his job. A professional.

• It felt like every time they cut to Scottie and Burns, they were eating something. Felt like Brad Pitt in Oceans 11.

• Also, I don’t think I realized that Scottie and Burns were Nos. 1-2 in the Data Golf rankings until yesterday. Roommates on the road, legit close friends, partners at these cups. And Nos. 1-2 in the world. That’s pretty wild.

• Amazing and underrated tweet here.

• The U.S. is up 98.5 to 58.5 all time in foursomes (even with a 5-0 loss on Day 2 in 2024). That’s likely because you can’t hide in foursomes, and the International team has a lot of guys they would probably like to hide.

I’m rooting for a big International win on Friday because I want to see things get tense for the U.S. on Saturday and Sunday like they did in 2019 at Melbourne. Golf that makes you nervous is the best kind of golf, and we very rarely get it at this event.

Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. As always, we remain a hand-made, algorithm-free establishment that specializes in theorizing about exhibition events that are played once every two years.

Hello fellow Presidents Cup curious folks,

I spoke with Jacob Bridgeman ahead of this week’s event. About his childhood, his year, his view of this particular U.S. team and what the entire process has been like.

The answers below represent a lightly edited transcript of that conversation (which took place before he won Asheville) along with my commentary that I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed putting together.

I walked away a bigger fan of Bridgeman than I was before, and I think you probably will, too. Truly one of the chillest pros I’ve spoken with and somebody that will be easy to root for this week at Medinah. We also included the conversation in this week’s Normal Sport Show with PGA Tour's Paul Hodowanic, which you can listen to (and subscribe to!) right here.

Name drops today: Brandt Snedeker, Brian Harman, Scottie Scheffler, BMW and Russell Henley.

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Their new Cub speaker is perhaps the Jacob Bridgeman of their lineup of speakers. Not the big boy Grande (Scottie) or the Original (JT) but a new addition to their lineup (check).

The Cub delivers big sound in a cube-shaped design. Tough enough for any outdoor adventure or workout (check). Don't underestimate the Cub's capabilities because of its size (5’10, 170 for Bridgeman, check).

The Cub produces enough sound for up to 20 people, has a 14-hour battery life, and connects with all the other Turtlebox speakers (replace Turtlebox speakers with U.S. players and … check).

Packs light, hits heavy. Check it out right here. Bridgeman sold separately.

Alright, now on to the news.

Jacob Bridgeman Q&A

Playing Baseball as a Kid

I love baseball. I played a little bit of basketball too. I tried some soccer. I wasn't really very good at soccer, but I think my parents’ plan was just let me play as many sports as I wanted to and try all out and then kind of see how it went.

I think that's good for learning how to play as a team, learning how to interact with other people and then also developing athleticism, hand-eye, using your legs, being able to run and jump and all those things.

So I think playing all those sports definitely helped me develop as an athlete. I love baseball. I played until I think I was 12 or so, and my baseball swing started to affect my golf swing and vice versa. I realized I could either be pretty good at both or really good at one.

Ed. note: A lot to learn here for me and other parents of young-ish kids. I’m a huge proponent of not specializing too early because the more different sports you play, the better you’ll be at the one you end up choosing. Case in point, if you let your kids play every sport under the sun like Jack Whaley's did, your kid might just go on to win the US Amateur.

No Defense In Golf

I think I've gotten used to that. It's definitely something that differentiates golf from everything else is you're not playing defense. It's really just a lot of offense and it's player vs. the course. That's the cool thing about it is you can be so inwardly focused and trying to compete against yourself. It's when guys start to really look at what other people are doing and trying to beat other people, that's maybe where the distractions come and the disconnect from just pure competitiveness.

But yeah, comparing … regular golf to like a team thing, like a Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup where we're playing match play, it's just a completely different world. You're playing one on one and you’re worried less about kind of how the course is and worried more about the opponent, which is quite different, but to me a lot more exhilarating than just regular stroke play.

Ed. note: Match play truly is the best format, and it’s crazy that we have turned pro golf into as little match play as possible!

On Improved Iron Play

Bridgeman made an enormous leap in his iron play in 2026. So I asked him how that happened. He again turned to the golf ball.

Last year after the Tour Championship — I had a great year and I made it there, but in the playoffs we got [to] Memphis and I felt like I played very good the whole week and there was just certain holes [where] any pin in the front I could not get to. I felt like I was hitting the shots and I finished like eighteenth or something. I remember telling my agent, That's about the best I could have done. 

I couldn't get the ball close on any front pins, and if I had a long iron, I just had to hit it over the green and get it up and down. So then I played the next week, and then at East Lake it was kind of the same thing. The greens were firm, and it was hot so the ball was going far with not a lot of spin and I struggled the same way.

I … told the Taylormade people I said, I need a new golf ball. And they're like, “What do you mean? You made the Tour Championship.” And I'm like, I know, but I want to win those things and I can't do that right now.

They they did some incredible work and went in and produced a golf ball that spins for me. … It just changed the control I had with the ball.

Ed. note: It takes some stones to have that much success but to know exactly what you need to change and then to go do it. Bryson does this (sometimes a bit too much). I respect it a lot.

The Game Within the Game

[I agree with Brian Harman’s quote] that there are 15 tournaments going on at once. Then there's five going on within my head at the same time. I'm trying to have my best FedEx Cup finish that I can, and then I'm also trying to earn points for the President's Cup team …

… You feel like you just accomplish one thing and they're safe, and then you're always kind of striving for the next. That's the tricky thing about our sport, but it's also what makes it so much fun and where you can never really accomplish what you're trying to get to. You can never be perfect and it it makes it eternally hard.

Ed. note: It’s also what makes it eternally fascinating.

The Pressure of the Presidents Cup

Definitely at the end of the year at East Lake I told my wife, I said, Sunday at BMW was the most nervous I've ever been in a golf tournament. And it was the whole day. It never went away. Because I just knew the importance of it. And then East Lake felt like that the whole week. I felt like every shot was very important and the whole tournament was gonna be so important for if I made that team and I wanted to be on it so bad.

I think I grew up kind of idolizing these guys, and some of them are on the team now and it's just super cool to have a kind of personal relationship with the people that you look up to your whole life. … It feels like something that I always expected I would do, and can't really believe that I've done it.

Ed. note: Hayden said this in our podcast, but it makes me feel old that someone on the Presidents Cup team grew up idolizing guys who are [checks notes] 10 years younger than me. Also, the duality of “I expected to do it, and I can’t really believe I’ve done it” is awesome. I love guys who hold both. Confidence + humility is undefeated.

Closest Confidant

Russell Henley has been kind of my guy. He's been probably the most supportive for me. I've asked him all the questions, and I feel super comfortable [with] Russ. I've known him for a while, and he's just super friendly and very generous with his time. But then Sam Burns and Scottie have been amazing to me as well.

They've told me how much they wanted me on the team even before the picks came out and it was just a proud moment to hear them say, You're an important asset to us. We want you on the team.

Playing With Guys You Look up to

I think I've been good throughout my life at not really comparing myself. If I were to compare myself, it maybe would [be difficult to play with guys I looked up to]. But I think it's mainly just pure joy, like being a part of it is so cool. Playing for the United States is just so cool and it's a … thing that I'm very proud of being a part of.

When it comes to the older guys, I think if they had some intimidation factor, like that would be difficult. But everyone's so nice. Even before the teams, everyone's really nice. There's not really that guy on Tour right now that is super tough and intimidating. So everyone's really welcoming. Everyone's made it, I think, as seamless as it could be to where us young guys aren't shocked or intimidated.

They've made it easy.

Ed. note: I said this on the pod, but I love how much the younger U.S. guys care about making teams. It matters to them in ways it didn’t seem to 20 or 25 years ago. I first started noticing this with Spieth, JT, Homa and that crew. It gives me hope for the future of the Ryder Cup. Not a tremendous amount of hope but hope nonetheless.

Thanks again to Jacob for giving us time before one of the biggest weeks of his golf life, so far. You can listen to our conversation with Jacob and Paul Hodowanic on this week's Normal Sport Show right here.

Thank you for reading and following our algorithm-free, human-built newsletter about many things and sometimes even about golf. Let’s have a week at the Presidents Cup.

Hello and again I am wishing you a happy Presidents Cup week,

Maybe I will just post my favorite PCup gifs at the top of the newsletter all week. This one might be the goat Tiger gif.

Three things to tell you about today.

1. Congrats to Kyle R. for winning our OMNI four-night stay giveaway as well as entry into the Generation Cup. Here’s what Kyle said about following Normal Sport (which I appreciated!).

As long as you guys keep showing up, our partners will keep doing giveaways like this one.

2. If you haven’t joined the Normal Club, this is a good week to do so. One newsletter writer I read said something the other day that resonated with me: This newsletter is free but not cheap.

That’s it.

We love making most of our content throughout the year free, but there is definitely a price associated with free. The two best ways you can support the cost of our time are by joining the Normal Club (which gets you 15 percent off the gear below) and …

3. Hitting up the pro shop. We have a full suite of goodies, but these three are new as of today. The green and gold Norman hoodie is from Levelwear and is what I’ll be living in this fall (if it ever turns fall in Texas).

The white polo is a Holderness and Bourne Springer and is one of the lightest polos I’ve ever worn. H&B is capital-T, capital-B The Best in general, and this is yet another iteration of that.

And lastly, our first Richardson hat is a hit in my house with the kids and my favorite hat we’ve made to date.

Click on any of them to see more details.

Thank you as always for your support of this truly ridiculous business. We wouldn’t be able to make Tiger gifs for a living if not for your backing via the Normal Club and your browsing of our pro shop. We are grateful for both and fired up for The Golf this week.

Hello, and happy “yeah but what will Si Woo Kim do at this Presidents Cup?” week.

The goat is back in action at Medinah starting on Thursday. Also, make some time for this excellent Joseph LaMagna profile of our beautiful boy on The Fried Egg.

Name drops today: The Elivras (both of them!), Mitch McConnell, the Duck Shed, C.S. Lewis, The Mink, the Cotswolds, Jamie Kennedy and Jacob Bridgeman.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Seed Golf.

[Jason here] Kyle’s going to talk below about being surprised, and I love it when golfers are surprised by Seed’s golf balls. It happens all the time.

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And then he realized he actually didn’t because the balls he lost were actually Seeds and did not come close to totaling €50. Talk about a pleasant surprise.

We see more and more Seeds popping up in starting chutes and there’s a long list of reasons why. We have grown to love them not just as a partner but also as a smiley-faced product, and we would love it if you checked them out right here.

Alright, now on to the news.

Re-Spauned

I love being surprised. Not in the “we gathered in the crevices of your dark home and jump scared your soul out of your body to celebrate your 35th birthday” sense. But rather, I love being delighted from out of nowhere.

I suspect this is part of why we love following sports. It is one of the few areas in our lives where we don’t know the answers and — more importantly — where we are completely incapable of finding them out. Where we can still be surprised.

This happens so often in golf. You need not look any further than the 2026 major championship season. Aaron Rai at The Mink. Ryan Fox at The Open. Both solid players, but both major champions from somewhat out of nowhere.

When I was younger, I did not like these particular surprises. I only wanted Tiger or Phil to win. Now? I appreciate them. As someone who covers all of this on a day to day basis, I even revel in them a bit. To get a break from writing about Scottie and Rory.

It is one thing to surprise for the first time. To pop for 72 holes over four days can happen to almost anyone. These are often fun stories for a few weeks or maybe throughout a month. But what is more interesting to me is when players surprise multiple times throughout their careers.

We experienced this with Wyndham Clark at Shinnecock earlier this season. And while that win definitely did not resonate, I found myself with a completely different level of appreciation for his game and his career. Wyndham Clark surprised me twice.

This phenomenon is not limited to mid-to-high-level players like Wyndham, either. Even wunderkinds can surprise. Rory surprised when he lit up the golf world 20 years ago, firing 63s at the Old Course, nearly winning Augusta at the age of 21.

And then, somehow — and somewhat improbably — he surprised again in 2025 when he won the Masters and finished off the Slam many years past the expiration date on our belief in his ability to do so.

At the end of his career, even Tiger had the ability to surprise, with a 2019 Masters victory that still barely feels like it happened.

It is often quite fun when this happens. When a thing takes place that you cannot believe is taking place. At worst, it is fascinating, when a player accomplishes something you did not believe he was capable of accomplishing. Even more so when he’s doing it for the second or third time, after our belief has waned once again.

All of which brings us to J.J. Spaun, who …

1. Is a U.S. Open champion.
2. Is ranked No. 10 in the PCup standings, but was left off the team.
3. Won the BMW Championship on Sunday as a response to this.

And while winning Wentworth is not at the same level as notching a Masters or collecting a second U.S. Open, it is still surprising at the J.J. Spaun level.

Categorically, I thought I understood J.J. Spaun. A good and solid pro who had the week of his life at Oakmont, which earned him a Ryder Cup bid. But someone who would fade back into being a good and solid pro for the next 5-7 years.

Spaun himself said on Sunday that he was never “the guy” throughout his career. “I've kind of blossomed into this player I never thought I could be,” he said.

Winning Wentworth over Adam Scott, Rory, Foxy, Lowry, Lowry and the Fitzpatricks is a big deal. Technically, as a tournament field, it is not that dissimilar to the Texas Open, which Spaun won earlier this season.

But as a prestigious event, they are not close.

My expectation — even after watching him take down his first major at Oakmont — is not that J.J. Spaun would run around the world winning big time events and proving that leaving him off U.S. teams was a mistake.

Which is exactly why last weekend was surprising.

There is no real reason to believe that J.J. Spaun is “the guy.” He doesn’t really look the part. Has self-admittedly never truly played the part. He hits it far but not exceptionally so. His short game is fine but not great. He’s a good ball-striker, but so are Tommy Fleetwood, Si Woo Kim and Kurt Kitayama (that’s the ball-striking company he keeps).

But he balls out when it matters, and he wins. Which is the eyebrow-raising part.

Being surprised again is delightful.

What a quote there at the end: Sometimes no expectation is the best thing to have. Surprise is, by definition, inversely related to expectation. It is difficult (but still possible) for Scottie Scheffler to surprise us because we expect so much. It is much easier for someone like Spaun, which makes him a fun and joyful character in the golf world.

Jamie Kennedy laid out some of the reasons Spaun is easy to root for in his post about the BMW PGA Championship right here. Spaun talks about going to CVS in the middle of the night during the U.S. Open. His wife sends him Cotswolds homes on Zillow that she wants him to purchase. He is, as far as pro golfers go, relatable and likable.

Those quotes above, though. The ones about never thinking this is a player he could be. About low expectations in the long- and short term. Those represent the most likable thing about J.J. Spaun. Because for all that he’s now accomplished and all the bravado and swagger one must play with as a pro at that level against these fields, it’s not that he has consistently surprised us over the last few years that make him easy to root for.

It’s that he seemingly is still able to surprise himself.

Bits and Bobs from the Weekend

No MacIntyre though.

• Tyrrell hit one of the filthiest shots you’ll ever see. But also not as filthy as this one, which I could — but will not — write 1,500 words about. Even among the best in the world, and even after 20 years, his swing and his shots still stand out.

• If you missed it, Manuel Elvira was tied with Spaun going to the 18th after making a 3 at the par-5 17th. He then laid up off the tee and laid up again into a bunker on No. 18. Never lay up. He made a double-bogey 7 to lose the tournament by two shots, which led to this incredible IYKYK tweet from Dylan.

• @BenSmith16, who was at Wentworth, sent me this photo via Twitter. It is perfect. Niklas Norgaard looking under something called the Duck Shed — which serves duck burger, duck wrap and duck salad — for his golf ball. 👌 

• I got absolutely crushed on X the Everything App over the weekend for my Ryder Cup take in the Friday newsletter. Which … maybe deserved, may have been a bad take. But I wasn’t talking about the gathering of players at Adare Manor being performative. I was talking about the posting of it being performative.

And I stand by the fact that Ryder Cup Europe has gotten a little out over its skis when it comes to thinking their entire process is awesome and infallible. I am projecting there, of course, and I wish the U.S. did more things like them, but I think that they think that their whole schtick is pretty awesome right now.

Might be fine! Also, might go very badly at some point.

• Asheville winner, Jacob Bridgeman, thank you for caring about the health of Normal Sport. We have an interview with him dropping over the next two days that now more people are going to read than they would have otherwise.

• This I saw from C.S. Lewis is so money. And honestly — I hate hate hate saying this — it’s how Europe wins Ryder Cups. Small wins stacked up over a long period of time leads to victories you never dreamed of know are going to happen.

Thank you for reading the Normal Sport newsletter. Delight someone today with a note, text or call. Use golf as the excuse. Being delighted — like J.J. Spaun delivered at Wentworth — is a good gift that is free to give and great to receive.

Greetings fellow “BMW PGA > preferred lies in Asheville” fans,

And congrats to the winner of our Holderness and Bourne collegiate collection giveaway, Colin H. Colin won a box of collegiate collection gear (his choice of school) and kindly had this to say about Normal Sport.

Name drops today: Carlos Alcaraz, J.T. Poston, Jennifer Lawrence, Jim Furyk, Jon Wertheim and Baylor’s placekicker.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Garmin and their new Approach J1 device, which is made specifically for young golfers. Both of my boys are currently wearing and loving this watch both on and off the course.

My 9 year old told me on our walk to school this morning, “Please charge my watch today, dad. I asked mom, but I think she’s probably going to forget.”

Hate to see that, but also love to see how much he’s loving it.

The J1 is the first golf watch designed specifically for junior golfers and pairs a lightweight fit with club suggestions, on-watch celebrations (awesome) and because Garmin cares about your sanity, a pace of play timer. If your 7 year old is holding up a round because he’s aimpointing a 3 footer, time to put him in flag football.

You can (and should) check out the J1 right here.

And now, onto the news.

8 Thoughts on Golf (Mostly Golf) This Week

1. Over the last 25 years, I think we got so accustomed to the reality that we had a golfer (Tiger) who was in a lot of ways bigger than the game that, in the aftermath of that, we tend to overrate how important all non-Tiger golfers are to the game. This is more or less something Brian Rolapp has been saying since he became CEO of the Tour.

Because of this, I think the two most important aspects of the new qualification criteria for the Tour’s championship series events should be …

1. Prioritizing product > individual players and …
2. Simplification

So did they accomplish that with the announcement this week of future Championship Series criteria? Uhhh … mostly. Kind of. Almost.

Here is how those Championship Series fields will be constructed.

• Top 90 players from previous year’s Championship Series.
• Top 20 golfers promoted from Challenger Series.
• Golfers who won twice on the Challenger Series.
• Winners of Championship Series events from the last 2+ years.
• No. 1 golfer from PGA Tour University.
• Medical extensions on a limited basis.
• Players eligible to use a one-time money list exemption.

2. There has been some criticism — specifically from Normal Sport readers — around Championship Series winners (including Players and majors) receiving 2+ year exemptions into other Championship Series events.

I mostly agree with that criticism, although I would point out that if you win in a given year, you’re almost certainly going to be in the top 90 anyway and eligible for the following season. J.T. Poston is a good example this year. Bad overall season but won Memorial, finished T4 at the U.S. Open and is easily in the top 50 of the FedEx Cup. It’s really that second year guarantee that should irk people.

Here’s my specific issue with it …

The Tour is a little bit trying to have it both ways. They are attempting to reward season long consistency by flattening the point distribution (see below) for everyone in the field, which caters to the top players. This is good. Your biggest stars are almost always also going to be your most consistent players over a big window of time.

But then the Tour is also massively rewarding winning an event by offering a multi-year exemption, which seems to undermine the whole idea of a pure year-to-year meritocracy in the way it has been framed over the last year.

Kristoffer Reitan and Poston, for example, should not be guaranteed spots in 2028 based on winning big time events in 2026.

Simplicity is part of the entire point here, and I think having that exemption undercuts the idea of trying to explain to someone, Well yes everyone is in danger of being relegated this year. Oh, except those three guys. And him. Oh and that guy over there.

Don’t love it. Just remove that category altogether and let the season long race decide things. This makes the product simpler and sharper.

3. But I really don’t love the career money exemption and think it is completely ridiculous. Part of the appeal of the new system is that Justin Thomas (6th in career money) or Jordan Spieth (10th) or Collin Morikawa (18th) actually could be playing in Quad Cities, San Antonio or Tampa the following year, not that they get a safety net from what they did 10 years ago. This is an example of prioritizing player over product.

Again, I get this from a business perspective — you don’t want your stars disappearing overnight — but I’m disappointed that the Tour didn’t go all the way in on prioritizing the product over the individual and making it as easy to understand as they could have.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes some European Ryder Cup things I need to get off my chest ...

By becoming a member, you will receive the following …

• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
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4. We will talk Ryder Cup, but first … the 2027 Euro Tour schedule.

Some things that stand out.

• Rory back in Australia at Kingston Heath in December is extremely compelling stuff. Absolutely cannot wait. Non-majors are only as good as the fields that make them up, and suddenly the Australian Open is world class event.

• TBC for a March event (six months away!) seems … kinda dicey?

• Will anyone go China —> Augusta National —> Singapore? If you win all three, you should get (a substantial amount of) equity in, like, Emirates Airline or Delta.

• Same for Portugal —> Frisco —> Germany. What culture shock.

• U.S. Open —> Italian Open —> Irish Open —> Scottish Open —> The Open is a truly insane stretch. You could certainly pick better courses for Ireland and Scotland, but that run just dunks all over anything the PGA Tour can do in the same window.

• Wentworth the week after the Ryder Cup is tough but understandable. Also, Wentworth seems to move around more than any other high level tournament in the world. Since I started covering golf, it’s been played in May, different weeks in September and even in October. A lot of that is based on when (and where) the Ryder Cup is being played, but it does make a tournament feel a bit less special when it moves around a lot like that.

5. Speaking of the Ryder Cup! Prospective members of the European team visited Adare Manor this week. Over 365 days ahead of the 2025 Ryder Cup!

Me seeing that post on a Monday in September in a non-Ryder Cup year …

Listen, I have written extensively about how much better Europe is at the Ryder Cup than the Americans. Extensively. Surely nobody has written more about this than me.

But going to Adare Manor 12 months ahead of time reminds me of this thing I saw this week about how Bill Gates removed the stereo from his car so he wouldn’t be tempted to turn it on and not think about Microsoft.

That is tantamount to what Europe is doing.

Which is at the same time aspirational and also a little bit eye-rolly.

6. The line between excellent and performative is getting a little thin for me on that side of the aisle. I don’t blame them, though. Because performative is also part of the deal. In Jim Furyk’s first press conference as captain of the U.S. team, he’s probably going to get a question about when and how often the U.S. is going to take players to Adare Manor specifically because Europe did this over a year before the event started.

He will have to get everyone on the same page. It will be an entire thing. Which is part of what Europe does well. Europe makes the U.S. uncomfortable because it makes the U.S. wonder what it even wants and needs when it comes to the Ryder Cup. So I don’t bedowngrade them for that.

What I am saying is that when you post stuff like this and start to flaunt it a little bit, you definitely open yourself to getting decleated if and when the U.S. gets its stuff together (which, also, might literally never happen).

Part of what has made Europe so great over the years is its relentless commitment to humility. One post does not erase that, but I have felt and seen just a few inklings of, Hey this is awesome because we’re awesome that I think can be a bit dangerous for the future of an organization.

7. I also realize I am mega overanalyzing the Ryder Cup 365 days out. But if you aren’t subscribed for that, then why exactly are you subscribed?

8. Last thing from me is something Carlos Alcaraz said at the U.S. Open after losing to Ben Shelton at 3 a.m. in the match of the tournament. I heard Jon Wertheim — one of the goat sports writers for me — talk about this so I went and found the clip, which you can watch by clicking below.

I’ll transcribe my favorite part …

I could perhaps write a book about that single sentence. It is one of the most mature things I’ve ever heard an athlete say, and I can’t help but wonder how different golf would have been over the last five years if more professional golfers operated from this position of gratitude rather than believing that they are both platform and performer.

To me, this is what it looks like to joyfully participate in what you were wired to do. Easy to say because Carlos is already post-money at the age of 23, but also not easy to live out because everyone at that level is telling you not only that you’re the man but that you’re one of the greatest men who has ever lived. All because you can move and twirl and swing a piece of carbon fiber with strings better than a bunch of other men.

No athlete embodies having an awe or wonder of the world more than Alcaraz for me right now. He seems to live in a healthy state of, I truly cannot believe I get to do this every day. So rare. So compelling. So attractive as a human.

Gratitude rules because it acknowledges what is true. That we are human. That we cannot do everything. That others help us and we help others no matter how high or lowly our estate.

This next part is painful for me to admit given what I wrote above, but this is very much how the European Ryder Cup team operates. What was it Justin Rose said in Rome?

Dang it, he actually said “stage”!

And it doesn’t get better.

I hate how much I like them and how wise and gracious they are when it comes to the way they view that event.

Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. As always, we remain an algorithm-free establishment. And thank you — all of you — for this particular stage.

Hello fellow “the golf watching times are actually secretly better when golf is played in Europe” sickos,

I am here to report (or remind) that the September golf slate is just as good as May-July (other than the majors) and in Ryder Cup years, might be even better.

Walker Cup ✔️ 
Irish Open ✔️
Solheim Cup ✔️
Wentworth
Presidents Cup
French Open

Some great ones down but plenty to go over the next two weeks.

Let’s get into the weekend.

Name drops today: Angela Stanford, Jamie Weir, Steph Curry, Wyndham Clark, Jose Maria Olazabal, CeeDee Lamb and Jen Kupcho.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at Sap’s Original.

We’re not saying that if Angela Stanford dressed up like a Sap's can and carried a case of Sap’s Original (purchased using their store locator, of course) onto the bus on Saturday night, Team USA would have retained the Solheim Cup.

But … well, maybe the celebration would have been a little more muted and the video would have gone just a little less viral.

A case full of hydration and performance support for this squad? Vamos? How about V-aminos (to help the body recover faster)!

A well-hydrated team is one you want going into Sunday, and you get the added benefit of not providing bulletin board material for a killer like Carlota Ciganda.

Alright, now on to the news.

Irish Cries

Before Shane Lowry won this year’s Irish Open by 11 shots but well after he had begun to establish himself as maybe someone whose schtick had become a bit old, an unflattering video emerged of a Lowry drive on the 18th hole at Doonbeg. The camera captured him saying that a group of volunteers “deserve to get hit” based on where they were standing and how little attention they were paying.

Some people seemed to use this as mounting evidence that Lowry is not exactly the easy-to-root-for, fun-loving, pub-visiting everyman who won the Irish as an amateur, the Open as a pro and made the winning putt at a Ryder Cup.

But as far as provocative pro golf clips go, this one does not particularly stand out. As far as Shane Lowry clips go, this one does not particularly stand out.

Is this something you should say on camera? Probably not. But Shane says a lot of things he shouldn’t say on camera — many of which are so perfectly incoherent that my kids don’t even know that he’s cursing — which I believe is what his detractors would nod to as their entire point. Geoff Shackelford even suggested a “six-month vacation” for the Irishman.

Whether Lowry was joking or not, some of the on-course behavior from him is difficult to square this with the man who became emotional about finally taking a trophy home to his daughter and who gestured to the fans at the end in disbelief that he got to do this in front of them once again, 17 years after improbably doing it the first time.

I do not know Shane Lowry (and even if I did, I wouldn’t know him). Do not know whether he’s a good or bad or great or terrible hang. What I do know, though, is that he is emblematic of all humans. We all say incredibly stupid things. We all feel emotional when we revisit where we are from and when we talk about our kids. We all would love to pop in a bar following a huge career victory and lead a few chants.

All of us are difficult to square.

Shane Lowry may be the worst. Or he might be the best. But the truth — and I think all of us know this deep down — is almost certainly somewhere in the middle. Like many middle age dads, he seems to struggle with anger, seems to enjoy his drinking, seems to truly love his wife and kids, seems to have a complete and total obsession with the game of golf. Sometimes seems unsure of himself and what he wants out of life and maybe also forgets where he came from, who he once was. Seems like someone who is proud of his close friendships but fearful of the big moment. You could swap the specifics and be talking about a lot of 40-something men I know.

You are of course free to root for whoever you want to root for. This is the point of sport. But I guess what I’m saying here is that we should remember we cheer for humans, not deities. I like rooting for humans. I like it when they show me all of their sides, good, bad, ugly and beautiful (anything but indifferent). I love good characters.

I wrestled with all of this more comprehensively this summer when Wyndham Clark won the U.S. Open for a second time. Lowry’s Irish Open — the full breadth of it — was a reminder that fandom in individual sports is complex because people cannot be reduced to the clips they sometimes produce.

Illustrator Corner

Jason here with two lasting observations from Sunday at the Solheim Cup before we get to Kyle’s take on Bottlegate.

1. I loved seeing the ladies not taking off their hats to hug after a match. Straight out of the Larry David School of Golf Etiquette. Make it a men's golf thing!

2. Atmosphere. The difference in atmosphere between Bernardus and Bethpage was the difference between drinking punch and getting punched.

Maybe it's because I grew up a Philly sports fan, but I was surprised at how cordial the crowd was and also how rarely they got irked. When Team USA held up a fathead of Alison Lee after her historic comeback I heard little more than, "pfft, typical Americans."

When Auston Kim gave an "I can't hear you" after draining a putt on 14, I heard, "Oh, now I don't like that!" It was a far cry from some of the histrionics at last year’s Ryder Cup and far more akin to what a team event atmosphere should be.

Bottle It

It had been, what, a whole two years since a global team event played in Europe was completely upstaged and largely upended by a tweet that changed the entire trajectory of the week?

But thankfully, we’re back.

In case you missed it over the weekend, Jennifer Kupcho hit 115 feet of putts in the last two holes on Saturday evening to — alongside Lindy Duncan — win a match against Carlota Ciganda and Celine Boutier. Prime Steph stuff to tie the festivities 8-8 going into the singles matches.

Then U.S. captain, Angela Stanford, brought beers on the bus for reasons that are still a little unclear. The social post said they were for Jen (as in Kupcho) or presumably for what she did on the course in the final team session on Saturday night.

On Monday, Soly noted that the beers were given to the caddies, which makes a lot more sense than the U.S. players drinking on Saturday evening (perhaps they drank the Sap’s instead).

Regardless, the Europeans — who are not usually known for taking offense to any perceived slight such as the spike marks in Jose Maria Olazabal’s line from the 1999 Ryder Cup, which they will be talking about for the next 700 years — saw it, wrote it down and punished the confident Americans for it by winning and then making up a “they drink on Saturday, we drink on Sunday” chant.

Which …. is kinda sick.

Golf is so weird in that you constantly stop play at the end of the quarter, take a day off and then play the next quarter after going about your life away from the course for a substantial amount of time.

Imagine the Cowboys-Giants game lasting four days, and Dak and CD are going out to eat in NYC after the second quarter while down 21 points. That would be so strange.

In golf, all of these things that have almost nothing to do with the actual on-field play can happen between quarters and go on to affect the on-field play.

Culture is so weird in that — like with Lowry — these massive weeks and events are sometimes reduced to a 20-second clip on social.

When you think of the Rome Ryder Cup, Jamie Weir’s tweet probably ranks pretty high on the first thing you think of. When you think about Bethpage, it’s probably Rory pointing at fans and screaming expletives. When you think of this Solheim Cup, it will be this moment.

All of this is incredibly entertaining, of course, but I fear these players and these teams will be incentivized toward being robots. Toward not doing anything even remotely controversial or that could even be labeled as controversial.

This would be a shame for fans.

Because half the fun of rooting is to see a video of Nelly housing a beer on Saturday evening when it was 8-8, looking at the camera and saying, “We’re going to drink on Sunday, too.” This of course did not — and would never — happen. But it would have been so great if it did.

Both the Lowry and U.S. moment have the same takeaway for me. That these little snippets are great snapshots into people and events. Pieces of the puzzle, of interpreting the whole. I hope they don’t go away because they serve as little clues within our fandom. They are stories in and of themselves, yes, but they become even better when we realize and remember that they are only tiny parts of the entire narrative.

Thank you for reading our golf newsletter that is sometimes about golf but always made by humans and never generated with A.I. We love writing and illustrating it, and we’re grateful that you would spend your limited time and attention on something we’ve built.

Greetings fellow mini-games-addicted dads (and moms),

Here is your daily dosage of golf connections.

Hope you enjoy and that nobody gets it on the first (or second) try.

Name drops today: Caleb Williams, Trevor Lawrence, Steve Kerr, Rachel McAdams, Roger Federer, Tadej Pogacar, Mondo Duplantis and probably a few golfers in there somewhere as well.

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Today’s newsletter is presented by OMNI and our ongoing giveaway, which includes a four-night stay at one of their locations and free entry into their Generation Cup*, which is already underway at 12 locations nationally with seven options for the rest of 2026 and into 2027 (you can see those options here).

Three things I remember from my experience playing in the Gen Cup in Frisco a few years ago.

1. Seeing one of the dudes from Dude Perfect playing with a member of his wife’s family. My then-10-year-old was beside himself.

2. My then-10-year-old outdriving me on multiple holes and chirping about it even though he was starting 125 yards ahead of me on some of them.

3. Driving home at dusk and asking him a question only to find him passed out in the front seat after a long and wonderful day.

[Jason here] Memorable trips are made up of these somewhat random moments Kyle noted above. But it’s the small details that make you feel at home enough to appreciate the good stuff. OMNI is great at those details. And although we don’t think they offer breakfast balls in bed, we also wouldn’t put it past them.

You can enter the giveaway at the link below.

*Generation Cup team entry will be subject to availability and that this team entry is for qualifier events only, not for the national championship.

And now, onto the news.

8 Thoughts on Golf This Week

1. We dropped a QB-golfer comps pod on Tuesday that I hope becomes an annual tradition. Joseph LaMagna joined me and Hayden, and we went through all 32 QBs in the NFL and comped each of them to a golfer.

Mistakes were made (mostly by me). The two of mine that got the most pushback were Tua-Zalatoris and Caleb-Bryson.

I stand by both, and I stand by the fact that Caleb is in fact performative. I don’t even know that I mean that derogatorily. He’s a good character and an excellent player, but he can definitely be odd at times. Maybe I more so mean that drama seems to follow him around. Sounds a lot like Bryson as well.

And on the Tua-Zalatoris argument. I think Tua has been better than people think and Zalatoris has been a bit worse (albeit still very good). Tua finished second in Heisman voting, got NFL MVP votes one year and was upper echelon for 2+ years. Very good, not amazing.

Zalatoris? Wonderful amateur campaign headlined by a U.S. Junior Am win. As a pro, he’s had some great major championship success but just one PGA Tour win and the same career SG (roughly) as Sungjae Im and Daniel Berger. Not exactly the Drew Brees of golf.

Both careers have been completely derailed by injuries, although JLM’s argument was that Tua’s was derailed by him just flat out sucking and that Zalatoris has never been the laughingstock of the league like Tua is right now. For sure, but what if Tua is the laughingstock of the league because he’s playing through so many concussions and injuries and Zalatoris is just sitting out (which is what Tua should be doing)?

Regardless, the back and forth in the pod was awesome, and there were some great, great comps. My three favorites that were not my own …

• Trevor Lawrence-Joaquin Niemann
• Jalen Hurts-Wyndham Clark
• Justin Herbert-Ludvig Aberg

Also, Hayden almost ended LaMagna with his Spieth comp.

You can listen right here: Spotify | Apple.

2. I went on the Bible Caddie Podcast recently to talk to Webb, Ben Crane and William Kane. It was as much fun as I’ve had as a guest on a pod recently, and we got steep on a ton of golf and a ton of spiritual things as well.

Ben was amused by my ridiculous fascination with determining who the best golfer from every continent is, and we generally just had the best time talking ball and life. Hope you guys enjoy it. Spotify link here, Apple here and YouTube below.

3. The U.S. announced its Ryder Cup qualification requirements this week, and there are some changes.

1. Points are awarded on finishes, not money.
2. Points don’t start until January 2027.

The U.S. qualifying is pretty similar to Europe’s now, only weighted slightly differently. Example: The U.S. weights a regular PGA Tour victory (Valspar) at half of a major championship victory. Europe weights it at 40 percent. The U.S. weights a signature PGA Tour win at 75 percent of a major while Europe weights it at 60 percent.

The best change is the timing. Previously, a player could theoretically win the Players and Masters 18 months before the Ryder Cup and be carried to an auto spot based on those finishes, even though no reasonable person would say that a finish 18 months prior would have any bearing on a team event in September of a given year.

Small tweaks here, to be sure, but they are encouraging. I refuse to invest myself in the idea that the U.S. is going full-scale change like it needs to do for this event, but I do want to acknowledge when even tiny smart decisions are made by an organization I’ve been incredibly critical of over the years.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes notes on LIV’s bankruptcy, how CFB is threatening golf as the normal-est sport and an amazing Steve Kerr story about Roger Federer.

By becoming a member, you will receive the following …

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4. Here are the two best things you’re going to read on LIV’s bankruptcy: The Athletic and Golf.com. I have a lot of thoughts on all of this, here are just a few.

• The amount of money LIV spent is even crazier when you see it typed out than when you hear someone talk about it. I’m not sure why, but seeing $5 billion on a screen or on paper is staggering.

• The PIF ejected, then lent LIV $495 million and now stands as its biggest creditor. This is hilarious and sad. After all of this, LIV owing the PIF before it owes anyone else is almost a perfect ending to this shell game.

• What started as an exercise in exploring Phil Mickelson’s curiosity around NFTs has is ending with a golf league owing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees nearly $2 million, which it cannot pay until Adrian Meronk is paid the over $4 million he’s owed first. Normal sport.

• Here’s Gabby on what is required of LIV to get that new $300 million from BC Partners for LIV 2.0 in 2027.

It sound like this may not get off the ground given the writing on the wall with Rahm, who will leave. If Bryson bolts, it’s all over.

• I guess ultimately my question is … why are we still trying to make this happen? Why does LIV 2.0 need to exist? What is the point of it?

I suppose there’s room for a European-Tour-but-kinda-more-global Tour, but this seems like a lot of trouble to go to and a mountain of work just to continue pushing a thing forward that so few people actually even want.

5. College football is back, and if golf ever goes away, CFB immediately takes the mantle as the most normal sport imaginable. The defense would like to first present as evidence this tweet about Baton Rouge on Saturday evening.

6. And of course, the Michigan fiasco is another piece of evidence in what is becoming an airtight case for CFB as a golf equal when it comes to absurdity. These tweets absolutely lit me up. I am in the middle of the middle of who they were intended for.

7. And finally, for your final golf-CFB crossover post of the week … here is Michigan defending itself.

8. Steve Kerr tells a story here about Federer that is incredible. Probably the best thing I’ve seen all week. Shoutout to David Hardy for sending it over to me.

Here’s the transcript after Kerr talks about how Draymond once asked Federer how he remained great.

There are two lessons here.

1. I am reminded of the all time Djokovic quote: “I like hitting the tennis ball.” You cannot be that good for this long like those two or like Rory, Rose, and Adam Scott unless you enjoy — like truly and deeply enjoy — hitting the ball. It’s such a simple thing, but the simplest things are often the easiest to complicate and also the most elusive.

2. Federer was a billionaire (tragically, it appears he no longer is). And yet, the most aspirational part of his life — the part everyone is actually after — is the peacefulness of the day he described above. 

We don’t always realize or acknowledge this, but other billionaires would pay, well, maybe billions to have the peace that comes with enjoying a craft and then cooking with your wife and delighting in your kids' days. What a good gift and what a thing to aim for.

[Jason footnote] I almost never have anything to contribute when Kyle starts talking tennis. But this week, Uniqlo put out a promo of Federer meeting one of my design heroes here in Amsterdam, Karel Martens.

He's the old man who never grew up. And in the same way that Federer loves hitting the ball, Karel loves playing with ink and paper in his studio. The peacefulness Kyle describes and the humbleness that comes with it is captured a simple moment when Federer greets him with "What an honor to meet you." Game recognize game.

Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. As always, we remain an algorithm-free establishment, and we enjoy hitting the ball typing the words and drawing the illustrations. Don’t forget to go enter our OMNI giveaway!

Hello fellow sickos,

If you reveled in a week off from high level golf a week after Scottie trounced the rest of the best players in the world at the Tour Championship, then I am sorry to report that you missed what may have been (and I think was) the golf event of the year (and one of the best of the last several years).

Name drops today: Michael Foster, Josh Hill, Big Stew, Chesson Hadley, Kihei Akina and Lane Kiffin.

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(Note to outfitters for the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup: That’s how it’s supposed to look).

Two of my current go-tos are the Alpha Venture backpack and the Renegade Vault carry on. Cannot wait to get this Go bag in the rota — as they say — with or without that Walker Cup gear (but preferably with).

Alright, now on to the news.

One Thing I Loved

Earlier this week I saw one of my favorite tweets of the entire year. It was a commentary on a clip of those ridiculous influencers from the U.S. Open (the other one), and here’s what it said.

Part of the beauty of social media — in the rare instances when it is beautiful — is the fact that you’re always one or two sentences away from writing something devastatingly efficient and concise in ways that keep this writer up at night wishing he had thought of such a thing. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does — as it did in the tweet above — it is amazing to witness.

And these sentences above are of course correct. Not all private equity is necessarily bad just as not all influencers are bad. But so often in both instances, the bloodsucking that is incentivized reduces the original business or product to a shadow of its former self. Easy to see. Gross to experience.

Which obviously brings us to Lahinch and the 51st Walker Cup, which took place over the weekend. After a back and forth Day 1, the U.S. hunted early on Sunday morning, winning all four foursomes matches with none even reaching the 17th tee.

GB&I’s hopes teetered as the U.S. led 9.5-6.5 going to the afternoon singles session.

But GB&I won the first four singles matches that went out — including an 8 and 7 mauling by friend of the pod, Jack Whaley that got the momentum going — and they re-took the lead. The U.S. countered with two huge Ws on the back end of the 10 matches.

Suddenly, with less than an hour to go, GB&I’s path to its first victory since 2015 was narrower than Akshay Bhatia after a sauna session.

It involved a series of events so preposterous that even the European broadcasters on the call were lamenting what might have been — with phrases like, “The door is beginning to close” — after such a strong start to Sunday afternoon’s session.

And then … the door was flung wide open.

Here’s how it went.

Kihei Akina missed this putt, which would have delivered a full point to the U.S. and ultimately gotten them to the 13 points needed to retain.

GB&I made all three of these putts. If they miss any of the three, they lose.

Stew Hagestad chose to go driver off the deck on the final hole. If he halves the hole (which ultimately would have taken birdie), the U.S. wins. Instead, he flared it into trouble and scrambled around for par.

Eliot Baker had to get up and down from here on 18 to win his match against Stew, which he did.

Miles Russell — whose short game is Tour-ready — needed to two putt from here to halve his match (at worst) and clinch the Cup.

In conjunction, if he makes either of these putts, the U.S. wins.

Instead he lost his last two holes.

And finally, Josh Hill had to get up and down from here for birdie at the last to win his match and the Walker Cup, which he did.

An unreal series of events that neither team will ever forget.

And that is kind of the point of it all for me. That nobody from either team will ever forget what happened on this day at that course with the most important team event most of them will ever play on the line. We don’t get to watch much golf throughout the year that makes us — the viewer — nervous. This was that golf, and it was wonderful.

Oh yes, and the influencers I mentioned off the top. You should know … I am no commercialized prude. I do not long for the days when amateur athletes played for love of school and the game itself. I do not believe that the billion-dollar athletics industrial complex should preclude the folks who star in those events from making money.

What I do think is that there are unintended consequences to capitalism, and one of those is a society in which we have sometimes agreed that a thing isn’t worth doing unless it can be done for more money than the time it was done before.

I have been reading a pastor and writer recently named Michael Foster. He recently wrote a piece about just enjoying things for the sake of enjoying them. And how everything in the world we are currently living in says this is a nonstarter. That unless your are commercializing the thing you are enjoying, it is not worth doing.

Again, I am not blind to the fact that the Walker Cup uniforms are sponsored and the event is on Golf Channel and money exchanges hands. To be clear, the Walker Cup is not a pick up game.

But as far as modern sporting events go, the union of “just enjoying things” and “world class competition” that a Walker Cup offers is as close to innocence as we’re going to get in sport in 2026 and beyond.

A quick confession: I love Lane Kiffin, mostly because I don’t have to be friends with him. I love the character and the circus. It’s pure entertainment.

And I watched like everyone else on Saturday night.

But that — the thing he participates in — is a machine. It is not done for enjoyment, and we don’t even pretend like it is anymore. It is a job for everyone involved. A fun one if you’re good at it. But commercialized to the gills and then commercialized some more.

On the other hand, the fact that tickets are only sold to 8,000 people daily so that scenes like this one can unfold at the Walker Cup is as quaint as it is praiseworthy.

Twitter tweet

And there is an irony for these kids.

These ones. Right here.

These kids.

Most of the people in this image will not play in another Walker Cup, and very few will ever play in a Ryder Cup. Not all of them will be stars or even moderately successful pros. For some of them — perhaps most of them — this will be the apex of their golfing lives.

Right now they probably believe that what lies ahead will be bigger, better and more glorious. But even when that is true, it is still a lie.

Because yes, someone from that image right there may win the Masters one day. May touch a smaller, golder trophy in Wisconsin or Rome or New York at one point. But most of them will never again enter an arena that is (mostly) free of commercialization and do something just because it is the most fun thing you could imaginably do: Play golf with your friends as a team and try to beat a bunch of other world class golfers at one of the greatest courses in the world. The most beautiful experience possible.

Why do you think current pros talk so glowingly about this time in their golf lives? Why do you think the Walker Cup has been dubbed “golf’s finest contest”?

Yes, the Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup are facsimiles of this, but even those have become very different than what this — the Walker Cup — is.

If influencers and private equity have taught us anything, it is the opposite of the gift I received from watching this event. The influencer and private equity model — which is a derivative of culture in general — is that nothing is worth doing if the highest price tag you can squeeze out of that thing is not attached to it.

The Walker Cup refutes that of course. Because the Walker Cup is a reminder that the very best things in life — the ones all the clout chasers are actually desperate for — those things do cost you a lot. They cost you dedication to a craft, commitment to a cause, vulnerability to a group and the risk of having your heart broken as the U.S. team experienced on Sunday.

But there’s a funny thing about all of those endeavors, all of which we would laud and say are aspirational for us and for our kids and within our sports.

And that funny thing is that at the end of the day, all of them are completely free and that you are allowed to do them simply because they are a great and good delight.

Thank you for reading our golf newsletter that is sometimes about golf but always made by humans. We love writing and illustrating it, and we’re grateful that you would spend your limited time and attention on something we’ve built.

Greetings and happy Friday Jr. to all (but especially Porath),

College football (officially) begins this weekend, and I’m convinced it’s the only sport that’s even more normal sport than golf.

Enjoy today’s Golf Connections.

Name drops today: Si Woo, Sellers Shy, Oklahoma State, 2013 Spieth, the Georgia attorney general and Brandt Snedeker.

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Personally, I’m desperate for this Oklahoma State hoodie, but they have tons of other (probably better) schools in the store as well.

You can enter the giveaway on our site right here, and it will be open until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, September 13. Good luck!

And now, onto the news.

8 Thoughts on Golf This Week

1. Me leaving 4th grade flag football practice on Tuesday afternoon to the Jackson Koivun-Presidents Cup news …

I legit did not think they would throw him on the team after so little experience as a professional. Based on his reaction — “When he called me and told me I was going to Medinah, I was about shellshocked for four hours” — I don’t think he thought they would either.

This is “Spieth at Muirfield Village in 2013” all over again, although Spieth finished that season with more of a flourish than I remember (can you imagine someone over a year younger than Koivun is right now finishing the season like this in 2026?!).

Koivun didn’t do that (although he did finish with two top 10s and a win in his last five events), but it’s still worth putting him on this team because of what he’s projected to be. Would Ryan Gerard or Mav McNealy help you incrementally more in 2026? Probably (maybe?).

But do you really need to be 1 percent or 2 percent better as a team, or do you need to develop the next Spieth as a centerpiece for future U.S. team events?

2. This is where Brandt Snedeker deserves a lot of credit. We all view the Presidents Cup as a warm-up of sorts for the Ryder Cup. But Presidents Cup captains are not incentivized to view it this way at all. The U.S. has never lost a home Presidents Cup, and it hasn’t lost one at all since 1998. You do not want to be the captain who ends that streak, and thus you are absolutely incentivized to pick the player who makes your team 1 percent or 2 percent better, even though that’s not the way the rest of us view it.

There is also very little crossover or continuity between the PGA Tour (which runs the U.S. side of the Presidents Cup) and the PGA of America (which runs the U.S. side of the Ryder Cup). So again, you are not rewarded for thinking a year (Ryder Cup) or even two (another Presidents Cup) into the future when someone else is probably going to be at the helm as captain anyway.

There isn’t much upside for a Presidents Cup (or Ryder Cup captain) to make picks like this (as KVV pointed out here). Snedeker eschewed all of that, though. And in doing so, he made the future of the U.S. team better and stronger for both events. From where I’m sitting, that’s a selfless (and thankless) choice.

I could do a whole newsletter on how there should be a Team USA that sits above both of these organizations and maintains continuity so you don’t have to rely on the stones of the captain to make Jackson Koivun-like picks, but that would be a book is another newsletter for another time.

[Jason here] Speaking of Captain Sneds and that Koivun illustration, here are some more tracks that could play out at Medinah.

• "Psycho Killer" - Patrick Cantlay when he goes 5-0 but only plays 50 holes.

• "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel,” whispers Captain Sneds to Mrs. Koivun during the Team USA afterparty.

• "Slippery People" - Trump’s nickname for the Team INT boys after they nearly stage an improbable comeback.

• "Burning Down the House" - Team INT makes a comeback and Rolapp takes the helm with this song as his walk-out track.

• "Making Flippy Floppy" - What Team USA captains call switching players, while making everyone extremely uncomfortable.

• "Once in a Lifetime" - The 30 for 30 documenting Team INT's impossible victory.

• "Crosseyed and Painless" - I honestly have no clue how this song could play out at the P Cup, but I hope some situation calls for it.

[OK, back to Kyle].

3. As for the snubs? There was really only one. Ryan Gerard was terrific this season. Here’s a look at him compared to Jacob Bridgeman.

But at that point, you’re splitting hairs, and I’m not going to lose my mind over one or the other. I would have taken Gerard, but I’m also fine with Bridgeman. Snubs are part of the deal when you’re in that range of player, which is unfortunate for the players who are on the receiving end but can also be used as a motivator in the future.

4. There was also some chatter around JT and Cantlay over Gerard, which is … fair?

Gerard has as many top 10s and major top 10s as those two combined. He outpaces both over the last three months in SG and crushes JT in every category.

Here’s the thing, though. Koivun was an unconventional pick (by historic U.S. standards). It probably doesn’t feel like you can afford to make two of those on the same team. Do I think JT is better than Gerard at golf right now? Not really. But I understand why he got picked (and have written many words in the past about why he gets picked).

If you think that Gerard is more deserving, I probably agree with this (!). But I don’t think you should just take the statistically best players for the team. I think this is foolish, often how Americans operate with teams like this (even in basketball and baseball and other sports) but not at all how teams — even in individual sports — actually work.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes a note on Jack Whaley, why CBS Sports rules the televised golf space and one of the better Presidents Cup ideas I’ve seen.

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5. This recent comment on Prez Cup qualifications made me chuckle.

If you split Scottie’s 14,749 points in half, Scottie No. 1 would have finished second and Scottie No. 2 would have finished third on the points list.

6. I’ve been wanting to get back to this, and now it’s relevant again since the Walker Cup will take place later this week.

I interviewed U.S. Amateur champion, Jack Whaley recently on the Normal Sport Show. He was terrific, and we covered quite a bit in a relatively short amount of time. This quote from his week at Merion was touched on in our pod.

I asked him how he got past the heartbreak of feeling like he was letting his dad down and he said his dad was just never negative, never did anything other than support him.

This was encouraging to me as a current youth sports parent. It is so easy to critique: Why did you do this? Why didn’t you do this?

But — and I can’t remember where I heard it — the best question I’ve ever been encouraged to ask my own kids after practices and games is not, How did your play? or Why did you miss the cutoff man in the third inning? But rather, Did you enjoy it? Was it fun? Is this joyful for you?

There is power in that.

(Update: I remembered … Scottie said it. Of course.)

Both as an empowerment of the child but also as a disengagement from the outcome as a parent. I have no idea if that’s how Jack Whaley’s father went about his business (although it does seem like how Padraig Harrington went about his), but I know that talking to Jack about the experience made me want to go about mine in that specific way.  

7. One thing I was thinking about over the weekend during the Tour Championship: Golf tournaments that are on CBS Sports feel bigger than ones that are on NBC. There are probably 100 reasons for this, and I could only name 5-10 of them because I don’t know everything that goes into building a broadcast. But I think it’s pretty objectively true right now.

Related: The numbers back this up. The four most watched golf events in 2026 were the final two rounds of the Masters, the final round of the PGA and the final round of the Tour Championship.

Some of the numbers here are skewed because they are calculated differently in 2026 than they were in 2025. However, even when you compare apples to apples, the story is pretty promising.

If you want more on the quality CBS is bringing to the table, you should start with this profile of Sellers Shy by James Colgan. Tremendous work that makes the entire operation even more likable and compelling.

8. Legit love this Presidents Cup idea.

Can you imagine Si Woo going to the first tee, staring at Cam Young and calling him onto the mat for a three-club challenge. Would watch. Would watch and record and then watch again!

Again, I’m not sure the U.S. is incentivized to engage in any of this — even if it was just one of the sessions — but Brian Rolapp does seem intent on building out the product. If anyone would go down that path toward a more interesting P Cup, it’s going to be an outsider who cares much more about what fans want than about “the way it’s always been done.”

Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. As always, we remain an algorithm-free establishment that (perhaps to our detriment in the short term!) handcrafts each tweet, each pod and each newsletter. Don’t forget to go enter our H&B giveaway!

Hello fellow sediment observers,

I kind of can’t believe the PGA Tour season is over. Don’t blink. Wait, that’s LIV. That was LIV. Regardless, it feels like if you blinked you missed one of the weirdest seasons in recent memory, capped by (of course) the most predictable, consistent ending imaginable. More on the deliverer of that ending and his crazy three-year run below.

Name drops today: Peerless Price, Southern Crust Catering (obviously), dangerous (and non-dangerous) wasps, Ludvig, Blockie, Marvin Harrison, LaDainian Tomlinson and Si Woo.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented Ship Sticks.

Speaking of not blinking, Ship Sticks offers real-time tracking and an on-time guarantee, which means you have peace of mind from pickup to delivery.

“Peace of mind” is not how I would describe what’s running through my head over a tight chip from 20 yards away with a false front running back down to my feet, but at least the lengthy journey with my clubs on trips is worry-free up until the point that I have to, you know, swing them.

You can check out Ship Sticks right here and use the code NORMALSPORT at any point to get a 20 percent discount on your first purchase with them. Thank you, as always, for supporting the businesses and brands that make our work possible.

Alright, now on to the news.

One Thing I Loved

We’ll get to the wins and all the absurd numbers in a minute, but first I want to talk about this clip I saw from Scottie a week ago, before the Tour Championship even started. You can click on the video below. It should take you to the ~40 second clip I want to discuss.

I’m impressed with a lot of different aspects of Scottie Scheffler’s game and life. But the one I go back to most often is his ability to (seemingly) compartmentalize an overwhelming competitiveness and historic run of success in a way that it does not define his identity.

This is so aspirational and unusual, and even though I have thought about the concept often and even tried to implement it in my own life, I still don't really understand how he's able to do it. It seems to be a bit of a preternatural gift (one I’m professionally jealous of).

Scottie may not be 1 of 1 in golf in the same way Tiger was 1 of 1 (or he might be?). But he is certainly one of the most unique world class performers in any industry today.

Take it wider than golf, take it wider even than sports or entertainment. Throw any category or profession you want to throw into the mix, and Scottie’s ability to divorce not only process from result but also result from identity is peerless.

(Free aside: my favorite sports name of all time is Peerless Price. Different newsletter for another time).

All of this is subtle. You have to pay attention, to look closely. But it is also powerful and something we should all try to emulate in our own jobs, families, ambitions and lives.

Hitting shots like these is impressive. But maintaining the tension in his life somewhere between these two extremes …

1. Giving his entire self over to golf or …

2. Acting as if it doesn’t matter to him as much as we all know he does (and should!).

Is so much more impressive than any shot he’s ever hit or tournament he’s ever won.

Data Golf Corner

Because we all fail to understand how good, say, Denny McCarthy actually is at the game of golf, it is almost impossible to properly contextualize just how good Scottie has been over the last few years.

Here’s my best effort …

Since January 1, 2024, Rory McIlroy has won nine times (including two Masters and a Players). A hall of fame career over 33 months for Rory. In that same window of time, Scottie has been 1.07 SG better than Rory, which is more than the difference in SG between Rory and … Alex Noren.

Think about how much better Rory is than Alex Noren. Now think about the fact that this is — statistically, at least — how much better Scottie is than Rory.

There’s a Marvin Harrison feel here where you watch it and think, “Yeah I mean that looks pretty good,” but then you look up again and it’s 1,400 yards and 14 TDs every single year.

Normal Sport

Me every week: This bit will surely not have any new submissions this week.
Also me every week: Wrong again.

1. Jacob Bridgeman hit a shot into a pizza stand in his second round on Friday. Sure. I’m sure Brock Purdy will throw a football into a popcorn machine on the first drive of the second quarter against the Rams next Thursday.

2. This one was incredible. Instead of enjoying Scottie’s third win of the season on Sunday, I was embroiled in a tussle with my own ability to screenshot and dissect whether multiple grains of sand moved in a bunker on the 13th hole at East Lake when Viktor Hovland did or did not touch them.

At first, I was dubious that he did. But after going full Zapruder, I landed in the same spot as Soly did (his homemade before/after GIF is even more compelling than this).

Golf is ridiculous. Also, this probably should have been a $3 million penalty. Hovland won $5 million for finishing second, but the T4 he would have received after a two-shot penalty would have been around $2 million.

3. Ryan Gerard got free relief on Saturday from the spot you see below. At first, I thought it was because of the wasps running amok in the bunkers at East Lake. But Mark Dusbabek clarified the situation.

Dusbabek: “Those wasps are not dangerous wasps. We already confirmed that with the players earlier in the week. That is not a dangerous situation.”

Instead it was because his ball was embedded in the grass.

Then Trevor Immelman brought up a fascinating point, which is that Trevor is allergic to wasps. So to him, all wasps are a dangerous situation. So now we’re in a hypothetical where to some players, some animals are dangerous but to others they are not.

Then what? Very normal stuff.

4. Imagine in a different sport someone over the age of 50, playing against other 50+ year olds and completely stealing the show from the 20- and 30-somethings who, at the same time, were playing arguably their most important day of the regular season.

That’s what happened with Blockie on Sunday as the most performative man in golf history flipped clubs to his caddie, riled up the crowds at the Ally Challenge and high fived walking scorers during the senior even en route to his T3 finish.

Yes we know Josh Allen and Drake Maye are playing this weekend for the AFC East title, but LaDainian Tomlinson and Torry Holt are lighting it up in this flag football game against Drew Brees and TO, and it is must see TV.

He is truly a force of nature.

Blockie does the dishes.

Meme of the Week

This one has so much potential runway.

Greeting a professional QB for the Browns.
Notre Dame linebacker greeting his date.
Seeing a Dwight Howard fan out in the wild.

Wait … What?

Here are Scottie’s worldwide numbers for 2026.

Starts — 20
Wins — 3
2nd — 5
3rd — 2
4th — 3

Here are the combined numbers of the next four players in the Data Golf rankings.

Starts — 78
Wins — 3.5 (Fitz won the Zurich)
2nd — 4
3rd — 5
4th — 6

Want more?

Here are the number of people who rank ahead of Scottie in the following categories so far this year.

Wins: 0
Top 5s: 0
Top 10s: 0
Top 25s: 0
Scoring: 0
Money: 0
Strokes gained: 0
Strokes gained tee to green: 0
Strokes gained ball striking: 0
Strokes gained approach: 0
Birdie average: 0
GIR percentage: 0
Final round scoring: 0
Major championship score to par: 0

Being a former Masters champion who lives in Dallas, went to Texas and deeply believing that he is playing the best golf he’s ever played no matter the results: Fine, 1.

Scottie is not even playing the same game.

How is this app free?

As always, some gems this week.

Porath low key the twitter goat.

Not really here because it’s a great tweet. Mostly because I could not possibly feel more seen. The number of times I think, Oh I am going to be early to this coffee meeting or this parent-teacher deal only to end up at least 10 minutes late is unbelievable.

You know what’s not late, though, based on their on-time guarantee?

Yeah, that’s right.

Thank you for reading our human-made newsletter about pizzerias and non-dangerous wasps. It’s a preposterous exercise every week to write and illustrate it, and it would be nothing without you, dear recipient.

Hello fellow Chili’s enthusiasts (we’ll get to them),

Welcome to today’s newsletter. After this week in the golf industry, it’s time …

Also before we get to it, apropos of nothing specific, a huge shout out to Charlie Golf Co. for making kids clubs and bags that — combined together — are 200x as good as most others for less than 1.5x the total price.

Name drops today: Charles Barkley, Phil, Travelers, Tweeth Mitchell and Ethan Strauss.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by OMNI.

We are doing another giveaway with our friends at OMNI, and this one again includes a four-night stay at one of OMNI’s golf resorts later this year AND a free entry into their Generation Cup*, which is already underway at 12 locations nationally with options for the rest of 2026 and into 2027.

Here are those Gen Cup options.

Sept. 13: The Omni Homestead Resort and Spa (Hot Springs, VA)
Sept. 27: Omni PGA Frisco Resort and Spa (Dallas)
Nov. 28: Omni Barton Creek Resort and Spa (Austin)
Dec. 12: Omni Amelia Island Resort and Spa (Jacksonville)
Dec. 20: Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate (Orlando)
Jan. 24: Omni Tucson National Resort and Spa (Tucson)
Feb. 6: Omni Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa (Palm Desert)

You can check out the Generation Cup right here. It gets a full endorsement from me as one of the best golf experiences I’ve ever had with my son. Great competition, perfect family time and fantastic golf courses.

Me talking to anyone about the Gen Cup.

You can enter to win both the four nights and the free Gen Cup entry at the link below. We will also throw in a goodie bag from Normal Sport, complete with some Norman gear for you to rock when you get out and play.

*Generation Cup team entry will be subject to availability and that this team entry is for qualifier events only, not for the national championship.

And now, onto the news.

Creation Over Transaction

Three stories have stolen the show this week in all the worst ways.

1. The Good Good debacle, which surely you have all seen by now has mushroomed into a national story that has resulted in Callaway dropping them as a partner and the PGA Tour following suit.

2. Grant Horvat is selling apparently-not-plastic-but-definitely-plastic-looking clubs and foam golf balls wrapped in a putting mat (?) for $200.

3. Chili’s and Rhoback (yes, really) made an incomprehensible commercial in which (I think) Chili’s is promoting a pop-up restaurant on a golf course.

Within these three stories, there are innumerable things for people who truly and deeply love golf to be offended by and annoyed with. Truly a “choose your own adventure” moment in golf history. And honestly, most of that offense and most of that annoyance is completely justified.

The primary takeaway for me — an outsider to all of these people and brands who is simply observing from afar — is that there is an implicit message from the creators of these products and this content.

And that implicit message seems to be that the actual humans who make up the audiences they are speaking to are simply roadblocks to what the creators and the brands are truly after, which is of course your money. In other words, all of it feels extremely transactional.

Some people hate the word "creator" as it relates to the current content economy (some people hate the word "content" as well and also “content economy” … some people, it turns out, maybe just hate everything).

I actually love the word "creator,” though, because to create simply means to manifest out of a unique creativity and skillset we were each given. That is extraordinary. To create is to make something useful or beautiful where previously nothing useful or beautiful existed. To create is to reflect a creator.

The flip side of creation is transaction. Creating is the most human we can be. Transacting is the least human we can be.

Creating (at least in its highest form) is when humans look at the audience who will read, listen to, watch or consume what the creator makes and then attempt to stir the hearts and minds of that audience toward things that are good and great.

We see this even in industries that have mediocre-to-bad reputations like advertising. The best ads make us feel because the best advertisers are really just human psychologists. They understand human nature. They understand people. That is usually good (although I concede that sometimes it can be manipulative).

I think of this Travelers ad. An advertisement about an insurance company!

This kick-started the commercial trend you see everyone jumping on now where brands depict a familial or life story in which time gets compressed and you start thinking about how quickly your own kids age and it kind of destroys you. But this was the first company I remember doing this. It was amazing because it was thoughtful and detailed and human.

Good Good, Horvat and Chili’s/Rhoback (an amazing group of folks that I never thought I would be writing about together) are far from the only culprits here. But each in their own way has seemed to lack a thoughtfulness about the person who was going to receive the thing that they were making.

This is most clear with Good Good (and Callaway!), which — it is extremely obvious at this point — did not consider what they were making. Ethan Strauss even posited that the Good Good sketch was built by AI and acted by humans. Whether that’s true or not, it is indisputable that the process was not thoughtful.

Horvat’s club set is … fine. The thoughtlessness comes from the fact that it costs $200 (!!) which reads like, “I’m trying to buy Phil’s wine collection.”

The Chili’s thing is just the least thoughtful commercial imaginable. All the cliches. Perhaps it’s parody? But if it is, an inability to distinguish this is a form of thoughtlessness itself.

All of this is easy to sniff out for consumers, yes, but I find it to be absolutely infuriating for those of us who are roughly in the same industry. For the people who are deeply and seriously attempting to create great art. Who have enough self respect that — even if they don’t care that much about the person they are creating for — care enough about the act of creating that they think deeply and fully about what is being built.

Here’s how Tweeth said it.

Transacting sees past the human to the exchange (of goods or services for money).

Creating is an act of selflessness: I spent time making this thing for you. Transacting is an act of selfishness: Here is a thing, give me your time and your money.

I don’t disparage brands or creators trying to make money or to build up their businesses. It takes a lot of trust to engage in the act of creating on the front end and then hope on the back end that it’s enough for a business to exist. And I have made plenty of mistakes of my own as a creator (far more than I have listed here about others).

What I have a problem with, though, is that there is a trajectory of thoughtlessness from so many folks in business (these are simply recent examples) that presumes you — the intended audience member — is not very smart. The process and output we observed this week implies both a lack of care about the audience and a lack of thoughtfulness about the product.

As an aside, when Good Good got a $45 million investment a year and a half ago, I had a few thoughts. First: Great for them! Second: Man there is a lot that goes with that, a lot you have to do to grow that, a lot of strings attached. Toss in the speed things move at online these days, and I would say the default of most people and companies is to run as fast as possible. What was it Zuckerberg used to say? Move fast and break things. That is a good mantra until it’s not.

I personally fight against this within this own business. I feel — physically and literally feel within my body — the draw toward always doing more. Dan Jenkins used to maybe write one thing a week. Now we’re all writing one thing every single hour.

Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick said in SBJ two weeks ago that Good Good aspired to be “the biggest golf company in the world.” This is a great and fine goal, but what it takes to get there is speed. Always more. Always faster. By definition this often requires less thoughtfulness than before.

This is where I feel a bit of sympathy for Good Good. They should not have done this, but they don’t seem to be nefarious. In fact, I think they are in a lot of ways absolutely fantastic. But they do a lot. Everyone does. Just to keep up. It’s a culture that is not aspirational and that I wish would slow down and get quieter. In some ways, their own success made them vulnerable to something like this happening because their own success and growth promoted an insane cycle of more, more and then more.

To be clear, though, a business doesn’t have to choose this vision. And this is where I don’t feel sympathy. This was a choice. One I certainly would not make. Because the upside of capitalism on the internet is unlimited financial gain, but the downside of modern capitalism on the internet is that it is exhausting, and with exhaustion comes thoughtlessness. I’m not sure you get to have both. At least not at the speed with which businesses like this operate these days.

All of this is probably a bit overwrought, but as someone who deeply values thoughtfulness in the work I do and is very proud to have friends in golf who create work that is thoughtful and beautiful, I have found this week to be pretty gross from a lot of perspectives.

So many people involved here have dubbed themselves “creators,” but what is being delivered is nothing more than a barely-veiled transaction. That lack of thoughtfulness (which implies a lack of humanity) is often not a huge deal in and of itself. It happens a lot, and it is usually harmless (like in the Chili’s/Rhoback collab).

But that doesn’t make it any better.

The harmlessness just makes it feel less catastrophic.

Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. As always, we remain a business of words and images that is algorithm-free and handcrafted.

Hello fellow hand foot and mouth survivors,

Welcome to today’s newsletter. We have so much to get to. But first … today’s connections.

Name drops today: Chi Chi Rodriguez, Jack Whaley, Mike Tirico, Tiger Woods, Shaun Norris and the Civil War.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Turtlebox.

I am going to show you two Data Golf skill profiles, and I promise this is connected to our friends at Turtlebox. Here’s the first one.

We’ll call this one the Original (Gen 3).

And here’s the second one. We’ll call this the Cub.

The point is … these two skill profile charts are almost indistinguishable. If you look closely, yes, the one on the top is someone who is slightly longer off the tee and a bit better around the greens. But the person on the bottom is as good of an iron player (if not better) and a great putting comp.

There are probably better ways to describe the relationship of Turtlebox’s new Cub speaker to its original models, but I’m pretty sure the reason you come to this newsletter is for comps exactly like this one.

Turtlebox’s Cub is the newest addition to their waterproof outdoor speaker lineup. Coming in at 5.5 lbs. (or half an Akshay Bhatia), the Cub delivers big sound in a cube-shaped design.

The Cub is adequate for up to 20 people, has a 14-hour battery life, and connects with all the other Turtlebox speakers. Packs light, hits heavy and checks in at just $330.

It is the “wait, this second skill chart is basically the same as the first even though the first is six-time major champion Rory McIlroy’s and the second is not” product of the outdoor speaker world.

I’ll give you the second chart answer at the very bottom of the newsletter.

Alright, now on to the news.

One Thing I Loved

If you haven’t seen Gary Woodland’s post-round interview from Sunday, you should watch it. It’s short but incredibly affecting and quite human.

Obviously much has been written and said about Woodland’s journey over the last few years. Brain surgery, PTSD, trying to play pro golf in the middle of all of that.

He won earlier this year and on Sunday, after finishing T4 at Bellerive, qualified for his first Tour Championship since 2019 (the year he won the U.S. Open).

His interview with Amanda above was terrific, so good. But I also loved his off screen quotes, where he gave an almost perfect description of what I believe courage to be.

I love the phrase, “I tried to be proud of myself.” How rarely do I do that (and when I do, it’s often an outsized, undeserved pride).

We often think of courage as the removal of fear. But that’s not courage, that’s either ignorance or stupidity. Courage, instead, is steadfastness when faced with fear.

Gary Woodland cannot erase the fears he has in his life right now. But he can lean into them, embrace them, try to enjoy the process and try to be proud of himself. That is probably true of a lot of us as well. We can’t change or amend the fears we have about innumerable threats in our lives (real or imagined), but we can muster up some courage, be proud of who we are and remain faithful in their presence.

I was inspired by Woodland’s willingness to do that after his performance on Sunday (and throughout this entire year).

Intrusive Thoughts

New segment here that I stole from my favorite fantasy football pod, which is basically just saying things out loud that you are surprised popped into your head while watching or thinking about golf. I italicized my actual thought, the commentary afterward is not italicized.

• Do I … [gulp] … do I kind of like Wyndham Clark? Listen, there are a lot of problems. The flying cubs, the destroyed lockers, the matted down rough and on and on we could go.

And I don’t think I’m trying to be friends with him, but I do respect both the singular pursuit of greatness as well as the ability to handle all the noise with some amount of grace. I think about this moment from Shinnecock with Mike Tirico often, and he said some version of this again on Sunday in St. Louis.

Yes, maybe swallowing the fallout from your own mistakes is as admirable as going poo poo on the potty, but he has continually done it, even when the hate has gone beyond what he’s probably deserved. I wrote more about how we should feel about him during the U.S. Open this year. I still feel personally conflicted when it comes to rooting for him, but that thought did pop in my head as I watched on Sunday.

• The fan reception in St. Louis is a good argument against my point that the Tour should maybe just stay at the usual spots it goes to. The Western Open (I’ll exclusively call it the BMW once BMW sponsors us) has been pretty good at engendering this no matter where it goes (Olympia Fields also comes to mind).

One Thing I Hated

On the flip side of the “wait, do I actually like Wyndham?” argument …

On the 14th hole on Sunday, Wyndham went to multiple clubs in the rough and tested the club behind the ball nearly 10 times (full video here).

Trevor Immelman: "He's taking a long look at this. This is like the third club he's placed down behind the ball there."

Frank Nobilo: "So the lie might be better."

Wyndhm is far from the only player who does this, but he is certainly a repeat potential offender of Rule 8.1b (4).

This is not cut and dry because — as is true with golf’s anchoring problem — it’s impossible to tell how much force the player is putting on the club. This means that an external party subjectively measuring what it means to “press the club on the ground” is a ridiculous proposition, which is part of the reason players are supposed to call their own fouls to begin with.

However, this only emboldens my take from The Open that each group should have a referee who can call fouls in the flow of the game. Would be absolutely insane, but at this point, so is the constant wondering whether guys are purposefully and willfully pushing the envelope or whether they have just done things like this for so long that they no longer think about it. I can promise the presence of a referee who calls penalties as you go would shift that line back to what we would all consider a more reasonable place though.

[Jason here] to accentuate that first point about willfully pushing the envelope … You could say his Darth Vader comments after the BMW (normal sentence) are a sign that he's taking the label of heel as a free pass to habitually step near or sometimes over the line. Also, bring on the Angel Hernandez of golf! [Jason out]

… now you see me better.

Normal Sport

1. The No. 1 player in the world and best golfer since Tiger Woods has been upended by the following situations over the last three years.

• An over-exuberant Louisville policeman who arrested him.
• A wine glass used as a rolling pin for homemade ravioli.
• Hand foot and mouth disease during a $20 million tournament.

Sure.

“I got the hand, foot and mouth” sounds like how a Civil War soldier might begin a letter to his wife and family back home, not how the No. 1 golfer in the world speaks after a year-end playoff event.

Very normal stuff.

2. On the Euro Tour, Shaun Norris was given a two-shot penalty for kicking a divot. A real sentence. The amusing part (although probably not to him!) is that he was penalized under the same rule that should apply to Wyndham Clark’s 9-iron pogo sticking: Rule 8.1.

Here it is.

I guess the argument here is that because Norris’ right foot was standing on the divot, it does relate to “conditions affecting the stroke” and thus he must be penalized. It is wild to me that moving “cut turf that is already in place” is punishable in every country in the world, but if the strip of grass was just sitting there in a random spot in the fairway and not back in its divot, you would be fine? How many sporting outcomes are so affected by what surface the 1mm roots of a strip of grass are resting on?!

Meme of the Week

Endless usage.

• When the cap table comes in and it wasn’t what you wanted.
• When the Good Good collab was supposed to drop on Monday.
• When you realize the Crown Prince built your contract in riyals.

[Jason here] it does bring to mind another superstar of sorts.

How Is This App Free?

As always, some good ones this week.

I howled at “my passion was Chi Chi Rodriguez’s equipment deal.”

/Scene

That one from Patty Mac didn’t get enough love. Excellent remix of a years-old trope.

Merch of the Week

This jewel from Holderness and Bourne is immediately in my rota. Roberto Castro once told me that the H&B Maxwell is the best golf shirt ever made, and I concur. If you’ve never worn one, you should check out this one.

Thank you for reading our algorithm-free newsletter. That second skill profile above? Presidents Cupper (and future Ryder Cupper) Chris Gotterup.

Don’t forget about referrals below, and please avoid hand, foot and mouth as your children enter back into school and daycare.

Hello Spieth stans,

Today’s NS Connections. I might be more obsessed with making these than I am with completing them. So much fun. Hope you enjoy it.

Also, if you missed it on Thursday, we launched a referral program. Our hope is that — just like when Spieth starts pouring in 3s — we hope you spread the word far and wide about our newsletter, and — unlike what comes after all those 3s for Spieth — we want to reward you for doing so.

More deets at the bottom of the newsletter.

Name drops today: Roberto De Vicenzo, Baby Si Woo, Kevin O’Connell, Old Course and Tyrrell Hatton (multiple times).

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Charlie Golf Co.

If you run a golf club or know someone who does, let’s help Tyler get his bags in 100 clubs (they’re currently in 86). This is a no brainer to me. Beautiful, not-stupid-expensive golf bags with a club’s sweet logo on them?

And in fact, Tyler will be taking my money because we’re going to be producing some Norman-themed kids bags over the next few months.

Whether you’re a dad (or mom!) with kids who love the game or someone who has an opportunity to buy at scale, I cannot recommend Tyler and Charlie Golf Co. highly enough. In a world where everything is mass produced with little care or thought, CGC is caring and thoughtful about how they produce their golf products. Exactly the kind of company we are also trying to be.

Alright, now on to the news.

One Thing I Loved

This quote from Brian Harman during the Memphis event really struck me. I thought about it a lot over the weekend.

I think we — the corrupt golf media — have collectively done a bad job of explaining the other 14 tournaments within the larger tournament that everyone cares about.

However, even if we were better and more consistent about explaining these things, I don’t really believe we live in a sports culture that cares all that much about who finishes 15th in a week and what that means for the 2027 majors.

We care about who won and lost because our biggest sports are very binary (football, hoops, baseball and hockey). We then try to take those concepts and apply them to individual sports — or at least I do — in ways that they probably don’t really fit.

I view a PGA Tour event as the entirety of the NFL schedule in a given week. Yeah, there’s the one game you care about most. But there are all these other games that matter quite a bit, too. I think there are ways to highlight those — this often does happen during a Ryder Cup year — in ways that properly communicate the depth of meaning those tournaments within the tournament have to the players who play them.

It’s also an opportunity to shine a light on how truly unique golf is as a sport (which is … kinda what this entire newsletter is all about).

Scottie's Sunday scripting

Stat of the Week

The Scottie stuff gets either normalized or ignored completely, which is a bummer because I’m fully on the block of “we are watching one of the (at least!) 15 greatest careers of all time unfold in real time” block.

Two stats. The first is number of events it took the last six guys who won 21+ PGA Tour events to get there in order of slowest to fastest (this does not include Euro Tour).

Vijay -- 285
DJ -- 266
Phil -- 246
Rory -- 214
Scottie -- 168
Tiger -- 97

Tiger is either the best or second best player of all time. I think Rory and Phil are around 10th. Logically, this means that Scottie will land somewhere between Tiger and Phil/Rory. Doesn’t mean that’s how it’s going to play out (shout out to the beautiful, beleaguered boy), but is it crazy to wonder if Scottie is going to go down as, like, the 6th best player of all time?

Another stat (pointed out by a reader) ….

Tournaments it took to go from win No. 1 to win No. 21 …

Tiger: 79
Scottie: 98

It remains remarkable that Scottie didn’t win any of his first 70 starts, and now he’s won 21 of his last 98. They are the only two players to go from 1-21 wins in a span of fewer than 100 starts on the PGA Tour in at least the last 40 years.

Normal Sport

1. What is the equivalent of this in another sport? Has to be a football, baseball or soccer ball hitting the camera wire in a big time stadium, right?

My short list of players I would be interested in seeing this happen to.

1. Hatton
2. Hatton
3. Hatton
4. Rahm
5. Not sure there’s anyone else.

2. This made me laugh.

Hush! But also get loud!

Golf but quieter (but louder)!

Meme of the Week

I’m not even sure what to do with this one, but it made me chuckle as I watched last weekend.

There’s definitely a “This is how Roberto De Vicenzo did it” joke in there somewhere. But regardless, I am desperate for more Si Woo content, even if it’s Baby Si Woo content.

Also, not sure if this is a meme, but wanted to point out how utterly ridiculous it is to have tournaments in Memphis and St. Louis in August. And truly, no offense meant toward the good and even great people of Memphis (especially Memphis) and St. Louis.

[Jason here] I would like to give Memphis some flowers for inspiring my first two Normal Sport illustrations from Normal Sport No. 21 ‘The Spieth Balance Beam’. 3 years later, that title still holds up and we're still talking about SWTY SZN. Thanks Memphis.

Corrupt Golf Media

• Come for the Randy Moss story, stay for an NFL head coach accidentally saying “one of the greatest ball-strik … trackers of all time.” Me to Vikings ball knower KOC after hearing that.

• Nobody is better at these little short stories about different people, places and moments in golf than Sean Martin. This one on 1989 U.S. Amateur winner, Chris Patton, is wonderful.

• It would be pretty weird if this tweet below wasn’t the case, right?

Golf almost certainly (?) has the highest percentage of media members who also play the sport of any other Tier 1 or Tier 2 sport (I don’t include sports like pickleball as Tier 1 or Tier 2 sports). It definitely has the most media members who are also still active professionals (normal stuff). And because of both of these realities, I think there is a love and a joy — not always, but often — that doesn’t exist in other media circles.

Example: I covered college football for 10 years in conjunction with golf. I enjoyed it. It was fun. But I didn’t love the game, I think because it’s more difficult to love a thing you’re not also participating in yourself. That’s not universally true, but I think it’s mostly true for most people.

• I referenced this piece last week, but I’m not exaggerating when I say it might be the best thing on AI I’ve ever read.

• This on ordinary abundance is tremendous as well. I think often about how crazy it is that we have running water inside our homes as well as a trash system that just magically gets rid of all of our waste. Those two realities would have been unfathomable to 99 percent of humans who have ever lived, and yet I take them for granted every single day. Anyway, this piece takes that idea even further. If you, like me, are obsessed with thinking about stuff like this, you’ll love exploring the piece.

Minor Major News

I really loved this video showing changes to the Old Course ahead of the 2027 Open Championship. It’s super interesting and frankly just really pleasant to watch.

I have recently found myself fairly deep in the chess world. Playing folks online — mostly friends but sometimes strangers — doing puzzles, the whole thing. I have been in and out of chess over the years, but I’ve never been as enamored as I am right now. The reason? I find the strategy and thoughtfulness about the game to be basically endless. There is no bottom to the well.

The same should be true of golf. However, every time I see a video like this where folks in charge of a golf course are moving bunkers around and subtly shifting the pieces on the board, my cynical voice says, Eh, none of it matters, players are just going to fly it all over the yard and past all the trouble. 

It remains to be seen whether this is actually true, but I can think of some changes to equipment that would reinstate the myriad ways a sport that, like chess, should be strategically infinite. Instead, golf is being played right now with all queens and one king. That’s more powerful, sure, but it’s not more interesting.

How Is This App Free?

This got me good …

And so did this one …

Thank you for reading our algorithm-free newsletter. We toil every week to produce something worth your time, and we are grateful when you give us even a few moments. To that end, there are also other things we’ve been cooking up such as our new referrals system which you can see below. Enjoy it, use it, participate in it and enjoy the Norman gear you accumulate along the way.

Hello,

A confession: I really enjoyed building Wednesday’s Connections puzzle and have been trading puzzle building with friends throughout the week. Here’s another one for Friday. No prize this time. Just share it with friends if you’re inclined.

ALSO! Before we get to today’s newsletter, you will some notes on our new referrals program at the bottom of this email. Our hope is that it will encourage you to #GetInvolved, share the newsletter and properly reward you for helping us grow the game sheep meme brand. We tried a version of this two years ago but decided to wipe the slate clean for this iteration. Here are the prizes. Good luck to all!

Name drops today: Oliver Burkeman, Blades Brown, Snoop, Jon Rahm and Steve Bornstein.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Sap’s.

You know who could use some Sap’s? The guys grinding their faces off in Memphis where the temperature over the course of the tournament looks like a Misiorowski pitching log: 100, 101, 101, 103.

Where guys are putting with towels over their necks (of course it’s Spieth).

Anyway, they could use some Sap’s, which includes an ingredient stack of electrolytes for hydration, adaptogens for stress and balance and aminos to help your body recover faster (no word on what it does to tan pants).

I’ve been pounding these in the morning here in Dallas (where it’s a full Misiorowski as well) both before and after runs and workouts. Highly recommend the lemon lime, which you can get right here on Amazon.

And now, onto the news.

8 Thoughts on Golf This Week

1. Hayden and I recorded a new podcast on Tuesday on a lot of what’s happened over the last few weeks. We talked about the young American stars suddenly popping, Bryson’s LIV circus and whether Jon Rahm is going to stay.

Oh, and also the cities that look like they’re going to be part of the championship circuit. I’m in favor of the Tour’s decisions, Hayden is a little less excited.

You can listen on Apple here or Spotify here.

Also, would love any feedback you have on the pod. You can vote below and leave written feedback as well.

The more honest, the better. There is nothing you can say that will come close to what I hear from the LIV stans on Twitter. Also, if you want to email me directly with any feedback, you can just hit reply and send over a note.

2. Speaking of Rahm! Turns out that he might not be willing to trade the $100M+ he’s owed for IOUs for a pink and black golf team whose other players include the second best player from Northern Ireland and an American who has never had a positive strokes gained season.

To be clear, Rahm proceeding with LIV 2.0 would be tantamount to Cam Young deciding to play on the Sunshine Tour in 2027. We don’t think of it like that because that’s not how we have thought about LIV over the last five years. But that’s what LIV 2.0 will be more like.

I think I have firmly landed in the “no single person can move the needle enough for it to matter for a golf league” camp, but this problem remains …

So whether a player actually does move the needle might not matter as long as the company funding the league believes that he moves the needle.

Maybe that’s all that matters as it relates to LIV 2.0, and in that sense there is a dark amusement in the seeming reality that Rahm may once and for all reunite the world of professional golf. Just not in the way he originally intended to.

3. Gabby wrote quite well about all of this earlier in the week, and the whole thing is almost comical. Among my favorite parts.

• LIV is pitching its 2.0 version by touting how much money it loses and how that can benefit a business looking to save on paying taxes.

Me reading that …

• It is probably going to enter bankruptcy, which means that for Rahm and others to get the money they are owed, they will have to sue Saudia Arabia in an international court (!!). The thought of Bryson and his attorney taking on the crown prince in an extremely public trial is almost too much for me to handle.

• And she confirms that Rahm is a linchpin (maybe the linchpin) because of what he’s owed and how much the league needs him because its future funding depends on it.

A question: Is this what we want pro golf to be?

I honestly feel bad for … basically nobody involved here (at the highest level anyway). They all tried to microwave history and were not quiet about doing it. So now everyone is looking around saying, “Wait, where is the money and why isn’t this working?” when the entire premise from the beginning was that there was too much money involved to make it work!

This is startup failure 101. Happens all the time. Might happen to Normal Sport at some point! So my frustration and lack of compassion is not with the fact that it’s happening but rather with the chest thumping that went with it along the way.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes some follow-up AI thoughts, a good Michael Brennan take and a couple of amazing profiles from this week.

By becoming a member, you will receive the following …

• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
• An invite to our Slack channel where we watch and talk golf together.
• A free digital copy of our Rory book.
• 15% off to our pro shop.

 

4. I found this piece by Oliver Burkeman on AI and how he can’t stop thinking about it … mostly how I feel about AI right now as well. It has just permeated so much of my life and my thoughts to the point that I feel the need to adopt either a personal or business-wide formal stance on it. Or both.

Most of you probably also feel this because, well, if you have time to read a newsletter about golf on a Friday (or whenever you’re reading this), you probably work in a job that can, will be or has already been affected by AI.

To be clear, I don’t feel held hostage by AI or its tentacles, but I do feel like it continues to find me and my brain no matter what I’m thinking about or consuming.

5. I don’t have a spiky point or take on all of this (at least not quite yet), but I found both this conversation Colin and Samir had as well as this NYT article — which I think is the best thing I’ve ever read on AI? — to be helpful in the way that I think about it.

Here’s a wonderful quote from the NYT article (emphasis my own).

AI is the newest form of what people have been searching for forever, which is comfort. Or avoidance of pain. I have found in my own life, though, that it is often only through discomfort (or various forms of pain) that we become who we are meant to become. That is what is being missed in all of this. This is not just a matter of getting right or wrong answers but rather what the technology is doing to who we become as people.

It’s all very fascinating.

Me reading that …

6. Here’s a fun one I got from a friend this week …

Michael Brennan: 2 wins in 29 PGA Tour starts.
Thor, Koivun and Blades Brown combined: 2 wins in 109 PGA Tour starts.

It’s a great point, and we probably don’t think about Brennan enough. I loved this on him from Rick Gehman’s excellent newsletter this week.

I’m intrigued.

I still think the ceiling is still higher than the other three guys, but I might only be saying that because of their respective pedigrees. Regardless, it would be terrific to see any of them bust into a U.S. team room that feels like it has been trotting out the same team — or a facsimile of the same team — for the last 10 years.

7. This Joel Beall profile of Brian Rolapp is really good, worth your time. Equal parts a great articulation of the person and also a good look at the current men’s pro golf landscape. No new huge structural takeaways if you’ve been paying close attention, but there was definitely great insight into who Rolapp is.

Such an underrated trait, and it stems from here. From these two qualities.

I was already a fan and walked away an even bigger one than I was before. Don’t know how it’s all going to go, but I do believe that the person leading it is smart, capable and humble enough to steer it into a thriving new era.

8. This story from The Athletic on a playboy NFL agent who nearly became general manager of the Seahawks but then suddenly found himself on trial for murder is — and I overuse this but I promise this is an appropriate use of it — insane.

Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. As always, we remain an algorithm-free, handmade artifact in a world where it seems like there are — even digitally — fewer and fewer of those left.

Hello,

I built a golf specific Connections game for all of you today. First one to respond with a perfect board (please don’t cheat) gets one of our new Norman hats.

Good luck!

Name drops today: Andrew Waterman, Blockie, Bronson Burgoon, Stefano Mazzoli, Bruce Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Rule 9.6.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at OGIO and their new Renegade Go bag.

Even though there’s a new PGA Tour event called “The GO” (seriously), let it be known that OGIO did it first (barely!).

The Renegade Go bag (sorry to pause here, but I need to say that I truly cannot believe that there is also a PGA Tour event called The GO) can be worn as a backpack or carried like a duffel. Built to go where you go, however you go. Or if you go to The GO.

Everything I have from OGIO rules from a durability, functionality and aesthetic standpoint. Cannot wait to get my paws on one of these.

Alright, now on to the news.

Stat of the Week

If I would have told you on January 1 or February 1 or March 1 or maybe even April 1 or May 1 that a player who was in college on all of those dates would make the FedEx Cup Playoffs but Brooks Koepka would not, you probably would have laughed at me.

And yet … here we are.

Koepka called his showing this year “pathetic,” which … yes.

But I also think these results for both Koivun and Koepka are indicative of where both players are at. It’s extremely difficult for us to conceive of the idea that Jackson Koivun is (or J.T. Poston or Bob MacIntyre are) better than the great Bruce Koepka.

But I think it’s just … undeniably true.

Part of this is because Koivun is undeniably great, and the traj looks like Anthropic’s growth rate chart. But also some of it is because Koepka is no longer excellent and honestly might not even be that good.

I have been on the “Brooks will never win another” block for a while, but to be fair I’m on that block with a lot of guys. Now I wonder if he’ll ever be competitive again. One top 10 this year on the PGA Tour. He’s ranked behind Oliver Lindell and Mac Meissner in SG since Jan. 1. Even at the majors — where he has historically made hay — he had just one top 25 in 2026 and zero top 10s since winning Oak Hill.

None of it is good. All of it is bad.

I didn’t have some broad, sweeping point here other than I thought it was pretty crazy that Koivun made the playoffs and Brooks did not. It’s also just a little jarring to have been doing this long enough to have seen the entire arc of somebody’s career (probably). From the Challenge Tour to the major assassin to whatever this is.

[Jason jumping in …]

I think you might be unfairly selling Brooks a bit short here. He had some hand injuries this year and we never really expected him to immediately kick ass after his return from LIV. I think the more interesting question is (for this comp and others), when you think about players getting their form back, what age do you cap it at? Could you imagine Brooks winning (or even wanting to compete) at 46?

[OK back to Kyle]

To address the question above, I think of 40 (or maybe early 40s — into the 41-43 age) as that number right now. More than anything, both that number and Koepka’s arc should shed some light on how crazy it is that Rory and Phil have existed at that level for 20+ years. It’s impossible, and yet they’ve done it. Even guys like Rose and Adam Scott are extremely impressive in this regard. To be fair, it’s getting easier to stay great into your mid 40s in golf, but I wouldn’t say staying great for 20-25 years has been normalized yet. That still takes terrific ambition and work (and probably some luck).

So yes, all of this is a commentary on Koivun but it’s also a commentary on players who are top 20 or 25 for multiple decades. It’s not as rare as winning five majors. But it’s a career achievement that we don’t really recognize as often as we should until somebody like DJ or Brooks falls off and we think, Oh yeah this never happens for that length of time.

1979

Normal Sport

• At LIV Bedminster last week, Charl Schwartzel spun one back off the green and into a hazard … where a fish ate it?

Schwartzel took a drop and made four, but I believe the drop was because his ball wasn’t playable in the hazard to begin with, not because an animal took it. Here’s the rule (can’t believe there’s a rule for this).

I think I’ve said this before, but I’m obsessed with the phrase “virtually certain” and believe it should be incorporated into daily life more often. 

I’m virtually certain I will remember to get the kids from school. I’m virtually certain I turned the stove off. I’m virtually certain you are wrong.

1984

Meme of the Week

This one has been in my repository for a while (yes, I have a repository for golf memes), situated between Rickie and the Cat. Here’s how it looks in my files (and yes, there are hundreds).

Anyway, Patty McDonald used it perfectly this week.

Here are players who had a top 10 finish on the PGA Tour this year.

Ben Silverman
Marcel Schneider
Jon Rahm
Jeremy Paul
John Parry
Joaquin Niemann
Stefano Mazzoli
Zach Johnson
Manuel Livira
Trace Crowe
Bronson Burgoon
Jacob Skov Olesen (who had two!)

Such strange times for the beautiful boy, whose last top 10 anywhere was June 2025.

1990

Quote of the Week

“There isn't a golf fan on the planet who doesn't want to see me play a big Tour event, and I get that.”

-Blockie -Bryson

All time good. And honestly?

[whispers]

[softly]

He’s not really wrong.

For 99 percent of pro golfers who enter a tournament, my feelings about that tournament change 0 percent. Some of them entering may change it negative percent.

Bryson is one where, if he’s in it, it immediately becomes a different thing altogether (I think we can exclude LIV events from this). Rory and Scottie as well, obviously. Who else? Maybe Rahm? Andrew Waterman? Is that the whole list?

Do you think differently about an event if Fitz, Morikawa, Xander, Cantlay, Spieth, Gotterup, JT, Hatton, Wyndham, Hideki or Ludvig are involved? Probably not. Maybe Xander if you’re heavily invested in the Xander app? 

Regardless, it’s a shockingly small list.

2004

Love Your Work

I have read this tweet many times. I’ll quote it here.

The pace we all feel because of AI (maybe not all, but a lot of us in knowledge jobs) is not sustainable. Not how we were created to interact with the world. Not how things were meant to be.

I am pro-AI, broadly-speaking. I think it is an extraordinary piece of technology. I’m not necessarily a doomer (though you could talk me into that path, perhaps). I use it every day for research or questions or to help me think through a problem (though I don’t use it for writing). I’m fine with my kids learning on it.

What I’m wary of is two-fold.

1. How its existence fundamentally changes the expectation on human output (see above) and how exhausting that can feel.

2. How difficult it is going to be for human content creators to break through the avalanche of noise starting now and into the future (and even more so for the next generation and beyond).

I think these things are probably related to each other. I also think there is some hope for the humans, especially as it relates to content creation. And also that true human voices and leadership will be more important than ever. But it’s going to be an all out war that humans won’t win by simply working harder.

2040

I’m fascinated by the whole thing and will keep writing toward it. Thank you for indulging me and for trusting us with your inbox. We take it (this oftentimes very stupid thing) quite seriously! And as always, we remain handmade and algorithm-free.

Hello,

It has been an exciting week behind the scenes here at Normal Sport. Nothing I can announce yet, but haven’t been this excited about a project in a long time. There will be hints below, and I’ll let you guys know what’s coming as soon as I can. If you’re a Normal Club member and hanging in Slack, DM me. I’ll share what i can.

Name drops today: Arlo White, Nick Kokonas, DHH, Babe Ruth, the Dodgers and Rasmus Hojgaard.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Holderness and Bourne.

Word on the street is that it’s the summer of cotton, and there is no better product in that space than H&B’s Oliver shirt.

Unlike some of what you’re going to read below, H&B Peruvian Pima cotton is actually a great investment of your money (and they even have their fall colors loaded up, which you can check out right here).

I wrote a lot today about what it means to create something great in the non-digital world. H&B has done that, and they do it over and over again across all their categories.

Thanks to them for supporting. Thanks to you for checking them out. Thanks to my wife for tolerating my overflowing closet.

And now, onto the news.

10 Thoughts on Golf This Week

1. Obviously the LIV news has taken up the lions’s share of oxygen in golf this week.

The league (allegedly) got funding from BC Partners, which has a stake in GSE, the agency that represents Bryson (and other LIV players). All of that is extremely normal sport, of course, but it gets weirder.

Rahm is still owed nine figures, and they’re gonna give him shares of Lesion 13 to make up the difference? Surely that will go over well!

2. I have no reaction to any of this other than to be exhausted. Right here, in the middle of Jackson Koivun’s emergence, pro golf turns the other way and is like, Well I do wonder what the interest rate will be on the line of credit from the investment firm that helps fund Bryson’s crew. That seems far more interesting and thrilling than whether Koivun will be on the Presidents Cup team!

Like, I just don’t care.

I thought this take from my guy, Nick Kokonas, was terrific.

As has been the case for a while, Bryson seems to be the straw that stirs the drink here. Just as everything related to the Cavs revolved around LeBron for the first seven years of his career, everything related to LIV revolves around Bryson. That is the position he enjoys being in the most, and it’s unsurprising that an entity tethered to GSE would fund the future of this operation.

And honestly this is what LIV should have been all along: A modest league that tries to build up over time. The amusing part to me is that now you have an army of LIV bots stanning for a roided up version of … the Asian Tour? The Sunshine Tour?

That is all fine and good. Whatever. But nobody should have been pretending like LIV was some solve for golf, some sort of antidote to what’s wrong with sports or the real way to [closes eyes and winces] … grow the game.

3. And certainly let’s not — under any circumstances — blame the podcasters and newsletter writers for the 1.0 version of the product not working.

This is both outrageous and an abdication of responsibility.

If Normal Sport fails, you will absolutely not in any way hear me say “Well if No Laying Up and Fried Egg hadn’t been there first, it would have crushed” or “If not for AI, I think we could have made it.” No, just be better. Do the thing better. Play better. Pivot. Fight for it. Do something — anything — other than pin the blame at the feet of folks outside your organization.

My list of pet peeves is not super lengthy, but abdicating responsibility is probably at or near the top of the list (right next to entitlement).

Related. ⤵️ 

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes a GIF of one of my favorite swings right now, why we love so

By becoming a member, you will receive the following …

• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
• An invite to our Slack channel where we watch and talk golf together.
• A free digital copy of our Rory book.
• 15% off to our pro shop.

 

4. I’ve said this many times, and I will continue saying it. If we’re not going to change equipment, why don’t we change par? It would give tournaments like Detroit more credibility, and I think sickos would really love it.

I thought about this during the final round at Detroit last weekend. The restoration there visually looked incredible, but guys still shredded it to pieces when it came to scoring. So … stay with me here … why not shorten Nos. 3, 4, 8 and 14 and make them, respectively, a par 3, par 4, par 3 and par 4. Par is now 66, and the winning number is now -2 (which would have been sweet!).

Maybe this is not what casual fans want — it’s probably not — but I think one of these dartboard shootouts that’s looking for an identity should do this and see how it affects the emotional reception of the tournament.

5. I decided while watching last week that Rasmus has one of my favorite rarely-talked-about swings in golf. Some Ludvig in there. Some Cantlay in there. It’s so quiet and pretty. Could watch it all day.

6. I feel this and believe this deeply. I don’t know if you have had the same experience I’ve had of late, but I have found my desire to create and publish online wane a bit because of what a war it is to compete with all the nonsense that gets made every day.

Perhaps that’s a cop-out position by me, but I’ve definitely been exploring what it could mean on the physical product side. I find my own heart longing for tangible things to replace the up and down movement of my thumb on a piece of glass that seemingly has no end.

7. I get the Joe Posnanski newsletter in my inbox even though I don’t really follow baseball all that closely. Why? He writes in an aspirational way. With heart. With feeling. Without care for whether it’s perfectly grammatically correct.

This week’s newsletter was about the Dodgers and the MLB trade deadline, which I care almost nothing about. But then again, Posnanski barely writes about baseball. He writes about the psychology and emotion of being a fan. Of being a human.

An example.

Absolutely provocative! And — depending on how you view things — absolutely true. But the point is not whether I agree with Pos or I don’t. The point is that he thinks about the game and its tentacles in a brilliant and emotional way. He doesn’t get lost in VORP and xWar and whatever else — even though he does care about those things and does sometimes write about them.

I have never cared that much about help side defense and where the left end goes when you’re in cover 3. I want to know how a game made you feel or how you’re thinking about your team’s draft or why you root for whoever you root for. That stuff is just so much more interesting to me, and a shout out to Joe Pos for fostering that love for that type of sports fandom in me.

8. This is excellent.

Nobody is perfectly aligned enough with the cultural zeitgeist to know what’s going to be a hit and what’s not. Which is an argument in favor of just making as many high quality pieces as you are able to in a world that brings you a lot of joy and letting the chips fall wherever they’re going to fall.

I will always, always, always argue for “all things being equal, do whatever is most life-giving to you because that is the thing that will allow you to take as many shots as possible, and inevitably some of them will eventually fall.”

Easy to say.

Difficult to trust.

9. The U.S. Amateur starts next week. I got a press release on it the other day. There are two 15 year olds in the field. There’s a 63 year old. Folks from Vermont, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Hawaii (basically all the license plates we lacked on our Colorado trip), Paraguay, Singapore, Vietnam and Iceland. All teeing it up at Merion to figure who the best one is. There is something beautiful about both the meritocracy of golf — it literally does not matter what Miles Russell did last week or last month or last year — and also the global breadth of the game. There is little like it. Maybe nothing at all. This is true at all levels, but it’s easier to see and internalize at this one.

10. I listened to a lot of interesting podcasts and interviews on my drive home from Colorado last week. The best one I listened to was with DHH, who some of you know as the inventor of Ruby on Rails (normal sport). He’s incredibly smart and terrificly opinionated. Here was the best thing he said on this particular pod.

That is so good. So self-aware.

I don’t think I’m particularly good at either of these things, partly because I’m prideful about what people think about me and horrible at artificial constraints, but his prodding here was such a great encouragement to become better at both for the sake of the product you have (and also the one you’re building for the future 👀 ).

Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. We’re coming! Not like Spieth is coming, either. Actually coming. Scared about that but also so excited.