Greetings!

I am back from the best sporting event going over the weekend.

Stanley Cup
NBA Finals
Canadian Open 😂 
World Cup
The College World Series

I head to Shinnecock on Tuesday afternoon for the U.S. Open, and it’s going to be wonderful, but will it top four college baseball games with my son — who happens to be the perfect age for enjoying the CWS — and new friends (and Normal Sport readers!) Mike and Liz B. who gifted us tickets in Omaha over the last few days?

Kinda doubt that.

Some thoughts on the CWS experience below along with what I’m looking forward to about the 126th U.S. Open and other stuff I’m reading and thinking about right now.

Name drops today: Thomas Jefferson, Gene Littler, Owen Hull, Bud Cauley and Rafa Nadal.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by a first-timer, our friends at … OMNI!

Speaking of my son (!) and of Father’s Day this weekend (!) I would like to point you to The Generation Cup, which is an incredible event, hosted at OMNI golf courses, where teams of two compete locally to advance to the national championship across three different divisions. The divisions …

• Grandparent-grandchild

• Parent-child or aunt/uncle and niece/nephew

• PGA Professional-generational family member

My son and I did the parent-child division at PGA Frisco in 2024, and it was about as much fun as I’ve ever had playing golf.

OMNI offers 12 different locations throughout the country from June 2026 through February 2027 where you can contend.

You can check out those dates and locations right here.

The combination of getting to compete with my son — who always notes how much longer he is than me, even though he tees it up like 120 yards ahead of me (!) — on elite golf courses with other moms and dads and grandparents and their kids.

Well, it is an exceptional experience that I could not recommend more highly. If any of that interests you — and I’ve seen our survey results so I know almost all of it does! — then you should check out The Generation Cup right here.

OK, now onto the news.

Seven Thoughts (Partially) on the U.S. Open

1. I woke up on Monday thinking about how we’re kind of due for an elite U.S. Open champion. Since Brooks won it in 2018, we’ve gotten the following.

2019 — Gary Woodland (only major)
2020 — Bryson
2021 — Rahm
2022 — Fitzpatrick (only major)
2023 — Wyndham (only major)
2024 — Bryson
2025 — J.J. Spaun (only major)

I was listening to the excellent U.S. Opens draft by NLU and as they rattled off guys like Hogan, Tiger, Palmer and Nicklaus among their winners, I was thinking about how we haven’t had a tremendous champion in a while.

The obvious objections here are Bryson and Rahm. Bryson is going to be a no from me, dawg, if we’re talking about all-time greats, although he could still get there. Rahm is … I mean, we’ll see. I fall on the side of thinking he’s going to be an all-timer, but a lot of work to do. And our recent run of champs is nothing like what we used to get.

Look at this in the 1960s and into the 1970s.

Everyone on this list won multiple majors except for Littler, Venturi and Moody, and seven of the winners won at least six majors. There are probably only three active players who even have a chance at reaching six major championships!

The U.S. Open is wonderful because Jack Fleck and Michael Campbell and Scott Simpson can win it. But the truly memorable ones have been won by the all-time greats. The right bet is probably to be on a more random winner (Spaun, Rai etc.) — especially in this era of more parity — but the dream of course is for the guy who’s favored to win the grand slam or for someone in this field to get to six and tie Phil or someone else to get to seven and tie Palmer.

2. Here are the top 13 performers at U.S. Opens over the last five U.S. Opens (min. 12 rounds played). Interestingly, it only includes two winners (Rahm, Bryson).

I am pretty fascinated by this list. Some questions …

• How has Rory not won one of these?!
• How is Tom Kim ahead of [stares at screen] … Brooks and Bryson?
• How has tom Kim played 16 rounds at the U.S. Open in the last five years?!
• Wait, how good of an iron player is Hideki? Oh, just way better than some of the best of all time at this tournament.
• Who’s going to talk me out of Sam Burns this week?

3. If you have been on the fence about becoming a Normal Club member, this is the perfect week to do so. A lot of our (boots Hokas on the ground) coverage is paywalled, and we’ll be full send almost every day this week for what should be one of the best majors of the last several years. Other member benefits include …

• 15 percent off all our merch (new H&B order dropping soon!)

• Free entry into our $1,250 U.S. Open fantasy contest (link after the jump).

• An invite to our Slack channel where we disparage Spieth with ferocity in one breath and praise him incessantly in the next.

It really is a fun community and one we plan on continuing to build out with more and more benefits until it becomes the best deal in golf, thus surpassing LIV Golf swindling Jon Rahm into playing with 47 guys you’ve never heard of because his contract is the most airtight document since Thomas Jefferson signed the Declaration of Independence.

I suppose we have a ways to go before we get there.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes CWS content (the good stuff) as well as our big U.S. Open pool and some notes on Bud Cauley and Rafa Nadal (of course).

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. Here is the Normal Sport U.S. Open contest with over $1,000 in prize money at stake. It’s open and free to enter for you, Normal Club member.

I have yet to notch a Wikipedia yellow so far this year. In fact, if there was a cut, I would have missed both of the first two. It’s a fun time, though, and a great way to follow the event.

5. I haven’t watched the Rafa documentary (yet), but this piece on how his heroic warrior mantra is not to be celebrated was fascinating. I’m not sure I agree with it (actually I’m pretty sure I don’t), but the questions it raises and the thoughtfulness that went into it, how against the grain it is, the piece is truly among the most provocative things I’ve read recently.

6. OK, some CWS thoughts. I presume this is exactly why you pay to be part of the Normal Club.

I went to Rosenblatt with my family 20 years ago (how was that 20 years ago?) but had never been to the new stadium. So when reader, Mike B. and his wife offered up two seats for me and my son for the first four games (Troy-WVU, UNC-Ole Miss, OU-Bama and Texas-Georgia), I jumped at the chance to take a dad-son trip.

The entire experience blew me away.

I won’t dump all 138 thoughts I have here (though I want to). The one I want to focus on today, though, is how perfectly enmeshed the commercial side (stadium holds 25,000) of the CWS is with the intimate side (it feels electric at almost all times).

It’s not quite like attending a baseball game on a college campus, but it’s far superior to the Final Four in terms of fan experience.

I’ve talked about this some, but after finishing up my own baseball career early in college, my fandom of baseball waned in the years after that. I was just tired of it and enjoying other things. But as my kids have started getting into it, it has reinvigorated in me the love I once had for it.

Pro baseball gets overly romanticized in ways that it shouldn’t. The minor leagues are a war. Traveling is a grind. It’s a capital-J job for sure. Not unlike pro golf. But college baseball? Guys with eye black from their eyelashes to their jawlines. Burly boys throwing 94. Lanky boys throwing 99. Dust spraying all over the yard as 50 guys — almost all of whom will never play beyond this level — live out the full college experience but on a diamond, under the lights and in front of 25K?

I mean, how can you not be romantic about that?

I’m not naive to the types of humans that baseball produces. I played with them all. And so when my 12 year old watches the center fielder for UNC or the shortstop for Alabama with wide eyes and lots of dreams, I know the shadow side of their lives that he doesn’t yet know.

But I will admit this: It feels good to hope.

It feels good to watch an ace demand the ball in the 9th and continue shoving. It feels good to watch other people hope. In a bounce, in a break, in a play, in an inning that could bring about just a little more hope and a little more hope until you’re at the bottom of a dogpile in the 14th game of the week.

As we get older, we become more jaded. We all know this. We all feel it. So for a few days, I took so much joy in watching the joy of my son watch the players he one day wants to be.

Sport is commercialized. Everything good goes this way. If it wasn’t good, it wouldn’t have the opportunity to become commercialized. Omaha is no different. But there is still a sliver of dreaming and hoping in there that has all but been extinguished in other arenas and other professions.

Omaha is full of guys who definitely aren’t boys but also aren’t quite men yet. Superstars who aren’t famous like Arch Manning and Brayden Burries, which means you can see and experience their greatness from close up.

All of this makes for an intoxicating mixture. This amalgamation of desire and craft and hysteria in one stadium for 10 days with nothing but all of your dreams on the line. I’m glad we got to see and experience it in person.

I can’t imagine there are many sporting events in the world better than that one.

7. I was equally inspired by Bud Cauley winning his first Tour event in his 239th (!) start. I am contractually obligated to note that Bud is a Holderness and Bourne guy (I’m not, but I’m happy to do it!). But even more importantly, watching the grind of going 0-for-238 before snagging one is pretty incredible.

Also, his perspective in the aftermath was striking.

That is such a great outlook on life. That fulfilling your potential is a “thank you” to the people who helped you do it is rare, especially for someone who just accomplished something for the first time that he’s been attempting for forever.

I loved it and hope to emulate it more often.

Thank you for reading and participating in all of this. We are grateful you’re here and glad for your support. If you haven’t joined our Slack channel, this week is a great week to do so!

Greetings!

This newsletter will be the only one for the week as I’m headed to Omaha with my 12 year old for the first two days of the College World Series. Shout out to reader, Mike B., for setting us up with tickets. We’re both extremely excited to get away for a bit and watch some baseball.

The CWS was a formative sporting event for me growing up, even though I’ve only been one time. I remember my dad going every year and always bringing me back something awesome — a t-shirt or hat, usually — and watching every single game on ESPN.

A lot of Long Beach State. A lot of Mark Kotsay.

A lot of views that looked exactly like this one.

Man, I loved the College World Series, and I hope my own son’s experience of it is half as memorable as mine was.

Name drops today: Rafa Nadal, J.T. Poston, Walt Disney, Extinction Rebellion, Nelly (both of them) and Juli Inkster.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at Seed Golf.

[Jason here] The ridiculous illustration you're about to see needs some background context, so here it is…

On Sunday, I fell asleep after 1. watching the very normal protestor-delayed ending to the KLM Open, 2. reading some pages from the wild Perdita Durango by Barry Gifford and 3. trying (unsuccessfully) to think of a concept for this week's Seed Golf illustration.

Somehow these three things mixed together and gave me a weird dream. The only image that stuck with me was a crowd of protestors on a golf course chanting pro-Seed things like, "Same performance! Lower price! Same performance! Lower price!”

I don't think playing a new golf ball constitutes a protest, although it can feel like radical change if you've played the same ball forever because your grandpa or Joe Pro played it.

I do know that our friend Dean founded Seed to invent new golf balls as a sort of protest against the bigger boys. At the very least, it's a bold movement against the status quo in the golf ball industry. Diving headfirst into the lab to develop a product at a price that makes golf more accessible and fun? It's like if the protestors at the KLM Open started their own airline instead of jumping into the water on 18.

And like any good protest or movement, people are taking notice.

We've been pumped for the last year to partner with Seed and spread their golf balls in this newsletter and on the course. We'll jump in the water if we have to with the spirit of Seed ambassador, Rob Hogan (I promise you’ll want to click on that).

OK, now onto the news.

One Thing I Loved

Nelly won her fourth major championship on Sunday at Riviera, and this quote from her after the round was awesome.

Golf — maybe especially competitive golf — discloses our fears and insecurities like no other sport does. The reason for this, of course, is that you are always at odds with yourself. There is no defender, nobody in front of you to believe you’re better than or that you can get past. You’re just constantly battling your past, present and future self.

And yes, this happens in other sports. We saw it on Sunday with Zverev at Roland Garros as he wrestled with his double faulting woes. But it doesn’t happen as frequently or as obviously as it does in golf. Nelly’s question is a perfect representation of what life is actually like and probably part of the reason I love covering golf so much.

The dad asking if he’s doing a good enough job for his daughter. The mom asking if she’s rising to the appropriate level for her friends. And on and on we could go. Golf asks different actual questions but delivers, directionally, the same answers as life does.

I find all of this to be quite beautiful, even when those answers aren’t as personally comprehensive as we would like. The reason I find it to be beautiful? There is an honesty to golf, like life, that forces us to face the truth of who we are and how we’re living (or playing). The parallels are obvious and often painful, but sometimes satisfying.

You have to endure. You have to hope. You have to believe. Even at times when you feel like none of those character qualities are even remotely compelling or attractive. Golf is life. Life is golf. I used to think this was a dumb trope trotted out by older people who didn’t have anything more creative to say.

Now? I find that, more than anything else, it is simply true.

Normal Sport

1. Going into this U.S. Women’s Open week, Nelly had played seven events and lost to 10 golfers. Actually nine, because one of those golfers — Hyo Joo Kim — beat her twice.

And yet! She decided to change her grip (?!) during (!!) the U.S. Women’s Open (!!!).

Golfers are insane.

Imagine Steph — following his best regular season of all time — playing in the NBA Finals and saying after Game 3 that his brother, Seth, helped him change part of his shooting form and that it feels weird but he’s gonna go with it.

Honestly, Tim Legler might have to be detained until the Finals conclude. Charles Barkley would do a 5-hour show. The whole thing would be completely crazy.

Remember when Phil changed his putter grip on the 71st hole at Kiawah? Nelly did that for an entire event, except Phil wasn’t having a Tiger-like season through the first five months of the year.

[Jason here] This feels like a good spot to share one of my grandfather's tips on putting. “I can only keep a putting stroke and stance for about 20 rounds. Then I get stale and I change."

2. Though it paled in comparison to Nelly going with a new grip after losing to 10 women across seven events, Sam Burns’ ball landing on a bridge that he then had to play from (!) was still amusing. Here Wemby, beat the Knicks but also you have to shoot these free throws from the catwalk. Good luck.

3. Jason mentioned it above in our Seed placement, but here’s an image of the folks scattered on the 72nd green at the KLM Open to protect golfers from protesters who were in and around the lake at the closing hole.

Sure. No doubt.

Here’s the Guardian.

Very normal stuff.

And our KLM Open illustration from 2 years ago feels more relevant than ever. s/o LIV

From the (Recent) Archives

I wrote what you’re about to read below several weeks ago, but it is becoming increasingly true as Nelly continues to fill out her Wikipedia grid.

She is playing, unequivocally, the best golf of her life (and of anyone on the planet). She has not missed a cut since June 2024 and is inching closer to this group of U.S. women who have won the most major championships since the middle of the 1960s.

Here’s what I wrote after she won the Chevron last month.

Male American golfers who have a chance to be the best of the modern era: 0.
Female American golfers who have a chance to be the best of the modern era: 1.

Here’s Meg Adkins.

Nelly is the only active golfer — male or female — who has a chance to go down as the best modern American. That is something that seems to go a bit overlooked when talking about her greatness. Winning back to back majors and taking the 2026 grand slam all the way to the Women’s PGA Championship will change things a bit, though.

Or at least it should.

From the (Further Back) Archives

I ran into this tweet this week and decided to go back and look up that 2004 Sony Open that is being referenced here.

Here’s the full board. Wie missed the cut by one but beat Scott, Hunter Mahan, Rory (Sabbatini) and Zach Johnson. Wie gets too much credit and attention in general, but this particular feat truly does not get enough attention or credit. She was 14 years old!

Stat of the Day

Speaking of things I stumbled into over the weekend, this reads like a Tiger Woods stat. Mind-bending stuff.

Also, I made it into a Tiger Woods stat.

Meme of the Week

This from the Memorial was amazing.

Ask a casual friend in your life which of these gentlemen can generate more ball speed?

My guess is that it’s not even close.

Dogs Only

J.T. Poston is having the opposite of Nelly Korda’s year. He has zero top 10s, zero top 20s and twice as many MCs (4) as finishes inside the top 30 (2). So of course he went out and shot the 88th best round since 1983 with 10.05 SG in Round 2 at the Memorial and lit up one of the best non-major fields of the year before holding on for the win.

Of course.

His final round on Sunday was perfectly emblematic of his entire career. If you watch Poston hit balls on the range next to, say, Wyndham Clark or Cameron Young, you are going to be surprised not that they look different but at how big of a difference there is.

Poston averages 172.4 ball speed off the tee this year. A fine and normal number but a mere sign post for the heavier hitters. His iron play is good but nothing extraordinary. His short game is solid throughout but won’t bowl you over. He is in a lot of ways an off-brand version of Xander Schauffele. If you took Poston and blindly increased his abilities equally in every facet of the game, you would have Xander Schauffele.

And this is exactly why I’m so impressed with his career — four wins, including at Memorial over Scottie, Rory and basically everyone else in the world.

Poston is someone who gets by — and often thrives — simply because he has figured out how to score. He has problem solved and gritted his way into becoming a scorer. It’s not art, but it is inspiring if problem solving and becoming great at something without a full bag of tools is inspiring to you (and I don’t know how it wouldn’t be).

If you’re not a freak among freaks on the Tour (which is most people on Tour) then you’re going to have to be a dog to compete and win. Poston is a dog. Not unlike Russell Henley, who won the week before him. It’s not an exceptional experience in the granular, but in the aggregate? In the sense of, “How does this guy continually go out and shoot 68s over and over?” Yeah, it’s pretty great.

Love Your Work

This from Kevin Kelly on work and money is outstanding.

We make money to make more movies. What an upside down view of work in modern America. What a content, peaceful view of work. I loved it. I identified with it.

I want to adopt more of it in my day to day vocation.

Thank you for reading and participating in all of this. Our goal is not to make money for the sake of money but to make money so that we can make more (hopefully) awesome products (newsletters, books and pods). That’s it. We make money to make more of the stuff we love. Thank you for participating in it. You can support us by becoming a Normal Club member right here.

Greetings!

I don’t know if you are experiencing this, but the start of summer is always such a strange time for content — what I watch and what I read online seems to change significantly. I am moving around more, participating in more activities, going on more trips and just generally at my desk less often.

Outside of both Opens, this seems to lead to less opportunity for consumption of golf, which is part confession and part wondering aloud if Brian Rolapp should factor that into his calculus when putting together the 2028 schedule. Maybe I’m alone in that. But I suspect I’m not.

Summer is a fun and wonderful time — all seasons are magical in their own unique ways — but I just feel a bit less invested in the golf than I do in January-May. So of course … here is a newsletter about everything going on in the golf world but really just about what went on with Scottie at Memorial this week.

Name drops today: Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Steph Curry, Jon Rahm, Jalen Brunson and Ted Scott.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Sap’s Original.

Sap’s is perfect for any summer activity. On the course. After a long run. During travel. Or doing absolutely nothing on a Sunday while watching the No. 1 player in the world hoot and holler at an event he’s won twice in a row.

Sap’s is light, crushable, and refreshing in a can. We played some golf at Wild Spring Dunes earlier this week, and they had some cans of those, uh, drinks started at the University of Florida. If you’ve never had that drink out of a can, you’ll never go back to the plastic bottle. That’s exactly what Sap’s out of a can reminds me of.

Plus, you don’t even have to travel to a resort course to find it because you can buy it on Amazon or at your local HEB.

OK, now onto the news.

Five Thoughts on Golf Scottie This Week

1. Scottie. Let’s talk about it. It’s all anyone is talking about. If you haven’t seen it yet, he hit a ball into someone’s milkshake with his training aid grip on Thursday. It was wild.

Ok I’m kidding, he actually just hit a ball in the water on No. 16 but then unloaded for two minutes, talking generally in Ted Scott’s direction and voicing his anger with Scott’s reading of the wind but also seemingly talking toward anyone who would listen to him.

The entire episode provided us with memes for weeks, possibly months.

Scottie’s frustration will literally feed families.

And of course people had many, many, many opinions about this outburst from the best golfer in the world.

Here’s mine.

Right around the PGA Championship, our tiny Normal Sport team had some backend technical problems that didn’t affect very many people but kept popping up. It made me extremely frustrated because I want everyone’s experience of Normal Sport to be a great one. I went to Jeff, who runs all of our tech stack, and said — and this is a direct quote — This just can't be happening, which sounds a lot like what Scottie said to Ted Scott.

Jeff probably wasn’t my biggest fan in that moment, and I was probably a bit harsher than I needed to be. But I say that to say that these things happen when you’re trying to build something, when you’re pursuing something meaningful. When you’re in the mix and working toward a goal.

I just cannot get worked up about this particular Scottie-Ted Scott interaction. If this was Wemby and Mitch Johnson or Jalen Brunson and Mike Brown I think we would be talking about what dogged competitors those guys are. Honestly, this seemed kind of mild to me as far as high-level athlete interactions go.

2. That having been said!

When Scottie plays poorly — the 2025 Players comes to mind for me — he does seem to get incredibly whiny in a way that is both unbecoming and unappealing to the general golf public. Both of these things — both No. 1 and No. 2 — can be true.

His anger can be both fairly tame by professional athlete standards and also incredibly annoying as a spectator.

Here’s the problem: When you see Jaxon Smith-Njigba yelling about how Sam Darnold never hits him at the right moment on his route — I’m making up scenarios — it is completely unrelatable to almost everyone watching so it’s easy to presume that this anger is justified.

But when you see someone whining and being sarcastic and getting worked up about a bad shot on the golf course, almost everyone watching has either played with that person or been that person [raises hand for both], and it is the most relatable — and unattractive — thing in the world.

Because we have all been in that situation, have all played with that person, it is easy and natural to formulate a negative opinion of Scottie. Easy to find it annoying.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,055 of them) and includes where I land on all of this and why I’m buying stock if you’re selling any.

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.

 

3. The place where I ultimately land is that I think all of this makes Scottie a more interesting character within the golf world. This is the third thing that is true.

Would I cringe if my kid one day emulated a whininess in this particular way? Probably. Do I also think it makes him more intriguing to write about and think about? Yes, of course. Obviously!

Jason illustrated the same Scottie story at the 2025 Players.

Golf is life, life is golf. Scottie once said, “I feel like every time you’re playing golf you’re kind of looking into a mirror and learning more and more about yourself.”

I’m sure he doesn’t always love what he sees.

But that is probably true of all of us in each of our particular worlds.

Could my opinion of this situation be viewed as a free pass for someone who dressed down an employee on national television? I suppose. I don’t see it that way, though I can understand why others would.

I am probably less offended by this incident than when Scottie goes full Tim Duncan and acts like every putt he hits should drop from all over the yard.

This.

That gets me riled up because it connotes some entitlement.

This Ted Scott interaction? I think it’s just a sociopathic competitor being a sociopathic competitor. Is it great? No. But I empathize with the situation because if there were cameras and microphones constantly in my workspace, people would sometimes see something pretty similar. Even in the last few weeks.

4. In light of this (or maybe because of it) that has been some low-key “Scottie’s lost it” chatter going on. Perhaps I’m getting got by random Twitter folks (basically this).

But if anyone is actually selling stock, I am looking to make large-scale and wide-sweeping purchases with no inhibitions and no regard for my actual cashflow situation.

Scottie is unequivocally the second-most consistently great player of this century. The others — Phil, Rory, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh and Brooks Koepka — have combined to win, what is that … 24 major championships.

Scottie has lost to 88 golfers across 11 events this year, or roughly eight golfers per tournament. Is the iron play mildly concerning? Sure. Do I think it’s more likely that he figures it out than it continues to decline? Absolutely.

He’s 29. Could catch Brooks in a month. Could catch Phil in six weeks. He’s averaging 3.0 SG per round across the last three years, and that hasn’t changed much this year. Most importantly when it comes to situations like this, I trust that his love for golf will win the day.

5. I was talking to Blayne Barber about this on our fun pod on Tuesday … guys who love it are so much easier to trust than just guys who have good swings.

Catching up with Blayne Barber on college golf, identity and falling in love with process (Ep. No. 34)

The Normal Sport Show · Episode

Spotify

Here’s what Blayne said.

Rory, Scottie, Rahm. They love it. That cannot get enough of it. That is … maybe not as common as we all would think. But Scottie stands out even among that crew. In love with the process. In love with the game. Bring me all your stock. I will happily gobble it up because I’m still not convinced everyone understands exactly what we’re watching, which is one of the all-time greats in the middle of what is probably his all-time best run.

Here are the record holders in terms of most consecutive weeks as world No. 1.

Scottie has a real chance to catch one of the great Tiger records ever.

There has been and will be more backlash in the upcoming years than there was when he was ascending. That’s part of the deal, and I think Scottie probably struggles with this spotlight more than others.

Which again, means that watching him compete under that microscope — where his flaws are highlighted but so are his strengths — is going to be (and already is) one of the more interesting storylines in golf.

Thank you for reading and participating in all of this. We are grateful you’re here and glad for your support. We promise little other than that we’re going to absolutely wear out that Scottie meme above in every conceivable way.

Greetings!

Happy low-key most intense day of the golf year with NCAA match play running throughout the day. I think today is representative of what LIV thought it was going to be. It never got there (or got close, really), but you can see why the aim was aspirational.

Name drops today: Andy Roddick, Donald Ross, Katie Miller (sure), Brett McCracken, Danny Go (sure), David Attenborough, and Blayne Barber.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Turtlebox.

[David Attenborough voice]

In bunkers all across the globe, eggs of the Original (Gen 3) that were laid at the start of the season are beginning to hatch.

Most hatchings happen at night. Now in the light of day the young Rangers are extremely vulnerable. Many (actually most) will be snatched up by golfers.

During their lifetimes these Rangers will inevitably be attached to golf carts, boats, thrown in water, mud and sand. And they will still be expected to hold a tune.

Which they will do, impeccably.

This season of hatchings is an annual pilgrimage. Out of every Original (Gen 3), many Rangers of all kinds of colors are born.

They are hunting for a home as much as their homes are hunting for them. Don’t let their desires — their very ambitions! — go to waste.

Not this summer, while the sun is pumping and the air is just calling to be interrupted with your favorite music (or your favorite podcast).

OK, now onto the news.

Normal Sport

Let’s play a game of how many words until you can guess who said the following quote.

A couple of weeks ago, an interview of Bryson DeChambeau dropped on The Katie Miller Podcast (normal stuff). Within the interview, she asked him the following question.

I joked that after that question, Bryson probably thought, “Hey, I actually should let AI decide my club selection.” And now here we are.

All of this is — of course — an activation. Bryson is a Google partner and he recently was part of a group that bought an AI company that is supposed to help you with your swing, which is powered by, you guessed it.

Hogan: “Dig it out of the dirt.”
Bryson: “You can actually find it in the cloud.”

These are strange times, to be sure. And they don’t seem to be going anywhere.

Thought(s) of the Week

In our last podcast, Brentley Romine came on to talk NCAAs, and he discussed how USC women’s coach, Justin Silverstein, was using Claude in real time to help make up matchups against Stanford. You can see that clip right here.

This is obviously related to the Bryson bit above, and I have two thoughts on it.

1. My first reaction to both Bryson tweaking his swing using a machine called Gemini and the USC women’s golf coach punching names into a box and getting feedback in real time is that I’m completely exhausted. Does this make me old? Curmudgeonly?

And I get it. I would likely be doing the same thing if I was in their shoes. But I find the search for a 1 percent advantage in the age of these machines to be quite tiring. I find the optimization-ification of everything to often be fool’s gold. A promise that cannot be fulfilled. A carrot that never gets caught. Sometimes (though not always) representative of an unwillingness to find contentment in life.

These are maybe two bad examples of what I’m talking about because I, too, am always working to improve and why not use all the tools at my disposal?

But they are also two examples that are emblematic of a world that has become completely obsessed with efficiency and self-improvement. Almost like we are aspiring to actually become the machines that we keep believing will make us better.

2. I have also been turned on to the idea that sport is one of the last places you can’t optimize your way out of. Brett McCracken wrote about this during the Olympics.

When Jannik Sinner is naked in front of the entire country of France with nowhere to hide and no one to help, that is beautiful because it’s real. When Shai is running around with no lane to enter and no Plan B and Wemby waving his arms like lightpoles in front of the basket, that is dramatic because it’s real.

When you hit one 30 yards short in a playoff with match play on the line …

… that is compelling (and horrible and wonderful) because it’s real.

I did not mean for this entire newsletter to become an anti-AI rant. I am certainly not anti-AI. But I am most definitely anti-stripping humans of their humanity, and I am concerned that — as a society — we are veering in that direction in the name of … progress (?) or success (?) or something in that realm.

Sport, somewhat strangely, seems to be a salve for this.

On the field, anyway, which remains refreshingly Claude- and Gemini-free. Though we are just a couple of decisions away from Bryson sticking a microphone on his bag and chatting with Perplexity throughout a round. Can you imagine the R&A old heads having to gather and decide what to do about a rule adjustment for this exact situation? 😂😂😂 

Corrupt Golf Media

• This excellent piece on the founder of Danny Go is both devastating and great. I don’t know Danny Go — my kids seem to be a few years ahead of his emergence — but I presume a lot of you do know about him, and you will appreciate his work much more after you read that piece.

• I stumbled into this podcast by Blayne Barber, who played at Auburn and on the PGA Tour for a long time. He tells his entire golf story, and it’s pretty mesmerizing. I knew bits and pieces, but it’s a sobering deep dive into what pro golf is actually like for everyone not named Rory, Xander and Scottie.

Related! I talked to Blayne for over an hour on Tuesday about golf, life, being a dad and a million other things.

Proud of our convo, and I hope you love it. Podcast edition here: Spotify | Apple.

• Speaking of AI! This is a sobering read on the future of writing that got passed around in our members only Slack channel. This part in particular rattled me a bit as I think about the future of Normal Sport and what I (and we) want it to be.

Me after reading that …

All-Grocery Store Team

Russ Henley won Colonial last weekend, and my guy Patrick McDonald sent this tweet out in the aftermath.

It got me thinking about a game we have played before and surely will again. Who is your starting five of this prototype? The Charles Howell IIII Memorial “I made a billion dollars in my career and only the sickos know who I am” team?

Or, as I am now calling it, the All-Grocery Store Team.

Here’s mine right now (active players only).

Russ Henley ($51M)
Brian Harman ($45M)
Harris English ($43M)
Sam Burns ($37M)
Si Woo Kim ($37M)
6th man: Chris Kirk ($36M)

Those six people could walk in a Whole Foods together (and possibly have done this), and nobody would notice a single one of them. The All-Grocery Store Team.

Of course the flip side of this is that it means you have one major combined between the six of you. That’s the entire reason you’re on the AGST to begin with. Which is a bummer.

I think Harman is kind of the goal. Won a non-U.S. major that many people probably didn’t pay attention to, has brought in $45M, doesn’t lose his card, wins a handful of times, can hunt and fish in peace and go anywhere he wants. Dream stuff.

Idea of the Week

I loved this from Kate Smith-Stroh, who co-owns the excellent GUR Design, and had this great thought over the weekend.

Elite, Tier S logo here, and she’s right … it wouldn’t get made today. It’s too weird and not safe enough to make it through the four committees necessary to get it out in to the wild. You can (and should) just make stuff, which is what we did with Norman.

[Jason here] Claude had Kyle call me in from the bullpen to close out this section. As a contemporary of Kate's in the “drawing golf things biz” I agree that the golf world could use more handmade character. And there are a lot of us fighting the good fight!

Having said that, I wonder if we [gestures broadly to golf artists] are always the right ones for the jobs. Or if we're going about it the right way. The reason we love the Dooks frog or Stanwich witch is because they weren't made by a Donald Ross passing through town designing logos, they were made by a Mike Strantz in the moment.

Someone — often a random someone — just did it.

Designing things is hard. It took us what felt like 100 rounds of sketches and experimenting to not even get the Norman logo. That happened one night in a stroke of desperation.

There's an authentic energy to putting something on paper and then sending it. Less optimization. More send. The opposite happens when a design is worked to death, which some committees are good at.

Maybe what I'm getting at is what Alistair Mackenzie said about bunkers. If you want a natural logo, give a pen to the village idiot and tell them to draw it clean.

I could, and should go more in depth about the creative process behind golf stuff, but for now I wanted to offer a golf version of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies in case you or your club are tasked with coming up with a new logo.

• No sketches allowed.

• Don't think about golf.

• Draw it with your eyes closed.

• Let your kid design it.

• Don't use a computer for any part of the process.

• Make it out of clay, wire or papier mache, dirt.

• Make the committee laugh or cry.

Wrong Era Award

Many are saying that Chet Holmgren is the new Phil Mickelson.

Original tweet said “Chet” and “France” not “Phil” and “Earl.”

Nobody is saying this, but it did get me thinking about how we’ve seen guys come along that appear early on as if they’re going to be world class players in their era, and they get completely outclassed and overshadowed by true all time greats.

The two that come to mind …

Ernie and Phil —> Tiger
Roddick —> [stares at big three]

It’s maddening that not only do you have to be blessed with genetics, a wild work ethic, a deep love for the game and the right situation around you at the right time, you also have to avoid the minefield that’s always lurking that someone out there is just you but way, way better. This is especially true in golf where you cannot affect the outcome by playing defense in any way against your opponent. And there are always a handful of players in every generation who it will be true of.

Love Your Work

I am learning the following lesson daily …

Writing this newsletter is (usually) easy and fun for me. Unfortunately I am finding out that writing this newsletter is about 35 percent of running a successful business. It is the other 65 percent that I find to be difficult and taxing.

As someone who (normally) enjoys swimming around in my own thoughts, the temptation is to just try and think my way out of situations or problems. But that is not reality. Reality looks more like thoughtfully considering a handful of different business options, testing them out, seeing what works, getting 10 percent clarity, trying some more, showing up every day, getting less clarity for a week, finding a breakthrough, moving a few steps forward, typing some things into Claude and Gemini 😃, hoping it’s the right path and doing this again and again and again until it starts working.

That is the action part. It’s difficult.

If it was easy, more people would be doing it because — and this is the important part — it’s also quite a lot of fun.

Thank you for reading and participating in all of this. Our promise to you is to put together the best Claude- and Gemini-free newsletter (and podcast!) we can, multiple times a week and to do so with as much heart and humor as we can muster.

Greetings!

I think this might low-key be the best sports weekend of the year.

Western Conference Finals
Roland Garros
Men’s NCAAs start
Baseball regionals
LIV Korea

Pro golf isn’t adding much to the festivities, but we still have plenty to talk about this Friday as the U.S. Open starts to peek around the corner.

Name drops today: Andy Roddick, Hiroshi Tai, Turk Pettit, Scottie Scheffler and Blades Brown (again).

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Saps’s. With the longest day in golf coming up next week and players and fans melting their faces off at Roland Garros in France, might I suggest an ice cold Sap’s (lemon lime is for sure the play).

Sap’s is the opposite of a stressful Jordan Spieth round — everything your body needs and nothing it doesn’t. No added sugar. No artificial ingredients. No filler or gimmicks.

Following Spieth, on the other hand, is nothing your body needs and everything it doesn’t. It’s certainly a choice. One I keep entering into against the wishes of my own self. Which is part of the reason I need Sap’s to recover.

OK, now onto the news.

6 Thoughts on Golf This Week

1. On Friday, I was listening to Andy Roddick’s excellent Served podcast, and he was talking about the year 2003 in the tennis world. The last time the slams felt wide open. The year four different players won the four grand slams. The last time an American — Roddick himself — won a grand slam.

Wait a second, I thought.

That was a year when the four golf majors were won by four different players, too.

All of this got me wondering how many times — and perhaps (probably!) I am the only person in the world who cares about this — the eight tennis and golf majors have been won by eight distinct people on the men’s side.

Here are the three times it’s happened this century.

Couple of thoughts here.

• I thought this would have happened fewer than three times.

• Have there ever been U.S. Open winners in the same year who are less alike stylistically than Jim Furyk and Andy Roddick?

• 2003 had to be one of the weirdest golf/tennis years ever. It was nearly extra unique in that it was almost eight first-time major winners (Agassi was the only player on either side who had won a major before)

• After Roland Garros this year, we will be halfway home, with four different major winners in the first four events. Rory, Rai, Alcaraz and .. ?

• And with Sinner the favorite at Wimbledon and Scottie the favorite at Shinnecock, we will probably (?) get to six of six going into The Open in July.

• Again, I realize that I am one of the only humans who cares about this, but there is a good chance that all of the others who care about it are also subscribed to this newsletter.

2. Three amazing normal sport things emerged this week. The first was from the Byron Nelson where this fan ran on the green during one of the rounds (I believe Friday) just before Scottie putted and was arrested off to the side.

The part that made me laugh was that both officer and perpetrator waited for another man who is also intimately familiar with the inside of a jail cell to finish out the hole.

Bizarre — and honestly pretty scary — stuff.

Not quite “fan walks up to Rory’s bag and takes driver out” scary, but I’m with Martin Trainer. No desire to live the life of most of the top famous pros.

The second NS moment was less nefarious and more amusing.

At the Austrian Open this week, a car is serving as the range picker. Sure.

The video is somehow (?) even better.

Oh and you can throw this in as the third very normal sport thing as well.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,055 of them) and includes thoughts on Jackson Koivun, the NCAAs and why Blades Brown continues to rock.

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.

 

3. A few thoughts on the men’s NCAAs going into this weekend of stroke play ahead of match play at the start of next week.

• This format absolutely rules. Does it definitively identify the best champion every year? Absolutely not. Do I care? Also, 100 percent no. Team match play is arguably the best form of golf when there are real stakes (sorry, LIV).

And while — like the PGA Championship at Aronimink — it may not be the best way to identify the best team (whatever that actually means), it is far and away the best mechanism for creating an entertaining and engaging product, which is what I think pretty much everyone involved actually wants anyway.

• The run of individual winners on the men’s side has been less than inspiring. Since Matt Wolff won at 10 under in 2019, these are your NCAA individual champions.

Pettit (who played on LIV) is on the Korn Ferry and outside the top 500 on Data Golf. Sargent is on the PGA Tour but ranked No. 158 in the FedEx Cup and has one top 10 in his last 25 starts.

Fred Biondi is No. 171 in the Race to Dubai. Hiroshi is ranked No. 76 in the world … among amateurs. And La Sasso is toiling away on LIV, though Brentley Romine noted that he may or may not have inquired about coming back to play for Ole Miss this year (which amuses me to no end).

• This run probably (?) ends this year with either Koivun, Preston Stout or Ben James winning it all. I think all three will be terrific pros. Although I also thought Sargent was going to win between 7-11 majors.

• I hope we get some variation of Florida, Auburn, Texas, Virginia and my O-State squad in the semifinals. Those teams are all tremendous, have all had success here, all have good future pros and are all loaded for a run. Pumped for it!

4. This is a thing I have been considering while watching Roland Garros this week ….

I’m … not sure which I prefer.

The golf major calendar is slightly too condensed, and tennis is probably a little too elongated. But I do like that the carrot of a major is out there for longer in tennis than in golf. I think I lean toward the tennis calendar, even though I don’t like that both have 11-month long seasons in general. End those seasons at the last major (they won’t) and let us have time off in the fall to start looking forward to the following year.

5. Speaking of Jackson Koivun! I recently went looking at strokes gained over the last 12 months, mostly as a Scottie exercise, and I found some very interesting things.

The first is that Scottie has been better over the last year than he was the year before that … Here are his numbers from from May 24-May 24.

2024-2025: 3.14 SG
2025-2026: 3.24 SG

He’s also been nearly as good YoY.

Jan. 1-May 25 (2025): 3.01 SG
Jan. 1-May 25 (2026): 2.94 SG

So that was a little unexpected.

But what really caught me off guard was the top 10 SG players over the last 12 months.

Yes, it’s a small sample size. Yes, he putted his face off. Yes, he will regress over a longer window of time. But also yes, he can be a top 25 player in the world almost immediately once he leaves Auburn. And finally, yes, he can (and maybe should?) be on this year’s President’s Cup team.

DG has him as a top 25 U.S. player, and he hasn’t played a PGA Tour event this year!

6. I wrote about Blades Brown a bit in Tuesday’s newsletter, and got this lovely email from a follower/reader. I thought it was illuminating and interesting.

Again, he turned 19 (nineteen!) last week!

Who knows — see Sargent comment above — but it is somewhat curious that Blades hasn’t gotten more attention than he has up until now (or maybe I’ll just keep writing about him in every newsletter and manifest this thing into existence).

In a world where it’s easier than ever to maximize efficiency, we labor instead to optimize humanity in everything we write, draw and publish. Thank you for reading and participating, and don’t forget that you can annotate everything we write on the website right here.

Greetings!

We got The Weight of Rory on Goodreads if you are the type of person who enjoys reading and then leaving reviews (I know there are still at least dozens of us!).

Name drops today: Blades Brown, Stan Wawrinka, Charles Howell III, Bill Simmons, Joan Didion, Charles Lindbergh and Curtis Strange.

TODAY’S SPONSOR PROTECTOR OF FACES

Today’s newsletter is presented by OGIO.

How tough is the OGIO vault collection? Tough enough to handle 190 mph stingers from Dalton Joyce and Roger Steele. And also tough enough to avoid these real-life scenarios from last week’s Byron Nelson winner.

1. After a near-disaster shot at the PGA Championship by Wyndham Clark (begging you to click here if you haven’t seen it), I think it’s time that we officially recommend bringing an OGIO vault bag to future events for protection.

2. Speaking of …

We got to thinking …. what if Oakmont's lockers were made with OGIO vault technology that includes ultra-durable carbon fiber corner protectors and a high-impact shell built to take hits and keep moving instead of … whatever it is that they’re made of?

Maybe there wouldn’t have been an, ahem, incident there a year ago. Makes you think. Maybe all lockers should be made with OGIO’s vault technology. 🤔 

TPC Craig Ranch in the hands of tour pros is like your stuff without an OGIO bag. Not protected, not safe and potentially at risk of being exposed at all times.

Check out their vault collection right here.

OK, now onto the news.

One Thing I Loved

I suppose we could do a full breakdown of that Byron Nelson leaderboard … or we could take a look at the aggregate major standings for everyone who has made the cut at both the Masters and PGA Championship.

I know which one of those options sounds more compelling.

So here it is. Player name in column 1, total shots across the first two majors in column 2 and total score to par in column 3.

Couple of thoughts here.

• Justin Rose deserves another major. Feels like someone should finally point this out.

• Did not expect to see Sam Burns on this list. He’s in a weird spot. Some Charles Howell III in there. He’s made $37 million in his career, and nobody ever picks him to win majors. Not sure what to do with that. Good enough to win and make an outrageous amount of money, rarely great enough to be in a week-to-week convo about the best 10 or 15 players in the world. Kind of Matt Kuchar-y tbh. Maybe more Kuchar than CH3.

• Rory has two top 10s so far this year to bring his career total at the majors to … 35 out of 69 tournaments played. That is 51 percent. A crazy number. Also, there’s this.

Tiger did 17 years in a row (1997-2013). Remarkably, he’s had just three top 10s at majors since the start of 2014.

Jack did 24 years in a row (1960-1983). He missed out on a top 10 at the 1984 Masters by three shots before notching top 10s in the next three years, which would have made it 28 years in a row (which seems impossible?).

Phil’s longest streak was nine years, which he did twice.

• Back to the aggregate majors score this year … I’m desperate for more Haotong. As much Haotong as humanly possible.

• Xander remains underrated.

• That Spieth and Morikawa are tied with Fitz is hilarious to me. Three wildly different seasons and all three have taken exactly 562 strokes at the majors.

• Brian Campbell … I mean, that round on Saturday at The Mink was a work of art. He lost shots on 13 different holes on a golf course with very few penalty areas.

Paint, brother.

• On Sunday at The Open, The Worst Best Player Award should be given to whoever finishes last in this category. Rasmus and Campbell duking it out right now. Sure, you were good enough to make the cut at all four majors, but you also finished T52-T61-74-T39 at the end. Not sure that’s a W. Golf is weird because you’re chasing consistency, but it’s actually extreme variability that is rewarded.

See: Sandy Lyle’s career.

• I need to get some more literature on Chris Gotterup. I’m just not totally there yet, but I probably need to get myself there. I think some of it is just him not looking the part. I see him and then I see Ludvig, and it seems so obvious that one of them should be better than the other. And yet, they’re three shots apart at the majors this year.

Somebody on site at the PGA was texting me about Gotterup and how good he is. I do love how he shapes the ball. There’s some Bubba in there, I think. Maybe a little P. Just dudes hitting shots and not playing Trackman golf. I appreciate it, and I want to fall in love with it at some point.

One Thought I Had

After Blades Brown finished T14 at the Nelson to earn his special temporary membership (a hilarious and very normal sport name, by the way), I was thinking about how little he is hyped compared to similar players at similar ages in other sports.

Blades turned 19 (nineteen!) last week and is now No. 97 in the Data Golf rankings, ahead of Cam Smith, Dustin Johnson, Tony Finau, Tom Kim, Max Homa and all but 96 other male golfers you can think of.

He was not alive when the Red Sox broke their curse. He did not see any of Phil’s first three majors nor Vince Young beat SC in the Rose Bowl.

And in other sports, all of the above would be fueling a constantly-humming hype machine. Two names come to mind.

Konnor Griffin — Pirates
Dylan Harper — Spurs

Both are older than Brown, both are arguably worse than Brown in their respective sports and both have received far more attention from people within those sports.

Golf is a little odd. If Brown played hoops, Bill Simmons would have constructed a six-part documentary and sold it to Apple TV. In golf, we’re like, Oh we’ll see how he does at the Memorial.

Things have … always been like this?

And who knows, Blades might flame out and end up as the next Norman Xiong or Matt Wolff or whatever. But in a world where we have been begging for someone who’s 1. Electric and 2. Under age 25 to come along and light it up a little bit, there is a glimmer there from someone who probably doesn’t get the attention he deserves.

Corrupt Golf Media

• This on Stan Wawrinka and a career into his 40s is excellent. Not sure who his comp is in golf, but maybe some Padraig in there. Gets by on hard work, good talker, born in a tough era for winning majors (Tiger, Phil — Nadal, Djokovic and Fed) and so on.

• An alternate angle of the Spieth shot from Aronimink has emerged. This is my Zapruder film. Replete with grassy knoll and all! Also, these two tweets on Spieth from the Nelson really got me.

Idea of the Week

After Gabby posted her 88 at The Mink following the PGA, it made me think about how there should be a group of good golfers from the media [bows out quickly] who play the golf course on the Monday-Wednesday of tournament week and report back on what they find and how it played.

It’s cool to get to play the course a month before or in the days after the tournament, but it’s helpful for the sake of storytelling to get to play in the days leading into the event. Think about how much more informed the way Gabby writes or Soly talks or Jamie Kennedy tweets or LKD discusses the event if they have all played The Mink on Tuesday alongside Rahm, Rory and Scottie.

Yeah, this is extremely normal sport behavior, but I think majors — maybe specifically the PGA — should consider it for the future.

How Is This App Free?

Some absolute gems over this last week from the residents of both Twitter and Golf Twitter.

• Perfect summation of what happened at TPC Craig T. Nelson James Ranch.

• Ah, that made me laugh. I think the French Open-Roland-Garros discourse is the new “Is it The Open Championship or the British Open?” debate.

•  👌👌👌 

Love Your Work

David Perell did this interview with poet David Whyte, and one of the quotes that came out of it was this one.

I find this to be true so often.

It’s the Joan Didion idea that I write to figure out what I am thinking. So often when I’m writing something about Scottie or The Open or the Tour or whatever, I will look back and say, Hmm, I didn’t know I thought that. Or, perhaps more often, Hmm, I’ve never thought about this in that particular way.

That is the fun for me and Jason in all of this and hopefully for you, too.

We are often not even sure what we think about the setup at The Mink or Rory’s career or any of the 1,000 other things going on in golf in a given week. We have to work those things out in real time with this newsletter and on the podcast.

My hope is that there are others in the same boat that come along for the ride with us. Others (like you!) that are trying to figure out what they think about a thing as well. Who know they will never get it exactly right but who aren’t afraid to think and to try anyway.

So thank you for reading and participating in all of this. Our promise to you is to put together the best algorithm-free newsletter (and podcast!) we can, multiple times a week and to do so with as much heart and humor as we can muster.

Greetings!

As with any major championship, there is still so, so much to discuss. We recorded a lively and fun Normal Sport show episode (Apple | Spotify) with some of our takeaways from one of the weirder major championships I’ve ever watched, but I need to get the rest down on paper here as we enter into the second half (!!) of major season.

I try to only do something like this 1-2 times a year, but because this newsletter list is literally the best network I have (or can imagine having), here is this year’s request: My family is traveling to Telluride, CO this summer for a youth baseball tournament at the end of July and is currently looking for both a place to stay and things to do around there.

If you are a person that has a place there or knows of one or has recommendations for that area, please reach out! I can pay in either American dollars or Holderness and Bourne sheep gear.

Thank you!

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by Ship Sticks.

Not only are we entering the second half of major championship season, but we’re also entering the beginning of golf travel season for the rest of us normies who don’t play well enough to complain about the greens at Aronimink (but probably would anyway).

If that’s you — going on a buddies’ trip, traveling with your clubs etc. — you should absolutely check out Ship Sticks. Their white gloves service (two, not one) and on-time guarantee make traveling with your golf clubs a much less stressful experience than it otherwise would be.

You can claim a 20 percent Normal Sport-ified offer for your first order with Ship Sticks at the link below simply by putting in your email address.

OK, now onto the news.

11 Takeaways from the 2026 PGA Championship

1. First, as a follow up to what I wrote about Aaron Rai and hope on Sunday evening, I thought this tweet from Michael Kim was validating. Look at what he said here about working hard and believing that the Aaron Rais and Michael Kims of the world can go out and win major championships.

That is why I wrote what I wrote. Exactly that, right there.

Major championship golf is perfectly meritocratic right now. I don’t know that it has always been that way. Sometimes the scales tip too far in one direction (superstars winning all the time) or the other (superstars not winning enough). But right now, that equilibrium rocks and is one of my favorite things about covering the sport.

2. Three brief course notes, partly because I’m a dumb when it comes to architecture and setting a golf course up, and partly because the discourse all week had me like …

1. I think it’s very, very difficult to set up a 7,000-yard golf course that both A. Plays extremely difficult and B. Identifies and separates out the best hitters of the golf ball. Augusta can do it (when it gets weather), but it’s tough for the Minks of the world to follow suit.

Why? Well, because the golf ball goes (way) too far, guys are going to have wedges in their hands all day. If you want it to play difficult, you have to hide pins. If you hide pins, it is seemingly going to be impossible to proportionally reward great golf shots.

But if you don’t hide pins, guys are still hitting wedges, and it’s open season. It’s an untenable situation. Ultimately, every course setup complaint has an equipment solution (as outlined here by JLM). It infuriates me that these solutions are continuously ignored and it gets more and more difficult to set up golf courses, but that’s where we are.

2. Also, it’s fine that this tournament tested a skill other than ball striking! I think we have decided that all majors should reward the best flushers, and I generally agree with this idea. But hitting only makes up ~60 percent of the game, and there’s no rule that says a major has to identify the guy swinging it best in that week. I agree that golf would become stinkier if we moved toward identifying the best lag putters or most patient golfers every major, but for one a year or one every three years? I’m fine with that.

3. I did love how easy it was to see that angles still matter. Take the 7th hole on Sunday. Rory torched a drive, but had the most atrocious angle into that pin.

Ludvig, meanwhile, laid back and had a beautiful angle in. Of course, Ludvig made bogey because he overcooked his approach and Rory made par because his short game was tremendous. But you get the point.

This is the opposite of bomb and gouge, and if equipment was reduced would be the type of thing we could get far more frequently.

OK enough of me talking golf courses.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,050 of them) and includes thoughts on Scottie kicking away a great chance, Rahm’s return and an announcement from me about Jordan Spieth.

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.

 

3. This was Scottie’s tournament to lose … and he went out and lost it. I was yelling on Thursday and Friday that Scottie is built for a place like The Mink, and Max echoed some of that on the NLU live show on Saturday evening.

We don’t need to re-litigate every putt. Just know that it was a lot (like a LOT) of this.

He finished 5th from tee to green and 71st (of 82) in putting.

It happens. It’s happened to him before. It will happen to him again. What’s crazy is not that it happened to him this week but how few times it has happened to him in his career. The T14 was just his second finish outside the top 8 in his last 10 major championships played. A sick, sick Wiki page.

His top five percentage at majors is now 37 percent (10-for-27), which is also comically good. That number is tied with Brooks (and comfortably ahead of Rory and Rahm) through their first 27 major starts.

I have no sweeping conclusions from this major for Scottie other than it felt like an opportunity that he could have capitalized on. While there will almost certainly be more, there are also only a finite amount throughout your career, and he will look back on this one in the “could have won it but never got anything to fall” bucket.

4. Around the Masters, a Person in Golf Media texted me about Rahm and how it wasn’t so much about the lack of preparation or any of the usual detractions listed when people talk about why Rahm won’t play well at a major.

For this person, it was about the amount of shame Rahm shows up with at the four biggest events and how that’s the thing that keeps him from playing well.

I … think there’s probably some truth to that?

I don’t know how much truth, but I do know that Rahm is extremely self-aware and cares a lot about how others view him. So he cannot possibly be showing up to these majors with no cares in the world. And when the margins are so thin to begin with, it’s easy to see how he has unraveled at majors of late.

All of that being said, I loved seeing him play (and act?) with more freedom this week. I will go down on the “he’s generationally good” ship, but at some point he has to actually win more majors.

This was probably his best opportunity since leaving for LIV (seems maybe too coincidental that it’s also his first major since LIV effectively collapsed!) and a week in which he simply got beat by a historic finish from someone who had the week of his life.

That happens. Brian Harman happens. So do Wyndham Clark and J.J. Spaun. Rahm was hunting again, though, which is the part I care about and the piece that has been missing a bit from major championship golf over the last several years.

5. I watched and listened to Aaron Rai’s presser on Sunday evening. It was fairly blasé, which is to be expected I suppose, but I did have this takeaway about his junior upbringing.

There are probably some lessons in there about not burning out at age 13 or 15. I think about what Scottie said before winning the 2024 Masters.

Man, I have thought about that quote a lot since Scheffler said it.

Also, back to Rai — and not to take away from what he did last week — but I’m over here cackling thinking about the gymnastics Luke Donald will do to keep him out of the lads club at Adare Manor for a third Hojgaard brother that we don’t even know about yet.

Sad.

Even worse, they’ll destroy us whether they have him, don’t have him or simply choose to up the degree of difficulty by playing with 11 Englishmen and Monty.

6. Me returning to Spieth Island after this week …

He pulled the Scottie. Third from tee to green and 79th in putting.

Might be time to try something different. A mallet. Closing his eyes. Looking not at the hole but at a different hole. Idk, something.

It was just this on repeat all week.

I will say I’m back in on the idea that he can win a PGA. He still probably won’t, but for the past eight years I haven’t even considered it as a possibility. He hit it so good. I cannot believe how good he looked off the tee. He and Scottie (and Chandler Blanchet) finished T1 in driving accuracy, all with 39 fairways hit.

I am all the way back in. Just sucked back to the island by a rip tide of hope and belief. It will end badly! I already know this. But I cannot quit it. I’m sorry for even trying.

Oh, and he absolutely hit the shot of this tournament the year his entire life.

I am still not even close to getting over it.

He might not be either.

7. Normal spooooooooooort!

8. I asked this on Twitter on Saturday, but I’ll pose it here with my answer: Who is the best player playing right now that you would confidently bet money on will end their career with zero majors? 

My answer is Corey Conners (and has been for a while).

I don’t have a great reason for it. I’m sure Conners is a lovely guy. But his disposition doesn’t scream, Gonna slam the door on the best players in the world! Doesn’t scream that he’s a dog.

(Of course the exact same thing could have been written about Aaron Rai this time last week! He clung to the hope that he could though).

I was thinking about this whenever, like, 25 guys without a major touched the top of the board on Saturday afternoon. While there are better current players without a major — Tommy Fleetwood, Ludvig Aberg, Viktor Hovland among them — I wouldn’t be able to confidently bet money on any of them like I would with Conners.

9. Cam Smith had a quote that I didn’t want to get lost. It gets at what I love about competition and major championships.

Also not sure what to make of the fact that he lost strokes on every single ball he hit off a tee on the back nine and still shot 36.

10. There was a moment on I believe it was either Friday or Saturday when someone on the broadcast was talking about how Maverick McNealy said he was really uncomfortable being in the lead.

This is not uncommon. In fact, I would say it’s actually quite common.

And it should serve to give a greater appreciation for how comfortable the top tier guys look with the lead. The Brooks-Rory-Scottie-Rahm crew in particular. It is terrifying to look up and not see anyone ahead of you. And those guys — whether through repetition or simply because of their makeup — have normalized making it look easy.

11. Max brought this up on the aforementioned NLU pod when he talked about how big Ludvig’s advantage is from distance than it is with a wedge.

So I went and looked it up.

Here are Ludvig’s Data Golf numbers over the last two years from 200+ …

And from 50-100 yards …

He’s still solid from 50-100, but the advantage is not quite there like it is from deep.

We can (and should) point to the putting (he was 1st from tee to green and 64th in putting), but this is also something to keep an eye on. A bit of a Rory from six years ago situation, it seems. One that should actually not be that difficult for him to solve.

I’m buying stock if anyone is selling.

Thank you for reading and participating in all of this nonsense. The nonsense being me offering to buy fake shares in a man who has called both Sweden and Lubbock, Texas home. Jason and I pride ourselves on putting together multiple algorithm-free newsletters every single week, and we hope reading them delights you as much creating them delights us.

Through eight holes on Sunday at the 108th PGA Championship, Aaron Rai played exactly how you would expect the No. 68 player in the world to play as he attempted to close out his first major championship win with zero top 10s at majors on the resume.

Three bogeys, two birdies, a half shot lost to the field, a drop to T8 on the leaderboard and — according to Data Golf anyway — a less than 2 percent chance of winning this loaded tournament.

Then suddenly — starting with the ninth hole where he made eagle — Rai turned in 10 of the most surreal holes that have ever been played in major championship history.

That is not hyperbole.

Rai gained six shots on the field over those final 10 holes — which is an amazing number across an entire round. He did it in 10 holes … with a major trophy on the line!

Rai didn’t seem to miss a shot and then punctuated the round of his life with a 68-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole that sent everyone else packing and slammed the door on a weird and wonderful week.

This is improbable under normal conditions.

On a Sunday in the throes of a major championship with Rory, Rahm, Ludvig and Xander coming around the final turn? It’s almost unthinkable.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Before we get to all of that!

Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at Holderness and Bourne.

H&B is the “Aaron Rai over the last 10 holes at The Mink” of golf apparel. Their SG Collars numbers are unrecognizable by Data Golf’s proprietary models, and I’m so excited for our pro shop to be restocked with their gear here in a week or so.

My personal favorite of theirs right now is the Maxwell shirt, and I would love to put Norman on every single color they make. It is my everyday weapon of choice when it comes to polos but is also perfect for going out and walking 18.

The best collared golf shirt in the world (though technically I haven’t tried all of them).

You can check it out right here.

OK, now onto Rai’s win.

In May 2005, Rafa Nadal won his first French Open over Mariano Puerta by the score of 6-7, 6-3, 6-1, 7-5. He was 19 years old at the time. It was the first of an eventual 14 titles at Roland Garros.

Including that particular French Open, there have been 79 grand slams played since. Four of those slams were won by men who are one-time slam winners.

Nadal, Federer, Djokovic, Wawrinka, Murray, Sinner and Alcaraz won the other 75.

That seven men would gobble up 95 percent of the most important events contested on the pro tennis circuit and only 11 men total would have won majors is astounding and has been a ton of fun to follow as a casual fan. I have enjoyed watching all seven of those guys win their 75 slams.

I am also thankful, though, that pro golf is not pro tennis.

In roughly that same timespan — starting with the second golf major of 2005 — golf has seen 49 different men’s golfers win major championships. Rory and Tiger have the most in that stretch with six. Brooks and Phil have five. Scottie has four and on down the list.

Yes, there are advantages to domination — Fed, Nadal and Djokovic are among the best players to cover in the history of tennis (or any other sport) — but there are also downsides. At some point, you lose track on the tennis side: Wait, was that Djokovic’s 17th or 19th? The Nadal titles at Roland Garros are difficult to parse out. How many times did Fed win Wimbledon?

Here’s the thing: I bet you remember at least one shot or moment from every single one of Rory’s six and Tiger’s six. Same for Brooks’ five and also Phil’s.

Golf’s major championship wins are precious because they are elusive, but they are also hopeful because they are available to players like Aaron Rai and J.J. Spaun, who can rock up to Aronimink and Oakmont in consecutive years and actually win. It makes all the other Aaron Rais and J.J. Spauns at least feel like they have a chance.

I’m not sure Frances Tiafoe and Tommy Paul feel the same way going into a grand slam when Sinner, Alcaraz and Djokovic are all healthy.

Aaron Rai will never win another major championship in his life. That’s not because he’s not good at golf but rather because almost everyone currently playing professional golf will never win another major championship in their lives.

That is the entire point.

What’s extra sweet about his win is that he did it right in the thick of elite major runs from two players — Scottie and Rory — who will probably go down among the 10-12 best of all time. He didn’t sneak one by when they weren’t looking. Nobody was injured. He didn’t get lucky. He simply went out and not only stared down Rahm, JT and Ludvig but also Rory and Scottie on a week when both had real chances on Sunday.

The beauty of major championship golf is that this parity — relative to other sports — makes it meaningful when J.J. Spaun and Aaron Rai win majors.

This part is obvious.

What is more intriguing (and less obvious) is that this parity — where Aaron Rai (!) can legitimately leave no doubt about who played the best at a given major championship — somehow also makes it more meaningful when superstars collect their majors as well.

Scarcity brings about reverence, and men’s major golf hits a perfect balance of superstars winning a lot but not ever winning too much.

There are statistical reasons for this.

Tiny margins have a bigger effect on tennis matches than those same small margins have across 72 holes in golf. But it is also a reminder of something we should be screaming from the rooftops: That 72 holes is the perfect number of holes for golf tournaments, and golf just sort of stumbled into that number a century or so ago.

If tournaments were more than 72 holes, superstars would probably dominate too much. If they were less than 72 holes, superstars wouldn’t win enough.

All of this brings us back to Aaron Rai.

While winning a grand slam in tennis for anyone outside of those seven guys above has felt like a miracle for the last two decades, winning a major in golf has felt at least feasible. But also you have to put in the work to capitalize on the one or two or (if you’re extremely lucky) three major opportunities that may come your way throughout a career.

Here’s two-time major champion, Xander Schauffele.

At its best, golf — even pro golf — is rooted in hopefulness. As a player, you have to hope. And then you have to be ready to answer the bell when that hope comes looking for you on a Sunday afternoon.

No matter what Aaron Rai does for the rest of his career, he can always look back on those last 10 holes at The Mink — with literally some of the best to ever do it closing in around him — and say, I did the thing. I was better than they were. I have proof that the work I put in actually mattered.

We love to talk about how it’s the hope that kills you, and this can be true. But it’s also the hope that buoys you. That serves as an incentive for you to improve. That drives every individual in the entire sport forward at this championship level.

Not that Rai needed the achievement of winning a major to prove to himself that the work he put in mattered. He seems to be of the Scheffler mold where doing the work for the sake of the work is reward enough for him.

If your thought in the aftermath of his win is, Man, this guy seems easy to root for! you are on the right track. Electric, charismatic and awe-inspiring, he is not. But esteemed for his kindness and work ethic? Yeah, by pretty much everyone.

Consider his reason for using head covers on his irons. It’s a dorky thing that’s easy to mock — as many of us have done! — but it’s also emblematic of why he’s so beloved.

If an apology has ever been less necessary, I cannot remember it.

Hope.

That’s the theme.

On a week when everyone was complaining about what you seemingly could not do (make birdies and score and hit shots close and separate from the field), Rai was a wonderful reminder of what you could.

A reminder that you can covet nice clubs as a kid and put head covers on them and become great by just working hard. And then you can keep those head covers for the sake of remembering who you are but also get good enough to beat a cavalry of players who are probably a lot better at the game than you, led by a grand slam champion.

It is good that golf offers this hope. Good for the game. Good for the Aaron Rais of the world. Even good for the Rorys and the Scotties.

Good that you can shoot the round of your life at the perfect time and play the last 10 holes in six under to put together one of the more legendary closing stretches in PGA Championship (or any other championship) history. Good that you can just go out and .. do things.

Few sports are more hopeful than golf is.

Few stories are more hopeful than Rai’s.

Few majors in recent memory should engender more hope than this one.

Thank you for reading our algorithm-free newsletter that is often barely about golf. Major weeks are the best. We’re both cooked, and need to reintroduce ourselves to our respective families. But thank you for experiencing this PGA with and alongside us. We love trying to follow and figure out all of it together with our ridiculous little community united by a sheep/monkey-meme logo. Onto Shinnecock.

Greetings!

I think this is maybe the second most excited I’ve been for a final round since Kiawah in 2021. Obviously the Rory slam last year tops this, but I legitimately would believe almost any scenario you can throw at me, possibly including Blockie getting re-entered into the field because of a clerical error and shooting 63-63 over 36 on Sunday to take the tournament.

Name drops today: Brian Campbell, Justin Rose, Kiawah, Luke Kerr-Dineen, Blockie (not even playing), Hogan, Hagen and of course Harry Vardon.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

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In other words, same performance golf ball but for half the price.

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Check them out below and use the code NORMALSPORT for 20 percent off your order. There’s enough value there that if you want to purposefully try to hit the thin, skull-y, possibly-hoseled water ball that we saw earlier in the week, you should absolutely do it!

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OK, now onto the news.

12 Thoughts on Round 3 of the PGA Championship

1. The template for Sunday is the same as the template for Saturday: Stars chasing non-stars on an amazing, often diabolical golf course. It’s one of my favorite templates because you get to see how long the leader(s) — in this instance, Alex Smalley — can keep the best players in the game at bay.

The problem in these scenarios for the player(s) being chased is that they have never felt the things they’ll feel on Sunday afternoon. On the flip side, those chasers are playing with loads of freedom that make it even easier to rip off the requisite scoring needed to catch the lead.

You can see the problem for Smalley (and others who have been in his position).

I will say, after one half of the examination on Saturday, Smalley looked ready for the heat. Saturday is not Sunday, however, and sometimes there is nothing that will prepare you other than going through the professional agony that Sundays often bring about.

With Smalley at -6 and twenty-nine other golfers at -1, -2, -3 or -4 — including 11 major champions — Sunday must be the most anticipated final round at a PGA since Phil was trying to ward off the night at Kiawah.

R3 in the production control room.

2. This tournament has kinda ruled. I’m not going to get mega steep on course setup today — I promise — but I was thinking about how I love that the same golf course can test different parts of your game depending on the day.

Kerry Haigh's tried-and-true method for picking pin positions.

On Thursday and Friday, the questions being asked were along the lines of, How patient and disciplined are you? How good are your hands on tricky greens? These are maybe not the most exciting questions ever asked at a major championship, but they certainly demand answers a major champion should be able to provide.

Here’s how my friend, Garrett Andersson, put it in our Slack on Saturday.

On Saturday, as players noted, the questions were different. It was, Can you hit it well enough to give yourself 8-10 reasonable birdie putts (because, unlike the first two days, you’re gonna be able to rip at them)?

That’s an interesting question, too.

It doesn’t all need to look the same every day (even if Shane Lowry disagrees!), and after cooling off for a day, Rory even walked back some of what he said on Friday evening about not liking the setup because it had led to a bunched leaderboard.

Again, I’ll wait to judge in full until the tournament is over, but I’m buying what the PGA has been selling this week at The Mink, even if I understand the frustrations top players have had around an inability to separate from the pack.

Make lag putting cool again.

3. Outside of the history that could be made if Rory or Scottie win (more on them below), I think Jon Rahm is the most interesting potential winner of the immediate chasers. He has been vilified — in this very newsletter — for what has felt a bit like him tossing away a part of his prime for a swimming pool full of money.

But all of a sudden, a win on Sunday means he pulls ahead of JT and Bryson, ties Spieth and is suddenly hunting Brooks. All at age 31. A bad finale followed by coming up empty-handed at both Opens, and we’re back to blaming LIV.

Major wins are so precious, and legacies are defined on such thin margins. That’s part of the burden of being that great.

And while I think we often over-index on the major win column of the resume to determine how good guys were, I also don’t really make the rules. It kind of is what it is.

I was thinking about what Rahm said earlier in the week when he was asked about his place in history. I found it fascinating.

First, he absolutely does think about it. How could you not? And second, he is absolutely tracking what his peers are and are not doing.

Rahm is one of the most aware (and self-aware) players in the world, and I think the relief of LIV maybe (?) coming to an end for him combined with a victory at this tournament to get back on what his trajectory should probably be at these events would be one of the more interesting major championship outcomes of the last several years.

The Kelce bros were [almost] right.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,049 of them) and includes thoughts on why more birdies were out there on Saturday, one of the worst round that has ever been played, reimagining Aaron Rai as an Antiques Roadshow appraiser, and some thoughts on … you know, what if Rory actually does win the first two majors of 2026?

By becoming a member, you will receive the following …

• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
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4. One question I kept asking myself on Saturday as I (and everyone else) noticed the course was playing much easier was, Why? Why was it playing so much easier on Saturday than it was in the first two rounds?

R1: 72.3
R2: 72.6
R3: 70.0

Some of that is because the club pros and Shaun Micheels are out of the field. But some of it because of something Justin Rose described after his round on Saturday.

The fall off beyond the pins was a common theme.

Kristoffer Reitan mentioned it, too. How cautious you had to be with your putting speed on the first two days and how that wasn’t necessarily the case on Saturday. It remains to be seen what they’ll do on Sunday, but I love getting this insight on what has been such an awesome and different test.

5. Fine, twist my arm, let’s talk Rory.

Some things.

1. He makes this and he’s in the final pairing alongside Smalley. That’s tough.

2. If he wins on Sunday, that’s seven majors. Seven! He would tie the following golfers at seven (read them slowly).

Arnold Palmer
Sam Snead
Gene Sarazen
Bobby Jones
Harry Vardon

My gosh.

There are only six golfers who have more than seven majors.

Tiger
Jack
Hagen
Hogan
Player
Watson

🤯 🤯 🤯 

3. I realize that we’re only seven rounds into the major championship season, but has anyone taken the calendar slam this deep with a chance to pull it off since Spieth took it to the 71st hole at St. Andrews in 2015?

Is Rory going to win either of the next two majors? Probably not. Is he going to win this major? Also almost certainly no. But the fact that it’s still tantalizingly alive and that the guy who has it on his clubs is one of the best to ever do it does intrigue me at least a little bit.

4. He swung driver on Saturday with an uncommon freedom, even for him. He went 191-190 on consecutive driver swings, and it looked as flowing as it has ever looked. He just turned 37. The longevity in that swing is remarkable.

5. And finally, I thought him and Brooks being paired together on Sunday was cool. Just 11 majors walking around playing a championship golf course in front of a bonkers crowd. Two of the best championship golfers combining to shoot 6 under on a difficult course to move toward the top of the board is not something that happens every day.

6. Speaking of Brooks and Rory, these two Twitter responses rocked me.

Legit lol moments during a punch drunk week in which most of the discourse has been very angry. Both may only affect those chronically online in Golf Twitter-like spaces, which I presume most of you are so I also presume that most of you will appreciate them as much as I did.

Again, I don’t know why, but the thought exercise of Aaron Rai as an Antiques Roadshow Appraiser just made me shake with laughter.

Then this one.

I’ve read it multiple times now and genuinely laughed out loud each time. And while we’re on tweets, this one ruled as well. The “how many beers would Scottie have to drink to lose 12 shots to the field” challenge.

We’ve actually had a lot of similar amusing statements in our members-only Slack this week. Enough that I’ve thought, Why am I the one writing this newsletter when the rest of you are collectively this funny? 

You can come check it out right here.

7. It was right there for Scottie to take it, and he …

Miss

Miss

Miss

Another miss

did not take it.

He’s hitting it so good, though, that he could shoot a casual 64 on Sunday, and I would not be gobsmacked. I keep thinking “it’s a distance control contest, and nobody in the last two decades has been better!” and he keeps making this face after running another one through the break.

They will start dropping at some point, though. I just hope it’s Sunday at The Mink and not Thursday at TPC Craig James Ranch.

8. The two numbers that really stand out on Data Golf after Round 3 are as follows.

Scottie: 5th in SG ball striking | 65th in putting (of 82)
Ludvig: 1st in SG ball striking | 72nd in putting

Both are primed to see everything fall on Sunday.

The Ludvig numbers are truly crazy. The context there is that he looks … apathetic (?) at times, which is how being cool and calm can come off when things aren’t going well, I suppose. But some of his mistakes are just like, Wait … what?! 

Some three putts so weak that you’re staring at them like …

I’m a big time Ludvig believer still, and I think the “he doesn’t have the goods!” stuff is way overblown. Another chance on Sunday, and given the way he’s hitting it this week, perhaps the best one he’s had to date.

9. I think I’m in love with the 11th hole? Those approach shots are so, so cool. Within 10 minutes of each other, I saw Max Greyserman hit one out of the rough up the left side of the green and swing it back around to the hole by using the slope at the very back. Sick, sick stuff.

Shortly after, Chris Gotterup went long and tried to flop one out of the thick rough by taking a full swing from 25 feet away. It … did not go well, even though it was probably the right play.

Crazy, wild hole. Cannot get enough of it. If I was a fan on site on Sunday, I would just post up here early, grab some drinks and enjoy the festivities.

[Jason here] I'm in love with the 20 × 20 yard patch of insane fescue rough on 7. There's no other spot like it on the course. When guys find it it looks like they're on another g̶o̶l̶f̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶r̶s̶e̶ planet.

More tuffs.

10. Maybe you’ll even get a replica of the shot Spieth hit on that hole on Friday.

Yeah, I’m still thinking about it. I watched it several more times on Saturday even though he played his way out of the hunt. I just will never understand how (or why) he hit it.

Thankfully, my friend Luke Kerr-Dineen was equally obsessed so he went and found Spieth to talk about it. His article is must read stuff. Spieth called it a top two shot he’s ever hit in his life!

11. Quick note of appreciation for this Justin Rose quote. I absolutely loved it. He made eagle on Friday to get inside the cut line before scaring the lead early on Saturday. Big time 2018 Carnoustie remix when he made the cut on the number there and finished T2.

I went back and found an article from that event to make sure I was remembering it correctly, and he said on the weekend, “I’m just very happy to not be down the road somewhere else this morning.”

He echoed that on Saturday at The Mink.

There’s been a lot (like a LOT) of hollering and whining and sniping in our dumb little world of golf this week. Oh, and the players have had a few grievances to air, too.

So I appreciated someone who’s seen everything and done most of it express his gratitude for just getting another tournament round. By my count, this was his 289th major championship round. Just another in a long, long line of them. But he’s out here talking about how grateful he is for it.

Gratitude is cool. I should practice it more often.

12. Who I want: Rory. Who I think: Ludvig.

I’d be fine with either. I’d be fine with most of those top 30. Low nightmares are I guess Smalley and Matti Schmid, so many of the guys who are truly in it would be great stories.

Rory, though, would obviously be incredibly historic for all the reasons mentioned above. Every win — and especially every major win — is historic for him now.

Since 1973, only two golfers have won the first two majors of the year. Tiger did it in 2002. He took the calendar year slam into the 11th major round of the year at Muirfield and shot 81 in some of the most insane weather in Open history. Spieth took it to the 12th major round of the major season in 2015 before making bogey at the Road Hole and missing an Open playoff at St. Andrews by one.

Rory has a chance to take it to Shinnecock in a month if he can somehow come from outside the top 100 after the first day and win his third major in his last six tries.

It won’t happen.

But what if it does?

Thank you for reading and participating in all of this nonsense. I am currently heading to bed around 11 p.m. my time while Jason wakes up in Amsterdam and I tag him in to drop some ridiculous illustrations and edit what I’ve written. Normal sport. Also the best.

Greetings!

Garrick Higgo missed the cut by one.

One shot, not one second.

Was never going to go any other way.

We talked about that and more in a late night pod with takeaways from the halfway point at Aronimink.

Takeaways at halfway point of the 2026 PGA Championship – Episode #30

The Normal Sport Show · Episode

Spotify

Name drops today: Blockie (again), Troon, LIV Singapore, Zack Greinke and Artsy JT.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at OGIO.

For the second consecutive day, I can recommend one of our sponsor’s products to our friend, Garrick Higgo (as well as everyone else who missed Friday’s cut). Yesterday, it was a Garmin watch. Today, some luggage for those slamming trunks, or I guess — since it’s 2026 and not 1986 anymore — angrily jamming a button that automatically closes the back of their six-figure SUV.

Regardless of how they’re leaving, I can tell you what should be in that trunk: Something from OGIO’s Renegade Vault collection.

Built because hardside luggage (like some of the pros in the field this week) has gone soft, OGIO’s Renegade Vault pieces are the best I’ve ever owned.

This carry-on is my current weapon of choice. Tough enough to get tossed around in any vehicle (plane or otherwise) but smooth enough that it would roll right off one of these greens at The Mink. A great combo.

OK, now onto the news.

9 Thoughts on Round 2 of the PGA Championship

1. It’s Friday at a major championship and everyone is completely exhausted, which means that we’re all yelling about things we wouldn’t otherwise care about.

In this instance, whether The Mink is the first, second or third bowl of porridge that Goldilocks tries.

First, it was too easy. Now it’s too difficult. I kinda think it’s … just right?

Scottie said the pin positions on Friday were “absurd” but also said nothing was unfair. Rory said he doesn’t believe bunched leaderboards are the product of great setups.

My take after 36 holes (subject to change after 72)?

The course setup is great, leaning a little bit on the difficult side, and I’m hoping they let it go a little bit and pin some easier spots on at least one of the weekend rounds (although Saturday does not appear to be that day!).

I get what Rory is saying, and I think there’s truth to it, but I also want to see things play out over the next 36 before fully judging the way the week was set up.

Also ……..

2. Here’s the problem I think people who are frustrated with the setup have with it: Average shots are being torched by the golf course, which means that great shots should be getting rewarded.

But the pins aren’t quite tantalizing enough for players to truly take them on so there’s a lot of guys just playing for par and bunching up on the board.

Rory basically said that above, and JT said something similar after his round.

That part is key: it's really, really hard to hit it close.

That’s it right there. The whole thing. Guys are worried about shooting themselves out of it early in the week by going after too many pins. Which means the setup is on the more difficult side of things. Which is fine! It’s been fun!

Sure, it may lead to some bunching of the board, but that’s OK.

Angles have mattered. Shaping drives has mattered.

And I think it’s cool that they’re at a golf course where — depending on how they pin it — you can get different variations of the same test. Augusta is normally like that, too.

And while I don’t agree with all of this from Garrett — mostly because I enjoy the data more than most — I loved what he said here about challenging, unusual shots. That has 100 percent been the case this week, and it’s been a fun major thus far because of it.

Scottie sort of echoed this idea.

Styles make fights, and if player vs. major is a fight, we probably don’t get enough unique styles of player or golf course. This week seems to be solving at least the course side of that equation.

I also think I’ll be slightly more critical of it if on Sunday the pins have remained completely tucked like this all four days.

Mad Mink Fury Green

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,049 of them) and includes thoughts on Bryson’s exit, JT as Zack Greinke, Scottie’s best shot of the entire week and Spieth’s best shot of his entire life.

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.
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3. Related to all of this! One of my hotter takes is that I think you could solve most player and fan grievances in any given major championship week simply by changing par. What if The Mink was a 72 this week, and the leaders were -8 after two days? I doubt there would be any consternation over the setup. In fact, people would probably be complaining about how easy it is. Or just get rid of par completely!

4. I think the real lead is -3, which means Spieth is just four back.

The bad news: 42 golfers are tied with or ahead of him.
The other bad news: He’s 111th in putting.
The good news: He’s flushing it! Second off the tee and third in ball striking.
The other good news: He’s a wizard. He hit this insane chippy, spinning shot on the 11th hole on Friday that has me in complete shambles.

Like, I don’t even know what happened here!

I’ve watched it close to 20 times, and it makes less sense every time. I am not alone.

Spieth knew it, too. He knew what he did.

Two other responses that made me laugh.

The even crazier part of his week than him hitting that shot is that I feel more confident when he’s holding driver than when Rory is. I cannot believe I’m typing those words, but Spieth feels absolutely automatic off the tee right now. Unfortunately, he feels equally automatic as a two- or three-putt on these greens. Like, his misses don’t seem very close. Not touching the cup. Not even really taking a peek at it.

Knowing the way his career has gone, I’m sure he’ll kick away this chance at the slam in the least comprehensible way possible — like, he’ll start putting with his 3 wood, and it will work on Saturday and he’ll make everything he looks at, but then he’ll replace it with his putter on Sunday stating that he doesn’t believe the other grand slam winners would want him to win while putting with a 3 wood or something or something that’s actually not believable. Regardless, I am definitely stoked to see what kind of run he makes at it over the next 36 holes.

A Jordan gem from the broadcast. How many times has Mikey heard this album?

5. Let’s go back to JT for a minute. I loved watching him and P hit some of the filthiest shots you’ll see anywhere throughout the morning on Friday. P was hitting these held off, flight-y shot into nasty greens, and JT was insane around the greens (which can sometimes get him into trouble!).

You don’t have to like P (I often feel like I don’t!) or JT (I normally do!) to appreciate the way both of them are able to move the golf ball around.

P is like Greg Maddux. High 80s fastball but everything is so good that it almost doesn’t matter. It’s not as fun as watching, say, Pedro (Rory), but it’s more relatable and possibly even easier to appreciate. And maybe, like Maddux, it will become easier to appreciate in hindsight.

JT is more Zack Greinke. Has like 11 pitches, wild changes of speed and usually the wherewithal to keep them all organized.

He also explained the way he tries to play golf at majors, which is exactly how I think all of us would love to play golf on a daily basis (but almost never do).

♥️♥️♥️ 

JT, Bryson and Jordan walk into a sip & paint class.

6. Scottie definitely still feels like he’s the guy to beat. Partly because he’s the smartest and most disciplined player in the world (and in recent golf history) and partly because his iron “struggles” from earlier in the year feel like they’re gone. This shot into 17 on Friday was dirty and reminded me of that shot he hit on 17 at Troon in the third round a few years ago. That one was better, but this one was insane and he said it turned his round around after three early bogeys.

On Thursday, Xander said it’s a game of distance control, and the ridges and ledges on these greens seem to be telling a similar story. Scottie might be the best distance control player of the last 20 years, and he’s two back of the lead and one back of the real lead with a ton of room left to run. Problematic.

7. If you haven’t seen the video of Bryson going long on No. 11 on Thursday in the first round and then nearly putting off the front of the green, you should watch it (screenshots below).

This, as Paul McGinley unintentionally (?) pointed out, is a rollback issue.

Here’s what McGinley said.

McGinley didn’t explicitly state that equipment is a problem here, and he may not even believe it. But when your greens are the defense of the course and when you have to run them up to these speeds to properly defend against the field, that is absolutely an equipment problem even if it’s not obvious.

Mike Clayton is one of the smartest people you can follow on golf Twitter, and he said something similar on Friday to what I had in my notes from Thursday.

If the equipment — which I promise not to pop off about again this week! — was under control, there would be a lot more options when it comes to pins, setup, green speeds and a million other things.

But because nobody wants -25 to win, courses get taken to the extreme, which is why you get crazy pins, insane speeds and governing bodies that are always flirting with silliness in their setups.

8. Blockie before the PGA: “Oh yeah, definitely [feels a little bit like a swan song]. I was actually surprised I made it again this year. After the PGA, I’m focused only on senior golf.”

Blockie after the PGA: “There’s no way on God’s green earth this is my last one. No chance. I will definitely qualify for one more, if not five more.”

Remains the performative 🐐.

OK maybe not the performative goat …

9. That would be — according to you guys — the formerly thicc boy who is quickly becoming the MC Boy.

Bryson now has four missed cuts at the majors since he won at Pinehurst in 2024. That’s twice as many as Scottie has missed since turning pro in 2018.

What went wrong?

Better question: What went right?

He finished 153rd (out of 156) in SG around the greens, which is wild.

And it was somehow uglier than that if you watched. He doubled the 7th (see below) after hitting a drive wide right, pushing his second up by the bunker and then hitting his third about 4 yards directly into that bunker.

A recap of Bryson’s 2026 PGA.

Do the single length wedges look awkward? Absolutely. Has he been successful with them in the past to the tune of two major championships? Also yes. Is all of this moot because there is no chance he will ever change? Also yes.

I don’t know what the answer is, but he looks quite lost. And unlike Rahm, I’m unconvinced it’s LIV related.

[Jason here] Bryson’s 2 shots on 6 green capture this lost feeling. He and his caddy over-analyzed the kind of chip he should hit. He fluffs it. He hits a putt and immediately pulls up to critique it. And it goes in. He puts so much effort into his game that when he loses he loses and when he wins he just loses less. Is he playing golf or is he trying to control it? [back to Kyle]

Matt over at Data Golf made a good point that he’s actually lost some of his massive advantage off the tee recently. Something to monitor as he tries not to get bageled at the majors for all of 2026.

It’s a bummer to lose the High King of Content at the halfway point. We say this about a lot of people and parts of it are probably true, but it is 100 percent true that golf and majors are better and more interesting when Bryson is in the middle of it.

Also more chaotic.

More of everything.

I’m bummed.

Thank you for reading and participating in all of this nonsense.

Come on over and participate in our Slack channel! It’s been the most fun week we’ve had all year, and we haven’t even gotten to the part where Spieth putts with his 3 wood. Which, by the way, I need to get over and be a fourth with him, Scottie and Si Woo at some point here in Dallas. I bet there are shots tried in those matches that make what Spieth did on No. 11 on Friday look stock by comparison.

Greetings!

I estimate that it will take you around 7 minutes to read today’s newsletter, but it’s impossible to measure things like that so really … who can say?

Name drops today: Blockie (always), Garrick Higgo (of course), Scottie (duh) and unripened bananas.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

I’m sorry to whoever we had slotted in today’s sponsorship slot, but I’m going to have to run it back with yesterday’s sponsor, Garmin.

Garrick Higgo, my man, can I interest you in a Garmin S70 for the remainder of the year? Sure, it keeps things like heart rate (yours seems low) and step count (probably high), but it also keeps hours and minutes, and even seconds (!) to keep you from incurring a 2-stroke penalty at your next major championship round.

During your casual golf, you can also measure distance to the front, middle and back of greens — I’m sure all the courses you play are among the 43,000 preloaded into Garmin’s library! — and keep your score right there on the watch face.

It’s a phenomenal device, and given that you’ve made over $7 million in your career, more than affordable for someone in your tax bracket (and most others, too). If you’re reading, you should check it out right here.

OK, now onto the news.

9 Thoughts on Round 1 of the PGA Championship

1. I did not think we would be leading Round 1 of my PGA thoughts with … Garrick Higgo, but we may have gotten the most normal sport moment(s) of the year about an hour into the golf on Thursday.

Higgo shot 67 but had it bumped up to a 69 because at 7:18:00 a.m. local time, he was not standing on the mown-down green rectangle where his playing partners were teeing off.

Higgo, if you somehow haven’t heard by now, was seconds late to his tee time on Thursday. What is difficult for me to understand is that he actually showed up early, left to hit some putts and then didn’t make it back before the watch of the official running the festivities (maybe he had a Garmin S70?) struck 7:18:00.

I couldn’t get enough of Higgo’s explanation(s). Here were just a few of the sentences he said, with corresponding links to either video or the transcripts.

1. “I was obviously there on time, but late.” (link)
2. “It's unfortunate that golf has these kind of situations where ... things we get penalized for ... things.” (link)
3. "One second is tough to define." (link)

Me reading that third one …

We’re not even close to done!

4. “I wouldn't have been late if I knew I was running late.” (Link)
5. “I was just trying to get evidence. I feel like any of you would have done the same. It's kind of … I was there on time, but the rule is, if you're one second late, you're late. So if you think about it, I was there on time, if you know what I mean.” (Link)

Me …

6. “Like, I was there at 7:18, 30 seconds, you know what I mean?” (Link)
7. (7:18 was the tee time?) “Yeah, or something like that, 7:19, whatever it was. I don't know.” (Link)

Just over here howling at all of this. Completely insane.

Although it led to some all-time commentary on Twitter.

Part of me feels like we should just end the newsletter there. Nothing this week is going to top that. The undercurrent here is that majors always bring about weird stuff like this because majors make for such a strange and uncomfortable environment for players. They are often unaccustomed to how major weeks feel, and so bizarre moments like this that sometimes happen at regular events always seem to happen during these four weeks.

Never miss a f̶a̶i̶r̶w̶a̶y̶ tee time again with the Titleist ProV1 Second.

2. And since we’re talking rules … I know there are probably plenty of purist reasons why this rule exists, but I’m just not sure anyone will ever convince me that a ball hit into the thick rough off of the fairway should be allowed to be placed on the fairway for a second shot like Rahm did on No. 10 today.

Where Rahm hit his tee shot.

Where he hit his second shot from.

That’s not a Rahm subtweet. I said the same thing about Scottie at Oakmont last year and J.J. Spaun at the Players last year, as well.

In a game defined by single shots and often even inches or millimeters (or seconds!), I do not understand how the positioning of a sprinkler head can have such an effect on the outcome of such an important event.

What if Josh Allen slipped on 4th and 1 at the end of the third quarter in the second round of the NFL playoffs next year, and the referees said they were gonna do the play over because there was paint from the Bills logo where he stepped. That’s not that far away from what happened here!

Extreme normal sport behavior, and a rule that I have yet to be convinced makes any sense at all.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,049 of them) and includes thoughts on Scottie’s 6-7, an amazing majors course (so far) and more on one of the great performative athletes of our time (somehow not Bryson).

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.

 

3. The Rory-Spieth-Rahm group was so much fun to watch. I’m normally not a huge supergroups fan, but those three are so different as people and stylistically as players that it really worked. They are also three of the most meme-able players in the world. Rahm and Spieth are definitely in the top three. I’d put Bryson ahead of Rory, though Rory has definitely had his moments.

As far as the actual golf, I have no idea what to think after the first round.

Rory said he played like “shit,” which is a great description of exactly how he played. He hit 5 of 14 fairways while Spieth — Jordan Alexander Spieth! — hit 12 of 14 and nearly led the field in driving. Rahm started slow and had me typing unspeakable things about what LIV has done to his major career before somehow — as podcast co-host, Hayden Martin, pointed out to me — shooting the same score as Spieth (69), which felt impossible for 17.5 holes until it actually happened. There is no way those two should have both shot 69, but they did.

As for whether I’m buying what Spieth is selling. No, I’m not. Do not put it in the papers that I was emotionally invested five shots into his round and that I quietly whispered to myself things like, Please find the right plateau on this green all morning while envisioning Rory and Spieth stomping into Shinnecock like it’s 2015 all over again and they held all four majors at once.

Do not print that.

herewegoagain.gif

4. This golf course — which I was led to believe would be a bomb-and-gouge festival! — was absolutely not a bomb-and-gouge festival. Proper major championship setup, and it had a lot of Southern Hills in it today. I thought it was tremendous.

Rory was wrong earlier in the week, and he admitted it on Thursday.

The setup even had Rory talking angles into some of these greens, which makes sense given the treacherous pin positions.

As I said before the tournament started, the PGA has a branding issue that is incongruent with its best tournaments and tournament venues for the last decade (Kiawah, Southern Hills, Bethpage), which have rocked for the most part.

The Mink — at least through the first round — seems to fall into that “great championship course, great golf tournament” bucket much more so than it falls into the Valhalla/Bellerive bucket of “questionable course, but at least we got some big names involved!”

How much is a second worth at The Mink?

5. My one fear for the rest of the week is something Andy talked about at Oak Hill. Will the fairways get too firm to hold, thus reducing the skill of shaping it both ways such that everyone just ends up in the rough and it becomes a big wedge out contest?

Here’s Rahm.

That’s something to keep an eye on.

Regardless, the PGA seems to have nailed the golf course through one day, and there apparently (and thankfully) wasn’t enough rain to cheapen the Mink Experience.

Phil Scottie was right!

Also, I thought Soly nailed why the setup worked and what differentiated it from, say, some past U.S. Opens as well as parts of Oak Hill, particularly the part about wide fairways plus rough.

Jason Day x DE-Wawa-LT

6. Please enjoy a jewel of a quote from Sahith on the rough around the greens.

“An unripened banana,” and “it squirts both ways for me.”

Incredible sport.

7. Not sure how we’re just now getting here, but Scottie with a nose out in front — or alongside several other noses — after 18 holes is obviously going to be an issue.

It’s not over for two reasons …

1. He’s doing a lot of work with this putter

2. There are 48 players (!!!) between E and -3

But a golf course where distance control is paramount and you have to continuously make smart decisions even in the face of tempting pin positions and nobody leads Scottie after the first day?

Best of luck to the field!

8. Brooks is about to be a problem as well. The five-time champ flushed it all day and finished 138th in putting (one-hundred and thirty-eighth!). He knows it, too.

There was never anything crazy, but he only lost strokes on four of 18 approach shots. This on the long 17th stood out to me. Bryson banged one off the right grandstand. Xander went way long left. And Brooks just hit that fierce, whistling iron shot that he hits right to the front middle of the green.

If you can do that 72 times in a row at a major, you’re probably going to lift a trophy at the end of the week.

I don’t know that it’s going to look as easy as it did when he shot 63 at Bethpage in 2019, but Brooks is very much live after Round 1 of this event.

Also, while we’re here, I covet the shoe game and don’t think it gets nearly enough credit. Not the greatest dresser on tour, but the shoes are always awesome.

9. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to respect one of the all time performative athletes of a generation. Come for the “look yourself in the mirror but without a mirror” speech (see video below), and stay for my favorite thing I saw him do on Thursday.

This is all intentionally dramatic, right? Or is he just the most unintentionally dramatic human that has ever lived. I feel upside down at this point. It seems intentional like wink wink watch this. But I truly don’t know. I don’t even know if he totally knows. That’s the place all the performative greats get to: I’m not even sure if this is a bit anymore!

The quote above is amazing (obviously), but my favorite thing Blockie did on Thursday was — and I can’t find it thanks to a DMCA but I wish I could — after he made a short-ish putt early in his round. He followed that by dramatically grabbing his chest in relief — I mean, we are like four holes into the week! — and doing this bent over “I’m so glad to be done with that hole!” walk to the next tee box with the putter sticking straight out behind him like a tail.

It made some of the performative stuff Justin Rose does look tame by comparison.

Truly incredible stuff.

Thank you for reading and participating in all of this nonsense.

Overheard in our Slack channel, which was popping off on Thursday: Is the true test of a major whether you reinstall the governing body’s app the week of? Come on over and get involved! Come agonize with a bunch of grown men over what a 32-year-old milquetoast three-time major winner does with his putter on Friday (and beyond).

Greetings!

There are so many normal sport things going on at The Mink right now.

I cannot believe I’m not there to take in, for example …

Name drops today: LeBron, Si Woo, Blockie (of course) and Bellerive.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

This newsletter is presented by our friends at Garmin. I won’t be getting my steps in at Aronimink this week, but I will be tracking my steps and HR at home using their S70 watch. An unofficial guide based on what could happen …

Rory-Scottie duel — Avg. RHR: 92 | Daily steps: 19K
Bryson-Blockie duel — Avg. RHR: 80 | Daily steps: 20K
Spieth gets involved — Avg. RHR: 140 | Daily steps: 37K
Spieth-Rory playoff — 🆘 

The S70 is for much more than just keeping track of that information, though. I use it pretty much every time I play to give me middle-of-the-green distances on every shot (which is exactly what I need and also rarely pay attention to).

And thank you again to Garmin for its partnership with Normal Sport this year. We love their products and love how they’re expanding into junior golf watches (!), too.

OK, now onto the news.

8 Final Thoughts Ahead of the PGA Championship

Rory seems fine, by the way.

1. I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on Wednesday and realized that the winning score at the PGA Championship has been higher than the U.S. Open in five of the last nine years. Wait … what?!

2025: U.S. Open higher (more difficult)
2024: U.S. Open
2023: PGA
2022: PGA
2021: PGA
2020: U.S. Open
2019: PGA
2018: U.S. Open
2017: PGA

Boy do we view the difficulty of these tournaments differently!

I think the PGA’s “identity problem” — which has been a big talking point so far this week — is largely due to four things.

1. The USGA loves to manipulate par of the courses it sets up to try and maintain its stature as the toughest test in golf. The PGA doesn’t seem to really care. I’m sure there is an equipment discussion in here somewhere — specifically from the USGA: “See, golf is still very difficult, we don’t need to change the equipment!” — but that’s for another time (like after the paywall below).

2. When PGAs are easy, they’re really easy (Valhalla, Bellerive, Harding Park).

3. The PGA’s main talking point for a decade has been, “We have the most exciting finishes in major championship golf!” This is largely true. But it is also difficult to control or predict this identity. What if they get five blowouts in a row? Then what are you?

4. You could probably add that the PGA is following the U.S. Open playbook but at “worse” and less historic golf courses, which is tough on its marketplace positioning.

Add it all up, and you get a tournament that is not rooted in a place (like the Players Championship or the Phoenix Open) but also doesn’t brand itself as a difficult examination at an historic golf course (U.S. Open), even though it is often more difficult than the very tournament that does brand itself this way.

2. Outside of picking a place (might I suggest a two-course rota of Chambers Bay on the west coast and Kiawah on the east?!) or a theme (I have no suggestions), I’m not sure what can be done about this. They are a little bit stuck.

Though the irony is that I will mega stan their championships as some of my very favorite over the last decade. You could argue that the PGA has been the best and most exciting of the four majors over the 10 years and yet they still have the biggest branding problem of the four entities, which is bizarre!

3. Two other suggestions for branding, both fairly extreme …

1. Go back to match play. Jamie Kennedy laid out the 64-player bracket here. I’m not in love with it. I would prefer medal play for 36 or 54 holes (obvious reasons) and then 16 or 24 players in match play. There’s too much randomness in 18-hole matches with 64 players. Scottie could easily lose in the first round, and it would feel kinda dumb. If you want to talk about 36-hole matches, however, please dial me up!

2. Be the rollback championship. This would take huge stones and will never ever ever ever ever happen. But buddy, Winged Foot with proper equipment or Chicago Golf Club with hickories? Stick all of that in my veins. You go from least interesting major to most interesting in a hurry. Zig while everyone else zags. Into it.

FutureFit0 by Cobra

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,037 of them) and includes thoughts on Bryson’s actual chances of winning, Cam Young’s already-rolled back (?!) ball and my pick to win at the Mink 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.

 

Here’s a link to our members only fantasy contest for the PGA. Good luck!

4. Speaking of equipment! News broke this week that Cam Young has been playing a rollback-conforming ball for nearly a year now, and he’s [checks notes] … wait … only slightly shorter than he was a year ago?

OEMs still have three and a half years (!) to close that already-tiny gap between old distance and new distance, and almost certainly will. Here’s the money line from that Jonathan Wall piece above on Cam’s golf ball.

Just one tweak on the driver, and a rolled back ball is already going nearly as far as the not-rolled back one?

This is seemingly all for naught. Like painting a metal bat to look like a wooden one and thinking you solved the distance problem and all is well for the future.

I have said this before, and I’m sure I will say it again in the future: The governing bodies cannot go too far in rolling the ball back. All that time, effort and energy for a couple of yards that will really be a couple of feet (if not less) in four years?

What is even the point?

And the question — as it has been for me for the last several years — remains: Do you want to go to St. Andrews? If not, then let it all ride. Let Acuna swing the Easton Hype Fire. But if so — if you do still want major championships at St. Andrews — then the changes have to be more drastic than whatever it is the USGA and R&A are trying to implement, which given this Cam Young info is almost laughable at this point.

USGA: You think this is rolled back? This is rolled back.

5. Bryson pressers should be mandatory at all major championships but especially this one. The PGA could use a little chaos every year, and there’s no easier way to get it than to stick a microphone in front of the High King of Content.

Aside: As Hayden Martin pointed out in our podcast on Tuesday, the PGA is on an insane run of Blockie —> Scottie getting arrested —> Don Rea doing Don Rea stuff in three consecutive PGAs. You could tell me anything this week, and I would believe it. OK, maybe not Spieth winning the slam, but almost anything, including these two kings chopping it up in contention for the final 36.

Also, we should talk about Bryson on the course. I think if it’s soft, he probably contends. He’s contended in four of the last five, and the only ones where he didn’t were 2022 (WD) and 2021 (Kiawah). Arguably the two most difficult tracks in the last six.

Otherwise, he’s been lights out at this tournament.

I’m not sure there could be a more chaotic outcome than Bryson winning the PGA Championship and doing a summer collab with Ryan Trahan where they drive the Wanamaker to as many domestic five-star resorts as they can find. Need it.

Lastly, this 2-minute video of him playing the front nine at Aronimink is legit cool! More content like that!

6. Speaking of a firm course, I thought Scottie summed things up well here.

This echoes what Rory said on Tuesday.

However …

This is so simple and succinct and easy for morons like me to understand. Also, we will probably know after Thursday which golf course we’re going to get.

I am cautiously optimistic after watching that Bryson video above and reading Michael Kim on where the PGA could put the pins. But also …

7. This Rory video where he looks at silhouettes of golf swings and guesses every single one of them is (understandably) making the rounds. My take on it: He’s getting too much credit for getting them all and not enough for getting the hardest ones!

This is like when Joe Lunardi gets all 68 teams in March Madness. Well, you really got like six of them because everyone knew the other 62.

Ranking the guess in order of easiest to hardest.

1. Tiger (easiest) — a few of my kids could have gotten it.
2. Rahm
3. Barkley
4. Spieth
5. Tiger’s year
5. Xander — I thought this was low key kinda tough
6. Blockie — This is his Lunardi moment, the last three are pretty wild.
7. Si Woo — I don’t understand everyone getting this one so quickly.
8. LeBron — He got it kinda quick! Also, Xander and Cam Young guessed Scottie for LeBron. The best player on the planet! And Scottie said he deserved it!

And he does! Their setups are so similar, which is wild. Look at this!

Wonderful idea for a video and great execution for everyone. Need more of this from the actual PGA Tour on a weekly basis.

A couple of the comments were great.

8. OK, I need to actually make a pick. I think we’re doing Porter Family Draft For a Pint of Ice Cream tonight, and I feel like the 2003 Vikings. I do feel good about my actual pick, though. I think Cam Young makes yet another leap this week and takes what has been a really good year into the stratosphere.

Since March, if he putts, he wins or comes close (see below). I think it happens again this week.

Thank you for reading our algorithm-free golf newsletter that is sometimes even about golf. We enjoy drawing and writing it every single week but especially during major championships and especially during major championships where we can turn a mink into a boxing coach who has to figure out a six-time champ’s pinky toe.

Greetings!

Major championship weeks absolutely rule. Let’s get right into it.

Name drops today: Padraig Harrington (obviously), Blockie, Alexander Zverev, the entire Fitzpatrick family and Annie Duke.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

This newsletter is presented by our friends at Cobra.

Here is a thing that happened this week: I played in a tournament at Trinity Forest on Monday morning and didn’t hit the ball that great.

On Monday evening, our entire family went to the driving range where I fiddled with the FutureFit33 settings on my Cobra OPTM driver — which is the most adjustable/fittable driver in golf nbd — while my kids played Go Fish on the TopTracer. Normal sport.

My wife looked over and said, “What are you doing?” I responded that I was trying out some different loft and lie settings and that, “the OPTM has 33 loft and lie settings for optimized ball flight, tighter dispersion, and more distance.”

OK, I didn’t say that last part, but — more importantly — I started flushing it after figuring out the right settings.

Since partnering with Cobra, we've gotten some feedback about how underrated Cobra is. Essentially what Jason’s go-to-gear-guy TEJ (The Equipment Junkie) has been saying for a while now. Most popular OEM drivers have 8 settings, three have 12, one has 16, and Cobra has … 33?! An underdog out-innovating the big dogs in Philly this week? Sound familiar? Expect anything different?

Thank you to Cobra for its partnership in Normal Sport this year.

OK, now onto the news.

8 Thoughts on the PGA (and other things) This Week

Jason and I will be cooking all week from afar.

No trip to Aronimink for me this year because my daughters have a dance recital on Friday (which I’m actually pumped about). What this often means, however, is more (and more comprehensive) content because we can watch everything on TV and not get lost in the sauce out on the golf course.

Here are eight thoughts/takes/positions I have going into the second major of the year.*

*Subject to change in the next two days.

1. Hayden Martin and I dropped a new pod on Tuesday previewing the PGA. Hayden has become my trusty co-host on the Normal Sport Show, and we’ve had a lot of fun hollering about all of this stuff. Today’s edition involves five storylines we’re each intrigued by at this PGA. Plenty on Scottie, Spieth’s slam, what to expect from the golf course and why the PGA’s identity is a little ambiguous. If you enjoy the pod, we would appreciate you subscribing, commenting etc. etc. wherever you listen. Thank you!

Five storylines for the PGA Championship – Episode #29

The Normal Sport Show · Episode

Spotify

2. I threw this out on Twitter, but I figured the newsletter would be an even better space for it: I was going through it the other day, and realized that our inventory of sponsor-able content across newsletter, podcast and social for all of 2026 should get between 8-10M impressions (not including Caffeine TV).

We've increased that output a bit from what our plan was at the beginning of the year and still have some space available. So if you want to get your brand/company in front of our audience of a couple hundred thousand wonderful, beautiful, smart and lovely golf fans, there's plenty of opportunity to do so. You can just respond to this email.

3. Scottie and Rory have faced nearly 2,300 golfers at the four majors since the start of 2022. Only 2 percent of those golfers have beaten both of them in the same week. Double digit golfers have not beaten Rory and Scottie in the same week since the 2021 PGA Championship. The one Phil won!

When you think through it, this makes sense. Rory and Scottie are going to end up as two of the 10 best golfers of all time, and they may both be in the middle of their respective primes. But it’s still wild to see it written down on paper like that.

Here are the only six golfers who have gotten them in the last year and a half (they all happened at the same tournament — last year’s U.S. Open).

J.J. Spaun
Bob Mac
Hovland
Hatton
Carlos Ortiz (!!)
Cam Young

What a group.

The takeaway: If you beat Rory and Scottie this week, you’re probably either winning or coming close to it. Such an easy proposition: Just beat two guys ….

Something this poor fella knows a thing or two about.

Alexander Zverev is 10-17 against Alcaraz and Sinner.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,036 of them) and includes thoughts on Jon Rahm’s fascinating press conference as well as a crazy Rickie-Bryson stat.

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. This interview with Blockie by Alan Shipnuck is terrific. The thing that strikes me about Blockie is the same thing that strikes me about everyone with charisma: They often don’t even know exactly what makes them charismatic and magnetic.

I’ve referenced this video a few times, but in the same way Rory and (especially) Scottie don’t know how to explain how they do what they do, Blockie and people like Blockie don’t always know how to explain why they are the way that they are.

Also, Blockie three years after Oak Hill is a lot more enjoyable as a personality than Blockie three weeks after Oak Hill, which he seems to be aware of and references often.

5. Rory talking about the golf course is something.

Cool.

I don’t want to turn this into an equipment debate [fiddles more with FutureFit33 settings] — and you can read Garrett Morrison for that — but I am bummed that it sounds like a little bit of Oak Hill 2.0 because that means only, like, seven guys can win.

Rory did add this on the greens.

Andy previewed the greens here for Fried Egg Golf, and it’s predictably wonderful.

I’m pessimistic that this will be the Creativity Open — and also bummed about that — but at least mildly hopeful that the PGA will make angles matter a little bit based on where they put the pins and if they can get it going firm (an admittedly big if).

Yes, they're talking about you, Mink.

6. I was going through strokes gained leaders across the last 20 rounds going into the PGA Championship, and a couple of things stood out. Here are the leaders.

1. Cam Young: 3.2
2. Scottie: 2.8
3. Ludvig: 2.6
4. Rory: 2.6
5. Rahm: 2.4
6. M. Fitz: 2.3
7. Morikawa: 2.2
8. A. Fitz: 2.2
9. Xander: 2.1
10. Cantlay: 2.1

Here’s what stood out …

• Cam Young has officially unseated Scottie as the hottest player in the world. This probably happened a while ago since Cam has won twice since Scottie won last, but it’s officially official now. Shackelford said after Doral that Cam should be the favorite to win the PGA. After sitting with that for a while, I still probably disagreed because Scottie has as many arrests as he does finishes outside the top two at the PGA in the last three years, but I could see how and why that would be the case. The Leap has been made.

• The “Rahm sucks” talk has been overblown. Rahm is fine. The “Rahm is not sharp enough to contend at majors right now” talk on the other hand is quite real.

I really do want to pick him, but I just can’t.

• I’m surprised Matty Fitz’s number is this low. Hurt by one (really) bad tournament at Quail Hollow last week, but he has three wins in his last five starts!

• Speaking of Fitz, I was talking to somebody a few days ago about how insane it is for brothers to be among the 10 hottest players in the world at any point. Think about the odds of that! Think about all the great junior golfers who never make it and how many things have to go right just to be a moderately successful pro, much less one of the 10 best at any given time.

• I’ve never done a deep dive here, but I found this article, which says the odds of making it to the Korn Ferry Tour for a dedicated junior are .02 percent. That’s one KFT player! And the Fitzpatricks produced two top 10-level players in the world?!

• What’s even crazier is that nobody in the family looks the part. Does this scream, “Looks like a pair of top 10 athletes in the world in their respective sport”?

I think this is something we’ll look back on years from now and think, Wow, we kinda underrated how insane that was at the time.

Mother's Day at The Fitzpatricks.

7. OK, let’s talk about Jon Rahm’s presser and specifically this answer to a great question from Shane Ryan. Aside: I could listen to Shane Ryan and Jon Rahm mentally joust for hours.

Anyway, you should really watch the entire exchange — YouTube version here — but if not, Shane asked Rahm whether he would, knowing what he knows now, go back and make the same decision about going to LIV.

Here’s what Rahm said.

In other words: Humans can’t operate like that because we would all drive ourselves crazy. This is, I think, the right way to view things. We can only make the best decision possible in a given moment.

Annie Duke says this well in her book, Thinking in Bets.

Again, Rahm is smart and seemingly (?) emotionally mature enough to understand this, and I appreciated his ability to answer Shane’s question in this manner.

However!

Looking into the future is a completely different story.

Totally a “two things can be true” situation, which is what it seems to be. You can make a decision that is good in the moment because you have fully thought through all the information you can possibly have at that time. But also, you can learn from it going into the future and internalize the idea that you wouldn’t do something similar again.

It’s easy to rush to either extreme and say, This was a great decision, and I don’t regret it or This was a terrible decision, and I do regret it.

Rahm seems to be saying, This was a good decision for me at the time — it was the right decision — but also I wouldn’t do it again. Whether you agree with why he did what he did or not (I definitely don’t!), I still appreciate his willingness to walk a thin line of thoughtfulness that most are unwilling to wrestle with.

8. Here’s a fun stat.

Strokes gained over the last 12 months.

Rickie Fowler: 1.5
Bryson DeChambeau: 1.4

Boy do we talk about those two players differently. In fact, here are all the golfers with a better SG number than Rick over the last 12 months.

Scottie
Rahm
Cam
Fleetwood
Rory
M. Fitz
Henley
Xander
Ludvig
Bob Mac

That’s it.

Rickie is low key (like really low key) playing some really solid golf, and I agree with Shane that seeing him win a major would be pretty high up on my list of guys I’d love to see.

Spieth is an obvious No. 1, and I’d probably have Scottie (five before age 30) and Rory (calendar year slam?) ahead of Rickie, but Rick would definitely be top five, and his first major at this stage would be a nice little boost for today’s newsletter sponsor, too 😏.

Thank you for reading our algorithm-free golf newsletter that is sometimes even about golf. We enjoy drawing and writing it every single week but especially during major championships and especially during major championships involving Blockie and Padraig Harrington.

Greetings!

I have been in a wrestling match with 1,000 actual hold-them-in-your-hands books for the last week as our house has become a distribution center of sorts for what is our company’s first physical product (outside of merch).

Some notes.

• If you haven’t bought the book — which is a collection of newsletters and illustrations from the 2025 Masters called The Weight of Rory — you can do so right here. It is perhaps timely given that Rory is probably going to win his seventh major this week. 👀 

• If you have bought the book, your order has almost certainly shipped. We have a few stragglers as I’m staring at some “can I actually drop a package going to Switzerland at my local USPS where they loathe my presence more than Spieth loathes making par” problems, but eventually those will go out, too.

• If your book has shipped, I may need to apologize for the packaging. My 6-year-old — who I paid $60 for her work — was in charge of parts of the assembly line, which I don’t believe is part of the six sigma best practices.

Actually I refuse to apologize for the packaging because this was a delight for her and an all-time memory for me. (but if there are any damages, please let me know, and I’ll make it right 😂).

• If you ordered the book alongside other merch (hats, shirts etc.), I apologize that it has taken so long to get your gear to you. Those orders are still being processed because I had to receive books and then ship them on to our new distribution center (which changed hands in March).

We presumed that everyone who did this would be OK receiving everything together, but it has taken longer than we would have liked. Sorry for that, and thanks for bearing with us as we continue to work out our system.

• You can just … do things. It is among my favorite parts of being an entrepreneur and trying to make all of this work. You can just write and illustrate and print and publish your own book. Anyone can. It’s difficult and sometimes frustrating and complex, but you can just … do it.

Growing up, I thought the only professions were, like, doctor and astronaut and firefighter and oil and gas executive.

Now? My daughter wants to be an illustrator. My son wants to build video games. Creating is a privilege, and also a reflection of the truth that we have been created. I hope it never becomes less exciting for me than it currently is.

• I signed and put an illustrated insert into the first 100 copies that were ordered (as promised) and attempted to do so for all Normal Club members who ordered a book. If yours shows up without a signature and/or illustrated insert, please let me know!

• Because I think there is some interest in the business part of this: We ordered 1,000 books and sold around 600 of them so far. That’s right around break even for us. A lot of work for something that has generated between -$1,000 and $1,000, but it’s also a thrill to print and publish your own book.

Plus, every book we sell from here on out is profit, and my thesis (hope?) is that as we build up a library of books like this one that are somewhat evergreen, that the library starts to compound over time.

In other words, when Jason and I illustrate and publish a book on Bryson’s YouTube match with Grant Horvat’s son on Mars in 30 years, people will hopefully see this book about 11-time major champion, Rory McIlroy, and buy it as well.

• First person to spot and show me a typo — and there is definitely more than one! — gets a $100 gift card to the pro shop.

• We will be back on Tuesday and Wednesday with a ton of PGA Championship stuff on the newsletter, the podcast (subscribe here) as well as a link to our PGA fantasy contest (for members only). First prize this time is $750, and the overall purse is just over $1,000.

• It’s Blockie Week, baby!

Thank you for being someone who still values reading and writing about this very dumb (but also quite meaningful) sport. It is a dream to get to produce, print and ship my own books alongside my kids, and it’s only possible because people continue to show up.

Grateful for it.

Greetings!

My friend, Garrett, sent this over to me.

Given how much AI has dominated the social conversation of late, this mini essay on human-to-human interaction is one of the best things I’ve read all year.

Name drops today: High King of Content, Scott O’Neil, Savannah Bananas, Hogan, Francesco and The Mink.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

This newsletter is presented by our friends at Experience Ireland Golf and Travel.

[Jason here with more stories from last year's Links Challenge]

Everyone knows that golf in Ireland is spectacular. It truly is every bit as impressive and approachable as NLU's Tourist Sauce Season 4 and our friend Jamie Kennedy's first-round-at-Carne recap make it out to be. The best.

But what really surprised and delighted me at last year's Link's Challenge run by EIGT were the shenanigans in between the golf. Nights at places like McDonnells Bar and Undertakers in Belmullet, where the bar tender is also the town… undertaker.

Normal sport.

The putting contests, the extra holes before sunset, the extra rounds set up by new golf friends (shout to Tim and Joe from Fescue and Dunes) just before catching a flight. That's the magic of an EIGT trip. Hard to describe or predict remotely, but sure to happen once you're there.

I could go on and on (I promise we will record a pod about this trip at some point). For now, all I can say is, if you have any seed of an Ireland trip idea, GO!

And let Tom Kennedy from EIGT make that happen for you.

You can also click here to grab one of the last spots for July event at Carne Golf Links and Enniscrone Golf Links.

OK, now onto the news.

10 Thoughts on Golf (and other things) This Week

1. Rory turned 37 this week, and people had some absolute takes on this little chart I tweeted out (see below).

It shows where Tiger, Rory and Phil all stood from a career standpoint on their 37th birthdays. It does not include European Tour numbers because Data Golf doesn’t have them built in to its career evolution tool. It is simply PGA Tour + major championships.

I think this reader kinda nailed it.

2. Let’s get to a couple of them.

• Rory is pretty objectively just better than Phil in almost every way. Fewer events, twice the majors and — most surprisingly to me — about three strokes better per tournament played. All of that is … mildly surprising to me, especially the SG numbers.

• Phil’s superpower is — as has been said innumerable times — his longevity. He was rarely great like Rory or off the charts like Tiger. But “very good” over a long enough window of time also gets the job done.

• Here’s a fun one in terms of career SG/round according to the Data Golf career evolution tool.

Fleetwood: 1.45
Phil: 1.40
Brooks: 1.30

Staring at those numbers …

• Tiger’s winning percentage being better than Rory and Phil’s combined is something else. Like, significantly better! As one reader (that I can’t track down) put it: Brooks’ career represents the gap between Tiger and Phil + Rory. That’s insane.

• I think Tiger’s top five percentage being north of 50 percent is just as insane (possibly more so). Over half the time he finished in the top five of a tournament? And it’s not like he was teeing it up at Myrtle Beach.

• If Rory continues on even half or 25 percent of the trajectory he’s been on, he will unseat Phil as the 10th or 11th best player of all time (maybe he already has?). The real question is …

3. What is the ceiling? I posited on Twitter that 45 PGA Tour wins (he has 30) and nine major championships (he has six) is the absolute ceiling.

The major number got more pushback than the PGA Tour number, mostly because he seemingly won’t play enough on the PGA Tour to get beyond (or maybe even close to) 45 wins.

I thought this comment on his major ceiling was instructive.

Hayden also pushed back on these numbers on our podcast. He ran the ceiling to 10 or 11 (send help) and called nine a 75th percentile outcome.

Here are some facts.

Players who have 45 PGA Tour wins and nine majors
Tiger
Jack
Hogan

Players who have 45 PGA Tour wins and 10+ majors
Tiger
Jack

Is … Rory McIlroy going to end up as one of the five best golfers who has ever lived?

I mean, that’s on the table, right? And with the post-Masters fog seemingly lifted way earlier this year, I’m excited for how all of this could change even in the next few months.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,034 of them) and includes thoughts on [gestures at the circus that is LIV Golf].

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. Things have been so bleak at LIV this week. Somehow even more so than usual. I discussed all of it with Gabby on this podcast, but there are a few things I wanted to note here as well.

The first is that Bryson is clearly rattled, and when Bryson gets rattled, he immediately goes into High King of Content mode. And almost inevitably when that happens, the quotes are extraordinary.

“I'd love to do a bunch of dubbing in different languages, giving the world more reason to watch YouTube,” he told ESPN. “And then I'd love to play tournaments that want me.”

Getting “Breaking 50 with Christ Pratt” into Indonesian and Japanese one week and then straight into practice rounds at Pebble for the U.S. Open the next week.

It doesn’t end there!

“The team franchises, there's enough making profit now to where we could sell them for close to $200 million, and that's not talking about my team either,” he said to ESPN.

I have to say, if the Cleeks and Magic Sticks are valued at $200 million, the Dallas Cowboys are going to sell for $55 billion.

And lastly.

💉💉💉💉💉💉

5. Bryson is a professional sports unicorn in that he is …

• An elite talent
• Also primarily (!) a showman and …
• Willing to say almost anything

This trio is the holy grail when it comes to sports entertainment, especially in individual sports. The PGA Tour would be foolish not to welcome him back as quickly as possible.

And in fact that looks to be what they are doing, or at least signaling that they will do. It is not — it cannot be — a coincidence that two days after Bryson is yelling about YouTube restrictions (normal sport), the Tour loosened their own parameters around what players can and cannot do.

The showman, but where will the show go on?

Who cares about the specific language in what the Tour loosened (it’s not a ton), this is clearly an overture to the HKOC that they do in fact want him back and will clear the path for that to happen.

Again, they would be out of their minds to not do this, and I think Rolapp knows this. The question will not be whether the Tour welcomes Bryson back but rather whether he wants to jump back into that arena at all. 

Bryson is wired a bit differently than most, and even though he has indicated that he would willingly return, I’m not sure Rory’s quote about the Tour being for guys who care about competing will resonate as much with Bryson as it likely will with others.

6. The contrast this week between the following three players was stark.

Bryson: I may just play the Masters and matches against Grant Horvat.
Rahm: I am being held hostage.
Rory: I can become one of the all time greats.

Twitter tweet

Greatness always has a cost, and while I don’t think it should be everyone’s aim, I do respect the singular focus of people who have been given all the gifts.

Rory hasn’t always had this singular focus (see: this time last year and many times over the last 15 years). But he certainly does right now as his golf legacy starts to come into focus. Rahm seems like he’s inadvertently kicking it away. Bryson as noted above … may not even care?

Again, there is more to life than winning 10 majors. In the grand scheme, it doesn’t matter all that much. But in a world where it is easy to lose focus often — [raises hand as high as possible] — it did catch my attention that while Rahm and Bryson are wandering about, Rory seems to be in “I want it all” mode going into the last three majors of this year and the last however many years of his prime.

Here for it and absolutely cannot wait to watch it.

7. Every time I turn around, I feel like Rahm is answering a question while looking like this.

I don’t want to spend too much time on him — I’ve already written about how he’s debasing himself on a weekly basis — but this quote was dire.

Me looking at that.

The sowing-reaping meme is the first thing that comes to mind.

Also this.

 

Tough to watch from someone who — I will continue beating this drum — is generationally good at golf.

8. One thing I feel fairly certain of is that LIV will be in existence this time next year and this time the year after that.

If you read this interview with Scott O’Neil, there is — as there is with any executive — probably a lot of BS. But there is also a sense to me of “this is for sure going to continue on in some capacity” in what he’s saying. Does that mean Bryson and Rahm are around for it? Probably not. But LIV isn’t going anywhere, which is going to be …

1. Painful to endure all the “this was the plan all along” from LIV bots.

2. Interesting to see what becomes of it and who invests (especially given that the PIF still owns it), and …

3. Probably another move toward private equity, which I’m not sure is in the best interest of golf fans, just as I’m not sure the Tour’s SSG money is in the best interest of any of us either.

Example: Does private equity move toward or away from this idea?

A question worth considering as a lot of pro sports move in the private equity direction.

9. This video of The Mink by Fried Egg is terrific. I watched it and took notes earlier this week and feel more prepared for the tournament than if I’d walked the golf course five times by myself. That’s the value of good commentary and a host who both knows what he’s doing and understands how to communicate it.

Takeaways include …

• No. 7 looks awesome. That’s going to be such a fun hole to watch.

• No. 13 — a sometimes drivable par 4 with OB just off the green to the left — is going to be delicious. Cannot wait to see players rage over some bad hops there.

• Gil Hanse was effusive in his take that nothing really matters in terms of challenging players other than firm greens (and I would add, wind … though the two are related).

• Lag putting, lag putting, lag putting.

• I think the 2018 leaderboard gets at something Andy referenced, which is that you can hit a good shot and have a dangerous two-putt. Great second shots, however, are rewarded. Look at this board from the 2018 BMW at Aronimink. Literally everyone on here is a great to elite iron player, and almost all of them finished in the top 15-20 in approach play that week.

10. They must just make more putts!

Thank you for reading our algorithm-free golf newsletter that is sometimes even about golf. We enjoy drawing and writing it every single week and we take a lot of pride in the craftsmanship that goes into it, even though it’s just a digital product (for now). We hope you enjoy reading and consuming it half as much as we enjoy making it and would love it if you would pass it along to a friend or colleague.

Greetings!

Our book is here. I’ll be opening the boxes later tonight and toasting a celebration signing and sending all evening, but here are some photos from the delivery this afternoon.

It feels both thrilling and relieving to be holding a physical artifact that we put together for all of you. If you haven’t purchased one yet, the pre-order stamp has been erased, and you can simply buy right here.

Shout out, as always, to Greig Anderson whose design makes the book sing and to Prolific Group for their flexibility and shepherding to get this project completed.

This is a longer post for a different time, but the publishing industry is outrageously opaque — which is part of the reason I’m so adamant about owning and publishing myself — so to have a designer and a printer that make the process a joy is more of a relief than it seems like it probably should be. I’m grateful for it.

Name drops today: Dublin (not that one), Aramco (kinda not that one), Virginia (not that one) and ball speed (but not that one).

TODAY’S SPONSOR

This newsletter is brought to you by Charlie Golf Co, who we are proud to partner with throughout 2026. We like to say we partner with companies whose products we enjoy and have stories that we love. Charlie Golf Co. is certainly among those.

Even better that their story is, uh, very normal sport.

Charlie Golf Co. started with toddler golf bags priced at $88, which was arguably the best deal in all of golf equipment given the quality of their work (they have since raised the price to an outrageous* $98!).

*kidding

Charlie Golf Co. founder, Tyler Johnson, tells the story of how his uncle’s race car number (88) inspired the pricing. Again, normal sport.

Amazing.

And today Jason illustrated this story and what we think Tyler's son Charlie's school locker might look like.

You can check out everything Tyler and Charlie Golf Co. are doing at the link below. I can pretty confidently promise you there aren’t any better golf businesses whose pricing structures were inspired by family race car enthusiasts.

OK, now onto the news.

One Thing I Did Not Love

I found myself disinterested with and ambivalent toward the Doral event all weekend. Did I give it a fair run? Probably not. I was caught up doing youth baseball and a number of other things, but every time I tuned in, the broadcast was rife with all the energy of a U.S. Open local qualifier (and almost that many people).

Twitter tweet

Whose fault is this? I do not know.

Time and place matter.

I’m just not sure that Trump’s venue in Miami on F1 weekend (or, honestly, any weekend) is it. In fact, I’m pretty sure it isn’t.

There have been a lot of arguments in favor of the Tour moving toward bigger markets (New York, Boston etc.). I don’t necessarily disagree with this idea in principle.

However, when I think of the best tournaments in terms of atmosphere and crowd participation, I think of places like Cromwell, Connecticut, Jacksonville, Florida and Dublin, Ohio.

In-person atmospheres affect the television product in any sport, and the television product in golf is — by a wide margin — the more important revenue stream for the PGA Tour.

When the in-person atmosphere looks like this on a Saturday afternoon at one of the (alleged) best events of the year, it creates a television product that is not going to benefit the Tour in the long term.

So I don’t know what the Tour should do here, but I do know that this was not a super successful return to Doral. Add it to the pile of things Rolapp needs to figure out and navigate as the Tour tries to determine what the best path forward actually is.

Stat of the Week

Nelly won again on Sunday, which means she has the following in 2026.

3rd place finishes or worse: 0
2nd place finishes: 3
1st place finishes: 3

This is insane. She has lost to two humans in three tournaments.

Mayakoba: 0
Chevron: 0
Aramco: 1 (Coughlin)
Ford Championship: 1 (Joo Kim)
Fortinet: 1 (Joo Kim)
Tournament of Champions: 0

Scottie Scheffler stuff. Better than Scottie Scheffler stuff. And while Nelly winning Mayakoba doesn’t move the needle for me in terms of changing what I think about her, it does reinforce what I wrote on Friday about how she has a real chance to become the best modern American women’s golfer of the last 50 years.

How is This App Free?

Some absolute bangers over the last week from the usual suspects.

Let’s jump into them.

I haven’t checked the comments, but I would imagine a number of Euros are taking this way (WAY) too seriously.

Perfection.

Imagining someone setting up these alerts got me pretty good.

Again, no notes.

Corrupt Golf Media

• This Jeff Passan article on how 100 is the new 95 in MLB is terrific. I — like many — am obsessed with speed. Ball speed, pitch speed, whatever you want to put in front of me. And as someone who grew up in the baseball world, the number of guys who throw 95+ now is astonishing.

If you touched 95 when I was playing, you were a king. Now? You’re just the next guy. Definitely some golf parallels in there.

• KVV said this thread deserves a Pulitzer. He was joking. But maybe it does. It’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek look at the insanity of our daily digital lives (see note at bottom of newsletter for more of my thoughts on digital vs. physical world).

• I was staggered by this podcast by my guy, Charlie Warzel, on how the clips are the content now. It is fascinating. I don’t know what in the world to do with it, but my mind was spinning by the end.

• This from Gabby on the future of LIV is must read stuff. Some very intense statements about the future of LIV, including, for example …

• Somebody tweeted out this video of “places Spieth makes par from,” and it is perfect.

• I read The Correspondent over the weekend after my friend, Garrett, sent it to me. And I have to say I think it’s the best book I’ve read in the last several years.

New Feature

If you are a Normal Club member, we are introducing annotations on our site today.

I got tired of folks not being able to comment on my newsletters — repeatedly hearing your own voice gets rather old! — so Normal Club member, David M., built this little annotations tool for all members to use.

To be clear, non-members can see the annotations, but they cannot write their own. Also, you have to be logged in to write. You can do so on this very newsletter right here.

Rap Genius — of all places — was my inspiration (normal sport).

I always thought it was so cool that people could annotate lyrics of songs based on how those lyrics spoke to them. Claude — and having very smart members — made getting this done much easier for me than it would have been 10 or 20 years ago.

So if you’re a member, I would encourage you to go use it on our website. We are planning on taking the best annotations at the end of the year and including them as footnotes in a “best of” book of that year’s newsletters so that you all feel some increase in ownership in what we’re building here.

Ryder Cupdate

I think Jackson Koivun is going to be on the 2027 U.S. Ryder Cup team.

This sounds insane for someone who was playing in something called the Mason Rudolph Championship a few weeks ago, but that’s how good he is and how confident I am that he’s going to remain that good for a long time.

The numbers are staggering.

His current rolling normalized SG number is approaching 4.0, which is 4.0 strokes better than the average D1 player per round and 2.0 better than the average PGA Tour pro.

This is equivalent to Ludvig, Matt Fitzpatrick and Xander Schauffele’s current numbers.

Additionally, he’s the best amateur Data Golf has measured in the last 15 years. Better than Rahm. Better than Spieth. Better than both Patricks, all the O-State boys and anyone in recent college golf.

At his best, Koivun has been a full shot per round better than the best amateur stretches from Nick Dunlap, Bryson and Michael Thorbjornsen.

Of the other nine best amateurs of the last 15 years, four have been Ryder Cuppers, and two — Spieth and Hovland — made the first team they were eligible for as a pro (Rahm turned pro three months before Hazeltine).

Of course Koivun’s pro success is far more dependent on his mental makeup than the numbers. I noted this in the video above, but one college coach who went against Koivun over the last several years told me he’s the most competitive player he’s seen since Tiger Woods. Obviously not on Tiger’s physical level, but this coach said he’ll be a top 20 player in the world one year into his PGA Tour career.

If that’s the case then he will almost certainly tee it up for Jim Furyk’s squad at Adare Manor in just 16 months from right now.

Question of the Week

Ignore CBS forgetting to include Matt Wolff in this graphic from a few weeks ago. Instead, let’s talk about whether Michael Kim is right.

Here’s the setup.

2017-18 Oklahoma State: Hovland (70.1), Wolff (70.1), Kris Ventura (71.65), Zach Bauchou (71.1), Austin Eckroat (71.9) and Sam Stevens (who never played).

2012-13 Cal: Kim (70.7 scoring average), Max Homa (71.7), Brandon Hagy (71.7), Michael Weaver (71.9) and Joel Stalter (71.8).

Both teams having all five players average under 72.0 is crazy, but I still have that 2018 Oklahoma State team (which also might not even be the best OSU team!) over Cal. Austin Eckroat was its worst player (as a freshman). That is insane. Its worst player is a PGA Tour winner.

Need to grab my guy, Sean Martin, and do a pod on this at some point.

Illustrator Thoughts

Often I include what readers have sent in via email, but today I wanted to highlight something illustrator Jason wrote out last week on Bryson.

I thought it was lovely and great and wanted to share it.

Golf — because it can be (interestingly) played by one individual and filmed by one other — is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this reality in ways other sports are just not.

Love Your Work

I came across this little clip over the weekend of a podcast cohort discussing a question that I love to ask and have asked in various forms.

Twitter tweet

My current answer: Physical artifacts. This is actually becoming my thesis for Normal Sport in some ways. I wrote about this last Monday, but I think as more of the world hurtles toward digital, I am increasingly comfortable with moving the other way. Print. Physical newsletters. Coloring books with Jason’s illustrations.

And on and on we could go.

I don’t know that this is right or that it is wise. It’s definitely a risk because the playbook for it actually working in 2026 isn’t totally established.

But when you’re a micro business like ours, risk is sort of baked into what you have to do to succeed. And if the risk for making all of this work is making what I want to make for people I want to make it for and it still doesn’t work, I can be OK with that. Because the entire point of starting your own business is finding this middle.

Thank you for reading our outrageous golf newsletter that is sometimes — but often barely — about golf and for reckoning with the golf world alongside us. Every edition is algorithm-free and handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason. It is a joy for us to build and to publish it for you to read. As always, we hope you love it.

Greetings!

This is as busy of a week or two-week stretch as I can remember. The Masters must have been eight months ago, yes? Between all the LIV memes news, three Siggies in four weeks leading into the PGA Championship, the R&A announcing a new venue, Jackson Koivun and Preston Stout winning everything in sight, Nelly joining the Spieth club with three majors and of course Justin Rose linking up with [checks notes] a car company whose equipment he will hit golf balls with …

Me taking all of this in.

So instead let’s do all of it together as we begin to break down what went wrong for LIV (besides everything) and why Nelly has a chance at something pretty special (although maybe not as special as Jackson Koivun).

Name drops today: Swaggy P, Greg Norman, Ray Lewis, Kathy Whitworth, Jack Nicklaus and Yes Theory.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

This newsletter is presented by our friends at Sap’s Original. If the breadth of golf news has been exhausting, buddy, we have something for you.

Sap’s is built with an ingredient stack that actually works together. Electrolytes for hydration. Adaptogens for stress and balance. Aminos to help your body recover faster.

I am particularly interested in the adaptogens at this moment in time as I try to manage the stress of figuring out why Justin Rose would play race car clubs and which private equity firm is going to end up with 600 luxury travel bags adorned with the Cleeks logo.

Regardless, you should check out Sap’s Original either on their site, on Amazon right here or in person at a locale near you.

My favorite flavor (by a wide margin) is the lemon lime.

OK, now onto the news.

Nine Thoughts on Golf (and other things) This Week

1. The LIV dissection will happen far beyond just this week, but I think there are two primary initial lessons to be learned from LIV’s failure, and they are related.

The first is that anything good takes time to develop. If you don’t believe this then you have to answer this question: Why did Masters tickets in 1994 — sixty years after the beginning of the event — cost just $100 for the entire week?

I realize that Augusta National artificially deflates all of its products, but we should be truthful about the reality that the Masters wasn’t the Masters for many, many decades.

Here’s Scott Michaux.

Humans inherently trust things that have been around for a long time because if we switched our attention and our trust to the next hot thing, we would constantly be switching and never have anything but chaos in our lives.

LIV, like many startups, tried to throw money at a time problem. This is hard anywhere in business, but it is especially difficult in an industry characterized by the importance of historical roots like golf is.

Whether you believe LIV’s attempt at success was earnest or not, the lesson remains the same: You cannot microwave history. Not even with all of the money in the world.*

*This is a good lesson for all of us trying to start businesses to remember [stares at self]

2. One shred, inkling or iota of humility at any point in all of this would have gone a long, long way. Instead, we got … this.

It would have been difficult to like LIV even if it had led with humility throughout the entire process. But the fact that its players and leadership walked around as if they were the predecessors to Old and Young Tom Morris and not the other way around made it extraordinarily easy to pile on at every turn.

Most people — and certainly the people reading this newsletter (!) — are not dumb. They see through faux arrogance and outsized hubris. They see exactly what those particular character qualities are covering up in the people who are displaying them.

Chest thumping is rarely attractive, and certainly not in instances where your entity has not accomplished anything to begin with.

If Fred Ridley did the Ray Lewis dance every time he entered his annual state of the union at Augusta National (an amazing thought exercise by the way), would it be annoying? Sure. But it would also be warranted.

That LIV and its people carried themselves with the swagger of 1,000 Nick Youngs at almost every single turn — despite not having accomplished a single meaningful thing — did not make for the collapse of the league, but it certainly did not help its cause along the way.

The burn book of a LIV stan.

3. I joined Roberto Castro on Thursday on his excellent Course Record podcast.

Ep. 55 Kyle Porter of Normal Sport - Building a Meaningful Golf Media Company

Course Record Show · Episode

Spotify

I could talk to Roberto for hours about all of this stuff, but we kept it to 30 minutes. It was more or less a follow to what I wrote to all of you in Monday’s newsletter. We talked about the future of golf media and what I’m trying to build.

He described Normal Sport as an “old school media company for golf’s new era,” which is … perfect?

Old school merch for modern day greats.

4. Here’s a video of our Rory book literally being printed (and one more of someone flipping through it). It’s kind of thrilling to see this (perhaps only to me!) and something I’m very proud of. You can order it here.

I should receive them in the next few days and start shipping out immediately.

Now I have to go hole up to write the 2026 version.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,030 of them) and includes thoughts on Nelly as the best women’s American golfer in the modern era, Jon Rahm’s legacy and how Jack Nicklaus could have had 20+ major championships.

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.

 

5. I have been thinking about this interview with Yes Theory founder, Thomas Brag, all week. Specifically one single thing he said 45 minutes into the interview.

Here is is.

This might sound pretentious or self-aggrandizing (or both!), but I am a fan of the newsletters I write. That is part of the reason I left CBS Sports. Because often at CBS Sports, I was not a fan of the work I was doing. I would never re-read 97 percent of what I wrote there because much of it was news or Rory round recaps or whatever.

Just boilerplate stuff.

And I get it, this is standard fare for behemoth traditional outlets like CBS Sports. I was given plenty of autonomy and a lot of leeway there to write what I wanted. More than almost anyone else at CBS Sports, I presume. But we still had to make the SEO-friendly stuff. And I was decreasingly becoming a fan of my own work there.

Now? I actually enjoy re-reading newsletters I’ve written. I listened back to the podcast above with Roberto, and I was proud of what I presented. I realize how this sounds! It sounds like there has never been a more pretentious human in all of history.

But that doesn’t change the fact that if you are not a fan of your own work then who on earth is going to be? Make stuff you’re proud of, sure, but also that you enjoy consuming.

This is an idea that I have always believe, although I’m not sure I’ve ever articulated it out loud as clearly as Brag did above. But it’s one I will now go back to often.

6. Here’s a wonderful reader response to my Wednesday newsletter on Jim Furyk and the Ryder Cup.

This is so, so, so well said, and the third paragraph in particular had me like 😲. I think it is spot on. Also, join other people like Mark H. in our Slack if you’re not already in there. We’re having a ton of fun chopping it up and yelling about the PIF and Spieth but mostly Spieth.

7. I’m astounded (I shouldn’t be) at the inability of LIV defenders (and many people in general) to grasp the idea that a human being would be governed by something other than money.

That has certainly been a through line of LIV over the last four years, and one I have written about often. That one of the bleakest worldviews imaginable is the concept that if you’re just offered enough money, that makes up for all the rest of it (kicking away a competitive window of your career, mindlessly linking up with an authoritarian regime etc.).

If living life is like driving a car, money should be viewed more as the battery or the alternator. So many people treat it as if it’s the built-in GPS.

8. Nelly. Let’s talk about it. I absolutely loved this quote after she won at Memorial Park last weekend.

Here’s the question I started asking myself after she grabbed her third major and extended her lead over Jeeno Thitikul as the top player in the world: Could Nelly go down as the best modern American women’s golfer?

It probably depends on how you want to define the word “modern,” but no American woman after 1969 has more than seven majors. Here’s your list.

I guess it also depends on how we want to define best. Kathy Whitworth won 88 times (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) on the LPGA, although only six of those were majors, and three of the majors she won don’t even exist anymore (Women’s Western Open and Titleholders Championship).

Also, I got steep on the women’s major history and … what the hell?!

I thought the men’s major championship history was sketchy!

Anyway, is it crazy to think Nelly (17 LPGA wins, 3 majors) could get to 30 and 6? That would put her right at the Inkster-Bradley-Sheehan conversation. Is it crazy to think she could get to 7-9 majors? Maybe. She’s 27, which is not old but not super young.

It’s unlikely that she gets to that 6-8 major mark (or 11 like Neil predicted), but it’s definitely in play, and I’m not sure we talk enough about how a current player has a real chance to be considered the best American of all time.

9. Speaking of best American golfers of all time! There was a follow up to the podcast Shane Bacon and I did on whose major championship total least matched his level of talent or play at majors. We mentioned Norman, Johnny Miller, Oosthuizen, Rose and Adam Scott (not enough!) as well as Faldo and Andy North (too many!). We did not however mention Jack Nicklaus.

One reader brought Nicklaus to our attention, and while it’s tough to argue against 18 majors (and if we’re using the women’s rubric, he may have had 27!), the “_______ shots from ________ majors” game with him is pretty interesting.

Jack Nicklaus is [checks notes] nine shots from having twenty three majors.

To go back to the “if you could take five shots off of anyone’s major resume, who would be most affected” game that Jamie Kennedy introduced to us during the Masters, the actual answer is either Oosthuizen or Justin Rose. But taking five shots off of Nicklaus’ total and it pushing him into the 20s is pretty fascinating as well.

Thank you for reading our outrageous golf newsletter that is sometimes (but often barely) about golf. Every edition is handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason and fueled by our personal war against the inevitability of artificial intelligence. It is a labor of love. One we are thrilled to engage in every single time we hit publish.

Greetings!

I have gotten so much feedback on my Monday newsletter outlining where our business is at and what we want to do, which has been awesome. Thank you to everyone who has reached out with ideas, connections or just a “thanks for sharing.” It has meant a lot and been extremely encouraging.

Name drops today: Scouts Consulting, Shane Ryan, Paris, Roger Angell, Coach K and Phil Mickelson.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

This newsletter is brought to you by Experience Ireland Golf and Travel.

[Jason here] Flying off to a new golf destination can feel a little daunting. Just getting your clubs there (at the time, without Shipsticks) can feel daunting!

I felt some of that last year when Seed Golf sent a Normal Club member and me to Ireland for the Links Challenge, hosted by Experience Ireland Golf and Travel.

All of my trepidation disappeared when I rolled up to Carne Golf Links and met Tom Kennedy — who is the CEO of EIGT — as well as the other golfers there for the event. I quickly realized that Tom is a golf sicko running an event with other golf sickos. 

This could be you.

Tom's superpower is making you feel like a golf buddy within his golf world. On our first night at Carne, we were enjoying some Guinness, watching the sun set over Carne's massive hills, and Tom told us to go sneak in some holes. That's something you do with buddies sitting on the terrace of your club.

But at one of the most beautiful courses you've ever seen?!  

Tom gets it.  

You can contact EIGT right here or check out their operation below for any type of Ireland travel you might have in your future.  

OK, now onto the news.

Eight Thoughts on Jim Furyk as Ryder Cup Captain

As someone who cares way too much about the Ryder Cup in [checks calendar] April of a non-Ryder Cup year, I thought today’s newsletter would be a great time to reflect on the announced Jim Furyk captaincy, what it means for the United States side and whether this team has a chance of taking down the tremendous European machine (😂).

Let’s jump in.

1. Winning captain selection day is very much not the point of this entire process. Is Jim Furyk an inspiring choice as the U.S. Ryder Cup captain? Absolutely no. Does that have any bearing whatsoever on how the team performs in Ireland a year and half from now? Also unquestionably not.

Here’s an instructive question: Do you think Luke Donald inspired the Euros back in 2022 when he took the reins from Henrik Stenson? I do not recall that there was parading in the streets nor any predictions whatsoever regarding what was about to unfold with Donald now on the short list of people you think of when you hear the phrase “best Ryder Cup captain of all time.”

So I don’t really care about any of that. Because it doesn’t matter.

I believe Shane Ryan said this best.

I don’t really believe that all sexy picks are terrible picks, and I actually will still defend parts of the Keegan pick. But the better (and more important) point is that systems do win Ryder Cups, and Jim Furyk is — I believe — nicely positioned to submit to and possibly even help facilitate a system that will usher in a new era of U.S. competition in the Ryder Cup.

(how many different ways have I written that sentence over the last 12 years?)

2. I admit that the previous paragraph is the most optimistic view imaginable of this Furyk pick. But I guess my broader point is that we get excited about captains on the U.S. side because of the system or philosophy they might bring to bear for our team.

This is a backwards way of viewing it.

The Euros, conversely, view their captain as a custodian of the system that is already in place. The steward of a plan that has been forged and formed over decades.

What this means is that even when the U.S. wins a Ryder Cup because of one individual’s system — see: Azinger at Valhalla in 2008 — there is no through line for that system going beyond that single Ryder Cup.

So I am less concerned about who the captain is and much more concerned about whether the U.S. has any infrastructure in place around Furyk (and future captains) at this event.

That part remains to be seen.

USAdare Manor

3. I am with Garrett here.

I would much, much rather talk to a board of PGA of America executives about the future of this Ryder Cup program than I would want to talk to Jim Furyk about the future of this individual 2027 Ryder Cup team.

I’ve talked to multiple people who believe Scouts Consulting is either no longer affiliated with the U.S. team or at some point in the near future will not be. I am not reporting this and have no idea if it’s actually true, but the people I’ve talked to are well connected and insinuated that the PGA-Scouts relationship was potentially not a long-term one following Bethpage.

So the question remains: What is the plan? Naming a captain is not a plan. It’s a byproduct of a plan. A formality. A weigh station en route to a destination informed by your GPS of choice. I’m unconvinced the U.S. has truly had one since … 2021? Earlier? Ever?

The alleged exit of Scouts Consulting underscores something that has plagued the U.S. for most of this century: They lack the ability to get everyone on the same page and pulling in the same direction. This is why they have the pressers they have following losses at this event.

4. I loved this clip from Furyk on the NLU pod from 2020 after he lost in Paris. It’s a line he’s trotted out a few times, but it is emblematic of who I believe Jim Furyk to be as a player and probably as a person: dogged, humble and thoughtful.

You should go listen to the entire thing. The Ryder Cup stuff starts around 40 minutes, and it will give you a deeper appreciation for Furyk.

I think it’s very easy to write him off as “boring white bald guy with a dumb swing who didn’t win many majors.” Fine, that’s certainly the surface level version.

But I believe he’s a certified dog who seems willing to listen and to change. That’s rare, and if (again, potentially the biggest IF in the history of team sports) the PGA of America can build an infrastructure around him and future captains, I legitimately think he can be successful.

5. I outlined what an infrastructure for the U.S. could look like right here in point No. 5. It’s a wild stab at … something and a facsimile of how I believe Europe goes about its business. Does Ryder Cup Europe care way too much about this event? One-thousand percent. Am I jealous of the fact that they care this deeply about something this ridiculous? Also an affirmative.

What was it Roger Angell said once about baseball?

I have used this line — the business of caring — multiple times in Ryder Cup hype videos I have written for the PGA of America. It is how things are supposed to be.

And while I do not doubt that each individual on the U.S. side does care about the Ryder Cup, I do not believe that any individual on the U.S. side cares as deeply or as hopelessly as almost everyone on the European side. Furthermore, I believe that the Euros care together rather than as individuals.

This is not necessarily why they win, but it is absolutely why they invest heavily in an infrastructure that brings about the kind of trust in everyone that leads to them winning.

If the Euro organization was an image, it would be this one.

6. This thread of suggestions for who the PGA should have picked is incredible. Names mentioned include …

Soly
David Duval
McConaughey
Justine
Jay Wright (!)
John Daly
Rich Lerner (!!)
Duffy Waldorf
Phil
Jackson Koivun

Among others.

The suggestion of folks like Jay Wright is, frankly, exactly what I’m talking about when I talk about the wrong way to look at all of this. I know Jay Wright was probably mentioned as a joke, but Phil Mickelson seriously mentioned Coach K at the end of last year (!).

Someone like Coach K (I cannot believe I’m typing this) could feasibly implement an amazing plan for Adare Manor in which Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa combine to go 9-0-1 and the U.S. wins in Europe for the first time in 35 years. But singular plans do not make great organizations, and Europe wins the Ryder Cup over and over and over again because they have organizational excellence.

7. I wrote about the idea of organizational excellence extensively after Bethpage, and while I’m not going to re-litigate every single thing that was said (you can read more here, here or here), I will restate my thesis.

The U.S. seems so, so far from this that I’m not even sure if they can see the signage for the path to get there. There are 1 million reasons, but I would say near the top is the fact that the PGA of America is an organization that most American players rarely interact with and perhaps almost never interact with outside of the PGA Championship.

That makes building anything — an infrastructure, trust, any of it — quite difficult.

8. Anyway, because it’s April of a non-Ryder Cup year, we need to wrap this up. My last point was going to be a different version of what I said back in October of last year, so I decided to just point you back to that again. ⤵️ 

Have I made it clear enough that I believe that while the captain certainly matters, he is one (very big) piece of an entire puzzle. The U.S. team sometimes feels like it’s trying to put the puzzle together without all of the pieces.

Shane Ryan argues a bit differently in this column. He says that the U.S. had a system and an infrastructure but went away from it. I hear that, but I’m unconvinced it was a strong enough system for prolonged long-term success.

Again, I could be wrong about this. I am not in every meeting, do not see every decision. That infrastructure (if you want to know exactly what I mean by repeatedly saying the word infrastructure, you can again read point No. 5 here) is potentially being (re)built out as we speak!

But the evidence of the last few decades is that this would be a questionable assumption at best.

So whether you believe Jim Furyk is a terrible piece with rounded edges that doesn’t fit anywhere in any puzzle or you — like me — believe that he is a good piece with sharp contours that can help put the whole thing together, none of it really matters without all the other pieces.

And until the U.S. has proven that it has the ability to put all the other pieces of the organization together, I refuse to even entertain a belief that they can contend to win a Ryder Cup on the road on European soil.

Thank you for reading our outrageous golf newsletter that is sometimes — but often barely — about golf and for reckoning with the golf world alongside us. Every edition is algorithm-free and handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason. It is a joy for us to build and to publish it for you to read. As always, we hope you love it.

Hey!

As a business, we have started sending out quarterly reports to our partners like Turtlebox, Garmin and Holderness and Bourne. When I started considering this more deeply, I thought, We should do the same for our Normal Club members. They are such a massive and important part of our business and I’m sure they would love to hear about where we’re headed and how the company is doing.

We have done a version of this before, but it was more ad-hoc and less structured. I would call this version now an expectation from you toward us.

That we produce a quarterly report complete with relevant numbers and thoughts on where Normal Sport stands as a business.

So without further a do …

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,025 of them) and includes numbers on where our business is at, why our book has made $0 and a few thoughts I have about the future.

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.

 

Three Numbers

The three numbers (or charts) that I probably care most about as it relates to updating you on the health of our business.

1. Paid members by month

This is net members and probably to be expected when it comes to the second year of running a business like this. However, given the importance of paid members to our current business model, we are doubling and tripling down on adding features that make it more and more compelling for our paid members to stay on board (like our Slack channel).

2. Subscribers by month

This one has been a bit confounding given that we’ve been flat-ish for the last year or so. Again, we are doubling down our efforts to convert more of my 200K social followers into readers and also going to find more of the correct, obsessed, thoughtful audience — and not just more email addresses — in other crevices of the internet.

3. Business runway

This is basically how many months we would be able to operate if we stopped making money tomorrow. We have been consistent so far this year but not at the number I would like to be at (5-7 months, rather than 2-4). This is certainly typical for businesses like ours, and a chart I would love to grow over the next year or two.

One Number

$0

When you take into account printing costs, design costs, packaging and a host of other smaller things, $0 is roughly how much money we have netted on our Rory book.

And I actually consider it a huge success so far because we have basically broken before even fully printing the book.

In the same way that so many YouTube pages compound over time — the more you produce the bigger the library of content is for folks to watch — I’m hopeful that our physical products like this one compound over time.

That is the bet I’m making (see below).

Things I’m thinking about

I think about 1 million things all of the time, but here are a few that have been occupying my brain space in recent weeks and months as it relates to the business (and also a bit of the content) side of our company.

• We still have room for 1-2 more brand partnerships in 2026. Some of the deals we were banking on fell through in recent weeks, and we are hunting once again for a couple of companies to round out our stable for this year.

• I think we have figured out what we want our podcast rhythm to be. Finally.

The cadence of me talking to one interesting person in the broader golf space on Tuesdays about a Big Picture Thing has been great (recent example). Especially combined with talking on Thursdays to my friend, Hayden Martin, about stories we’re following (recent example). Both of these dovetail nicely with the newsletter and bring me a ton of energy. I think we will follow that rhythm for the rest of the year.

• Our YouTube/video strategy is messier. YouTube is more difficult than I thought it would be. Turns out, you can’t just throw stuff on there and watch it take off.

This is … obvious (?) to anyone who has grown on YouTube before, but we are still figuring things out over there.

I think the basic problem is that videos that do well and compound over time are very much made for YouTube and not just clipped up podcasts, but all I really have time for these days is clipped up podcasts (and I barely have time for that, considering I’m doing the majority of the clipping).

All of this creates an “I feel kinda stuck here” situation for me and our team but one we are constantly working on solving.

• We want to do more projects with Greig Anderson, who designed our Rory book. He’s so talented and understands what we’re trying to do and his work fits so nicely with our vision of wanting to be a business that creates more and more tangible artifacts and not just digital products.

• While we’re here, I have been thinking about how I believe a bet on tangible artifacts is a bet on the future of AI. Here’s what I mean: I believe people will become so worn down and exhausted of an AI world, that tangible artifacts will become increasingly meaningful. I might be wrong about this (!), but it’s a bet I’m willing to make, and we will position our company in a way to capitalize on this bet over the next few years.

• Two more things. One, we have talked a lot about branding unification over the last few weeks. I think I did not have an appreciation for how long it would take for me to realize what our position is in the golf media (and more broadly, sports media) landscape. Who are we? What is our actual corner? Things of that nature. I think I am starting to realize that, and at some point we need to create a unified brand around that so that you can see a piece of content out in the wild, recognize it and know right away what to expect from it.

• I love, love, love writing the newsletter. Truly. It is our premier product and the one I enjoy creating the most. Two questions have recently emerged from that truth. The first is how we can repackage some of that content and deliver it to readers and fans. One example that reader Brett U. thought of: A memory game of Jason’s illustrations to sell to all the dads (and moms) who read the newsletter. Brilliant!

The other question is how do we make the newsletter not as lengthy but with the same impact? Should it be a shorter daily newsletter? These are questions I’m always asking, and we even tried to launch a blog to solve this issue during the Ryder Cup last year, which didn’t really work out. But when I think about the newsletters I love (and actually read), almost all of them are …

• Very frequent (The Athletic)

• Short and amusing (5 Tweet Tuesday)

• Often about one idea (Collab Blog)

I don’t think your newsletter has to be any of those things to be successful, but I am saying those are all characteristics of newsletters I love.

I recently read this from Nathan Baugh on writing and storytelling.

I am for sure the last sentence. And I think it often undermines my desires as someone who curates, comments on and distributes information on a daily basis.

Final Thought

One of my friends recently told me, Building your own business is like going to a knife fight every day. You don’t know what you’re fighting or how it’s going to go. But that’s what it feels like.

Me thinking about that every day since he said it …

I wouldn’t want it any other way, though. As taxing as each day can be and as difficult as it often feels to gain momentum, it is still the coolest job in the world. One I’m so grateful to have stumbled into and one that continues to engender joy even after all these years.

On an earnest note, our Weight of Rory book is being printed, and the printer keeps sending me photos and videos, and I cannot get enough. Probably very silly, but making real, tangible things is so much fun (until I find that first typo).

You can buy the book right here.

Name drops today: G.K. Chesterton, H.E., Tron Carter, Michael La Sasso, Alexander Zverev and OKGC.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

This newsletter is presented by our friends at Garmin and their Approach Z30 rangefinder. You don’t need a Z30 to see into the future and what’s going to happen at the 2027 Ryder Cup, but you could definitely use one for your next round.

I suppose it is a very normal sport thing to be touting things such as the PlaysLike distance and a 6x magnification feature of a device, but both are compelling features of the Approach Z30.

Less of the straining to see the pin …

More time spent hitting the actual shots and working on your one-handed twirl.

Check them out below.

OK, now onto the news.

10 Thoughts on Golf This Week

1. I did a podcast with Full Swing superstar, Dylan Dethier, on Tuesday about five things that have surprised us about golf in 2026, and one of mine so far is Matt Fitzpatrick turning into Xander Schauffele.

I just didn’t see it coming.

The primary reason this has happened is because Fitz has gone from being Sami Valimaki with his iron play to being Colin Morikawa.

Three numbers to look at in his Data Golf profile.

1. He’s having the worst putting season of his career.

2. A 1.0+ SG approach number per round is insane.

3. This overall mark is a crazy, crazy number for somebody who’s basically been an average putter this year.

2. So why (or how) has the iron play improved this much at this stage of his career? That’s an unusual area for someone to improve on a decade into their career.

Usually it just kind of is what it is at this stage.

Fitz has credited his new coach, Mark Blackburn.

LKD has an even more thorough explanation here, and it has to do with that weird shoulder shrug thing that Fitz does before shots.

The numbers above don’t lie. He was 104th in the Data Golf rankings a year ago. Now he’s fourth. They can’t lie when they’re that far apart.

I have so much respect for guys at Fitzpatrick’s level — major champion, Ryder Cupper, mostly a top 20 player in the world for the last 8-10 years — who decide to reinvent themselves or completely change something that they’re doing.

It can go poorly (Hovland, Viktor), but I still respect the effort that goes into trying to become the fifth best player in the world when you’re already the 17th best player in the world.

[Note: This was written before Jim Furyk was named captain. I think the idea still applies, and I should have some more fully formed Furyk thoughts early next week].

3. Speaking of Matt Fitzpatrick! Want to know why the U.S. loses Ryder Cups?

Is it because Europe just makes more putts? No, it’s because they’re committed to a culture of excellence.

A story in two screenshots.

Screenshot No. 1 …

Screenshot No. 2 …

Europe is out there grinding tape at Adare a full 18 months out from the event, and the U.S. side apparently didn’t have a Plan B if the Cat didn’t want the job.

Of course Europe doesn’t win Ryder Cups just because it sends a scouting team to Ireland in April the year before the event, but doing this is emblematic of its desire to leave no stone unturned.

What was it Tom Watson said at the Masters?

The phrase, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes” comes to mind.

You don’t have to name a captain at this point in the festivities to go out and win the event, but given Europe’s obsession with detail and the U.S.’, uhh, not obsession with detail (see below).

I think it’s pretty telling that that seat is still empty for the stars and stripes.

Join the Normal Club to read the rest …

This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,055 of them) and includes thoughts on Brody Miller’s amazing LIV article, why the Tour should buy NLU or Fried Egg (?!) and how much time pro golfers actually spend playing golf.

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. The story of the week was Brody Miller’s excellent report from Mexico, which is must read stuff if you haven’t read it yet. Brody does such a great job going boots on the ground to get the goods on LIV and its future.

Here are a couple of my takeaways.

• Bryson is considering playing YouTube golf plus the majors. Stick it directly into every one of my veins. You: This is a leverage tactic, he would never do that!

Me: We talking about this guy?

I think he very much would at least try that, even if it wasn’t in his best interest (as outlined by Michael Kim below).

Also, this!

• This sentence: The league reportedly spends $100 million a month. That is so so so much money. And it’s probably only going to increase if you pay Bryson (again). So what is the pitch to more rational investors? Yeah, we spend nine figures a month but have you seen the OKGC branding?

• This was a very important point by Brody.

No, the answer is no. It’s not. It would be like me bringing on Michael Bamberger for $300K a year and then trying to say, You know we’re going to try and do this without brand partners just to see how it goes. You can try it, certainly, and perhaps the business model is a little cleaner but everyone knows how it’s going to go.

• LIV is claiming $500M in sponsorships annually? While I do believe they have momentum in this area, one dialed in golf reporter that I spoke to wondered how many of those sponsors were in fact other PIF-owned companies and called the idea of this number, “money laundering adjacent.” 😂 

5. One thing that got lost on me as it relates to LIV — possibly because it came out right around the end of the 2025 Masters, which you may remember was a busy time — was that the PGA Tour basically offered Yasir $500 million for LIV as part of an overall investment in the Tour by the PIF (which is all Yasir wanted to begin with!).

Yasir rejected this because he thought it was insulting, which is apparently one of the better things that has happened to the Tour throughout this entire saga.

6. This point by my sometimes podcast co-host, Hayden, is a good one.

LIV is facing an “our entire draw is superstars but now we don’t have enough money to pay them so what the heck are we?” problem.

This is a problem that is not unique to other startups. Every year another hit show leaves Netflix because its licensing period has run out. But the difference is that Netflix spent the time when it had Friends or The Office building its own catalog that is strong enough to retain customers even if their prior assets disappeared.

LIV has, um, not done that. To its credit, it has tried to do that. But these things take time. Michael La Sassos and Eugenio Chacarras need runway to fully develop, and now suddenly runway is one of the things LIV has the least of.

7. A thought I had this week: Why doesn’t the PGA Tour buy Fried Egg and No Laying Up?

This thought came to me while I was listening to Colin and Samir talk about how OpenAI recently bought TBPN for a nine-figure amount equivalent to one month of running LIV.

Would those entities sell?

I mean everyone has a price.

The better question — which is the question everyone has been asking as it relates to TBPN and OpenAI — is whether you can maintain your independence and popularity as a show or an entity even if you’re technically state-owned media?

This involves a lot of humility and trust from the state side. A level that most executives have no interest in bringing to the table.

And maybe the Tour’s “meh” brand would overwhelm the terrific brands of those other entities. But if you’re the Tour, wouldn’t you at least explore buying up the best storytellers for a future in which — at least as it relates to the attention economy — the best story is absolutely going to win?

Part of the reason OpenAI bought TBPN, as posited by Colin and Samir, is because OpenAI sucks at marketing and presenting itself in an interesting way, and the guys who started TBPN are elite at it. The price tag is high — although probably not for a company like OpenAI — but now you have brought the best people in the world at marketing in the AI space onto your team. That’s potentially quite valuable if they’re allowed to continue to do their thing.

How would this work in the golf space? Let’s say the Tour buys NLU and then lets them do an hour-long show with Cam Young where they sit down and rewatch his final round at the Players and talk through it. Would that intrigue you? If the Tour was doing it right now? Maybe, maybe not. If Soly and Tron were doing it? Absolutely.

8. This tennis graphic caught my eye. It’s percentage of time spent playing vs. not playing while you’re actually on the court.

In golf, it’s even crazier.

If we say each shot takes 5 seconds (I guess this is a fair number?), and you have roughly 70 of them per round and each round is roughly 270 minutes, you are playing around 2 percent of the time and thinking for the other 98 percent.

Even if you include prepping for the shot as “time spent playing” that number probably increases to around 25 percent.*

Rory had a great quote on this after the Masters.

Unquestionably!

Partly because there’s so much solitude. In tennis, at least, someone is out there with you. That may be of no comfort when Sinner is ripping one 81 MPH up the line, but at least it’s a reaction sport and not a “oh how is this going to go wrong” sport.

*Tom Kim’s number is incalculable.

9. I’m not sure this Gary Woodland shot got the credit it deserved.

You can look at the numbers.

• 2.42 SG on that shot (meaning the average shots to get it in the hole from that spot was 3.42 shots, and he did it in one).

• This chart by Scott Fawcett and Lou Stagner say that a shot from 200 has a 1 percent chance of being inside 3 feet. And he made it.

• There were four other birdies on that hole the entire day, and Woodland made eagle.

Or you could just watch the swing. The laggy, flushing move that is one of the few that really gets me going. I don’t know that there are more than five other guys on the planet who hit it flusher than Woodland does (off the top of my head: Rory, Brooks, Cam, Tommy, H.E., Adam Scott, Ludvig and Bryson are in the convo).

Everything looks like it is shot out of one of those cannons they use in Monday charity scrambles when you pay them an extra $75.

Or perhaps better said …

10. I thought this (which I saw on Twitter, of course) from G.K. Chesterton was so lovely and wonderful.

Thank you for reading our outrageous golf newsletter that is sometimes (but often barely) about golf. Every edition is handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason and our personal war against the inevitability of artificial intelligence.

It is a labor of love, but as long as you keep showing up and Sam Altman hasn’t shut everyone down, we will keep handcrafting and delivering this thing to you with all the obsession we can muster.