Hello!
It has been a delightful golf week.
Between Pawan Munjal and the Cat hosting their annual presser, Rory playing Royal Melbourne and Scottie hunting Spieth’s 2015 season (more on that below), this has to be one of the best non-Ryder Cup golf weeks of the entire fall.
It also means we have a lot to get to.
Name drops today: Min Kim, the memed girl from the airplane, Jim Nantz, Jackson Koivun, Data Golf and Big Scheffler.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the Normal Sport pro shop.
We’re pumped up about Norman making his way out into the wild after some fun BFCM deals and want to extend the festivities: Today, anyone who spends $200+ in the pro shop will get $50 off (automatically applied at checkout).
If you’re a Normal Club member who gets 15 percent applied automatically, the bigger of the two discounts will be applied.
Also, we have towels stocked up.
Deal expires at 5 p.m. central time today. Go get it.
OK, now onto the news.
1. First things first. Scottie shot 66 at the Hero on Thursday, which means he’s primed to win for a seventh time this year.
Last year, he also won this event which netted him 7+ Data Golf points. If he does it again, he’d likely get another 7+ and kick aside one of the best seasons I’ve ever covered (Spieth in 2015).
Oh, and it wouldn’t even be Scottie’s best year of the past two years.
Think about what Spieth did in 2015. Won the Masters, won at Chambers, nearly won at St. Andrews and Whistling Straits. Took six trophies. Gained over 2.5 strokes per round on the field. And Scottie is probably going to discard it for the second consecutive year in six fewer events and by gaining nearly a half stroke more per round than Spieth did.
There’s only one thing to say.
2. Speaking of Scottie. Tiger talking about the details of what makes him great was in itself quite great. Here’s what he said.
I truly love watching him hit irons, the shaped shots that he hits, the trajectory, the window changes that he has, the distance control, the miss in the proper spot, the proper spin in certain pin locations.
These are all subtle things that mean a lot over the course of 72 holes.
That to me is impressive. If you don't have trajectory control, you can't have distance control. To see him move it up and down in different windows, use wind, fight wind and control spin is fun to watch.
Tiger Woods
Tiger talking traj out of different windows.
Tiger also talked this week about why he thinks about punching putts and how the golf ball slows down his putter on the way through. Could listen to it for hours.
3. We did a pod recently with James Colgan, who is one of my top three picks if I’m drafting the next generation of golf content creators.
We talked about a lot of different things — including his take that Jim Nantz could legitimately be president of the United States (which I’m way into). We also discussed a few ideas/takes related to the future of golf media starting right here.
My three ideas/takes ..
1. Golf is in the best (or, I guess, worst) position to be disrupted as a spectator sport. It’s the one sport that all of us can also play, and I care a lot less about the difference between good and bad golfers than I do in sports like football and basketball. This is already happening with YouTube Golf, which I’ve talked about extensively.
2. Broadcasts should lean all the way in on stats. As discussed in the LKD episode, the deeper you go into a topic, the better (not worse, but better!) for aggregating meaningful fans.
3. Curators win. In the attention economy, very few people want to spend their X number of free hours on 6-hour broadcasts of any kind when they can get a more enjoyable recap elsewhere. I’ve said this many times before, but it remains a good example. I don’t watch NBA games, but I do listen to Zach Lowe.
It takes so much less time, I have better takeaways than if I was actually watching the games and it’s actually more fun for me. Sometimes it feels like the leagues exist to serve the content creators rather than the other way around. Great for the content creators. Quite problematic for the leagues!
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Poll results from last week’s question of whether you would rather own the media rights for the PGA Tour or all the majors, a Ryder Cup solution and what it would look like if there were two Masters every year.
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Kyle's content is a product of a sick sense of humour, a clear passion for golf and unquestionable dedication to hard work. That's not normal!
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