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 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.
Nelly won her fourth major championship on Sunday at Riviera, and this quote from her after the round was awesome.
I mean obviously I've had doubts of like even mid round I was like, “Well, will I ever win it?” I mean you always have those doubts.
But I think you're just a human being if you have them. Like everyone will have them eventually at some parts of their career.
Nelly Korda | 2026 U.S. Women’s Open
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.
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 (!!!).
It was honestly the worst. My sister [who helped me with the change] was like, “I barely could sleep. I just literally told you to change your grip during a major championship.”
But it is so uncomfortable. I think it's the hardest thing in the game of golf is to change your grip because … I was fiddling with it so much even on the range my sister was like, “I just saw you regrip your grip four times before you hit that one shot,” and I'm like, “Yeah, because it feels awful.”
Nelly Korda | 2026 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.
The protesters, reported to be from Extinction Rebellion, entered the lake to the side of the putting surface and began to set off flares and scream slogans as the last groups approached the definitive stage.
… it is clear that the Tour was prepared for such dissent at The International course near Schiphol Airport. Extinction Rebellion targeted the same tournament two years ago and has also staged protests against KLM – the Dutch national airline – at multiple intervals since then.
The Guardian
Very normal stuff.
And our KLM Open illustration from 2 years ago feels more relevant than ever. s/o LIV
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.
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.
Me
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.
For someone who admits she doesn’t think about her legacy, Korda is building up a resume that stacks up against some of the best to ever play. She is the youngest American to win four majors since Mickey Wright in 1960. She is the first American to win four majors since Meg Mallon in 2004. She is the first player to win the first two majors of a season since Inbee Park in 2013.
Her seven-shot first-round deficit matches the largest ever comeback to win the U.S. Women’s Open. She is now just two points away from a Hall of Fame berth.
Fried Egg
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.
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!
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.
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.
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).
But at that point when we're all tied, you kind of almost flip a switch and you've got to be aggressive and go try and win the golf tournament. That's something that I've never shied away from, I feel like, throughout my career. Just to have a chance, that was all we were looking for.
J.T. Poston
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.
This from Kevin Kelly on work and money is outstanding.
I asked him the difference between “following your interests” and being scatterbrained or having shiny object syndrome, like I sometimes worry I do.
“The people who become legendary in their interests never feel they have arrived,” he said. When he talked about the power of passion and obsession in that process, I asked him if passion is enough. “Enough for what?” he asked, somewhat rhetorically. He had an impression of what I meant.
“I think one of the least interesting reasons to be interested in something is money,” he said, and cited Walt Disney. “We don’t make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies.”
Colossus
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.
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