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.
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OK, now onto the news.
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.
Jerry Franklin was an original member at Bobby Jones’ golf club off Washington Road. He would eventually outlive all of his fellow charter members — he was the only one left to attend the plaque dedication after co-founder Clifford Roberts’ death in 1977.
When the club decided for financial reasons that it needed to continue playing host to the Masters Tournament after its three-year hiatus during World War II, Franklin served as door-to-door salesman at local businesses trying to drum up funds.
“I want you to buy 20 tickets,” Franklin would say to the local paper’s publisher, William Morris.
“What am I gonna do with 20 tickets?” Morris asked in return.
“We need you to support the tournament,” Franklin pleaded with a whiff of desperation. “Buy the tickets, give them to employees or advertisers or clients. But please support the tournament.”
Golf.com
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.
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.
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.
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The way Kyle has been able to mold a silly Twitter joke (normal sport) into a must-read newsletter on the weekly happenings in our silly game gives a great look into why he's one of the smartest people in golf.
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!
I’ve always enjoyed your love for golf. So often I see favoritism showed to golfers in the social media world, but I enjoy reading you telling a situation how it is regardless of the person.
Kyle is one of the best in the golf world at finding and synthesizing the absurd, the thoughtful and the fun things that make being a golf fan worthwhile.
Kyle is a perfect curator of the necessary moments of levity that accent a sport that will drive most of us insane.
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
Normal Sport is exploratory, sometimes emotional, always entertaining. It also has one of my favorite writers in the biz at its foundation.
Kyle approaches coverage of the game with both conviction and curiosity
There’s been no one else in golf that has tickled my funny bone as often as Kyle Porter does. He’s been instrumental in ushering in a new era of golf coverage and it’s been a pleasure to be along for the ride in that.
Kyle is the best columnist in sports. That he has channeled those talents through strokes gained and Spieth memes is a blessing to golf.
Kyle sees golf in a way that no one else does—and we're all fortunate to get to share in that view through Normal Sport!
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