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 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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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.
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
Kyle approaches coverage of the game with both conviction and curiosity
Kyle is a perfect curator of the necessary moments of levity that accent a sport that will drive most of us insane.
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.
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.
Normal Sport is exploratory, sometimes emotional, always entertaining. It also has one of my favorite writers in the biz at its foundation.
It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
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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