Greetings fellow mini-games-addicted dads (and moms),
Here is your daily dosage of golf connections.
Hope you enjoy and that nobody gets it on the first (or second) try.
Name drops today: Caleb Williams, Trevor Lawrence, Steve Kerr, Rachel McAdams, Roger Federer, Tadej Pogacar, Mondo Duplantis and probably a few golfers in there somewhere as well.
Today’s newsletter is presented by OMNI and our ongoing giveaway, which includes a four-night stay at one of their locations and free entry into their Generation Cup*, which is already underway at 12 locations nationally with seven options for the rest of 2026 and into 2027 (you can see those options here).
Three things I remember from my experience playing in the Gen Cup in Frisco a few years ago.
1. Seeing one of the dudes from Dude Perfect playing with a member of his wife’s family. My then-10-year-old was beside himself.
2. My then-10-year-old outdriving me on multiple holes and chirping about it even though he was starting 125 yards ahead of me on some of them.
3. Driving home at dusk and asking him a question only to find him passed out in the front seat after a long and wonderful day.
[Jason here] Memorable trips are made up of these somewhat random moments Kyle noted above. But it’s the small details that make you feel at home enough to appreciate the good stuff. OMNI is great at those details. And although we don’t think they offer breakfast balls in bed, we also wouldn’t put it past them.
You can enter the giveaway at the link below.
*Generation Cup team entry will be subject to availability and that this team entry is for qualifier events only, not for the national championship.
And now, onto the news.
1. We dropped a QB-golfer comps pod on Tuesday that I hope becomes an annual tradition. Joseph LaMagna joined me and Hayden, and we went through all 32 QBs in the NFL and comped each of them to a golfer.
Mistakes were made (mostly by me). The two of mine that got the most pushback were Tua-Zalatoris and Caleb-Bryson.
I stand by both, and I stand by the fact that Caleb is in fact performative. I don’t even know that I mean that derogatorily. He’s a good character and an excellent player, but he can definitely be odd at times. Maybe I more so mean that drama seems to follow him around. Sounds a lot like Bryson as well.
And on the Tua-Zalatoris argument. I think Tua has been better than people think and Zalatoris has been a bit worse (albeit still very good). Tua finished second in Heisman voting, got NFL MVP votes one year and was upper echelon for 2+ years. Very good, not amazing.
Zalatoris? Wonderful amateur campaign headlined by a U.S. Junior Am win. As a pro, he’s had some great major championship success but just one PGA Tour win and the same career SG (roughly) as Sungjae Im and Daniel Berger. Not exactly the Drew Brees of golf.
Both careers have been completely derailed by injuries, although JLM’s argument was that Tua’s was derailed by him just flat out sucking and that Zalatoris has never been the laughingstock of the league like Tua is right now. For sure, but what if Tua is the laughingstock of the league because he’s playing through so many concussions and injuries and Zalatoris is just sitting out (which is what Tua should be doing)?
Regardless, the back and forth in the pod was awesome, and there were some great, great comps. My three favorites that were not my own …
• Trevor Lawrence-Joaquin Niemann
• Jalen Hurts-Wyndham Clark
• Justin Herbert-Ludvig Aberg
Also, Hayden almost ended LaMagna with his Spieth comp.
You can listen right here: Spotify | Apple.
2. I went on the Bible Caddie Podcast recently to talk to Webb, Ben Crane and William Kane. It was as much fun as I’ve had as a guest on a pod recently, and we got steep on a ton of golf and a ton of spiritual things as well.
Ben was amused by my ridiculous fascination with determining who the best golfer from every continent is, and we generally just had the best time talking ball and life. Hope you guys enjoy it. Spotify link here, Apple here and YouTube below.
3. The U.S. announced its Ryder Cup qualification requirements this week, and there are some changes.
1. Points are awarded on finishes, not money.
2. Points don’t start until January 2027.
The U.S. qualifying is pretty similar to Europe’s now, only weighted slightly differently. Example: The U.S. weights a regular PGA Tour victory (Valspar) at half of a major championship victory. Europe weights it at 40 percent. The U.S. weights a signature PGA Tour win at 75 percent of a major while Europe weights it at 60 percent.
The best change is the timing. Previously, a player could theoretically win the Players and Masters 18 months before the Ryder Cup and be carried to an auto spot based on those finishes, even though no reasonable person would say that a finish 18 months prior would have any bearing on a team event in September of a given year.
Small tweaks here, to be sure, but they are encouraging. I refuse to invest myself in the idea that the U.S. is going full-scale change like it needs to do for this event, but I do want to acknowledge when even tiny smart decisions are made by an organization I’ve been incredibly critical of over the years.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes notes on LIV’s bankruptcy, how CFB is threatening golf as the normal-est sport and an amazing Steve Kerr story about Roger Federer.
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• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
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Kyle is the best columnist in sports. That he has channeled those talents through strokes gained and Spieth memes is a blessing to golf.
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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.
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Normal Sport is exploratory, sometimes emotional, always entertaining. It also has one of my favorite writers in the biz at its foundation.
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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.
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 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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It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
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