Greetings!
Following 3.95 days of a fairly tame (alternate interpretation: boring) Players Championship — if you ignore that electric 63 on Friday from Ludvig — this event finally thumped and delivered a memorable back nine.
If I told you that back nine produced a breakout star in his 20s who has come close at major championships before, is one of the best drivers in the game, was on the bubble to be picked for the 2023 Ryder Cup and has been incredible at Augusta National, you likely would have believed me.
But you would have been wrong about which player it ended up being.
We’ll get into all of that and much more in this edition of the Normal Sport newsletter below. Thank you, as always, for supporting our ridiculous business. It is way too much fun to be considered a job, and yet we are delighted to report back to you every day during these big weeks with observations, thoughts and any other nonsense that comes to our minds.
Name drops today: Bob Mac, Joe Skovron, Dan Hicks Rory McIlroy, half the European Ryder Cup team.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Sap’s Original, which kept me hydrated all weekend for my … extremely stressful golf watching from the couch.
That’s the great thing about Sap’s though. It is made for all days, not just workout days. On the course. After a long run. During travel. Or doing absolutely nothing on a Sunday (and Thursday and Friday and Saturday).
It’s a hydration drink without all the junk. If the hydration drinks of yesteryear are a Jordan Spieth round (many things going on), this hydration drink is Ludvig’s swing. Simple, tasty, repeatable (except for a few times in the final round).
OK, now onto the news.
As a reminder, this week’s content is partially behind the paywall (though thankfully not behind the moat). You can read it all — as well as the rest of our major championship coverage — by becoming a Normal Club member right here.
1. How good was that 17-18 finish from Cam Young? Down one walking off the 16th green, he hits it to 9 feet with the diciest 17 pin of the week. A subtle step in birdie followed by a tee ball that made my jaw drop. It was — according to Justin Ray — the longest drive in the ShotLink era on the 18th hole.
And Cam knew what he needed.
It wasn’t quite Rickie’s 3-3-2-3 finish in 2015, but it was an astounding 20 minutes on two of the most familiar holes of the year. That’s to be celebrated, but so too is the fact that he just went for it in the highest pressure situation of his career. No bailing out, no feebly hitting it to the safe side. He stepped into the arena and did the thing we always want to see guys do. An awesome first 70 holes. But an iconic last two.
2. Cam might not say much and rarely emotes. I don’t find watching him play golf to be the most joyful experience because of how little he gives away and how rarely it seems like he’s having fun.
However!
I think if you asked my wife, she would say he's a very, very happy person. And I am. I mean, I love my life, I love my family, I love my job. I couldn't ask for much more. I'm healthy. I have healthy little children. So I just think it's more for me about I think that's the best way for me to play the best.
Cam Young
I respect this even if it’s not my favorite type of golfer to root for. Cam exudes so little joy (or so little of anything) while he’s actually playing that he makes Hideki Matsuyama seem over the top. That makes him feel … robotic at times, but let me second this take from TC that his presser after the win was as introspective and human as he has maybe ever seemed.
3. I also loved that he mentioned the importance of the Ryder Cup in his on-course interview with Dan Hicks. He said he was feeling a lot of the same things coming home on Sunday as he did at Bethpage when he beat Justin Rose 1UP to get the comeback started.
This is similar to what we saw with Scottie Scheffler after he baptized Jon Rahm in Lake Michigan at the 2021 Ryder Cup and then went on an insane run to start 2022.
I’m not saying Young is going to go on a Scheffler-like run (he’s not). I am saying that the Ryder Cup is invaluable in terms of high-pressure, confidence-building experience.
4. It’s weird to me that Cam Young is 28. He’s four months older than Viktor Hovland and three months younger than Collin Morikawa. Part of the reason this is weird is because he looks like he could be 35 and a professional woodworker or craft brewery owner. The other part is because he has three kids and has been on Tour for quite a while now.
All that to say, this is not 35-year-old Tommy Fleetwood finally finally grabbing a monster W. There’s a lot of runway for Cam, especially given his success at the majors and the reality — which Joseph LaMagna talks about a lot — that he turned his putting from a weakness into an immense strength.
Hot dog leaderboard order restored by narrowly avoiding Sheffield dog from finishing on top.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes thoughts on …
Ludvig’s collapse on the back.
Rory’s thoughts on his former Ryder Cup teammate.
A great Matt Fitzpatrick quote on the crowds at TPC Sawgrass.
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 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.
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
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!
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.
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!
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.
It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
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 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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