Greetings!
It’s been a fun week around here. The kind of week we envisioned when we started this business. From a long post on AK and his future to the book we dropped on Thursday about Rory and the 2025 Masters — which is a collection of everything we wrote that week along with some new stuff — we have loved hitting publish over and over.
Also, you can pre-order the book here.
To cap off the week, I have some random (and possibly not connected) thoughts about golf (and a lot of not golf) as well as a new sponsor (!) to introduce you to.
Let’s get to it!
Name drops today: Nikita Filippov, D3 college softball coach, Phil, Bryson, Rod Laver and Bill Belichick.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Charlie Golf Co., which is …
• One of my favorite golf business stories of the last five years
• The brand that powers the collective golf habits of our kids
• A very normal company
Why is it a very normal company?
Well, my friend Tyler — who founded it in his garage — started looking around a few years ago and realized he couldn’t find a golf bag that made sense for his 3-year-old boy. So he decided to design his own.
Then a bunch of people wanted them, and he started hanging wires and lights in his garage to make room for all of them (normal stuff).
Tyler is a former RFID systems manager who probably has too much of his retirement savings tied up in two embroidery machines (again, very normal!) that assist him in making bags for places like Oakmont, Eastward Ho! and Baltusrol.
Being the perpetually-too-online golf person that I am, Tyler and I connected early in his process of building this company. It was pretty obvious that what he was making was going to be a hit because of 1. His excitement around it and 2. The (obviously?) underserved market he was entering.
I was professionally jealous at how he was nailing that venn diagram of doing what he loved and providing a great product. So we’re extremely proud to partner with Charlie Golf Co. in 2026 and hope you check out what they have going on right here.
OK, now onto the news.
1. Guys, I think we found it. Skimo, easily the most normal sport in history. As illustrator Jason said, “They’re getting medals for getting dressed and undressed!”
Here’s the video, but the screenshots are just as good.
Golf has nothing on Skimo.
2. One of my favorite stupid Twitter bits is to ask, “What does this person do for a living. I did it a week ago about Rickie Fowler, and wanted to check back in on the responses (which were spectacular).
First, here’s the image.
And the glorious responses.
That one reminded me of the time someone called Cam Smith an iguana merchant, and it became part of the cover of our first Normal Sport book.
So specific!
Honestly? Maybe …
Perfection.
Also excellent.
Yes to both.
Not sure why, but both of those got me pretty good.
For our Normal Club members, I have a few more thoughts on why Scottie is (a lot?) more interesting than Tiger, the new Rory biography (not mine) and more grand slam history that could be made in 2026.
If you’re not a member yet, you can sign up right here.
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 1,013 individuals who may or may not think of me when they see penis material headlines in the Olympics. By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• The delight of helping us establish Normal Sport.
• 15% off to our pro shop.
• Access to all of our content (like the rest of this post).
Welcome to the members-only portion of today’s newsletter. Easier to access than Riviera but a smaller group of people than Merion. Put it on a t-shirt.
3. The “Scottie is great but boring” narrative started popping off again recently as I’m sure it will often over the next several years as he begins to climb the all-time ladder from 20th to 15th to 10th and even higher.
KVV entered the ring with this, which I could not agree with more. If you don’t think Scottie has more personality than Tiger, then you either are just blindly following Tiger around or didn’t pay super close attention to either of them.
And that response sparked me to whip up this little graph. It really needs a third axis that displays “great” and “not great,” but I think it is directionally correct.
I picked guys who proved the points I was trying to make, and I probably picked four of the most up-and-to-the right golfers in recent memory in Bryson, Phil, Rory and Spieth.
If I had to do it over again, I would probably drop Spieth down a little on the “says nothing” axis, though he makes up for not saying much in pressers with continually talking throughout his round.
I would also move Rickie to the left to the other side of Scottie. I think Scottie makes me feel a lot more than Rickie ever has.
Curious where people disagree and where they would place other guys like Cantlay, Morikawa, Fleetwood, Rahm, Rose, Xander and JT.
4. This on KD’s latest online mess from Ethan Strauss’ excellent newsletter is very good. KD fascinates me. I’ve always been enamored, while also acknowledging that he is a ridiculous human to engage in burner activity in the way that he does.
The part that really floored me was the end.
KD also offers lessons on how not to help those around you succeed. If you hyper focus on how you’re treated unfairly, it’s not only a tax on yourself, but on everyone working with you. I’m reminded of Danny Amendola’s quote from the Patriots documentary: We worked for Bill but we played for Tom.
Many teammates have worked with and for Kevin Durant. But who would ever play for him in the way they would Steph Curry?
House of Strauss
It made me wonder who U.S. Ryder Cuppers work for and play for.
As an outsider, it seems like they work for the captain and the organizational machine. I’m not positive they have anyone they play for though. That’s perhaps unfair, and I think it’s harder to have someone you play for when you’re together so infrequently.
But on the flip side, I think you could make the case that the Euros work for the captain but play for Rory. Or that they work for the organization and play for Luke Donald. Or even that they work for each other and play for the legacy.
I’m not sure any of those are exactly true, but you could make a decent case for each one and an even better case that the U.S. doesn’t really have that rallying point at all.
5. Speaking of Rory, I am close to finished with Alan Shipnuck’s new biography of him, which drops the first week in April. I’ll have a full review with quotes for this newsletter at some point, but I was a bit underwhelmed. Alan is an elite writer — way better than I am — but it didn’t feel like there was a ton of depth to the book.
Some of that, of course, is because Rory didn’t participate in it or sit down with him. This is made exceedingly clear early in the book when Shipnuck writes about a profanity-laced exchange they had at Oakmont about the entire saga. Tbh, that’s most of the juice of the book.
There are a few parts in the early chapters that are excellent — one specific line from Wally Uihlein about Rory stood out to me.
Rory competed in the 9-10 age division, cutting a distinctive figure.
“He had a little swagger and a big head of curls,” says Wally Uihlein, then the CEO of Titleist and FootJoy’s parent company, Acushnet; his son, Peter, played in the same age group as McIlroy.
“His swing then doesn’t look much different than now, with this wonderful full shoulder turn. From there, he dropped it in the slot and just let the club go.”
Alan Shipnuck | Rory
I’m a sucker for a good quote on a great swing.
But a lot of what is covered after Rory turns pro isn’t new information. As someone who just released a book with almost no new information, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I do think if you come into the Rory story with no context or history, you will like it. But for the sickos, it will probably come up a bit lacking in the end.
6. I’m not totally sure what to do with this information.
Collin Morikawa ...
2019-2021: 63 events | 6 wins | 1.6 SG (1.7 tee to green)
2022-2026: 92 events | 2 wins | 1.6 SG (1.6 tee to green)
Morikawa has mostly (?) been the same golfer overall in 2022-2026 that he was in 2019-2021. But he has won only a third as much. This is probably due to win luck, as Rick Gehman pointed out in his newsletter this week.
But not all of it.
Morikawa finished in the top 10 in 41 percent of his starts from 2019-2021 and just 30 percent of his starts from 2022-2026. He has clearly been different mentally and as a closer than he was when he was young, which are small but meaningful things that lead to wins and losses.
[Padraig Harrington quote on innocence goes here]
I think this discloses two things. The first is the winning margins are minuscule. The second is that strokes gained — even in the long term — tells a pretty good story but not the entire story of individual players and the careers they are having.
7. TBPN (which I have written a lot about recently) is charging $87K/month per business to sponsor its newsletter, and they have around 20 sponsors. That is wild, but it gets at an idea that we have talked about a lot recently here at Normal Sport. A small, high-agency, high-value audience is worth a lot more than a big, low-agency, low-value audience. This post is instructive.
The way it was explained to me one time — I don’t remember where — is through the following question: Does Newsletter List A with 32 people or Newsletter List B with 32,000 people have a more valuable business?
Now do the exercise again, but pretend like all 32 people on Newsletter List A are NFL owners. That is, aspirationally, what TBPN is building.
8. This point by Will is crazy.
Going into 2025, there had been five grand slam winners in the open era in tennis (since 1968) and five in the Masters era in golf (since 1934). So 10 total.
And we might get four more in 15 months?!
Here they are in order, by the way.
Gene Sarazen
Ben Hogan
Gary Player
Jack Nicklaus (3x)
Rod Laver
Andre Agassi (golden slam)
Tiger Woods (3x)
Roger Federer
Rafael Nadal (2x and golden)
Novak Djokovic (3x and golden)
Rory McIlroy
Carlos Alcaraz
Jannik Sinner (needs French)
Scottie Scheffler (needs U.S. Open)
Sinner will almost certainly be in the finals at Roland Garros in May, and Scottie will be the heavy favorite at Shinnecock in June, where a win would make him the first golden slam winner in golf history (four majors plus gold medal).
It’s also pretty crazy to me that of the potential 14 career slam winners (assuming Sinner and Scottie get it done), seven of them would have taken place in the last 17 years. Another excellent reason to get Charlie Golf Co. clubs and bags in the hands of your kids as soon as possible. 😄
Thank you for reading our ridiculous golf newsletter that is sometimes (but often barely) about golf.
Every edition is handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason.
We would appreciate it greatly if you would check out our new book that we can’t wait to get out into the world.
Kyle is the best columnist in sports. That he has channeled those talents through strokes gained and Spieth memes is a blessing to golf.
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
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'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!
It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
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.
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.
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 is a perfect curator of the necessary moments of levity that accent a sport that will drive most of us insane.
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!
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.
.svg){kind=spacer}
