Masters week!
It always feels like the wait lasts forever and the week seems to go faster than anyone wants it to. Soak it in. Every shot, every moment, every normal sport encounter.
Our coverage this week will be extensive. I will be writing a newsletter every day through next Tuesday with notes and thoughts from the grounds at Augusta National. Today’s is from Dallas, some land over Arkansas and Mississippi and the Atlanta airport. We will also be producing a good number of podcasts from the event.
The Normal Sport Show is still in its nascent days as we try to find a rhythm, but I enjoyed recording with my good friend, Hayden Martin, on Monday as we discussed five players we’d bet our house on to win this year’s Masters.
We’ll have a pod dropping later this evening with Webb Simpson, who previews the course and discusses what it’s like to play in the tournament. And then some daily updates from the course. You can subscribe on Spotify here and Apple right here.
We will also be giving something away from our sponsors every day. Today’s sponsor of the newsletter is the Normal Club (that’s us), and we’re giving away $500 worth of merch from any 2026 major of your choosing to a random winner who 1. Is subscribed to this newsletter and 2. Comments on this tweet.
I got one question about what if subscribers don’t have Twitter and can’t comment. Unfortunately, we are trying to limit how much work we have to do on our end, so those are the parameters. More giveaways to come, and not all of them require a Twitter account.
Name drops today: Akshay, Gotterup, Dr. Chipinski, all four of my kids.
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OK, now onto the news.
When I worked at CBS Sports — which at this point feels like it was 35 years ago — I used to rank every player in the field from 1-94. This exercise would begin in February around Pebble Beach and end the Sunday before the Masters started.
It kept me sharp, and we mostly had fun with it. I have actually considered bringing it back as a year-round thing (think The Ringer’s big boards), but for today we’re going to limit it to my current top 10 and run through it before we get to the always entertaining Porter family draft for a pint of ice cream. We went full auction this year, and I got cooked by my kids.
OK, here are your 10 most likely to win the 2026 Masters from 10 to one.
10. Gotterup: I just … can’t get there with him, and I’m not sure why (maybe I will by the end of the week). I see what the numbers say. Really.
Crazy long, great from tee to green, wins big events. The data is why he’s on this list at all. But is Chris Gotterup (Chris Gotterup!) going to break a 47-year streak and become the first player since Fuzzy in 1979 to win the Masters in his first try?
It’s just extremely difficult for me to imagine! I am also open to the idea that this is my anti-OU, pro-Oklahoma bias showing (another indicator: I have Viktor Hovland at No. 1 below)! (not really)
[Jason here] Gotterup might be my first pick after watching his press conference. He's Scottie-esque in his reflective answers. I agree with the "Good job” caught on mic at 20:40.
9. Fitz: I’m hesitant here, which means we’re 2 for 2 on me hating my most likely to win list. He’s been so good this year but so … middling at the Masters over the last five years. Since 2021, Justin Thomas, Ryan Fox, Tyrrell Hatton and Patrick Cantlay have all been better than Fitzpatrick from tee to green at ANGC.
Solid players, obviously, but not exactly threats to win the Masters. But I can’t ignore the leap he’s seemingly made over the first three months of 2026. Only Fitzpatrick and Morikawa are better than 2.0 SG tee to green (and Morikawa hasn’t played in a month). One note to keep an eye on with Fitz: He has a fairly low ball flight (not this low but low enough), which doesn’t seem ideal for ANGC.
8. Rory: I could see this going one of two ways. The first is that he’s so exhausted from carrying the pre-event content over the last month and leading into the very first shot of the tournament that he shoots 45 going out and has to play heroically to make the cut and finish T45.
Or I could see him feeling so good from the afterglow of all of this that he just goes out and shoots 33-34-32-33 before he even realizes he has an 8-shot lead going into Saturday. I think the former is more likely, but the latter is definitely in play. As Brad Faxon noted here, he may set the all-time ball speed record off No. 1 on Thursday.
[Jason here] I want him to win just to see how the jacket ceremony would go.
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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.
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'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 approaches coverage of the game with both conviction and curiosity
Kyle is the best columnist in sports. That he has channeled those talents through strokes gained and Spieth memes is a blessing to golf.
It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
Kyle is a perfect curator of the necessary moments of levity that accent a sport that will drive most of us insane.
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!
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.
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.
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
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