I got a text this morning from someone in golf that just said, I can’t believe there are three signature events in the next four weeks. I concur, but the great thing is that we aren’t obligated to pay attention to or care about any of them!
On Sunday, I was walking around ANGC with a good friend, and we were laughing about how much every singular round at the Masters is more meaningful and memorable than almost every entire PGA Tour tournament. “Would you rather win one Masters or 10 Valspars?!” this person said. I laughed. It’s not even close.
We still have a ton to unpack over the next two days as we dissect what was one of the more historically consequential major championships of the last few decades.
Name drops today: Johnny Miller, Hideki Matsuyama, Jon Rahm, Sam Stevens and Carlos Alcaraz.
But first a huge thank you to Cobra for sponsoring today’s newsletter.
One of the more normal sport moments from last week was when a certain five-time major champion admitted he had his driver on the wrong setting. Don’t be like this five-time major champion. At least not in this specific way.
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Also, we are giving away an OPTM driver from Cobra to one of our members today. You don’t have to do anything to be eligible other than be a member.
That’s 22 cents a day to support our business, play our big major fantasy contests, have access to our Slack channel and win free stuff from our sponsors like Cobra. Seems like a better ROI than what the PIF is getting!
OK, now onto the news.
The fruit leader board was prescient for the Irish Peach.
1. The thing that keeps rattling around in my brain in this post-Masters world where Rory has now won two PGAs, a U.S. Open, an Open and two green jackets: Six majors is so many. So, so, so many.
Six is as many as a combination of …
Greg Norman
Johnny Miller
Adam Scott
Justin Rose
OR
Hideki Matsuyama,
Jason Day
Jim Furyk
Davis Love III
Dustin Johnson
OR
Vijay Singh
Ben Crenshaw
Tom Weiskopf
You could play the game all day (shout to Mark Cross on Twitter for the idea), but no matter how you divvy it up, six major championships in this era of competition is an astonishing number.
Consider the following: Since World War II officially ended just over 29,000 days ago, there have been 11 days in which someone won their sixth major championship.
Sunday was one of those days.
Here are the 11 to do it.
Jack
Tiger
Hogan
Player
Watson
Snead
Palmer
Trevino
Faldo
Mickelson
Rory
Six is so many (and as Jason point out to me, it makes what Jack Nicklaus did — winning six Masters alone — that much more impressive).
2. This from Ben Coley is a nice way to frame it.
This is what being around the rim looks like.
It does seem impossible that anyone in this era could be this good for this long, but we’re watching it. And in some ways (maybe a lot of ways?), he’s getting … better.
3. Two things I wanted to note from the presser. One of them made me happy. The other made me a bit sad. Maybe sad is the wrong word, but I felt it in my heart.
First, the one that made me happy: We aren’t getting an “F the world” tour from Rory this year like we did following last year’s Masters. Last year’s event was barely a golf tournament. More of an existential exorcism. The fallout from moments like that is always messy and complex. I didn’t see that coming last year, but I should have.
This time around? Not happening. This win felt more rote, more expected, less of a relief and more of a joy. That doesn’t mean he’s going to contend at or win any of the other three this year, but I don’t believe we’ll see the very odd (but also understandable) emotional downturn he experienced a year ago.
[Jason here] Receiving the amazing coloring pages from AJ and his k̶i̶d̶s̶ artists, Hallie and Bode delighted and surprised me more than I expected. Click here if your kids (or you!) want to do some coloring. And send them my way (jason@normalsport.com) if you do!
4. The second thing, the one that made me sad, was this.
I said at the start of the week here I felt like the grand slam was the destination, and I realized it wasn't. I'm on this journey to -- I don't know …
I just won my sixth major, and I feel like I'm in a really good spot with my game and my body. I don't want to put a number on it, but I feel like this win is just -- I don't want to say a stop on the journey, but yeah, it's just a part of the journey. I still have things I want to achieve, but I still want to enjoy it as well.
Rory McIlroy
If I still worked at CBS Sports, I probably would not try to read into this. But the great thing about doing my own thing, is that I can explore this statement a bit … here goes.
I believe that Rory believed that winning the slam would be more personally fulfilling than it was. I think he thought it would satisfy him as this destination, this life goal, a mountaintop he finally crested.
When it didn’t (because nothing material ever does), he hit that emotional lull I mentioned above. We see this all the time with Olympians. With all high achievers, really. They finally complete the goal and start looking around like, Is that it?
This is less a commentary on Rory than it is a commentary on the human condition. We all believe that the next thing — promotion, raise, kid, accomplishment — will finally be the one that fulfills. I know I beat this drum often, and I will continue to do so for the very specific reason that it is a reminder that we are all human.
Some hit approaches into 15 at ANGC better than others, but at the core of it all, we are human and to be human is to seek high and seek low for some sort of satisfaction.
Gestures wildly at this newsletter from last year’s Open Championship.
5. I was proud of the podcast work we did across Masters week. I am still finding my footing when it comes to the pod, but we had so much fun talking about this tournament and about what it was like being there.
You can listen to the Sunday recap I did with my friend, Hayden Martin, right here. And we’ll have a new pod with Joseph LaMagna coming later this week.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,053 of them) and includes a Jon Rahm take, more on Scottie Scheffler and a look at who won our members only major fantasy contest.
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• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
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