Hello,
A confession: I really enjoyed building Wednesday’s Connections puzzle and have been trading puzzle building with friends throughout the week. Here’s another one for Friday. No prize this time. Just share it with friends if you’re inclined.
ALSO! Before we get to today’s newsletter, you will some notes on our new referrals program at the bottom of this email. Our hope is that it will encourage you to #GetInvolved, share the newsletter and properly reward you for helping us grow the game sheep meme brand. We tried a version of this two years ago but decided to wipe the slate clean for this iteration. Here are the prizes. Good luck to all!
Name drops today: Oliver Burkeman, Blades Brown, Snoop, Jon Rahm and Steve Bornstein.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Sap’s.
You know who could use some Sap’s? The guys grinding their faces off in Memphis where the temperature over the course of the tournament looks like a Misiorowski pitching log: 100, 101, 101, 103.
Where guys are putting with towels over their necks (of course it’s Spieth).
Anyway, they could use some Sap’s, which includes an ingredient stack of electrolytes for hydration, adaptogens for stress and balance and aminos to help your body recover faster (no word on what it does to tan pants).
I’ve been pounding these in the morning here in Dallas (where it’s a full Misiorowski as well) both before and after runs and workouts. Highly recommend the lemon lime, which you can get right here on Amazon.
And now, onto the news.
Get the boys some Sap's!
1. Hayden and I recorded a new podcast on Tuesday on a lot of what’s happened over the last few weeks. We talked about the young American stars suddenly popping, Bryson’s LIV circus and whether Jon Rahm is going to stay.
Oh, and also the cities that look like they’re going to be part of the championship circuit. I’m in favor of the Tour’s decisions, Hayden is a little less excited.
You can listen on Apple here or Spotify here.
Also, would love any feedback you have on the pod. You can vote below and leave written feedback as well.
The more honest, the better. There is nothing you can say that will come close to what I hear from the LIV stans on Twitter. Also, if you want to email me directly with any feedback, you can just hit reply and send over a note.
2. Speaking of Rahm! Turns out that he might not be willing to trade the $100M+ he’s owed for IOUs for a pink and black golf team whose other players include the second best player from Northern Ireland and an American who has never had a positive strokes gained season.
To be clear, Rahm proceeding with LIV 2.0 would be tantamount to Cam Young deciding to play on the Sunshine Tour in 2027. We don’t think of it like that because that’s not how we have thought about LIV over the last five years. But that’s what LIV 2.0 will be more like.
I think I have firmly landed in the “no single person can move the needle enough for it to matter for a golf league” camp, but this problem remains …
Bloomberg reported that 1) LIV is working on a deal with BC Partners and 2) while BC Partners and LIV Golf’s executive team may have agreed to broad terms, a term sheet has not yet been fully executed. The Financial Times then added more color after that, reporting that BC’s investment is contingent on LIV Golf retaining enough star players.
Huddle Up
So whether a player actually does move the needle might not matter as long as the company funding the league believes that he moves the needle.
Maybe that’s all that matters as it relates to LIV 2.0, and in that sense there is a dark amusement in the seeming reality that Rahm may once and for all reunite the world of professional golf. Just not in the way he originally intended to.
3. Gabby wrote quite well about all of this earlier in the week, and the whole thing is almost comical. Among my favorite parts.
• LIV is pitching its 2.0 version by touting how much money it loses and how that can benefit a business looking to save on paying taxes.
Me reading that …
• It is probably going to enter bankruptcy, which means that for Rahm and others to get the money they are owed, they will have to sue Saudia Arabia in an international court (!!). The thought of Bryson and his attorney taking on the crown prince in an extremely public trial is almost too much for me to handle.
• And she confirms that Rahm is a linchpin (maybe the linchpin) because of what he’s owed and how much the league needs him because its future funding depends on it.
A question: Is this what we want pro golf to be?
I honestly feel bad for … basically nobody involved here (at the highest level anyway). They all tried to microwave history and were not quiet about doing it. So now everyone is looking around saying, “Wait, where is the money and why isn’t this working?” when the entire premise from the beginning was that there was too much money involved to make it work!
This is startup failure 101. Happens all the time. Might happen to Normal Sport at some point! So my frustration and lack of compassion is not with the fact that it’s happening but rather with the chest thumping that went with it along the way.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes some follow-up AI thoughts, a good Michael Brennan take and a couple of amazing profiles from this week.
By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
• An invite to our Slack channel where we watch and talk golf together.
• A free digital copy of our Rory book.
• 15% off to our pro shop.
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'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.
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.
Kyle is the best columnist in sports. That he has channeled those talents through strokes gained and Spieth memes is a blessing to golf.
Normal Sport is exploratory, sometimes emotional, always entertaining. It also has one of my favorite writers in the biz at its foundation.
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
Kyle approaches coverage of the game with both conviction and curiosity
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.
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.
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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