Greetings!
And a great week for the semi-olds among us [raises hand]. Justin Rose (born in 1980) and Novak Djokovic (born in 1986) both made astounding runs over the weekend.
This is interesting for competitive purposes but also inspirational for life reasons.
We’ll get into all that and more below, but first.
Name drops today: Colt Knost, Jarrell Miller, DJ, John Coogan and Jordi Hays, Maverick McNealy, Andrew Novak and Tiger Woods.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Ship Sticks, which recently got our clubs back to us from the PGA Show just ahead of the ice storm in Arkansas (for business partner David) and Dallas (for me).
Their hassle-free door-to-door service has become the only way we travel when we’re playing some road G, and they are currently offering Normal Sport readers 20 percent off their first purchase right here.
If traveling for golf is your thing — and given that you are reading a golf newsletter about a dog in a top hat, I’m guessing it is! — we cannot recommend Ship Sticks highly enough!
OK, now onto the news.
A thought I had as Justin Rose torched the field at Torrey over the weekend: Wait, is top-hat wearing, train-riding, cornball dad, Justin Rose, actually one of the preeminent dogs* of his era?
*And by “dog” I mean somebody who is a killer.
The way he plays (proper and sometimes even mechanical) doesn’t scream “dog” the same way Patrick Reed’s greasy scoring does or even the same way Cam Smith or Matt Fitzpatrick do. There are a lot of high-level players you look at and think, “Wait, this guy?” Rose is not one of them.
But dogs come in all shapes and sizes, and how you score is just one of them.
While Rose’s world class ball-striking means he will never really have to be a dog when it comes to scoring, his tenacity shines in a different way. Namely, grinding for 22 consecutive years in which he has mostly been in the top 20 in the OWGR.
Rose got to No. 34 in the world the summer I graduated high school (!) in 2003.
Twenty-three years later, he’s No. 3 in the world. That is astounding.
As was pointed out here, Rose was one of the featured golfers in Tiger Woods 2004! Everything about his career displays dog-like tendencies at an age where it’s harder than ever to embrace the fight.
Two other quotes from Rose stood out to me on Sunday.
Here’s the first after he was asked about LIV in his post-win presser.
It would have been easy to potentially do other things, but none of that excited me I don't think really. And none of it gave me access to what I wanted to achieve.
I kind of always felt like my childhood self wouldn't feel very good about making that decision and kind of giving up on those dreams.
…
The way things are in the world of golf right now, yeah, I feel like it's good to see people wanting to kind of play where it motivates them to be their best.
Justin Rose
There are a number of different group chat versions of what did or did not happen with Rose and LIV. But at the end of it, he almost certainly had nine figures (or something absurd) on the table and said no.
That means something, and the quote about his his childhood self wouldn’t have felt good giving up on those dreams, well, as you can imagine, I’m very into that.
The other quote was on the 72nd green with Amanda just after the win.
I'm still loving it. I'm still working hard. You have to love it to work hard.
Justin Rose
Such a great quote, especially for someone who has made $75.4 million on the course on the PGA Tour alone. It reminded me of — coincidentally! — one of my all time favorites from Djokovic, who said a few years ago, “I can carry on playing at this level because I like hitting the tennis ball.”
Both are such telling and great quotes.
Last thing on Rose. I loved this phrasing from my guy, Joel Beall: Armed only with the stubborn hope of what he might still do. That is very much Justin Rose right now!
Also, I want Rose’s sauna/cold plunge RV.
How do you do fellow tour pros?
1. Buddy, the meme is catching on. This sums it up very nicely. The exact thing I started noticing however-many years ago.
2. Also … sure.
Again, this is amusing and maybe even funny.
But I’m not sure if we can keep making claims like this one from Michael Kim when you can simply take off your shirt and write a letter to someone in a suit jacket to get into one of the most coveted events in the league.
And none of this is an anti-Joel or anti-Michael take, it’s just the reality of the situation. Imagine Brandon Weeden writing a letter to the owner of the Broncos three weeks ago that alluded to getting caught under the American flag again for entertainment purposes, and the Broncos signing him for their NFL playoff run.
It’s not the same, but it kinda is the same.
And while I’m OK with some sponsor exemptions (I guess) and great with a purer meritocratic nature of the PGA Tour, I’m against claiming that both can exist at the same time. They undermine each other and make the Tour look kinda silly.
Also this response to me saying that this was very normal sport was pretty good.
3. Honestly … don’t even want to know the backstory here. I’d rather just imagine it.
4. OK, this one had me howling. The video is incredible!
I was thinking about Brooks over the weekend as he finished out his T56 finish at Torrey and just how strange his entire career has been.
I decided to look up his strokes gained neighbors. Which neighborhood is he hanging out in? Not Rory, Rahm, Tiger and Scottie. But not even Xander, JT, DJ and Cantlay.
No, he’s more in the neighborhood of Rickie, Stricker, Kuchar, Paul Casey and Big Tone.
I sorted Data Golf’s all-time SG leaders among the top 150 players of the SG era, and this is what it looks like. Brooks gains 1.0 strokes per round, which is a very solid number but hardly representative of a five-time major champion.
So I wrote in how many majors each of these players has won. And excluding Phil — because Phil is anchored by his last 10 years of up and down play and that SG number was much better when he was the age of most of the rest of these guys — the nine players surrounding Brooks have a combined four majors while Brooks has five.
This is very bizarre to me.
I was considering it because I was thinking about the idea that I proposed in my 10 thoughts about Koepka’s return to the tour, which is that this was a much bigger W for Brian Rolapp, executive at the PGA Tour than it was for the PGA Tour.
Sure, Brooks might win an event or two over the next several years. But he’s probably not going to win as many events in the rest of his PGA Tour career as Scottie wins by the end of this February.
I had forgotten about what an enigma he is. I’m not sure there’s anyone else even remotely like him. A 1.0 SG number but five majors?!
Add it to the list of reasons I’m fascinated by who he is and what he’s all about.
• This answer from Alcaraz after he was asked about Djokovic calling him a legend. Whew. The good stuff. The full Justin Rose (with somehow even more talent).
But I believe a legend is forged over a long period of time. Seeing a player year after year, going to the same tournaments, with the same ambition, the same hunger, the same passion, and creating a feeling in the people who watch—that’s where a legend is really forged.
Carlos Alcaraz
Also, I find this amazing. More on tennis slams and golf majors in a newsletter (and possibly a podcast) later this week!
• Wanted to shout out the Fried Egg folks and KVV in particular. We are not the only golf newsletter in town, and they have been crushing so far this year. Pumped for them, love reading their work and wanted to point folks specifically to follow their newsletter content.
Some great ones this week as always.
• This one got me good.
• Me every single meeting.
This is very well said and something that stood out to me this week.
And speaking of the Fried Egg, I connected the above take to something Patrick Rodgers told Joseph LaMagna this week.
The opportunity with LIV is a little bit like an exaggerated version of the college NIL situation. It’s been an unbelievable sociology experiment with golf. What does your competitive integrity mean to you? What price do you pay for it? It’s given a lot of professionals really interesting philosophy questions.
I feel like as a young player, you want to give yourself the simplest ladder to the top of the game if you really back yourself. And I don’t believe that’s on LIV. I believe the structure through the Tour gives you the best chance to win majors and become the number one player in the world. I wouldn’t trade that for anything when I was young, because that’s where I wanted to go.
Patrick Rodgers
Again, echoes of what Justin Rose said at the top about always keeping what his dreams were when he was young at the top of his mind. The whole Rodgers interview is terrific. And as a reminder, here are your all-time individual Stanford win totals.
T1. Tiger Woods (11)
T1. Mav McNealy (11)
T1. Patrick Rodgers (11)
I keep going back to Colin and Samir, but they have been putting out bangers only recently. This two-hour chat with the gentlemen at TBPN — which I am aware of and sometimes see clips about but do not listen to regularly — is exceptional.
The big takeaway for me: Don’t be afraid of embracing advertising. If I’m being honest and vulnerable for a minute, it sometimes feels terrifying to embrace advertising. I want to be an artist, and advertising sometimes feels like the antithesis of artistry. But I’m also proud of the fact that we have labored to partner with other brands and businesses (like Ship Sticks!) in a tasteful way and will continue to do so.
The other big takeaway for me: Don’t chase scale. This is something I have to remind myself of constantly. But scale doesn’t matter as much as quality of audience, and we pride ourselves on having one of the highest quality audiences in all of sports media.
According to the survey data we’ve collected, our demographics are off the charts, and this is something that we always put in front of brands as we try and figure out what the best marriage is between a brand and our people (you).
The last takeaway, and one I think I will be promoting to our partners is shorter but more frequent mentions and reads. The TBPN boys view their show like an F1 car and their partners like the companies that are associated with that F1 car in a given season.
This is smart and no different from how golfers view their sponsors. It’s something I hope to personally consider and embrace more fully in the future. I believe that in the same way I have affinity for a brand that gives me ad-free viewing of a PGA Tour event for the final hour, you likely have affinity for any brand that makes Normal Sport possible.
Also, this was a sick take.
Thank you for reading our ridiculous golf newsletter. Every edition — and everything we make — is handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason. We always love hitting the tennis ball.
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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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