Greetings!
Following 3.95 days of a fairly tame (alternate interpretation: boring) Players Championship — if you ignore that electric 63 on Friday from Ludvig — this event finally thumped and delivered a memorable back nine.
If I told you that back nine produced a breakout star in his 20s who has come close at major championships before, is one of the best drivers in the game, was on the bubble to be picked for the 2023 Ryder Cup and has been incredible at Augusta National, you likely would have believed me.
But you would have been wrong about which player it ended up being.
We’ll get into all of that and much more in this edition of the Normal Sport newsletter below. Thank you, as always, for supporting our ridiculous business. It is way too much fun to be considered a job, and yet we are delighted to report back to you every day during these big weeks with observations, thoughts and any other nonsense that comes to our minds.
Name drops today: Bob Mac, Joe Skovron, Dan Hicks Rory McIlroy, half the European Ryder Cup team.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Sap’s Original, which kept me hydrated all weekend for my … extremely stressful golf watching from the couch.
That’s the great thing about Sap’s though. It is made for all days, not just workout days. On the course. After a long run. During travel. Or doing absolutely nothing on a Sunday (and Thursday and Friday and Saturday).
It’s a hydration drink without all the junk. If the hydration drinks of yesteryear are a Jordan Spieth round (many things going on), this hydration drink is Ludvig’s swing. Simple, tasty, repeatable (except for a few times in the final round).
OK, now onto the news.
As a reminder, this week’s content is partially behind the paywall (though thankfully not behind the moat). You can read it all — as well as the rest of our major championship coverage — by becoming a Normal Club member right here.
1. How good was that 17-18 finish from Cam Young? Down one walking off the 16th green, he hits it to 9 feet with the diciest 17 pin of the week. A subtle step in birdie followed by a tee ball that made my jaw drop. It was — according to Justin Ray — the longest drive in the ShotLink era on the 18th hole.
And Cam knew what he needed.
It wasn’t quite Rickie’s 3-3-2-3 finish in 2015, but it was an astounding 20 minutes on two of the most familiar holes of the year. That’s to be celebrated, but so too is the fact that he just went for it in the highest pressure situation of his career. No bailing out, no feebly hitting it to the safe side. He stepped into the arena and did the thing we always want to see guys do. An awesome first 70 holes. But an iconic last two.
2. Cam might not say much and rarely emotes. I don’t find watching him play golf to be the most joyful experience because of how little he gives away and how rarely it seems like he’s having fun.
However!
I think if you asked my wife, she would say he's a very, very happy person. And I am. I mean, I love my life, I love my family, I love my job. I couldn't ask for much more. I'm healthy. I have healthy little children. So I just think it's more for me about I think that's the best way for me to play the best.
Cam Young
I respect this even if it’s not my favorite type of golfer to root for. Cam exudes so little joy (or so little of anything) while he’s actually playing that he makes Hideki Matsuyama seem over the top. That makes him feel … robotic at times, but let me second this take from TC that his presser after the win was as introspective and human as he has maybe ever seemed.
3. I also loved that he mentioned the importance of the Ryder Cup in his on-course interview with Dan Hicks. He said he was feeling a lot of the same things coming home on Sunday as he did at Bethpage when he beat Justin Rose 1UP to get the comeback started.
This is similar to what we saw with Scottie Scheffler after he baptized Jon Rahm in Lake Michigan at the 2021 Ryder Cup and then went on an insane run to start 2022.
I’m not saying Young is going to go on a Scheffler-like run (he’s not). I am saying that the Ryder Cup is invaluable in terms of high-pressure, confidence-building experience.
4. It’s weird to me that Cam Young is 28. He’s four months older than Viktor Hovland and three months younger than Collin Morikawa. Part of the reason this is weird is because he looks like he could be 35 and a professional woodworker or craft brewery owner. The other part is because he has three kids and has been on Tour for quite a while now.
All that to say, this is not 35-year-old Tommy Fleetwood finally finally grabbing a monster W. There’s a lot of runway for Cam, especially given his success at the majors and the reality — which Joseph LaMagna talks about a lot — that he turned his putting from a weakness into an immense strength.
Hot dog leaderboard order restored by narrowly avoiding Sheffield dog from finishing on top.
5. Ludvig’s 40 on the back … we need to have a conversation. It was not what I envisioned when I wrote on Sunday morning that he was for sure going to win and break out as Adam Scott 2.0. It was not what anyone envisioned when he took a three-shot lead into the final 18 holes.
Obviously the golf was bad, and it only dials up the noise in my own head that he might have too much Rickie Fowler in him. Meaning he might be a little too laid back.
I’m still undecided on that because I don’t think we have enough history with him to determine one way or another, but this answer in the aftermath of his 76 was not super encouraging.
But overall pleased with the week. Obviously today the back nine was not good, but that's the way it goes sometimes.
Ludvig Aberg
It’s harder to envision someone like Scottie saying this. I want to know that you’re completely gutted here because it’s a signal that you’re a dog, that you can be a dog late in these events. This is a micro analyzation of one moment, one quote, one event. And people evolve. Rory was never a dog, but he’s somehow turned into one late in his career.
But I'm at least intrigued by how this goes with Ludvig. Obviously the talent is off the charts, but often it’s everything else (intangibles) that wins you big time events.
6. Two other things on Ludde. The first is that you should read this excellent profile of him by Dylan Dethier. It may give a little insight as to why he hit driver on No. 12 when nobody else was doing so.
Other things become simple because Aberg takes action; he simplifies things for his future self. For instance, he and his caddie, Joe Skovron, meet two hours before every tee time to go over pin locations, wind and strategy.
“It just simplifies things,” Aberg says, “because when we do get to the golf course, it’s like, ‘No, this is what we said we were going to do.’ It takes away all these emotional decisions you make during a round.”
Golf.com
Here’s the insane (and alluring) thing about golf, though. If he makes a good swing on 12 and somehow goes on to win, we’re praising his strategy of sticking to a plan. Which way is the right way? Nobody can say for sure, which is why the game at this level is so infuriating and also so intriguing.
7. The other Ludvig thing is Rory talking about what he likes about him.
Pretty much everything. His pace of play. Once he gets over the ball he's really decisive. He's obviously got a beautiful swing. Looks like he plays with a lot of freedom.
Watching a little bit of the golf yesterday afternoon, he's always smiling out there. He looks like he finds a lot of joy in playing the game, and it looks like him and Joe, his caddie, always have good conversations and a good laugh out there, and that's important, as well.
Rory McIlroy
Man … the win, the quotes, all of it was so easy to see happening. In contrast to Cam Young, it is fun to watch Ludvig play golf because it seems like it’s often fun for him. All he had to do in the final round was shoot 71. And then it never even came remotely close to coming to fruition.
8. I could not agree with this sentiment more.
Here’s the champ talking about it after his round.
It's absolutely exhausting. This place has had my number the last few years. I've never really had a good finish here. And yeah, it is incredibly taxing. Every shot all day long you can get yourself into trouble. There's no easy ones. There's no givens. And you're going to make mistakes.
So it's a great test of will, a test of patience and obviously a test of hitting some good shots. So I feel like I did a lot of those things really well this week.
Cam Young
I honestly don’t care what you call the Players Championship. Don’t care whether it’s considered a major championship or not. Don’t care about any of that. What I care about it is that it’s a tremendous test of championship-level golf that demands so many different shots and keeps giving us an even bigger library of moments to look back on.
For me, it’s the variance that the back nine can create. This has been one of my problems with the U.S. Open (and PGA Championship to an extent) over the last 10 years. At the U.S. Open, it often doesn’t feel like you could make birdie or better but also doesn’t feel like you could make double or worse. At the PGA, par often feels like the worse score possible. Here? It feels like there’s no place where you could put up a wider variation of scores on the exact same holes.
9. I think it’s amusing at just how different a golf course — any golf course — can play. This is a theme that we heard all the time as it relates to Tiger, but I was thinking about it when Ludvig missed left on No. 4. and got the easiest lie imaginable.
Maybe that happens in the first tee time of the day, maybe not, but it’s almost undeniable that the later you play in the day, the more people are following and the more people following means the more likely the grass is going to be trampled down for you. Strange stuff. Normal sport.
Introducing the 'Rough Fluffer' by Normal Sport.
10. I enjoyed Matt Fitzpatrick calling the U-S-A! changes for Cam Young “literally child’s play” compared to Bethpage.
Twitter tweet
This is true. What was said at Bethpage was outrageous and vile, and this was nothing compared to that. And possibly appropriate given that at the time all of this was being chanted, Cam was literally surrounded on the leaderboard by half the European Ryder Cup team.
11. Let’s end with this. I loved this quote from Cam Young on being present. You could take away the names and envision Scottie saying it.
Yeah, what kept me going all week is honestly, I pretty much walk down the fairways looking at my feet asking myself where my feet were. If I could just focus on where I was, what I was doing without getting ahead or behind the present moment, I felt like I could continue to execute shots well enough to stay around.
Cameron Young
We could all probably use a bit more “looking at my feet” in our lives to remember to be present where we are. Cam might not be the most demonstrative or exciting player in the world, but I found that piece of golf and life advice to be really meaningful, and all of it right after the most important victory of his career.
Thank you for reading our handcrafted, algorithm-free newsletter. Don’t forget to check out our Rory/Masters book. As always, we appreciate your support of our business. May it blow 25+ this weekend.
Greetings!
Following 3.95 days of a fairly tame (alternate interpretation: boring) Players Championship — if you ignore that electric 63 on Friday from Ludvig — this event finally thumped and delivered a memorable back nine.
If I told you that back nine produced a breakout star in his 20s who has come close at major championships before, is one of the best drivers in the game, was on the bubble to be picked for the 2023 Ryder Cup and has been incredible at Augusta National, you likely would have believed me.
But you would have been wrong about which player it ended up being.
We’ll get into all of that and much more in this edition of the Normal Sport newsletter below. Thank you, as always, for supporting our ridiculous business. It is way too much fun to be considered a job, and yet we are delighted to report back to you every day during these big weeks with observations, thoughts and any other nonsense that comes to our minds.
Name drops today: Bob Mac, Joe Skovron, Dan Hicks Rory McIlroy, half the European Ryder Cup team.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Sap’s Original, which kept me hydrated all weekend for my … extremely stressful golf watching from the couch.
That’s the great thing about Sap’s though. It is made for all days, not just workout days. On the course. After a long run. During travel. Or doing absolutely nothing on a Sunday (and Thursday and Friday and Saturday).
It’s a hydration drink without all the junk. If the hydration drinks of yesteryear are a Jordan Spieth round (many things going on), this hydration drink is Ludvig’s swing. Simple, tasty, repeatable (except for a few times in the final round).
OK, now onto the news.
As a reminder, this week’s content is partially behind the paywall (though thankfully not behind the moat). You can read it all — as well as the rest of our major championship coverage — by becoming a Normal Club member right here.
1. How good was that 17-18 finish from Cam Young? Down one walking off the 16th green, he hits it to 9 feet with the diciest 17 pin of the week. A subtle step in birdie followed by a tee ball that made my jaw drop. It was — according to Justin Ray — the longest drive in the ShotLink era on the 18th hole.
And Cam knew what he needed.
It wasn’t quite Rickie’s 3-3-2-3 finish in 2015, but it was an astounding 20 minutes on two of the most familiar holes of the year. That’s to be celebrated, but so too is the fact that he just went for it in the highest pressure situation of his career. No bailing out, no feebly hitting it to the safe side. He stepped into the arena and did the thing we always want to see guys do. An awesome first 70 holes. But an iconic last two.
2. Cam might not say much and rarely emotes. I don’t find watching him play golf to be the most joyful experience because of how little he gives away and how rarely it seems like he’s having fun.
However!
I think if you asked my wife, she would say he's a very, very happy person. And I am. I mean, I love my life, I love my family, I love my job. I couldn't ask for much more. I'm healthy. I have healthy little children. So I just think it's more for me about I think that's the best way for me to play the best.
Cam Young
I respect this even if it’s not my favorite type of golfer to root for. Cam exudes so little joy (or so little of anything) while he’s actually playing that he makes Hideki Matsuyama seem over the top. That makes him feel … robotic at times, but let me second this take from TC that his presser after the win was as introspective and human as he has maybe ever seemed.
3. I also loved that he mentioned the importance of the Ryder Cup in his on-course interview with Dan Hicks. He said he was feeling a lot of the same things coming home on Sunday as he did at Bethpage when he beat Justin Rose 1UP to get the comeback started.
This is similar to what we saw with Scottie Scheffler after he baptized Jon Rahm in Lake Michigan at the 2021 Ryder Cup and then went on an insane run to start 2022.
I’m not saying Young is going to go on a Scheffler-like run (he’s not). I am saying that the Ryder Cup is invaluable in terms of high-pressure, confidence-building experience.
4. It’s weird to me that Cam Young is 28. He’s four months older than Viktor Hovland and three months younger than Collin Morikawa. Part of the reason this is weird is because he looks like he could be 35 and a professional woodworker or craft brewery owner. The other part is because he has three kids and has been on Tour for quite a while now.
All that to say, this is not 35-year-old Tommy Fleetwood finally finally grabbing a monster W. There’s a lot of runway for Cam, especially given his success at the majors and the reality — which Joseph LaMagna talks about a lot — that he turned his putting from a weakness into an immense strength.
Hot dog leaderboard order restored by narrowly avoiding Sheffield dog from finishing on top.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes thoughts on …
Ludvig’s collapse on the back.
Rory’s thoughts on his former Ryder Cup teammate.
A great Matt Fitzpatrick quote on the crowds at TPC Sawgrass.
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