Greetings!
Here was me watching the leaders play the front nine on Saturday.
It got momentarily better on the back.
When Ludvig dropped that 3 on No. 11, I gave it one of these.
But all in all, Round 3 at the Players lacked some juice we’ve become accustomed to getting at this tournament over the years.
Still, there’s a lot to discuss and a bit of looking ahead to do for Sunday.
Name drops today: Odysseus (!), Joaquin Niemann, Wembanyama and Adam Scott.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Charlie Golf Co.
Big Sundays like this one always make me want to get out on the golf course myself. And if you need your kid to carry their own clubs while you, say, stick your fingers in the side of a hill or measure the distance between your feet with a tape measure, then you should check out Charlie Golf Co.
They are the best in the game when it comes to both bags and clubs for young kids, and all of it at 1990 Players Championship purse prices rather than the 2026 edition.
And as Jason illustrates below, 1 pair of Tony Finau's pants = 6 Charlie Golf Co. bags. We don't know if that's true, but we do know that they give you a lot of bag for your buck.
You can (and should!) check them out right here.
OK, now onto the news.
Shout out to Tron for proposing a Christo artwork for the trees on No. 6. Just an Incredible idea to increase the already high thread count at TPC.
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. Ludvig had this 5 footer for par on the 7th hole on Saturday. If he misses it, he falls back into a tie for first with The Bridgeman.
Instead, he drains it, birdies 9 and then hits a filthy shot into 11 and goes on to make eagle there. One hour later and his near-tie turned into a four-shot lead.
This particular moment on No. 7 won’t be on any highlight reels, it kicked off a stretch that was the inflection point of the entire tournament (so far) for me.
2. The shot on 11 was extraordinary. It brought about one of these.
A rainmaking long iron from 238 to 17 feet that he pours in the middle to really take over the event. The kind of shot that makes you wonder not “if” but “how many” when it comes to major championships.
I linked to the exact shot in this video (click below).
Overall, it wasn’t the prettiest 18 holes you’ve seen from him (that came on Friday), but he did what he needed to do — avoid doubles, build on the lead, hit one tournament-changing shot — and is now 18 holes from a win that would reshape his (still very young) career.
3. I loved this quote from him when he was asked if he’ll think about winning the tournament tonight when he goes home.
I think about winning a lot. I think a lot about what it would look like, what it would feel like. I think a lot about the different scenarios that might happen, and I did that in college, I did that when I turned pro and I still do it.
So I think I'm trying to embrace it. I'm trying to be okay with all those things that comes with it, which is why we play golf. We spend so much time practicing, playing, training, preparing, so why wouldn't we think of what it would actually mean to win. So naturally that's what I'm going to do tonight. But does it change anything for me tomorrow? I don't think so.
Ludvig Aberg
I love that he’s embracing it. It would be much easier to talk about The Process or Taking It One Minute At a Time or whatever, but I love that the robot swinger has a human heart. Easy to watch, fun to embrace.
To quote Scottie at the 2022 Open, How could you not root for Rory Ludvig?
As Gabby Herzig pointed out, there's a lot of Ludvig love on TikTok. WATTBA!
4. JT bouncing back after the early triple was so impressive. I have no idea how he’s T4 with how many penalty shots he took on Saturday, but he’s now among a group that can take a run at Ludvig. One of these eight guys is going to shoot 66 or better on Sunday, which probably won’t be enough, but give JT credit for putting himself among them with a 4-2-4 finish late in the day.
The one I’m most interested in of that group, by the way, is Thor. After all the talk about how the Olds were doing work in the early part of the PGA Tour season, the biggest event of the year includes a 26 year old and a 24 year old in the final pairing.
I don’t think Thor is quite ready for the stage he’ll be on in the finale — he may get the full tutorial from Ludvig — but that experience will be invaluable for someone that got a little lost in all the Clanton-Sargent-Dunlap hoopla.
We have reached capacity on the Top 10 Dog Leaderboard. Time to see who the big dog is.
5. This is in no way Players Championship related, but it is one of the most unhinged things I’ve ever seen. Joaquin Niemann is [checks LIV’s website] tied for first with 52-year-old Lee Westwood — one ahead of Bryson and Richard T. Lee — and we get an Odysseus (in the Odyssey) comp. What?!
Also amusing that he both …
Found his way back and also …
Never left.
Amazing stuff. Had to include it.
6. Scottie shot 67 on Saturday and clearly had his best stuff of the week. This quote after the round was really interesting.
When I look at tournaments, I'm not thinking about winning, I'm thinking about approaching things the right way. I did my best to stay committed and I did a good job I think of keeping the right attitude and keeping my head on straight in order to grind out a couple rounds that were difficult.
And then I shot a nice round today as well. So overall I think I've been in a good spot with how my attitude and commitment has been to my shots. So that's, for me that's a good week.
Scottie Scheffler
This will sound dumb in a week when he’s going to finish T22, but this specific attitude is exactly why he wins as much as he does. It is also not contrary to what Ludvig said about thinking about winning. Scottie does think about winning — he’s made that clear at the Masters — but he’s saying that he doesn’t come into the week thinking about what’s going to happen at the end, which is a much more manageable way to maintain your station as the No. 1 player on Earth.
7. To be clear, I agree with this and talked about it extensively on Thursday. However, it’s also extremely normal sport that the color of the grass on the ground determines how much we enjoy the sports event being played on top of it.
8. While we’re here, the greens got insane late in the day. Bridgeman hit this shot into 16 that bounded over and trickled into the water. After he watched it dive into the pond, he looked at his caddie and mouthed, “That was a perfect shot.”
It does seem weird that not all the participants of a professional sport play on the same playing field as one another (it wasn’t that bouncy in the morning), but I do enjoy guys struggling to deal with course conditions like we’ve seen at times this week at TPC Sawgrass.
If Kyle was in charge of rough policy.
9. If you haven’t seen any of the content that’s come out of TPC Sawgrass this week — specifically around the first-timers at the Players — it has been great. I’m thinking specifically of this NLU video where guys are asked what shot changed the trajectory of their career the most and this SGS video where guys are asked all kinds of random questions.
These are not complex videos to make, but they both humanize guys you’ve never heard of and give you something to hold onto when you’re trying to figure out who to root for. It’s the type of content the Tour should have been doing for years and years and hopefully will do more of in the future.
The content is gold.
10. The par 5s at TPC Sawgrass are so good. They demand interesting shots and give you plenty of opportunity for 3 but also you might make 6 (or worse). I don’t know anything about architecture, but in terms of variance, I view them similarly to the collection of 5s at Augusta National. I’m not saying that the holes themselves are as good. Only that I enjoy the experience of watching golfers play them and how many different scores they can spit out.
If I’m ranking them.
1st — No. 16
2nd — No. 11
3rd — No. 9
4th — No. 2
11. The pin on 18 was so sick. Just Wembanyama-ing shots all over the place. Here’s the approach Thor hit at the end of his round (it was rolling in from the top left of the screenshot).
After it took a peek, it dived for the water and ended up 40 feet (!!) from the hole.
I’m sure players weren’t too pleased with it, but I couldn’t get enough of guys trying to figure out how to get it back on that shelf and get out of there with par (it played .38 over par, which was the toughest it’s played so far this week).
12. Ludvig is going to win. You could feel it on Friday when he started 3-3-2-3. He confirmed it on Saturday with that 3 on 11. It might not be straightforward throughout the day on Sunday. But sometimes superstars transcend the Data Golf numbers or anything else that could happen.
And Ludvig is a superstar.
This generation’s Adam Scott. A quiet, seemingly genteel flusher who can kind of convince you that anything is possible with his career depending on which five-hole stretch you catch him on.
For the Knowers, Sunday is not his coming out party. It’s been several years since that happened. But it could be an announcement to the broader Sports Fan that there is (finally?) a new young superhero who will likely become the No. 1 player in the world at some point.
Surely I’m forgetting someone, but it feels like it’s been since Morikawa (and sort of Hovland?) in 2020-2022 that we’ve had a mid-20s star break out as The Guy on a monstrous stage. Ludvig is going to do that on Sunday.
(And if he doesn’t, then Thor has a chance to as well).
(But Ludvig is going to).
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!
Here was me watching the leaders play the front nine on Saturday.
It got momentarily better on the back.
When Ludvig dropped that 3 on No. 11, I gave it one of these.
But all in all, Round 3 at the Players lacked some juice we’ve become accustomed to getting at this tournament over the years.
Still, there’s a lot to discuss and a bit of looking ahead to do for Sunday.
Name drops today: Odysseus (!), Joaquin Niemann, Wembanyama and Adam Scott.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Charlie Golf Co.
Big Sundays like this one always make me want to get out on the golf course myself. And if you need your kid to carry their own clubs while you, say, stick your fingers in the side of a hill or measure the distance between your feet with a tape measure, then you should check out Charlie Golf Co.
They are the best in the game when it comes to both bags and clubs for young kids, and all of it at 1990 Players Championship purse prices rather than the 2026 edition.
And as Jason illustrates below, 1 pair of Tony Finau's pants = 6 Charlie Golf Co. bags. We don't know if that's true, but we do know that they give you a lot of bag for your buck.
You can (and should!) check them out right here.
OK, now onto the news.
Shout out to Tron for proposing a Christo artwork for the trees on No. 6. Just an Incredible idea to increase the already high thread count at TPC.
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. Ludvig had this 5 footer for par on the 7th hole on Saturday. If he misses it, he falls back into a tie for first with The Bridgeman.
Instead, he drains it, birdies 9 and then hits a filthy shot into 11 and goes on to make eagle there. One hour later and his near-tie turned into a four-shot lead.
This particular moment on No. 7 won’t be on any highlight reels, it kicked off a stretch that was the inflection point of the entire tournament (so far) for me.
2. The shot on 11 was extraordinary. It brought about one of these.
A rainmaking long iron from 238 to 17 feet that he pours in the middle to really take over the event. The kind of shot that makes you wonder not “if” but “how many” when it comes to major championships.
I linked to the exact shot in this video (click below).
Overall, it wasn’t the prettiest 18 holes you’ve seen from him (that came on Friday), but he did what he needed to do — avoid doubles, build on the lead, hit one tournament-changing shot — and is now 18 holes from a win that would reshape his (still very young) career.
3. I loved this quote from him when he was asked if he’ll think about winning the tournament tonight when he goes home.
I think about winning a lot. I think a lot about what it would look like, what it would feel like. I think a lot about the different scenarios that might happen, and I did that in college, I did that when I turned pro and I still do it.
So I think I'm trying to embrace it. I'm trying to be okay with all those things that comes with it, which is why we play golf. We spend so much time practicing, playing, training, preparing, so why wouldn't we think of what it would actually mean to win. So naturally that's what I'm going to do tonight. But does it change anything for me tomorrow? I don't think so.
Ludvig Aberg
I love that he’s embracing it. It would be much easier to talk about The Process or Taking It One Minute At a Time or whatever, but I love that the robot swinger has a human heart. Easy to watch, fun to embrace.
To quote Scottie at the 2022 Open, How could you not root for Rory Ludvig?
As Gabby Herzig pointed out, there's a lot of Ludvig love on TikTok. WATTBA!
4. JT bouncing back after the early triple was so impressive. I have no idea how he’s T4 with how many penalty shots he took on Saturday, but he’s now among a group that can take a run at Ludvig. One of these eight guys is going to shoot 66 or better on Sunday, which probably won’t be enough, but give JT credit for putting himself among them with a 4-2-4 finish late in the day.
The one I’m most interested in of that group, by the way, is Thor. After all the talk about how the Olds were doing work in the early part of the PGA Tour season, the biggest event of the year includes a 26 year old and a 24 year old in the final pairing.
I don’t think Thor is quite ready for the stage he’ll be on in the finale — he may get the full tutorial from Ludvig — but that experience will be invaluable for someone that got a little lost in all the Clanton-Sargent-Dunlap hoopla.
We have reached capacity on the Top 10 Dog Leaderboard. Time to see who the big dog is.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes thoughts on …
That sick pin on 18.
Some thoughts on Scottie’s best stuff of the week.
An amazing (amazing!) Joaquin Niemann comp.
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