Greetings!
I had to write about AK early in the week, but there is still so much to discuss on the PGA Tour side as well. Also, had to get my official quad god rankings in.
Stolz
Ilia
Look at those things!
Let’s get right to work.
Name drops today: Free Solo, Jacob Bridgeman, Nick Taylor, Death Metal Spieth, Tom Kim and Derek Sivers.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Turtlebox, which also sponsors Scottie Scheffler and whose name is emblematic of his last few weeks of professional golf.
“How is that?” you ask.
Phoenix: Opens with 73 —> finishes T3
Pebble: Opens with 72 —> finishes T4
He is very much the tortoise in a league of hares.
Which is fitting given his new partnership.
Also please enjoy this insane illustration, and please check out my new favorite product from Tortoisebox Turtlebox
OK, now onto the news.
I don’t know that I’m the biggest Morikawa guy in the world, but it was wonderful to watch the struggle shift in real time on Sunday.
First, that shot he hit into 18.
Yeah, it’s his shot shape, and yeah, the wind is off the left. But also … he had just waited 19 minutes between shots (and probably 30 since putting on 17), had won once since fall 2021 and proceeded to take one out over the ocean while tied for the lead.
His comment on it was even better.
I saw no world where my ball was going to be left. Like there's just zero, zero world. Just because like in times like that you know what shot you're going to hit.
Now, granted, would I have liked to cut it a little bit more? Yes. But the way the swing has been feeling, the ball was never going to go left.
Collin Morikawa
The fallout after the winner was great, too.
He shared a teary hug with his wife and then announced their pregnancy, noting that he wanted to win so he could announce it on national television (which is one of the most baller things I’ve heard a tour pro say in a while).
This is not without context, and it’s not just about Baby Kawa.
After winning five of his first 51 PGA Tour events and majors, Morikawa was one for his last 93 on the PGA Tour and in major championships (he did have a Euro Tour win mixed in there, albeit over four years ago).
In some ways, Morikawa’s victory at Pebble was a miniature, 2 percent version of what AK did in Adelaide. When you’re 22 and winning everything you look at, there is significance to that, but I don’t know that there is texture.
There’s a story but no story.
Here is another of the shapes of story that I wrote about AK’s arc. I added the red line and the arrows to represent Morikawa’s own arc.
Morikawa’s first five wins happened to the left of the red line. His career is now somewhere on the right side of that red line, which to me is far more interesting.
Some notes from that amazing 8 Shapes of Stories post.
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — so the reader may see what they’re made of.
Kurt Vonnegut
I don’t know that anything awful happened to Morikawa — although I wouldn’t wish this on anyone — but I do know that post-Pebble interview was the most human he has ever seemed.
It’s funny that when we’re young, we think it’s our success that will make people love us (and not to speak for everyone, but it seems as if we all want nothing more than to be loved). But as we get older, we begin to realize that it is actually the way we handle our failures that endears us to others.
I’m not sure if Morikawa has fully learned that — some of his comments from the last few years would suggest that he has not — but his reaction at Pebble disclosed that he is at least learning it.
His talent is so immense and led to so much so early. But it was all without texture. A marriage between that talent and (perhaps) this texture could lead to someone whose story is far more interesting than it has ever been.
Pre-dad perspective is the new perspective. Add it to the leaderboard graphics.
Last weekend was rife with normal sport moments. Sunday alone had more than I can remember a single day having in quite a while. Here’s a sampling.
1. I can’t remember who said it, but I was howling when one of the broadcasters (maybe Nobilo) said the following — with the seriousness of someone covering a presidential election — regarding whether the greens were mown at Pebble: “they were rolled, but the blades did not engage.” I don’t know why, but that run of words really got me good.
2. The Jacob Bridgeman situation in the final round was insane. This looks more like a whaling expedition than it does a professional golf tournament.
All of that was followed by so much wind that Bridgeman couldn’t replace his ball on the green, which led to this money line.
Shane Ryan had some bangers on it, too.
4. Spieth scaling the rock face on 18 at Pebble following a 3 wood off the beach that led to an outrageous (even by his standards!) par amused me greatly.
This also amused me greatly.
5. Speaking of things that amused me, the Tour implemented a new rule for lift, clean and place that you can’t move the ball more than a scorecard, which led to this exchange on the 10th green.
“Who are you again?”
Also, when Patrick Reed finds out about this rule shift, he’s going to show up with a scorecard the size of a winner’s check.
6. Viktor had a couple of great NS moments last week. The first when he wore pool floaties on the range (sure), and the second when he threw an umbrella into a tree and got it stuck.
Also, gonna be tough to unsee this.
Here is a very simple explanation that gets at what strokes gained tries to explain. Since finishing T20 at the 2025 Players Championship, Scottie Scheffler has played 19 tournaments worldwide.
If another pro played all 19 of those tournaments and made the cut at all of them, finishing right in the middle of the pack after the cut, his score would have been right around -46. In that same window of time, Scottie’s score at those 19 tournaments was -278.
That’s all strokes gained is … a player’s score compared to the field average.
Also, Scottie’s last finish outside the top eight in a field was at that 2025 Players Championship. That’s 19 top eights (and top 10s) in a row.
Here’s a list.
Cameron Young — 28 career top 10s
Wyndham Clark — 28
Maverick McNealy — 26
Will Zalatoris — 21
Ben Griffin — 21
Ludvig — 19
Scottie — 19 in a row
Tom Kim — 18
Akshay — 16
Me seeing that Scottie has a chance to catch Wyndham Clark’s career top 10s with consecutive top 10s later this year.
These are good players! Ryder Cuppers, Presidents Cuppers, Olympians and PGA Tour (and major!) winners. And Scottie is just dunking on everybody he looks at.
Also, a mea culpa: I had a previous version of this particular stat wrong (see below). I hate, hate, hate getting things like this wrong, but I forgot to filter in majors and was only filtering PGA Tour events.
Apologies for that!
What if I told you last Thursday that someone who …
• Wears Under Armour
• Played Big 12 golf
• Famously torched Europe in the Ryder Cup for the U.S.
• Holds a scoring record at Augusta National
• Plays with a wild, chaotic energy
• Recently has struggled trying to recapture who he used to be
• Won on Sunday to tremendous fanfare around the golf world
• By beating one of the last three Masters winners
• And another guy who was in the final pairing at the Masters last year
Would your first thought have been Anthony Kim?
Or would it have been this?
Me after hearing those facts above and learning that Spieth did not go on to win on Sunday.
While we’re here, you could probably talk me into Rahm being more meme-able than Spieth.
This is such a money quote, and it applies to both the golf we all enjoy watching at the highest level and also the daily work so many of us engage in (including myself).
Mastery is both elusive and aspirational. It’s what Spieth and Rahm are laboring toward every day. You can’t buy it, but you can lose it. You can’t speed up gaining it, but you can give it up in a hurry.
You can only earn it through hard work, but you also might not ever earn it all.
Mastery is slippery, but the path to gain it is often extraordinarily enjoyable.
Thank you for reading our ridiculous (mostly) golf newsletter. Every edition is handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason.
Being a turtle is our entire goal.
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