Greetings!
There are so many normal sport things going on at The Mink right now.
I cannot believe I’m not there to take in, for example …
Name drops today: LeBron, Si Woo, Blockie (of course) and Bellerive.
This newsletter is presented by our friends at Garmin. I won’t be getting my steps in at Aronimink this week, but I will be tracking my steps and HR at home using their S70 watch. An unofficial guide based on what could happen …
Rory-Scottie duel — Avg. RHR: 92 | Daily steps: 19K
Bryson-Blockie duel — Avg. RHR: 80 | Daily steps: 20K
Spieth gets involved — Avg. RHR: 140 | Daily steps: 37K
Spieth-Rory playoff — 🆘
The S70 is for much more than just keeping track of that information, though. I use it pretty much every time I play to give me middle-of-the-green distances on every shot (which is exactly what I need and also rarely pay attention to).
And thank you again to Garmin for its partnership with Normal Sport this year. We love their products and love how they’re expanding into junior golf watches (!), too.
OK, now onto the news.
Rory's pinky toe: “Cut me, Mink.”
Rory seems fine, by the way.
1. I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on Wednesday and realized that the winning score at the PGA Championship has been higher than the U.S. Open in five of the last nine years. Wait … what?!
2025: U.S. Open higher (more difficult)
2024: U.S. Open
2023: PGA
2022: PGA
2021: PGA
2020: U.S. Open
2019: PGA
2018: U.S. Open
2017: PGA
Boy do we view the difficulty of these tournaments differently!
I think the PGA’s “identity problem” — which has been a big talking point so far this week — is largely due to four things.
1. The USGA loves to manipulate par of the courses it sets up to try and maintain its stature as the toughest test in golf. The PGA doesn’t seem to really care. I’m sure there is an equipment discussion in here somewhere — specifically from the USGA: “See, golf is still very difficult, we don’t need to change the equipment!” — but that’s for another time (like after the paywall below).
2. When PGAs are easy, they’re really easy (Valhalla, Bellerive, Harding Park).
3. The PGA’s main talking point for a decade has been, “We have the most exciting finishes in major championship golf!” This is largely true. But it is also difficult to control or predict this identity. What if they get five blowouts in a row? Then what are you?
4. You could probably add that the PGA is following the U.S. Open playbook but at “worse” and less historic golf courses, which is tough on its marketplace positioning.
Add it all up, and you get a tournament that is not rooted in a place (like the Players Championship or the Phoenix Open) but also doesn’t brand itself as a difficult examination at an historic golf course (U.S. Open), even though it is often more difficult than the very tournament that does brand itself this way.
2. Outside of picking a place (might I suggest a two-course rota of Chambers Bay on the west coast and Kiawah on the east?!) or a theme (I have no suggestions), I’m not sure what can be done about this. They are a little bit stuck.
Though the irony is that I will mega stan their championships as some of my very favorite over the last decade. You could argue that the PGA has been the best and most exciting of the four majors over the 10 years and yet they still have the biggest branding problem of the four entities, which is bizarre!
3. Two other suggestions for branding, both fairly extreme …
1. Go back to match play. Jamie Kennedy laid out the 64-player bracket here. I’m not in love with it. I would prefer medal play for 36 or 54 holes (obvious reasons) and then 16 or 24 players in match play. There’s too much randomness in 18-hole matches with 64 players. Scottie could easily lose in the first round, and it would feel kinda dumb. If you want to talk about 36-hole matches, however, please dial me up!
2. Be the rollback championship. This would take huge stones and will never ever ever ever ever happen. But buddy, Winged Foot with proper equipment or Chicago Golf Club with hickories? Stick all of that in my veins. You go from least interesting major to most interesting in a hurry. Zig while everyone else zags. Into it.
FutureFit0 by Cobra
Here’s a link to our members only fantasy contest for the PGA. Good luck!
4. Speaking of equipment! News broke this week that Cam Young has been playing a rollback-conforming ball for nearly a year now, and he’s [checks notes] … wait … only slightly shorter than he was a year ago?
OEMs still have three and a half years (!) to close that already-tiny gap between old distance and new distance, and almost certainly will. Here’s the money line from that Jonathan Wall piece above on Cam’s golf ball.
The driver, he added, was the easy part. A small spin tweak and the launch came back into a perfectly playable window.
Golf Digest
Just one tweak on the driver, and a rolled back ball is already going nearly as far as the not-rolled back one?
This is seemingly all for naught. Like painting a metal bat to look like a wooden one and thinking you solved the distance problem and all is well for the future.
I have said this before, and I’m sure I will say it again in the future: The governing bodies cannot go too far in rolling the ball back. All that time, effort and energy for a couple of yards that will really be a couple of feet (if not less) in four years?
What is even the point?
And the question — as it has been for me for the last several years — remains: Do you want to go to St. Andrews? If not, then let it all ride. Let Acuna swing the Easton Hype Fire. But if so — if you do still want major championships at St. Andrews — then the changes have to be more drastic than whatever it is the USGA and R&A are trying to implement, which given this Cam Young info is almost laughable at this point.
5. Bryson pressers should be mandatory at all major championships but especially this one. The PGA could use a little chaos every year, and there’s no easier way to get it than to stick a microphone in front of the High King of Content.
Aside: As Hayden Martin pointed out in our podcast on Tuesday, the PGA is on an insane run of Blockie —> Scottie getting arrested —> Don Rea doing Don Rea stuff in three consecutive PGAs. You could tell me anything this week, and I would believe it. OK, maybe not Spieth winning the slam, but almost anything, including these two kings chopping it up in contention for the final 36.
Also, we should talk about Bryson on the course. I think if it’s soft, he probably contends. He’s contended in four of the last five, and the only ones where he didn’t were 2022 (WD) and 2021 (Kiawah). Arguably the two most difficult tracks in the last six.
Otherwise, he’s been lights out at this tournament.
I’m not sure there could be a more chaotic outcome than Bryson winning the PGA Championship and doing a summer collab with Ryan Trahan where they drive the Wanamaker to as many domestic five-star resorts as they can find. Need it.
Lastly, this 2-minute video of him playing the front nine at Aronimink is legit cool! More content like that!
6. Speaking of a firm course, I thought Scottie summed things up well here.
A lot of it depends on the golf course. A lot of it depends on the conditions. If you look at this golf course specifically, between it being soft and firm, I think is two totally different tests.
If you're looking at this golf course when it's soft, I think there's a lot of stuff you can kind of get away with in terms of like you can hit it pretty far offline. There's not many things to block you. And if you hit it really far offline when there's no trees, you can just get to the crowd and you have a cleaner lie than if you're a yard or two off the fairway.
Then with soft greens you're able to play a pretty simple strategy of golf where you can kind of play that sort of bomb-and-gouge-type strategy. That's probably what works best because, when you have greens that have a ton of pitch back to front and they're really soft, it's easier to take off spin when you're in the rough. So the reward for hitting the fairway is not that great …
Scottie Scheffler | 2026 PGA
This echoes what Rory said on Tuesday.
However …
… but if you look at this golf course when it's firm, the fairways are hard to hit. Then if you want to get the ball close to a lot of these pins, you have to control your spin and control your distance really well, which is not that easy to do out of the rough. It's easy to take off spin, but it's not easy to control the spin, if that makes sense.
There's certain spots on this golf course where I think it can get really challenging if it's firm and fast. A lot of it depends on conditions and golf course setup. If they decide to water the greens, it's going to be a completely different setup than it is if the greens are quite firm.
Scottie Scheffler | 2026 PGA
This is so simple and succinct and easy for morons like me to understand. Also, we will probably know after Thursday which golf course we’re going to get.
I am cautiously optimistic after watching that Bryson video above and reading Michael Kim on where the PGA could put the pins. But also …
7. This Rory video where he looks at silhouettes of golf swings and guesses every single one of them is (understandably) making the rounds. My take on it: He’s getting too much credit for getting them all and not enough for getting the hardest ones!
This is like when Joe Lunardi gets all 68 teams in March Madness. Well, you really got like six of them because everyone knew the other 62.
Ranking the guess in order of easiest to hardest.
1. Tiger (easiest) — a few of my kids could have gotten it.
2. Rahm
3. Barkley
4. Spieth
5. Tiger’s year
5. Xander — I thought this was low key kinda tough
6. Blockie — This is his Lunardi moment, the last three are pretty wild.
7. Si Woo — I don’t understand everyone getting this one so quickly.
8. LeBron — He got it kinda quick! Also, Xander and Cam Young guessed Scottie for LeBron. The best player on the planet! And Scottie said he deserved it!
And he does! Their setups are so similar, which is wild. Look at this!
Wonderful idea for a video and great execution for everyone. Need more of this from the actual PGA Tour on a weekly basis.
A couple of the comments were great.
8. OK, I need to actually make a pick. I think we’re doing Porter Family Draft For a Pint of Ice Cream tonight, and I feel like the 2003 Vikings. I do feel good about my actual pick, though. I think Cam Young makes yet another leap this week and takes what has been a really good year into the stratosphere.
Since March, if he putts, he wins or comes close (see below). I think it happens again this week.
Thank you for reading our algorithm-free golf newsletter that is sometimes even about golf. We enjoy drawing and writing it every single week but especially during major championships and especially during major championships where we can turn a mink into a boxing coach who has to figure out a six-time champ’s pinky toe.
Greetings!
There are so many normal sport things going on at The Mink right now.
I cannot believe I’m not there to take in, for example …
Name drops today: LeBron, Si Woo, Blockie (of course) and Bellerive.
This newsletter is presented by our friends at Garmin. I won’t be getting my steps in at Aronimink this week, but I will be tracking my steps and HR at home using their S70 watch. An unofficial guide based on what could happen …
Rory-Scottie duel — Avg. RHR: 92 | Daily steps: 19K
Bryson-Blockie duel — Avg. RHR: 80 | Daily steps: 20K
Spieth gets involved — Avg. RHR: 140 | Daily steps: 37K
Spieth-Rory playoff — 🆘
The S70 is for much more than just keeping track of that information, though. I use it pretty much every time I play to give me middle-of-the-green distances on every shot (which is exactly what I need and also rarely pay attention to).
And thank you again to Garmin for its partnership with Normal Sport this year. We love their products and love how they’re expanding into junior golf watches (!), too.
OK, now onto the news.
Rory's pinky toe: “Cut me, Mink.”
Rory seems fine, by the way.
1. I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on Wednesday and realized that the winning score at the PGA Championship has been higher than the U.S. Open in five of the last nine years. Wait … what?!
2025: U.S. Open higher (more difficult)
2024: U.S. Open
2023: PGA
2022: PGA
2021: PGA
2020: U.S. Open
2019: PGA
2018: U.S. Open
2017: PGA
Boy do we view the difficulty of these tournaments differently!
I think the PGA’s “identity problem” — which has been a big talking point so far this week — is largely due to four things.
1. The USGA loves to manipulate par of the courses it sets up to try and maintain its stature as the toughest test in golf. The PGA doesn’t seem to really care. I’m sure there is an equipment discussion in here somewhere — specifically from the USGA: “See, golf is still very difficult, we don’t need to change the equipment!” — but that’s for another time (like after the paywall below).
2. When PGAs are easy, they’re really easy (Valhalla, Bellerive, Harding Park).
3. The PGA’s main talking point for a decade has been, “We have the most exciting finishes in major championship golf!” This is largely true. But it is also difficult to control or predict this identity. What if they get five blowouts in a row? Then what are you?
4. You could probably add that the PGA is following the U.S. Open playbook but at “worse” and less historic golf courses, which is tough on its marketplace positioning.
Add it all up, and you get a tournament that is not rooted in a place (like the Players Championship or the Phoenix Open) but also doesn’t brand itself as a difficult examination at an historic golf course (U.S. Open), even though it is often more difficult than the very tournament that does brand itself this way.
2. Outside of picking a place (might I suggest a two-course rota of Chambers Bay on the west coast and Kiawah on the east?!) or a theme (I have no suggestions), I’m not sure what can be done about this. They are a little bit stuck.
Though the irony is that I will mega stan their championships as some of my very favorite over the last decade. You could argue that the PGA has been the best and most exciting of the four majors over the 10 years and yet they still have the biggest branding problem of the four entities, which is bizarre!
3. Two other suggestions for branding, both fairly extreme …
1. Go back to match play. Jamie Kennedy laid out the 64-player bracket here. I’m not in love with it. I would prefer medal play for 36 or 54 holes (obvious reasons) and then 16 or 24 players in match play. There’s too much randomness in 18-hole matches with 64 players. Scottie could easily lose in the first round, and it would feel kinda dumb. If you want to talk about 36-hole matches, however, please dial me up!
2. Be the rollback championship. This would take huge stones and will never ever ever ever ever happen. But buddy, Winged Foot with proper equipment or Chicago Golf Club with hickories? Stick all of that in my veins. You go from least interesting major to most interesting in a hurry. Zig while everyone else zags. Into it.
FutureFit0 by Cobra
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,037 of them) and includes thoughts on Bryson’s actual chances of winning, Cam Young’s already-rolled back (?!) ball and my pick to win at the Mink this week.
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• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
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