Greetings!
After a brief window of time in which we could care about things like the historical relevance of Rory McIlroy, the importance of the Masters and the consequential nature of actual golf shots, we are back to staring into, as Brody Miller wrote on Monday, “a large, black, fire-breathing Día de Muertos-style skull with eyes that change color and a DJ inside its mouth pounding music.”
Cool stuff. Normal sport.
Name drops today: Brian Windhorst, Maria Popova, Si Woo Kim, Zach Johnson and Matthew Wolff.
This newsletter is brought to you by Charlie Golf Co.
They do not sell fire-breathing Dia de Muertos-style golf bags, but perhaps they will at some point. Instead, Tyler Johnson and Co. are focused on more traditional designs like, you know, blue, pink and green on their golf bags for kids.
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OK, now onto the news.
1. Si Woo taking a break from his final round to check out the broadcast made me laugh. It’s even better that there are three fans, two red Solo cups and some mesh netting with an extension cord running parallel. Very normal stuff.
Also, I think I agree with this.
2. You have to peel one off the Atlantic Ocean into a 35 MPH wind with the tournament on the line. Oh and we’re going to point a cannon (that works!) at your kneecaps.
Sure.
Also, this is a take.
3. Bryson losing it about the playing surface in the middle of the bumpiest LIV event to date amused me. Imagine going from Augusta National to … this.
Also, there are worse metaphors for LIV’s past and Bryson’s future than the following screenshot.
After Matt Fitzpatrick dunked on Scottie in the RBC Heritage playoff, I found myself thinking about the 2016 Ryder Cup.
Remember that one? Fitz went 0-2-0, got baptized in singles by ZJ (of all people!) and looked for a bit like he might have to retire before his pro career even got off the ground.
I was thinking about going back to that particular event and imagining telling myself in October 2016 that less than 10 years later, in consecutive weeks at the Masters and Hilton Head, I would be adamantly rooting for … Justin Rose and Matt Fitzpatrick? What’s going on here?
Rose is probably a different story altogether, but it’s not crazy to say that Matt Fitzpatrick has become … kind of a badass. He won his second event in his last three starts and walked putts in against the best player of the last 25 years to do it.
After (ok, badly) falling into a playoff, he then went full Patrick Reed following an up and down for birdie from 209 yards away, all while being on the business end of some absurd U-S-A, U-S-A chanting for the last 40 minutes of the tournament.
Fitz doesn’t look the part in the same way that, say, Brooks or DJ or Tiger look the part. And I’m not suggesting that he’s in any of their worlds. But I respect not only him as The Professional but also as someone who clearly enjoys the moment.
Here’s what he said afterward.
I'm all for [the chanting and taunting]. They're supporting Scottie, that's great.
You want golf to have an atmosphere in my opinion. I grew up watching football. I'm paid so much money to be out there in front of those crowds, having them chanting at you every week, it's great feeling.
However, there's no better feeling than coming out on top against that.
There isn't a better feeling.
To describe it in my terms, it's kind of winning away against your biggest rival. Nothing to do with Scottie or the players; it's the fans that have sort of spurred me on there. It was nice to obviously win, but it never crossed the line. It was just loud. Just loud.
Matt Fitzpatrick
Yes! Hell yes! Gah, that fires me up! By the way, here’s a look at Fitz listening to the question about whether he gets tired of U.S. fans chanting at him.
So few guys out there truly want the moment. What was it Brooks said at Marco Simone when he was asked how many of the 24 golfers actually want the ball late in the game?
We have been conditioned that to be one of these very few, you have to look a certain way. Like Anthony Edwards looks or like Julio Rodriguez looks or like Josh Allen looks.
Matt Fitzpatrick looks more like he should be distributing 1099s for guys like that, and yet he is clearly one of the very few. That’s not only commendable but aspirational. And while the processes and systems he employs get 99 percent of the praise when it comes to Fitzpatrick — as they probably should — it’s his finger-to-ear-after-downing-a-four-time-major-champion swagger that I’ve become far more interested in.
I didn’t see it coming.
Maybe he didn’t either.
Bookmarking this illustration for 2027.
1. Less than a week after the placidness of the Masters and its no-phone policy, we were thrown right back into a tsunami of devices at the RBC Heritage.
It’s all pretty gross to me.
To be clear, I don’t hate phones. I hate any vessel that removes us from where are feet are at because I think when you lose presence, you lose humanity. And when you lose humanity, you … [gestures at the downfall of every great society in history].
But I’m probably overstating that.
Or not!
Who can say?!
2. I thought Rahm lighting Chapultepec on fire over the weekend was such an indictment of both that league and him as a player right now. This of course incensed the LIV bots, most of whom didn’t even understand what I was referencing.
Take a look.
Nobody has defended Rahm more than I have over the years. I think he’s generationally good (and still do). And I am willing to give grace for small sample sizes. Rahm may win Aronimink and mention this very newsletter in his post-tournament press conference!
However, there is a sadness to me that he is spending his time dog walking guys who aren’t on his planet, and the unintended consequence of that path has been an increasingly clear (?) struggle to maintain a sharp, competitive game at major championships.
That he would sandwich a T38 at the only tournament that has mattered to him so far with wins and runner-up finishes maybe says something about LIV and its lack of competitive players and challenging golf courses, but the longer this goes on, the more it says about Rahm himself.
Here are some interesting numbers over the last eight years (I threw out his first 18 months as a pro).
Rahm SG at the majors from 2018-2023: 2.41
Rahm SG at the majors from 2024-2026: 1.73
I don’t know specifically why Rahm has struggled at the majors since moving to LIV. You could talk me into any number of reasons. But he decidedly has struggled at the majors compared to his previous baseline.
(Even if you add back in his first 18 months on tour, he was at 2.07 SG per round at the majors so he’s still down about quarter stroke per major from that).
Again, congrats on all your money.
But Rahm used to conduct himself in general like Fitzpatrick did on Sunday at the RBC. He thought he was better than Rory (because a lot of the time he was). So let’s not treat one of the greats of the last 25 years with kid gloves.
His standard is way, way beyond what the standard should be for pretty much any men’s professional golfer not named “Scottie” or “Rory.”
I’m not sure there’s a better way to visually display Rory’s sustained excellence than to look at how he’s now hunting Tiger’s all-time record of weeks spent as a top 10 player in the world.
Given that Rory is guaranteed another year (or more?) inside the top 10 given where he’s at in the OWGR right now, he’s probably actually only 50 or 60 weeks from breaking this record and beginning to put distance between himself and Tiger.
I am not suggesting that Rory is on Tiger’s planet. Nobody is. I am suggesting, however, that Rory is having Phil’s longevity but as a better player than Phil probably ever was.
A lot of comps got made during the fallow period when Rory didn’t win any majors. Spieth, Day and even players like Rickie Fowler. Those seem almost comical now. The longer this goes on, the more obvious his place in history will become.
As Andy Roddick said in his podcast this week, “You can always make the shadow [of the people who came before you] a little bit smaller.”
We have entered that territory with Rory, which is as remarkable as it is enjoyable.
Shout out to this follower for the idea here.
Me, away from four kids for a day, resigned to shooting 91 while my friends grind on the range for the chance to shoot 89.
Scottie from Jan. 1 through RBC Heritage.
2025: 2.53
2026: 2.99
At this point last year, he went on to win six of his next 12 events, including two major championships. Is that going to happen this year? Absolutely not. The iron play is not nearly as sharp, he’s not as good from tee to green and on and on we could go.
There’s no way he’s going to rip off six of the next 12. Or even three of the next 12. Right?
But … what if it does?
Also … this is some sick, sick stuff.
• This piece on the PIF slashing its portfolio of sports investments does not bode well for LIV Golf.
• I thoroughly enjoyed this article on how the NYT has thrived in an era where it seems like media is not doing very well at all. The takeaway for Normal Sport is not, Be everything to everyone (like the Times) but rather, A trusted and good brand elevates everything else that you do.
There will be a lot to say (and a lot of tweets to sift through) in the months ahead as it relates to LIV. But a couple of things seem extremely clear following a tumultuous week.
1. The PIF is a WD (cash) from LIV 2027.
2. LIV is looking elsewhere for funding.
The latter point was accentuated by LIV CEO Scott O’Neil literally saying the following sentence out loud: "This notion of, 'Do you have to raise money?' Probably. This is business.” You can view the clip here. It wasn’t scrubbed like the one of O’Neil confirming that LIV is only funded through this season.
None of this means that LIV is going away, of course. Though they have ripped through $5 billion in less than four years — an amount of money they could have used to send four humans to the moon — with almost nothing to show for it, they could still find outside investment for their extravaganza in 2027.
However, they have a Bryson problem, and they are spending $100M monthly (!) even outside of solving their Bryson problem. So to continue down that path, LIV will have to unearth an investment entity that is either ...
1. Foolish or
2. Desperate or
3. Interested in something other than traditional business (i.e. the PIF) or
4. Some combination of these three.
Will that happen? Maybe. But it does seem unlikely that they would be able to find an investor (or investors) flush enough to help them through their nine-figure problems in a sustainable way. And if you lose Bryson (and then Rahm?), aren’t you just a bad facsimile of the European Tour?
None of this has been rational (obviously) and so when the irrational funder ejects, you are left with something nobody else (that is rational) is going to want to touch.
Also, this is a good recap (and there will be more) …
Some great ones from Twitter this week.
Bryson DeChambeau, podcaster.
Ah, this got me good.
So did this one.
I was recently reading David Pierce’s excellent newsletter — published by The Verge — and he wrote about Maria Popova, who writes the Marginalian.
Here’s what Pierce wrote about her.
Maria put out a book earlier this year, called Traversal, that is all about how people look at, think about, and reckon with the world around them.
David Pierce
This is almost exactly how I view writing Normal Sport. I don’t think of readers as people I’m speaking to as much as people I’m speaking with. I think of you, dear reader, as someone I am trying to internalize Matt Fitzpatrick’s career alongside. I think of you, dear reader, as someone I want to talk with about Bryson DeChambeau and his next five moves. I think of you, dear reader, as someone who is likely as compelled by the historical figure Rory cuts as I am.
That is fun. I think (hope) it engenders good community for everyone at Normal Sport and certainly it keeps me grounded in the (sometimes painfully obvious) truth that I do not know as much as I often think I do.
Thank you for reading our outrageous golf newsletter that is sometimes — but often barely — about golf and for reckoning with the golf world alongside us. As stated above, every edition is handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason. It is a joy for us to build and to publish it for you to read. We hope you love it.
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