This is, sadly, the conclusion of our Open Championship coverage for the year (although this will be a two-parter!). All of it was presented by Seed Golf, which is a business you should absolutely check out.
They make the best golf ball you’ve probably never heard of and are the rare (only?) golf ball manufacturer that is actively pro rollback (warms the heart!). Thanks to them for their support.
If you enjoy Normal Sport you should take a look at what they’re doing.
The Open is over. Major championship season is over. Congrats to Splash pool winner — and Normal Club member — Bob P., who took home $750 for the following lineup (taking Jackson Suber in that last slot is truly insane).
We gave away over $7,000 in fantasy prizes to Normal Club members this year. It was all free to enter for our members — membership is $82/year — and if you want to play next time around, you can join right here.
Also, congrats to Logan M. for winning our OMNI giveaway. We’ll be doing another one of these later this year for a four-night giveaway at one of OMNI’s awesome resorts.
Name drops today: Rick Gehman, Kevin Kisner, Butch Jones and Jordan Spieth.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Garmin.
I recently took my sons (ages 12 and 9) to play a five-hole short (tiny) course on a hot Saturday morning here in Dallas. I played a worst ball score with two balls (shout out to the Cat!), and the 12 year old played his own ball.
We went 15 holes and were tied. So we went extras, score for score on every hole, until we came to the 21st hole, where I scrambled for bogey, and he made par and went full Gary Woodland celebration on me.
I say all this not because you care about the worst ball game I played with my 12 year old recently, but to tell you about the gear Garmin outfitted him with while we were playing. Their lovely J1 watches are a facsimile — the kids version — of my Garmin S70.
And while it wasn’t necessarily needed from a down and distance perspective on the tiny course we were playing — other than to track their step counts, which they are obsessed with — they’re going to be using the GPS for distance to the pin this weekend when we play some mountain golf in Colorado. Specifically, this part will be nice .
With forward tee locations down the fairway on more than 43,000 golf courses, every hole is scaled to the golfer’s ability.
Garmin
There’s also a pace of play timer, which is much needed given that my 12 year old plays at a “I’m trying to qualify for the U.S. Junior Am” pace currently. Will report back on how much they enjoy them after our Colorado trip.
And now, onto the news.
Shout out to Lawrence D. for tipping us off to Fox's biscuits. It was meant to be.
1. On paper, the four major champions of 2026 was not a great list. A good one, maybe, but certainly not a great one.
Rory
Rai
Wyndham
Fox
Obviously Rory’s Masters win plays in any year of any era. I think you could also argue that Wyndham’s U.S. Open makes him that much more interesting as a player and historical golf figure. One-major guys are everywhere. Two-major guys with both of those majors being U.S. Opens? That’s a different stratosphere.
Since World War I ended, only 21 guys have won multiple U.S. Opens in their careers, and a lot of them are one-name players: Tiger, Hogan, Jack etc. Throw Wyndham on that list. You may not like it, but it’s at least pretty intriguing.
This leaves the PGA and the Open Championship. I thought what Soly said on Sunday evening on the NLU pod was smart. I’m paraphrasing, but basically It makes sense that Ryan Fox is an Open winner, but it still doesn’t make sense that Aaron Rai is a PGA Championship winner.
I concur. Although, you can argue (and I did argue) that that PGA Championship represented a hopefulness not really seen in other (especially individual) sports.
Regardless, Fox’s Open win does make more sense. It fits with what I know about him and what I believe to be true about The Open. Which is that you don’t have to be a Trackman god to win it. In fact, optimization might actively work against you because optimization presumes consistently positive outcomes following proper inputs. The Open delivers anything but consistently positive outcomes.
This event is perhaps a last bastion of art in a game that is becoming much more scientific (and thus more sterile?). The perception of this tournament is an ode to everything we used to believe about sports: That being a dog matters, that clutch is a real thing and that artists win the day.
Ryan Fox winning it reinforces these ideations, which I have to say is a fun outcome for those of us who are (maybe irrationally) clinging to all of those notions from a different era of both golf and sport. Ryan Fox winning The Open is a point in the ledger that art is not dead yet.
2. The votes have been tabulated for one of my favorite fake awards: Aggregate major champion of the year. Here are the final results on the 14 golfers who made the cut at all four majors.
T1. Scheffler (-20)
T1. Burns (-20)
3. Xander (-13)
T4. Cam Young (-11)
T4. Rory (-11)
6. Ludvig (-10)
7. Morikawa (-6)
8. Gotterup (E)
T9. Griffin (+3)
T9. JT (+3)
11. Hideki (+5)
12. Conners (+10)
13. Kitayama (+12)
14. Brennan (+18)
Some thoughts.
• One of these things is not like the other ones!
• Only one player on this list actually won a major. Golf is stupid in that it usually rewards a high level of consistency in the long run but often doesn’t in the short run.
• Total score of the other three majors winners: Rai (E in 14 rounds), Clark (+1 in 12 rounds) and Fox (+1 in 14 rounds).
• The name that really stands out on here to me is Gotterup. I said this after the Deere, but I haven’t really been a believer. I am now. He’s maybe not quite an artist but definitely part of the artist in training program. Stud player, hits the shots. Excited to see how it evolves for him next year.
• Which player on this list who hasn’t won a major would you be most surprised if he never wins one? Several contenders, but probably Ludvig, right?
Or maybe not.
• I do hope this is a stepping stone for Burns. It seems like it is, right (see below)?
But also, better players than Burns have had similar seasons to this and then never gone on to win a major (or in some cases, really sniffed one again).
• Scottie: Best major season of anyone on the planet. Everyone else on the planet: What’s wrong with this dude?
Expectations, baby. Difficult to manage. Impossible to fulfill.
• My guy, Rick Gehman, had some pretty awesome Scottie stats in his most recent newsletter. Here are Scottie’s raw SG totals by season at the majors since 2022.
2026: +40.9 (0 major wins)
2025: +56.2 (2)
2024: +43.0 (1)
2023: +44.8 (0)
2022: +38.6 (1)
Rick’s point is staggering.
You’re reading that right. Scheffler’ 2026 was his worst major championship season in the last four years. It was also the best of any player in the world.
Rick Gehman
That is truly crazy.
• Someone pointed this out on Twitter, but did you ever think one single time this year that Xander was going to win a major championship? He’s like American Corey Conners but also somehow has two majors.
3. I watched the third round of The Open on Saturday with my dad, who was giving me a hard time about picking Cam Young not to win. I told him this is the whole point. Best case is the guy you pick not to win finishes second. That’s the whole deal!
In all seriousness, though, I absolutely loved this quote from Cam on Sunday after he went for it all out of the bunker on 18.
I was trying to hit it on the green, to be honest. I felt like I could. I really felt like 10 had a good chance to win the golf tournament.
It was just trying to win the golf tournament.
Cam Young
This sounds like an obvious thing and maybe it is. But I also think scenarios and quotes like this one are the reason that with Cam, close calls feel like they’re portending future major championships.
Juuuuust a little early on the slide.
Whereas with other guys you find yourself asking, Do you have that closing mentality or are you just excellent at golf and finish in the top 10 all the time?
Like, I feel much more confident that Cam will one than I do Burns or Ludvig, even though I also feel confident about both of those guys.
4. As I think most people are probably aware of by now, I got into it with Kevin Kisner on Sunday over something he said as the leaders started teeing off that I thought was ridiculous. On air, he said if he was Burns he would take a 70 to finish at -10, and that if he was Burns he would feel confident -10 wins.
Then 15 minutes later, he said that Bryson — who was at -6 — was “just a little too far back.” Couple of things here (also, I talked about it on our Sunday pod).
• I thought this was a ridiculous statement because a two-time major winner being four back of the perceived winning score does not seem like it’s too far back. I thought Kisner forgot he had just said -10 would be enough to win.
• I thought these statements were incongruent with each other and jumped on the opportunity to get after someone I sometimes feel isn’t super prepared for his job.
• This was an extension of his Bryson gaffe the day before where he did not take a stance and sort of acted like he was just hearing about it for the first time (this is obviously not true, but it’s how it sounded).
• I got out over my skis on the score thing, and shouldn’t have said anything. Kisner ended up being correct about it, and his reasoning — which he noted earlier but not when talking about Bryson — was that the course was going to play harder as the day went on. That was true and ended up being correct.
• The attention all of this got — with Kisner tweeting back at me during the broadcast — pretty much ruined my Sunday.
• I felt quite lousy about the whole thing for most of the final round and noted afterward that I was wrong. This happens a couple of times a year and is just collateral from being active on social. Just part of the deal.
• I stand by the Bryson take from Saturday and believe that was a fine and right thing to ask an analyst to give more on. This one was just me trying to pile on a bit. I don’t do that often (or I try not to), and it was unfair to the situation.
• The impetus for doing so in the first place was that I feel like … I don’t know how to put this really, but I feel like a lot of us obsess over this stuff. And sometimes it feels like Kiz doesn’t. I’m probably being unfair to him because I don’t see how he prepares or anything like that, but I guess it just comes off like that sometimes on air, and I took a shot at that idea with my tweet.
• The bigger point that I wrestle with as someone who preaches kindness but is also in the analysis business is how to let those two coexist. One is always vying for a greater piece of the pie, but you don’t want either to overtake the other. Can you be both nice and kind but also a good and smart and sometimes cutting analyst of the players and the game? I think so? But it’s a difficult line to walk. One I fail at often (as seen above).
• I should probably refrain from parsing through the minutia of someone who says a lot of words for a living unless I want someone to parse through the minutia of the words I say for a living as well.
5. We talked about this on our Sunday pod a bit, but the Tommy adventure last week was inspirational. Just a world class life experience.
It was almost like he was playing an entirely different tournament than everyone else. As noted by the former object of my immense fandom, Jordy Spieth.
I hate going full Butch Jones “Championship of Life” because winning does matter. But like Rory said before the tournament started …
If you do that stuff enough times, hopefully you get yourself in a position to win. Then from there, yeah, you can start to think about winning the tournament. But if all you're thinking about is winning and results, you're playing the wrong game.
Rory McIlroy
Would Tommy winning have been amazing? Of course! But it did strangely feel like a week in which it mattered less, which is odd because with Tommy — who probably hasn’t won as much as we all thought he would — the winning portion seems to matter a lot in terms of the way we talk about him.
This week felt like a hall pass for him on winning. A bonus. Gravy. If it happens, it’s a movie. If it doesn’t, it’s still probably a documentary.
Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. It allows us to do things like attend The Open at Birkdale and other events like it. Truly a dream, and we always hope it comes across in our writing and our illustrating.
This is, sadly, the conclusion of our Open Championship coverage for the year (although this will be a two-parter!). All of it was presented by Seed Golf, which is a business you should absolutely check out.
They make the best golf ball you’ve probably never heard of and are the rare (only?) golf ball manufacturer that is actively pro rollback (warms the heart!). Thanks to them for their support.
If you enjoy Normal Sport you should take a look at what they’re doing.
The Open is over. Major championship season is over. Congrats to Splash pool winner — and Normal Club member — Bob P., who took home $750 for the following lineup (taking Jackson Suber in that last slot is truly insane).
We gave away over $7,000 in fantasy prizes to Normal Club members this year. It was all free to enter for our members — membership is $82/year — and if you want to play next time around, you can join right here.
Also, congrats to Logan M. for winning our OMNI giveaway. We’ll be doing another one of these later this year for a four-night giveaway at one of OMNI’s awesome resorts.
Name drops today: Rick Gehman, Kevin Kisner, Butch Jones and Jordan Spieth.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Garmin.
I recently took my sons (ages 12 and 9) to play a five-hole short (tiny) course on a hot Saturday morning here in Dallas. I played a worst ball score with two balls (shout out to the Cat!), and the 12 year old played his own ball.
We went 15 holes and were tied. So we went extras, score for score on every hole, until we came to the 21st hole, where I scrambled for bogey, and he made par and went full Gary Woodland celebration on me.
I say all this not because you care about the worst ball game I played with my 12 year old recently, but to tell you about the gear Garmin outfitted him with while we were playing. Their lovely J1 watches are a facsimile — the kids version — of my Garmin S70.
And while it wasn’t necessarily needed from a down and distance perspective on the tiny course we were playing — other than to track their step counts, which they are obsessed with — they’re going to be using the GPS for distance to the pin this weekend when we play some mountain golf in Colorado. Specifically, this part will be nice .
With forward tee locations down the fairway on more than 43,000 golf courses, every hole is scaled to the golfer’s ability.
Garmin
There’s also a pace of play timer, which is much needed given that my 12 year old plays at a “I’m trying to qualify for the U.S. Junior Am” pace currently. Will report back on how much they enjoy them after our Colorado trip.
And now, onto the news.
Shout out to Lawrence D. for tipping us off to Fox's biscuits. It was meant to be.
1. On paper, the four major champions of 2026 was not a great list. A good one, maybe, but certainly not a great one.
Rory
Rai
Wyndham
Fox
Obviously Rory’s Masters win plays in any year of any era. I think you could also argue that Wyndham’s U.S. Open makes him that much more interesting as a player and historical golf figure. One-major guys are everywhere. Two-major guys with both of those majors being U.S. Opens? That’s a different stratosphere.
Since World War I ended, only 21 guys have won multiple U.S. Opens in their careers, and a lot of them are one-name players: Tiger, Hogan, Jack etc. Throw Wyndham on that list. You may not like it, but it’s at least pretty intriguing.
This leaves the PGA and the Open Championship. I thought what Soly said on Sunday evening on the NLU pod was smart. I’m paraphrasing, but basically It makes sense that Ryan Fox is an Open winner, but it still doesn’t make sense that Aaron Rai is a PGA Championship winner.
I concur. Although, you can argue (and I did argue) that that PGA Championship represented a hopefulness not really seen in other (especially individual) sports.
Regardless, Fox’s Open win does make more sense. It fits with what I know about him and what I believe to be true about The Open. Which is that you don’t have to be a Trackman god to win it. In fact, optimization might actively work against you because optimization presumes consistently positive outcomes following proper inputs. The Open delivers anything but consistently positive outcomes.
This event is perhaps a last bastion of art in a game that is becoming much more scientific (and thus more sterile?). The perception of this tournament is an ode to everything we used to believe about sports: That being a dog matters, that clutch is a real thing and that artists win the day.
Ryan Fox winning it reinforces these ideations, which I have to say is a fun outcome for those of us who are (maybe irrationally) clinging to all of those notions from a different era of both golf and sport. Ryan Fox winning The Open is a point in the ledger that art is not dead yet.
2. The votes have been tabulated for one of my favorite fake awards: Aggregate major champion of the year. Here are the final results on the 14 golfers who made the cut at all four majors.
T1. Scheffler (-20)
T1. Burns (-20)
3. Xander (-13)
T4. Cam Young (-11)
T4. Rory (-11)
6. Ludvig (-10)
7. Morikawa (-6)
8. Gotterup (E)
T9. Griffin (+3)
T9. JT (+3)
11. Hideki (+5)
12. Conners (+10)
13. Kitayama (+12)
14. Brennan (+18)
Some thoughts.
• One of these things is not like the other ones!
• Only one player on this list actually won a major. Golf is stupid in that it usually rewards a high level of consistency in the long run but often doesn’t in the short run.
• Total score of the other three majors winners: Rai (E in 14 rounds), Clark (+1 in 12 rounds) and Fox (+1 in 14 rounds).
• The name that really stands out on here to me is Gotterup. I said this after the Deere, but I haven’t really been a believer. I am now. He’s maybe not quite an artist but definitely part of the artist in training program. Stud player, hits the shots. Excited to see how it evolves for him next year.
• Which player on this list who hasn’t won a major would you be most surprised if he never wins one? Several contenders, but probably Ludvig, right?
Or maybe not.
• I do hope this is a stepping stone for Burns. It seems like it is, right (see below)?
But also, better players than Burns have had similar seasons to this and then never gone on to win a major (or in some cases, really sniffed one again).
• Scottie: Best major season of anyone on the planet. Everyone else on the planet: What’s wrong with this dude?
Expectations, baby. Difficult to manage. Impossible to fulfill.
• My guy, Rick Gehman, had some pretty awesome Scottie stats in his most recent newsletter. Here are Scottie’s raw SG totals by season at the majors since 2022.
2026: +40.9 (0 major wins)
2025: +56.2 (2)
2024: +43.0 (1)
2023: +44.8 (0)
2022: +38.6 (1)
Rick’s point is staggering.
You’re reading that right. Scheffler’ 2026 was his worst major championship season in the last four years. It was also the best of any player in the world.
Rick Gehman
That is truly crazy.
• Someone pointed this out on Twitter, but did you ever think one single time this year that Xander was going to win a major championship? He’s like American Corey Conners but also somehow has two majors.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes thoughts on my Kisner brouhaha, Tommy’s dream week and why I’m buying Cam Young stock.
By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
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