Normal Sport is presented by Seed Golf this week. An Irish golf ball company presenting our coverage of a golf tournament started in Scotland, played this year in England and attended by an American (Jason) who currently lives in the Netherlands.
Sure, absolutely. Let’s do it.
Check Seed out right here.
Open week.
With all respect to the United States Masters — which I absolutely love and has played such a pivotal (and disproportionate) role in my career — the best week of the major season has arrived.
Related: Also the most normal.
Why?
It’s not just the coat hangers for me, although the coat hangers are amusing. If you didn’t catch it on Monday, the most recent major champion — like the best golfer in the world from a month ago — was swinging his club with a coat hanger in his hands on Monday at Birkdale.
One reader pointed out that he’s prepping for the wrong major prize.
But beyond that, what makes normal sport so normal sport is often the unpredictability of nature and the elements. There are innumerable examples.
And it is at The Open that these examples seem to most often disclose themselves. It is the least tamed, the most “see what she brings ya’ today, boys” of all the major venues. And so it leads to just the oddest (and often most amusing) adventures imaginable.
Every year. Every Open. I cannot wait.
Oh, one quick note before we get rolling: Our email provider — the good folks over at beehiiv — remind us every once in a while to tell you to check your promotions and spam folders and drag emails into primary plus mark messages as “not spam.” This (hopefully) benefits you and it definitely helps us. Thank you for enduring our email deliverability PSA.
Name drops today: Fred Ridley, Martin Del Potro, Tim Ferriss, Jude Bellingham and Young Tom Kim.
Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at Charlie Golf Co.
CGC founder, Tyler Johnson, recently posted a video of golf clubs he and his team have built toddler (and junior) golf bags for. They include Brookline, Winged Foot, The Park and Eastward Ho, among many others.
A sampling.
Why am I writing about this? Why does it matter?
Well, it matters because, yes, buying an individual golf bag from Charlie Golf Co. is a great way to support a business run by a great dude and golf sicko.
But also, if you run any kind of B2B operation — a golf shop, an organization that needs to provide cool client gifts, anything — you should get in touch with Tyler. He will make both the experience and product feel great.
And now, onto the news.
Birkdale bunkers presented by Seed
1. This was something co-host Hayden pointed out on our podcast last week, and I was thinking about it as Young Tom Kim (YTK) closed out his fourth (!) PGA Tour win on Sunday at the Ruh-Nay-Sonce Club.
The (relative) lack of variety in PGA Tour venues has shaped not only who the stars of the PGA Tour currently are but also how one becomes a star on the PGA Tour.
Extreme example: If every Tour event was played at Torrey Pines with the rough up, Bryson, Rory and Rahm would each have 50 wins. That scenario is not entirely indicative of the current lack of variety of courses and setups on the PGA Tour, but it’s also not that far off.
YTK winning the Scottish is a good example. YTK is never (I mean never) going to win a modern PGA Championship with its brawny setups and the length you need to contend.
But he has shown in recent years that he can absolutely contend on fast and firm tracks where an entirely different skillset is needed.
The conundrum here for organizations is that going to fast, firm golf courses often rewards “non stars” so why an organization want that? The reason for this is because “stars” were made on PGA Tour courses and setups that are less varied.
So it appears as if fast and firm identifies more of a random champion and makes for a lesser event, but the truth is that maybe if there was more variety in the courses the Tour goes to, guys like Tom Kim would be bigger stars because they would win more frequently.
One pathway to identifying winners (and thus stars) is not necessarily better than the other, but it’s worth acknowledging that they are different. Which I think is a truly interesting discussion when it comes to professional golf.
There are some guys — like Scottie and Rory — who would thrive no matter what the course setup was. But others need specific parameters to be great. That pro golf has mostly (mostly, not always!) in the modern era determined that those parameters should be to identify who can hit the ball the farthest is a bit of a bummer to me.
Which is part of the reason this stretch of golf in Europe is so refreshing.
2. Almost everyone watching the Wimbledon final: Let’s talk about the prince’s beard.
You, golf sicko and major championship aficionado: Let’s talk about the chairman’s hair.
3. We just dropped some new gear in our pro shop.
It’s awesome — much of it is built by Normal Sport partner, Holderness and Bourne — and buying some is a great way to support our business. Click on any of the photos below for a link to that product in our store.
   |   |
4. YTK dished some tremendous lines he heard from Scottie great perspective on life after winning the Scottish on Sunday.
I mentioned this earlier, just moments ago, but I think one of the biggest things is that sometimes all the work that you put in might not get rewarded.
YTK
I feel like the leap from childhood to adulthood can be marked by the first time we all learned that sentence above.
It's very easy to think that, “Oh, you know, you put in 12 hours every day, and then you should be playing well.”
It didn't really work like that. You really treat life as each moment. Just be fully in the present … when you are practicing, when you are working, you're not really thinking about what could come and what has happened before. You're fully focused on, “Okay, what am I trying to do today and how can I get better?”
I think you live more towards the person that you're becoming when you're working that hard instead of … when you win, it's flashy and all that stuff. But I'm more proud of the moments I didn't give up and I had doubts and all those things. Instead of going the other way, I kept going.
I'm more proud of that than holding a trophy.
YTK
This is so wise and great.
Enjoy the writing of the words, not the number of retweets they may (or may not) bring you. Enjoy the building of the backyard office, not the completed photo you can put on IG. Enjoy the pitching of the ball, not the plausibility that you start shooting 77 instead of 84.
These are difficult paths that are not well trodden.
Life is not a math problem. If it was, then Bryson would have 15 majors.
But that is kind of the beauty of it, too.
The idea that true success is about putting in the work but not holding too tightly to whatever the outcome ends up being. About delighting in the process. We are conditioned at almost every turn to only consider the ending. But the truth is that the ending is 0.1 percent of the total time spent on the thing. If that’s all that counts, then our work (and thus our lives) may be pure misery indeed.
5. Things Rory McIlroy did last week.
Finished T7 at a sweet event with a strong field.
It is so easy to visit the pits after a poorly struck shot of my own. But if that is what this cruel and at times tyrannical game does to one of the 10 best players who has ever lived, then perhaps grace upon grace is necessary for our own beastly attempts at taming this untamable thing.
Saw this on Monday and thought, “Oh so just … golf.”
6. Sinner won Wimbledon on Sunday, which means that since Federer won his first slam in 2003, 84 of the 92 slams have been by one of the following.
Federer
Nadal
Djokovic
Sinner
Alcaraz
Murray
Wawrinka
Sprinkle in Zverev, Medvedev, Thiem, Cilic, Del Potro, Gaudio, Safin and Roddick, and you have all 92 won by 15 guys (aside: if you won a slam in the middle of the Fed-Nadal-Djokovic era, it should count as two or three).
In that same window of time, 54 different golfers have won golf majors.
I’m not totally sure which system I prefer, but I think it’s probably golf. Probably. It makes the majors superstars do go on to win feel more special and memorable.
Also — and my Venn diagram of intrigue here might be just one person (me!) — but for the first time since 2012, there’s a real chance that we could get eight different champions at the eight men’s golf and tennis majors.
This probably won’t happen because Sinner, Zverev or Alcaraz (?) will probably win the U.S. Open. But the fact that it’s still on the table with just two events to go is pretty great.
7. Things that have rocked me from the World Cup.
How bad the U.S. was against Belgium.
How good France is against everyone.
How likable Haaland is.
How unlikable Ronaldo is.
An entire stadium of crazies (including Sir Becks) screaming the lyrics to Hey, Jude at the top of their lungs.
One of the most incredible videos I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure why, not sure what it is about that particular video and moment, but it is so captivating, so … good that you just want it to last forever.
I think I’m in on England?
8. This quote is awesome. Tim Ferriss noted it recently.
Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up. But the writing is a way of not allowing those things to destroy you.
John Edgar Wideman
I believe that good art is almost always an attempt to push back a darkness that seems to naturally envelop the world. That is probably a silly and overzealous thing to say about a … golf newsletter.
But on the other hand, if we’re not gathered here to discuss how life (and golf) makes us feel and what it makes us think and how we are trying to push back against all of the darkness by writing and talking and sharing our experiences, then what is the point of even gathering at all?
Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. It allows us to do things like attend The Open at Birkdale this week, which is where Jason is headed on Tuesday. It never gets old for us. Never becomes rote. The writing (and illustrating) is a way of pushing back the dark and celebrating the good. What a gift to get to do that for a living.
Normal Sport is presented by Seed Golf this week. An Irish golf ball company presenting our coverage of a golf tournament started in Scotland, played this year in England and attended by an American (Jason) who currently lives in the Netherlands.
Sure, absolutely. Let’s do it.
Check Seed out right here.
Open week.
With all respect to the United States Masters — which I absolutely love and has played such a pivotal (and disproportionate) role in my career — the best week of the major season has arrived.
Related: Also the most normal.
Why?
It’s not just the coat hangers for me, although the coat hangers are amusing. If you didn’t catch it on Monday, the most recent major champion — like the best golfer in the world from a month ago — was swinging his club with a coat hanger in his hands on Monday at Birkdale.
One reader pointed out that he’s prepping for the wrong major prize.
But beyond that, what makes normal sport so normal sport is often the unpredictability of nature and the elements. There are innumerable examples.
And it is at The Open that these examples seem to most often disclose themselves. It is the least tamed, the most “see what she brings ya’ today, boys” of all the major venues. And so it leads to just the oddest (and often most amusing) adventures imaginable.
Every year. Every Open. I cannot wait.
Oh, one quick note before we get rolling: Our email provider — the good folks over at beehiiv — remind us every once in a while to tell you to check your promotions and spam folders and drag emails into primary plus mark messages as “not spam.” This (hopefully) benefits you and it definitely helps us. Thank you for enduring our email deliverability PSA.
Name drops today: Fred Ridley, Martin Del Potro, Tim Ferriss, Jude Bellingham and Young Tom Kim.
Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at Charlie Golf Co.
CGC founder, Tyler Johnson, recently posted a video of golf clubs he and his team have built toddler (and junior) golf bags for. They include Brookline, Winged Foot, The Park and Eastward Ho, among many others.
A sampling.
Why am I writing about this? Why does it matter?
Well, it matters because, yes, buying an individual golf bag from Charlie Golf Co. is a great way to support a business run by a great dude and golf sicko.
But also, if you run any kind of B2B operation — a golf shop, an organization that needs to provide cool client gifts, anything — you should get in touch with Tyler. He will make both the experience and product feel great.
And now, onto the news.
Birkdale bunkers presented by Seed
1. This was something co-host Hayden pointed out on our podcast last week, and I was thinking about it as Young Tom Kim (YTK) closed out his fourth (!) PGA Tour win on Sunday at the Ruh-Nay-Sonce Club.
The (relative) lack of variety in PGA Tour venues has shaped not only who the stars of the PGA Tour currently are but also how one becomes a star on the PGA Tour.
Extreme example: If every Tour event was played at Torrey Pines with the rough up, Bryson, Rory and Rahm would each have 50 wins. That scenario is not entirely indicative of the current lack of variety of courses and setups on the PGA Tour, but it’s also not that far off.
YTK winning the Scottish is a good example. YTK is never (I mean never) going to win a modern PGA Championship with its brawny setups and the length you need to contend.
But he has shown in recent years that he can absolutely contend on fast and firm tracks where an entirely different skillset is needed.
The conundrum here for organizations is that going to fast, firm golf courses often rewards “non stars” so why an organization want that? The reason for this is because “stars” were made on PGA Tour courses and setups that are less varied.
So it appears as if fast and firm identifies more of a random champion and makes for a lesser event, but the truth is that maybe if there was more variety in the courses the Tour goes to, guys like Tom Kim would be bigger stars because they would win more frequently.
One pathway to identifying winners (and thus stars) is not necessarily better than the other, but it’s worth acknowledging that they are different. Which I think is a truly interesting discussion when it comes to professional golf.
There are some guys — like Scottie and Rory — who would thrive no matter what the course setup was. But others need specific parameters to be great. That pro golf has mostly (mostly, not always!) in the modern era determined that those parameters should be to identify who can hit the ball the farthest is a bit of a bummer to me.
Which is part of the reason this stretch of golf in Europe is so refreshing.
2. Almost everyone watching the Wimbledon final: Let’s talk about the prince’s beard.
You, golf sicko and major championship aficionado: Let’s talk about the chairman’s hair.
3. We just dropped some new gear in our pro shop.
It’s awesome — much of it is built by Normal Sport partner, Holderness and Bourne — and buying some is a great way to support our business. Click on any of the photos below for a link to that product in our store.
| |
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes thoughts on Wimbledon, Jude and the torment of golf.
By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
• An invite to our Slack channel where we watch and talk golf together.
• A free digital copy of our Rory book.
• 15% off to our pro shop.
.svg){kind=spacer}
