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Issue No. 205 | May 22, 2025 | Read Online
Hello,
I was at a kindergarten graduation today (don’t get me started …), and I saw a gentleman with a name tag on that said “Travis Rahm.” Clear as day.
Perhaps this is a common name (?), but my broken brain was dangerously close to asking this man, who was just trying to enjoy his grandson’s school performance, if he was a distant relative of the esteemed captain of Legion XIII.
Can’t even imagine the look he would have given me.
Speaking of getting looks! Dialing up your game with a Meridian putter this summer will do just that. And sure, you could purchase your next putter from a Big Putter Company, but wouldn’t you rather purchase from the folks who are obsessing over every facet of the club?
The folks who talk about things like this?
I'll see putter designs or I'll see putter looks, and I'll go, “That'd be pretty cool if you could just tweak that.” Even sometimes on TV, I'll see a model. We're looking at the Key West, we're looking at modifying the flanges. Instead of it being like a fang, maybe we round the edge a little bit.
You'd be surprised at how much a little change can impact the way the putter looks and the way the putter sets up. I would probably say inspiration comes from just watching other people putt. Even sometimes like those worm cams on TV, you're like, “Oh, if you just change that.”
Ryan Duffey | Founder of Meridian Putters
I love talking to and observing obsessives, and the founder of a club manufacturer studying worm cam on a broadcast absolutely qualifies. The putters are gorgeous, they roll the ball beautifully and they are built by someone who is just as deep into the game as you are.
Let’s get right to it.
1. I wrote earlier this week about Scottie possibly winning six, seven or even 10 majors. This feels stupid, even as I say it or write it down. And yet, I don’t think it is?
But why? Why is it not stupid? Why might it actually be reasonable? I didn’t build that case very well on Tuesday so here’s a better version of it. Five reasons.
1. He has been playing at a 3 SG level for two and a half years.
2. Nobody — not Brooks, not Rory, not Spieth — has sustained 3 SG for this long.
3. Here is proof from everyone’s best 150-round stretches.
It shows Scottie peaking last summer, but that 3.03 number is the exact same number he’s been at since Jan. 1, 2023.
4. Scottie’s worldview and disposition are perfect for a 15-year run.
5. This chart (via Data Golf).
It shows that Scottie — over the course of his six-year career — has, at the majors, outperformed his own career baseline of 2.0 SG.
Up and to the right is where you want to be here. The further right you are, the better you are at golf. The further up you are, the better you are at majors. That’s a sobering triangle to the right of Tom Watson. Twenty three majors between them, and Scottie’s not even 30 yet. He is only moving further up and further to the right.
So that’s the case, and it’s a great one.
As airtight as we’ve seen over the last decade and a half. Unexpected, maybe, because Scottie wasn’t quite the wunderkind Rory was, and he didn’t win as early as Spieth did (see below). But the foundation seems incredibly strong, and I am talking myself into irresponsible things.
2. Here’s a look at how Scottie started his career compared to his contemporaries. This is first 70 PGA Tour starts.
Scottie won 0 times. None! I remember specifically being on a podcast after the 2021 Houston Open, saying, “Man, I don’t know, I just don’t know if he’s a winner. He’s obviously very good, but I don’t know he can get it done!” I think I compared him to Sungjae Im or maybe Rickie. 😂
I looked up Jack (~12 of his first 70) and Arnie (~5 of his first 70), and it seems very unusual that someone would start their career 0 for 70 and then go on to become one of the 10-15 best players of all time.
But that is exactly where we’re at for reasons I’m not completely sure of.
Here are all those players’ next 70 starts, by the way, which Scottie just completed. Looks a little bit different.
3. Here’s how you guys voted on the poll on Tuesday when I asked how many majors Scottie was going to end up with. A reasonable crew!
I don’t know that I’m ready to get an official prediction on the book, but after giving it some thought, I’ll say Scottie ends up with seven majors. I still think it’s smarter to bet on Rory or Koepka winning more than him (Rory more than Koepka) just because a two-major lead is DJ’s whole career, but I think seven is actually not unreasonable and that anything beyond that would be pretty outrageous in this era.
The part that should concern everyone is two-fold.
1. He’s not exactly squeaking out these wins at the end of the tournament.
2. He’s a 0.00 putter at majors since Jan. 1, 2022 and has won three of them.
4. Another newsletter, another poll.
Who ends their career with the most majors?
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Some (actual) Rahm thoughts.
The best Scottie stat.
Some life truth from Alex Noren.
If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.
If you are, keep reading!
Welcome to the members-only portion of today’s newsletter. I hope you both enjoy it and find it to be valuable to your golf and/or personal life.
4. I loved having Rahm back in the mix at the PGA. Loved it! I think he is historically insanely underrated, and this should be proof.
Since the month he turned pro in 2016, nobody in the world has been better at golf (although give Scottie another few months, and he will probably catch him).
I also loved what he said after finishing 5-5-6 to drop from leading the tournament to T8.
God, it's been a while since I had that much fun on a golf course, 15 holes. Even the first seven the day where I was swinging well and things weren't happening, but I kept myself in and made the pars that I needed and played really good golf from the 8th to the 15th.
Jon Rahm | 2025 PGA
Can confirm!
My favorite mini moment of Rahm’s week was when he broke into a jog off the 14th on Sunday. He’d just gotten a right kick on his drive when he needed a left, but it wasn’t one of those ironic “I think he may kill someone” laughs.
It was a smile that said, Dude, this is what I play for!
It had been a while.
And if those putts on 14 and 15 go differently, maybe this is a different conversation. But I respected the hell out of him for going for it over the last three holes.
He has no FedEx Cup points to protect, but even still, there aren’t a ton of guys who would truly go for the win and rip at that back left pin on 17 in that situation. They would say they would, but the actual list is pretty short.
Rahm only cares about winning majors, and his last three holes showed it.
He also reminded us why it’s important that he’s in the conversation. The Mt. Rushmore of talkers in men’s pro golf right now is probably Rory-Homa-Rahm-Scheffler (I’m sure I’m forgetting someone), and he was awesome.
I always like to go back a little bit on something that Charles Barkley likes to remind basketball players all the time. Like, I play golf for a living. It's incredible. Am I embarrassed a little bit about how I finished today? Yeah. But I just need to get over it, get over myself. It's not the end of the world. It's not like I'm a doctor or a first responder, where somebody if they have a bad day, truly bad things happen.
I'll get over it. I'll move on. Again, there's a lot more positive than negative to think about this week. I'm really happy I put myself in position and hopefully learn from this and give it another go in the U.S. Open.
Jon Rahm | 2025 PGA
Last thing on Rahm, patting myself on my back for this Scottie call at the Whistling Straits Ryder Cup … that I was completely joking about.
6. Two amazing Scheffler quotes.
Here’s the first, about when he wept before the final round of the 2022 Masters.
If I go to what I was feeling Sunday morning before the Masters in '22, three months before that tournament, I had just won my first tournament on the PGA Tour. Won my first tournament in February, and all of a sudden, I've got a three-shot lead going into Masters Sunday as the No. 1 player in the world.
It's one of those deals where my wife and I were sitting there, like how did we get to this point? What's gone on in the last couple years of our life that kind of put us here? I'm just not sure if we were ready for all that it entailed. It's a different lifestyle coming out here and playing now than it was for me four or five years ago.
Scottie | 2025 PGA
It’s easy to forget. Up to February of 2022, he was Davis Riley or Harris English or whoever you want to throw in that bucket. Great amateur career but hadn’t done a lot as a pro. And a lot of guys have great amateur careers.
You could see something coming, but certainly not this.
Fast forward three months, and he’s leading the Masters after 54 holes. That must have been so unnerving, so jarring, so difficult to grapple with mentally and emotionally.
7. Here’s the other quote.
When I think about the game of golf, my favorite thing to do in golf is probably … When I can be by myself and I can just practice, it's one of the most fun things for me. It's so peaceful, and I love the pursuit of trying to figure something out. That's what I love about this game.
I feel like you're always battling yourself, and you're always trying to figure things out. And you're never going to perfect it. I can be kind of a crazy person sometimes when it comes to putting my mind to something.
In golf, there's always something you can figure out, there's always something you can do better. It's a great challenge, and it's a lot of fun.
Scottie | 2025 PGA
One of my good friends went to a breakfast hosted by Clayton Kershaw recently. His message was simple, and I believe it wholeheartedly: The most important thing in youth sports is whether your kid loves the game. If they don’t love it, it’s going to be difficult to find low-level success (high school or maybe a bit beyond), much less high-level success.
The top pros? Go look at the top 10 in Data Golf or the OWGR or wherever, they all love it. Love it. They all take on the Djokovic quote that I cannot get enough of.
“I like hitting the tennis ball.” It seems so reductive and possibly even stupid that this sentence would explain one of the best tennis players in history (and also one of the best golfers), but I think it’s true. Not everyone in pro golf loves it the way Scottie does.
This union of deftness and desire and disposition is unassailable and the reason he’s probably going to be talked about among Watson and Palmer and Snead.
8. Honestly … one of the great tweets of our time.
And here are a couple of others.
9. Here’s a stat: Scottie has three missed cuts since Jan. 1, 2022 and also three major championship wins. What?
Missed cuts
2022 PGA
2022 Scottish Open
2022 St. Jude
Major championships
2022 Masters
2024 Masters
2025 PGA
That’s right, since September 2022, he has been arrested more times than he has missed a cut at a professional golf tournament.
10. This Alex Noren clip was pretty incredible. You should absolutely watch it. He drops a lot of truth, but the money quote is here, and it reflects the Djokovic quote above.
I just want to be good at hitting a ball and be better than all the guys I play with.
Alex Noren
He goes on to say that he will “never be happy” with his career and that he’s “not sad about [that].”
“Golf is amazing. It’s an amazing sport. I’m just happy to play golf.”
This idea — that you know you will never be happy with your career because perfection is impossible and that you’re not upset or sad or frustrated about that — is worthy of emulation. Because I think it gets at the fundamental life truth that nothing we are pursuing will, once we catch it, satisfy us.
That is the wisdom of someone who has lived a little bit of life and the acceptance of someone who has realized that the best and most enjoyable part is the, as Scottie said above, “trying to figure something out” as you go.
Do you enjoy hitting the ball?
Thank you for reading until the end.
You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a newsletter about golf that is 2,417 words (!!) long, and we are grateful for your support of this business.
Issue No. 205 | May 22, 2025 | Read Online
Hello,
I was at a kindergarten graduation today (don’t get me started …), and I saw a gentleman with a name tag on that said “Travis Rahm.” Clear as day.
Perhaps this is a common name (?), but my broken brain was dangerously close to asking this man, who was just trying to enjoy his grandson’s school performance, if he was a distant relative of the esteemed captain of Legion XIII.
Can’t even imagine the look he would have given me.
Speaking of getting looks! Dialing up your game with a Meridian putter this summer will do just that. And sure, you could purchase your next putter from a Big Putter Company, but wouldn’t you rather purchase from the folks who are obsessing over every facet of the club?
The folks who talk about things like this?
I'll see putter designs or I'll see putter looks, and I'll go, “That'd be pretty cool if you could just tweak that.” Even sometimes on TV, I'll see a model. We're looking at the Key West, we're looking at modifying the flanges. Instead of it being like a fang, maybe we round the edge a little bit.
You'd be surprised at how much a little change can impact the way the putter looks and the way the putter sets up. I would probably say inspiration comes from just watching other people putt. Even sometimes like those worm cams on TV, you're like, “Oh, if you just change that.”
Ryan Duffey | Founder of Meridian Putters
I love talking to and observing obsessives, and the founder of a club manufacturer studying worm cam on a broadcast absolutely qualifies. The putters are gorgeous, they roll the ball beautifully and they are built by someone who is just as deep into the game as you are.
Let’s get right to it.
1. I wrote earlier this week about Scottie possibly winning six, seven or even 10 majors. This feels stupid, even as I say it or write it down. And yet, I don’t think it is?
But why? Why is it not stupid? Why might it actually be reasonable? I didn’t build that case very well on Tuesday so here’s a better version of it. Five reasons.
1. He has been playing at a 3 SG level for two and a half years.
2. Nobody — not Brooks, not Rory, not Spieth — has sustained 3 SG for this long.
3. Here is proof from everyone’s best 150-round stretches.
It shows Scottie peaking last summer, but that 3.03 number is the exact same number he’s been at since Jan. 1, 2023.
4. Scottie’s worldview and disposition are perfect for a 15-year run.
5. This chart (via Data Golf).
It shows that Scottie — over the course of his six-year career — has, at the majors, outperformed his own career baseline of 2.0 SG.
Up and to the right is where you want to be here. The further right you are, the better you are at golf. The further up you are, the better you are at majors. That’s a sobering triangle to the right of Tom Watson. Twenty three majors between them, and Scottie’s not even 30 yet. He is only moving further up and further to the right.
So that’s the case, and it’s a great one.
As airtight as we’ve seen over the last decade and a half. Unexpected, maybe, because Scottie wasn’t quite the wunderkind Rory was, and he didn’t win as early as Spieth did (see below). But the foundation seems incredibly strong, and I am talking myself into irresponsible things.
2. Here’s a look at how Scottie started his career compared to his contemporaries. This is first 70 PGA Tour starts.
Scottie won 0 times. None! I remember specifically being on a podcast after the 2021 Houston Open, saying, “Man, I don’t know, I just don’t know if he’s a winner. He’s obviously very good, but I don’t know he can get it done!” I think I compared him to Sungjae Im or maybe Rickie. 😂
I looked up Jack (~12 of his first 70) and Arnie (~5 of his first 70), and it seems very unusual that someone would start their career 0 for 70 and then go on to become one of the 10-15 best players of all time.
But that is exactly where we’re at for reasons I’m not completely sure of.
Here are all those players’ next 70 starts, by the way, which Scottie just completed. Looks a little bit different.
3. Here’s how you guys voted on the poll on Tuesday when I asked how many majors Scottie was going to end up with. A reasonable crew!
I don’t know that I’m ready to get an official prediction on the book, but after giving it some thought, I’ll say Scottie ends up with seven majors. I still think it’s smarter to bet on Rory or Koepka winning more than him (Rory more than Koepka) just because a two-major lead is DJ’s whole career, but I think seven is actually not unreasonable and that anything beyond that would be pretty outrageous in this era.
The part that should concern everyone is two-fold.
1. He’s not exactly squeaking out these wins at the end of the tournament.
2. He’s a 0.00 putter at majors since Jan. 1, 2022 and has won three of them.
4. Another newsletter, another poll.
Who ends their career with the most majors?
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Some (actual) Rahm thoughts.
The best Scottie stat.
Some life truth from Alex Noren.
If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.
If you are, keep reading!
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