Issue No. 175 | March 27, 2025
A book recommendation off the top.
American Kingpin is unbelievably good. I loved it, my wife loved it. It’s incredible. Reads like fiction, very much is not. One take I have a lot of conviction around is that most books (including my own) should have been half the length. This one could have been double the length and still been awesome. Read it.
Onto the news.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Meridian Putters.
Recently, I was exploring NewClub’s website, and they had a great bit about why you shouldn’t join their club. Basically, they listed all the things they are not.
If I were to make the list for Normal Sport, I would probably include things like “we are not a DFS site” and “we are not gear heads” and “we do not care about information for the sake of information.” We could go on and on.
The reason I thought of this was because Meridian posted a video recently listing a few things they aren’t about.
“We are not a boutique brand charging $1,000 a unit.”
“We are not an established OEM cashing in on our brand name.”
I would add that they are not owned by PE folks who make products in spreadsheets. They do not care about drivers, irons and wedges (not yet anyway). They do not concern themselves with fancy boy gadgets and toys.
No, their goal is to provide the best putter possible that you can feel good about buying (because it’s not exorbitantly expensive), holding (because it’s beautiful) and gaming (because it’s true).
As a business, those are all worthy things to care about. Viktor Hovland is about to tell you all he thinks about is golf. All Meridian thinks about is making putters.
It shows.
OK, now onto the news!
1. I loved this quote from Hovland after he won last weekend.
I don't care too much about other things outside of golf. Because I don't have time or energy to put the same amount into other things, so naturally when you only get to do certain things just a few times here and there, you can't have a perfectionist mindset.
…
I'm not super hard on myself if I'm not really good at something when I haven't put the effort into it. But golf … it's been my life for a long time, it's what consumes my thoughts and my time, so if I'm not spending that time to do it correctly, then what am I doing?
Viktor Hovland | 2025 Valspar
It’s what consumes my thoughts and my time.
I have found the following balance to be extremely difficult.
I love this thing, and it’s all I want to think about.
I love this thing, and I am thinking about it so much that it is actually detrimental.
My personal example of what Hovland is talking about is this newsletter and this business. You probably have your own. Maybe it’s a job or a hobby or something else.
No matter what the thing is, though, I find that doing the first often leads to doing the second. Just this week, I have found myself so obsessed with my business that I’m not even thinking clear, coherent thoughts about its future.
This is one of the 10,000 ways golf reflects life. All of us are probably guilty of thinking too much about our jobs or the future or anything at all. So it goes with pro golfers that we have almost nothing in common with.
In the same way he is constantly trying to solve an unsolvable game (golf), we are trying to solve an unsolvable game (life). This is endlessly fascinating to me and very much the reason this newsletter exists!
2. Here’s a take: Maybe this makes me an ᗡ˥O, but I don’t understand the upside down and backwards logos.
The BG BLCK LTRS get all the hate, but I feel like the upside down/backwards trend is one we’ll look back on in 10 years and think, “Huh … that was kind of a weird era.”
3. Two tweets that absolutely killed me.
4. Here’s a fun Masters stat I like to dust off every year: In Gary Player's first Masters, he played against Jock Hutchison, who was born in 1884. Here’s is a photo of Jock Hutchison I found on Reddit. And here’s an even better one of him at ANGC.
In Gary Player's last Masters, he played against Rory McIlroy, who was born in 1989 … 105 years after Hutchison was born. A truly remarkable game.
This post will continue for Normal Sport members — who we are now calling and have settled on calling the Normal Club — below, and includes …
My favorite annual Masters stat.
Why 10 is (almost) the best hole at ANGC.
Peter Kostis squaring off against … me?
If you aren’t yet a Normal Sport member, you can sign up at the link below.
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.
5. First of all, this shot by Billy Horschel is comically good. He gets up and down from 120 yards for birdie. Left-handed! But it led to an even better discussion, which started with the following hypothetical statement from someone on Twitter.
If you are a 25 year old scratch player and I gave you unlimited time, the best teachers, the best equipment, best fitness coaches … the odds of you getting a tour card are ZERO.
@Top100Rick
The comments on his tweet are wild, and it seems like a lot of people (maybe not the majority, but a lot) actually disagree with the premise.
There is plenty of this …
With all due respect Rick, this tweet is just dumb. I played college golf and never took it seriously. Spent one summer during Covid practicing every day and went from a -3 handicap to a plus 3.7 in about 4-5 months.
I’ve beat PGA Canada players in straight up match play, not saying I can sniff a tour card then or now but that’s also because I never applied myself. If I had unlimited funds and access to coaches, I could certainly get good enough to at least make a run at Q school.
@RobbieRob618
My take is that a lot of people are confusing a great index with great tournament play. They are just completely different things. You can be a +4 or +5 or whatever, but tournament play is not the same as shooting 64 in a semi-competitive match at your club. Not even close.
There is a canyon between being a +4 and being good at tournament golf.
A big thing would be have you been playing some tournament golf growing up? If not, it’s zero for sure.
Best case scenario, you have some speed and coordination but don’t know where it’s going and awful chip and putter.
You have played tournament golf and have some talent but never put any time into it. You get access to the best swing coach and mental coach.
I mean it’s not zero, but it’s very very small.
Michael Kim
That and the age 25 thing are key. Change the age to 20, and you could maybe talk me into it or a version of it. But learning tournament golf at age 25 as a 0 handicap?
Zero chance. None. Absolutely not.
6. Let’s talk about our favorite holes at ANGC. It’s a question I threw on Twitter on Wednesday and got some awesome answers.
My top three in order starting with my favorite …
Firethorn (No. 15) — Not really a hot take to have this one at No. 1, I guess. I just have so many memories there. It feels like it serves as the inflection point for the tournament. Your last chance to make eagle, but also six or seven or 13 (!) is in play. I used to sit on 16 when I went with my parents, and watching players crest the hill on 15 as they descended into whatever the tournament held for them is as good as an in-person golf experience gets.
Camellia (No. 10) — I could sit behind 10 and watch tee shots literally all day. Mega underrated hole. I love how it starts at the top of the property, and then feels like you’re on a decline into the rest of the back nine. Such a decline that I fear if a big fella like Sepp stumbled and tripped while walking off the tee, he might just roll all the way out to the bottom of the fairway. That second shot feels impossible, too.
Pink Dogwood (No. 2) — My favorite hole on the front. That second shot is so fun to watch no matter if you’re standing behind the player who’s hitting or around the green and watching balls fly in. There are some fascinating angles players have to pitch from depending on where the pin is. A great, great hole.
7. Hand up, it has been difficult for me to divorce my true TGL thoughts from the fact that I was contracted to write for TGLGolf.com this season. That’s not to say I think the league is trash and I wasn’t allowed to voice that. Not at all. Just that it is literally difficult for me to find an objective take while thinking 100 percent independently.
Broadly, I thought TGL was good because it was unique. There’s nothing else like it. When that is true, you don’t have to be amazing, you just have to be yourself because you are literally the only organization in that particular category.
Long-term I worry about how consequential the matches are, how meaningful winning the championship is. Think about shot consequences on a spectrum from the first shot of the John Deere on Thursday to the last shot of the Masters on a Sunday. Where does any of TGL — including the playoffs — fall on that line? I truly don’t know.
What I do know is that the players found themselves caring about it far more than they thought they would. That was a constant theme throughout the last half of the year.
I think you get a group of the best golfers in the world doing anything, you're going to find us trying to beat each other. I don't think that aspect is lacking at all. I think we're all desperate to win out there just like we would be at anything.
Cameron Young | March 25, 2025
It was the right amount of irreverent, and it provided something the Tour rarely provides, which is stars contending at the end of matches against each other. It forces that competition by only including stars in its format. That’s a good thing.
So is Billy Horschel running around the arena on Tuesday evening like he’d just singlehandedly won a war. Screaming expletives about how the SoFi Center was in fact actually Billy’s F’n House presented by SoFi.
We don’t want more golf for the sake of more golf. That is a fallacy. There are too many other things contending for our attention. What we actually want is more meaningful golf.
Is TGL that? It certainly was at times. If you squint, you can see how it will be even more so in the future. Was it a roaring success? I’m not sure, but it surely wasn’t an abject failure. It was obvious early on that wouldn’t be the case.
What it eventually becomes remains to be seen, but I think the objective truth is that Year 1 was legitimately something to work with as TGL’s future unfolds.
8. I wrote about one of my favorite Masters stats last week. Here it is.
Ten of the last 12 Masters winners were at 1.7 SG tee to green or better in the three months leading into Masters month. Only Reed in 2018 and Hideki in 2021 were not. In 2021, Hideki was at 1.01. In 2018, P. Reed was at 1.2. Both decent numbers but not 1.7 numbers.
Here are the 2025 qualifiers (as of right now — this could change a bit after Houston).
Morikawa: 2.6
Rory: 2.3
Scheffler: 2.2
Niemann: 1.9
Lowry: 1.8
Fleetwood: 1.8
This elicited some comments similar to the following.
Which is a not unexpected response. However, it misses the point of how exclusive that 1.7 tee to green number is. This year, only six guys are in it. Let’s pick three other years and see how many players met the threshold.
2022: 7 (inc. Scheffler)
2019: 7 (inc. Tiger)
2017: 10 (inc. Sergio, but Rory and Fleetwood only had eight measured rounds)
The point is, you could spend your time looking at a pool of 20 players who you think could win the tournament. OR … you could spend your time looking at a much smaller pool from which the winner has almost always emerged over the last 12 years. It’s no guarantee, of course — nothing is — but it’s a winnowing of the true contenders in a reasonable way.
There is no true lead in to a major like there is Augusta — all the stars more or less play the same schedule and there becomes a bit of a rhythm to how all of it happens. I haven’t pulled these numbers for other major championships, but I would trust them less because schedules change and differ quite a bit between post-Masters and the end of the Open Championship.
9. This was a stunner. The page number did me in.
Thank you for reading until the end. I hope view this newsletter like I viewed that tweet above.
You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a golf newsletter that is 2,447 words long, and your support of our business is appreciated.
Issue No. 175 | March 27, 2025
A book recommendation off the top.
American Kingpin is unbelievably good. I loved it, my wife loved it. It’s incredible. Reads like fiction, very much is not. One take I have a lot of conviction around is that most books (including my own) should have been half the length. This one could have been double the length and still been awesome. Read it.
Onto the news.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Meridian Putters.
Recently, I was exploring NewClub’s website, and they had a great bit about why you shouldn’t join their club. Basically, they listed all the things they are not.
If I were to make the list for Normal Sport, I would probably include things like “we are not a DFS site” and “we are not gear heads” and “we do not care about information for the sake of information.” We could go on and on.
The reason I thought of this was because Meridian posted a video recently listing a few things they aren’t about.
“We are not a boutique brand charging $1,000 a unit.”
“We are not an established OEM cashing in on our brand name.”
I would add that they are not owned by PE folks who make products in spreadsheets. They do not care about drivers, irons and wedges (not yet anyway). They do not concern themselves with fancy boy gadgets and toys.
No, their goal is to provide the best putter possible that you can feel good about buying (because it’s not exorbitantly expensive), holding (because it’s beautiful) and gaming (because it’s true).
As a business, those are all worthy things to care about. Viktor Hovland is about to tell you all he thinks about is golf. All Meridian thinks about is making putters.
It shows.
OK, now onto the news!
1. I loved this quote from Hovland after he won last weekend.
I don't care too much about other things outside of golf. Because I don't have time or energy to put the same amount into other things, so naturally when you only get to do certain things just a few times here and there, you can't have a perfectionist mindset.
…
I'm not super hard on myself if I'm not really good at something when I haven't put the effort into it. But golf … it's been my life for a long time, it's what consumes my thoughts and my time, so if I'm not spending that time to do it correctly, then what am I doing?
Viktor Hovland | 2025 Valspar
It’s what consumes my thoughts and my time.
I have found the following balance to be extremely difficult.
I love this thing, and it’s all I want to think about.
I love this thing, and I am thinking about it so much that it is actually detrimental.
My personal example of what Hovland is talking about is this newsletter and this business. You probably have your own. Maybe it’s a job or a hobby or something else.
No matter what the thing is, though, I find that doing the first often leads to doing the second. Just this week, I have found myself so obsessed with my business that I’m not even thinking clear, coherent thoughts about its future.
This is one of the 10,000 ways golf reflects life. All of us are probably guilty of thinking too much about our jobs or the future or anything at all. So it goes with pro golfers that we have almost nothing in common with.
In the same way he is constantly trying to solve an unsolvable game (golf), we are trying to solve an unsolvable game (life). This is endlessly fascinating to me and very much the reason this newsletter exists!
2. Here’s a take: Maybe this makes me an ᗡ˥O, but I don’t understand the upside down and backwards logos.
The BG BLCK LTRS get all the hate, but I feel like the upside down/backwards trend is one we’ll look back on in 10 years and think, “Huh … that was kind of a weird era.”
3. Two tweets that absolutely killed me.
4. Here’s a fun Masters stat I like to dust off every year: In Gary Player's first Masters, he played against Jock Hutchison, who was born in 1884. Here’s is a photo of Jock Hutchison I found on Reddit. And here’s an even better one of him at ANGC.
In Gary Player's last Masters, he played against Rory McIlroy, who was born in 1989 … 105 years after Hutchison was born. A truly remarkable game.
This post will continue for Normal Sport members — who we are now calling and have settled on calling the Normal Club — below, and includes …
My favorite annual Masters stat.
Why 10 is (almost) the best hole at ANGC.
Peter Kostis squaring off against … me?
If you aren’t yet a Normal Sport member, you can sign up at the link below.
If you are, keep reading!
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 607 sickos. By becoming a member, you will receive the following.
• The satisfaction of helping us establish our business.
• The entirety of our behind-the-paywall major championship coverage.
• First access to future merch drops.
• Entry into our first annual Masters contest (more details next week).
By clicking below to join the Normal Club, you will have 1. A lot of explaining to do to your spouse re: your CC statement and also 2. A front row seat to the community and world we’re creating here at Normal Sport.
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