Greetings!
This is as busy of a week or two-week stretch as I can remember. The Masters must have been eight months ago, yes? Between all the LIV memes news, three Siggies in four weeks leading into the PGA Championship, the R&A announcing a new venue, Jackson Koivun and Preston Stout winning everything in sight, Nelly joining the Spieth club with three majors and of course Justin Rose linking up with [checks notes] a car company whose equipment he will hit golf balls with …
Me taking all of this in.
So instead let’s do all of it together as we begin to break down what went wrong for LIV (besides everything) and why Nelly has a chance at something pretty special (although maybe not as special as Jackson Koivun).
Name drops today: Swaggy P, Greg Norman, Ray Lewis, Kathy Whitworth, Jack Nicklaus and Yes Theory.
This newsletter is presented by our friends at Sap’s Original. If the breadth of golf news has been exhausting, buddy, we have something for you.
Sap’s is built with an ingredient stack that actually works together. Electrolytes for hydration. Adaptogens for stress and balance. Aminos to help your body recover faster.
I am particularly interested in the adaptogens at this moment in time as I try to manage the stress of figuring out why Justin Rose would play race car clubs and which private equity firm is going to end up with 600 luxury travel bags adorned with the Cleeks logo.
Regardless, you should check out Sap’s Original either on their site, on Amazon right here or in person at a locale near you.
My favorite flavor (by a wide margin) is the lemon lime.
OK, now onto the news.
1. The LIV dissection will happen far beyond just this week, but I think there are two primary initial lessons to be learned from LIV’s failure, and they are related.
The first is that anything good takes time to develop. If you don’t believe this then you have to answer this question: Why did Masters tickets in 1994 — sixty years after the beginning of the event — cost just $100 for the entire week?
I realize that Augusta National artificially deflates all of its products, but we should be truthful about the reality that the Masters wasn’t the Masters for many, many decades.
Here’s Scott Michaux.
Jerry Franklin was an original member at Bobby Jones’ golf club off Washington Road. He would eventually outlive all of his fellow charter members — he was the only one left to attend the plaque dedication after co-founder Clifford Roberts’ death in 1977.
When the club decided for financial reasons that it needed to continue playing host to the Masters Tournament after its three-year hiatus during World War II, Franklin served as door-to-door salesman at local businesses trying to drum up funds.
“I want you to buy 20 tickets,” Franklin would say to the local paper’s publisher, William Morris.
“What am I gonna do with 20 tickets?” Morris asked in return.
“We need you to support the tournament,” Franklin pleaded with a whiff of desperation. “Buy the tickets, give them to employees or advertisers or clients. But please support the tournament.”
Golf.com
Humans inherently trust things that have been around for a long time because if we switched our attention and our trust to the next hot thing, we would constantly be switching and never have anything but chaos in our lives.
LIV, like many startups, tried to throw money at a time problem. This is hard anywhere in business, but it is especially difficult in an industry characterized by the importance of historical roots like golf is.
Whether you believe LIV’s attempt at success was earnest or not, the lesson remains the same: You cannot microwave history. Not even with all of the money in the world.*
*This is a good lesson for all of us trying to start businesses to remember [stares at self]
2. One shred, inkling or iota of humility at any point in all of this would have gone a long, long way. Instead, we got … this.
It would have been difficult to like LIV even if it had led with humility throughout the entire process. But the fact that its players and leadership walked around as if they were the predecessors to Old and Young Tom Morris and not the other way around made it extraordinarily easy to pile on at every turn.
Most people — and certainly the people reading this newsletter (!) — are not dumb. They see through faux arrogance and outsized hubris. They see exactly what those particular character qualities are covering up in the people who are displaying them.
Chest thumping is rarely attractive, and certainly not in instances where your entity has not accomplished anything to begin with.
If Fred Ridley did the Ray Lewis dance every time he entered his annual state of the union at Augusta National (an amazing thought exercise by the way), would it be annoying? Sure. But it would also be warranted.
That LIV and its people carried themselves with the swagger of 1,000 Nick Youngs at almost every single turn — despite not having accomplished a single meaningful thing — did not make for the collapse of the league, but it certainly did not help its cause along the way.
The burn book of a LIV stan.
3. I joined Roberto Castro on Thursday on his excellent Course Record podcast.
I could talk to Roberto for hours about all of this stuff, but we kept it to 30 minutes. It was more or less a follow to what I wrote to all of you in Monday’s newsletter. We talked about the future of golf media and what I’m trying to build.
He described Normal Sport as an “old school media company for golf’s new era,” which is … perfect?
Old school merch for modern day greats.
4. Here’s a video of our Rory book literally being printed (and one more of someone flipping through it). It’s kind of thrilling to see this (perhaps only to me!) and something I’m very proud of. You can order it here.
I should receive them in the next few days and start shipping out immediately.
Now I have to go hole up to write the 2026 version.
5. I have been thinking about this interview with Yes Theory founder, Thomas Brag, all week. Specifically one single thing he said 45 minutes into the interview.
Here is is.
But my main priority is to create something that I myself am a fan of … like, am I a fan of my own videos? And if I'm not, how do I become a fan of my own videos?
Thomas Brag
This might sound pretentious or self-aggrandizing (or both!), but I am a fan of the newsletters I write. That is part of the reason I left CBS Sports. Because often at CBS Sports, I was not a fan of the work I was doing. I would never re-read 97 percent of what I wrote there because much of it was news or Rory round recaps or whatever.
Just boilerplate stuff.
And I get it, this is standard fare for behemoth traditional outlets like CBS Sports. I was given plenty of autonomy and a lot of leeway there to write what I wanted. More than almost anyone else at CBS Sports, I presume. But we still had to make the SEO-friendly stuff. And I was decreasingly becoming a fan of my own work there.
Now? I actually enjoy re-reading newsletters I’ve written. I listened back to the podcast above with Roberto, and I was proud of what I presented. I realize how this sounds! It sounds like there has never been a more pretentious human in all of history.
But that doesn’t change the fact that if you are not a fan of your own work then who on earth is going to be? Make stuff you’re proud of, sure, but also that you enjoy consuming.
This is an idea that I have always believe, although I’m not sure I’ve ever articulated it out loud as clearly as Brag did above. But it’s one I will now go back to often.
6. Here’s a wonderful reader response to my Wednesday newsletter on Jim Furyk and the Ryder Cup.
Kyle, fun read on the Ryder Cup in the newsletter today. I enjoyed going through your take and Shane Ryan's article back-to-back. I think you guys are coming at the same point from different angles.
You mention how Europe views the captain as the guardian of the system. And Shane argues that we had a good system (twice) but abandoned it. I think both of these points speak to an American tendency: we chase results over process. Our assumption is that if we lost, the process must have been bad, so we trash it and start over. Whereas Europe has recognized that their process is good and worth building on, even if they sometimes lose (because … sports).
Our individualism usually causes us to think that if we are being hired into a position, it must be because of some unique quality that only we bring to it. Therefore, the captain feels the need to put his own "stamp" on the process. It's hard to overcome that idea with humility.
The other thing we Americans tend to do is not sweat the details. We yadda-yadda the little things away as something we'll worry about later. This is why all of my home projects end up with 4-5 additional trips to Home Depot. And now I'm picturing Furyk sending Sneds out with a shopping list as the Friday foursomes reach the 12th hole.Mark H.
This is so, so, so well said, and the third paragraph in particular had me like 😲. I think it is spot on. Also, join other people like Mark H. in our Slack if you’re not already in there. We’re having a ton of fun chopping it up and yelling about the PIF and Spieth but mostly Spieth.
7. I’m astounded (I shouldn’t be) at the inability of LIV defenders (and many people in general) to grasp the idea that a human being would be governed by something other than money.
That has certainly been a through line of LIV over the last four years, and one I have written about often. That one of the bleakest worldviews imaginable is the concept that if you’re just offered enough money, that makes up for all the rest of it (kicking away a competitive window of your career, mindlessly linking up with an authoritarian regime etc.).
If living life is like driving a car, money should be viewed more as the battery or the alternator. So many people treat it as if it’s the built-in GPS.
8. Nelly. Let’s talk about it. I absolutely loved this quote after she won at Memorial Park last weekend.
I love the game of golf and I feel like that really helps. I love competing. If you come out here and you’re just focusing on a paycheck, then I feel like the times when you’re not playing well and you get down on yourself, you go through it a lot tougher and you start to kind of think about, you know, is this life for me?
Nelly Korda
Here’s the question I started asking myself after she grabbed her third major and extended her lead over Jeeno Thitikul as the top player in the world: Could Nelly go down as the best modern American women’s golfer?
It probably depends on how you want to define the word “modern,” but no American woman after 1969 has more than seven majors. Here’s your list.
I guess it also depends on how we want to define best. Kathy Whitworth won 88 times (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) on the LPGA, although only six of those were majors, and three of the majors she won don’t even exist anymore (Women’s Western Open and Titleholders Championship).
Also, I got steep on the women’s major history and … what the hell?!
I thought the men’s major championship history was sketchy!
Anyway, is it crazy to think Nelly (17 LPGA wins, 3 majors) could get to 30 and 6? That would put her right at the Inkster-Bradley-Sheehan conversation. Is it crazy to think she could get to 7-9 majors? Maybe. She’s 27, which is not old but not super young.
It’s unlikely that she gets to that 6-8 major mark (or 11 like Neil predicted), but it’s definitely in play, and I’m not sure we talk enough about how a current player has a real chance to be considered the best American of all time.
9. Speaking of best American golfers of all time! There was a follow up to the podcast Shane Bacon and I did on whose major championship total least matched his level of talent or play at majors. We mentioned Norman, Johnny Miller, Oosthuizen, Rose and Adam Scott (not enough!) as well as Faldo and Andy North (too many!). We did not however mention Jack Nicklaus.
One reader brought Nicklaus to our attention, and while it’s tough to argue against 18 majors (and if we’re using the women’s rubric, he may have had 27!), the “_______ shots from ________ majors” game with him is pretty interesting.
Jack Nicklaus is [checks notes] nine shots from having twenty three majors.
To go back to the “if you could take five shots off of anyone’s major resume, who would be most affected” game that Jamie Kennedy introduced to us during the Masters, the actual answer is either Oosthuizen or Justin Rose. But taking five shots off of Nicklaus’ total and it pushing him into the 20s is pretty fascinating as well.
Thank you for reading our outrageous golf newsletter that is sometimes (but often barely) about golf. Every edition is handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason and fueled by our personal war against the inevitability of artificial intelligence. It is a labor of love. One we are thrilled to engage in every single time we hit publish.
Greetings!
This is as busy of a week or two-week stretch as I can remember. The Masters must have been eight months ago, yes? Between all the LIV memes news, three Siggies in four weeks leading into the PGA Championship, the R&A announcing a new venue, Jackson Koivun and Preston Stout winning everything in sight, Nelly joining the Spieth club with three majors and of course Justin Rose linking up with [checks notes] a car company whose equipment he will hit golf balls with …
Me taking all of this in.
So instead let’s do all of it together as we begin to break down what went wrong for LIV (besides everything) and why Nelly has a chance at something pretty special (although maybe not as special as Jackson Koivun).
Name drops today: Swaggy P, Greg Norman, Ray Lewis, Kathy Whitworth, Jack Nicklaus and Yes Theory.
This newsletter is presented by our friends at Sap’s Original. If the breadth of golf news has been exhausting, buddy, we have something for you.
Sap’s is built with an ingredient stack that actually works together. Electrolytes for hydration. Adaptogens for stress and balance. Aminos to help your body recover faster.
I am particularly interested in the adaptogens at this moment in time as I try to manage the stress of figuring out why Justin Rose would play race car clubs and which private equity firm is going to end up with 600 luxury travel bags adorned with the Cleeks logo.
Regardless, you should check out Sap’s Original either on their site, on Amazon right here or in person at a locale near you.
My favorite flavor (by a wide margin) is the lemon lime.
OK, now onto the news.
1. The LIV dissection will happen far beyond just this week, but I think there are two primary initial lessons to be learned from LIV’s failure, and they are related.
The first is that anything good takes time to develop. If you don’t believe this then you have to answer this question: Why did Masters tickets in 1994 — sixty years after the beginning of the event — cost just $100 for the entire week?
I realize that Augusta National artificially deflates all of its products, but we should be truthful about the reality that the Masters wasn’t the Masters for many, many decades.
Here’s Scott Michaux.
Jerry Franklin was an original member at Bobby Jones’ golf club off Washington Road. He would eventually outlive all of his fellow charter members — he was the only one left to attend the plaque dedication after co-founder Clifford Roberts’ death in 1977.
When the club decided for financial reasons that it needed to continue playing host to the Masters Tournament after its three-year hiatus during World War II, Franklin served as door-to-door salesman at local businesses trying to drum up funds.
“I want you to buy 20 tickets,” Franklin would say to the local paper’s publisher, William Morris.
“What am I gonna do with 20 tickets?” Morris asked in return.
“We need you to support the tournament,” Franklin pleaded with a whiff of desperation. “Buy the tickets, give them to employees or advertisers or clients. But please support the tournament.”
Golf.com
Humans inherently trust things that have been around for a long time because if we switched our attention and our trust to the next hot thing, we would constantly be switching and never have anything but chaos in our lives.
LIV, like many startups, tried to throw money at a time problem. This is hard anywhere in business, but it is especially difficult in an industry characterized by the importance of historical roots like golf is.
Whether you believe LIV’s attempt at success was earnest or not, the lesson remains the same: You cannot microwave history. Not even with all of the money in the world.*
*This is a good lesson for all of us trying to start businesses to remember [stares at self]
2. One shred, inkling or iota of humility at any point in all of this would have gone a long, long way. Instead, we got … this.
It would have been difficult to like LIV even if it had led with humility throughout the entire process. But the fact that its players and leadership walked around as if they were the predecessors to Old and Young Tom Morris and not the other way around made it extraordinarily easy to pile on at every turn.
Most people — and certainly the people reading this newsletter (!) — are not dumb. They see through faux arrogance and outsized hubris. They see exactly what those particular character qualities are covering up in the people who are displaying them.
Chest thumping is rarely attractive, and certainly not in instances where your entity has not accomplished anything to begin with.
If Fred Ridley did the Ray Lewis dance every time he entered his annual state of the union at Augusta National (an amazing thought exercise by the way), would it be annoying? Sure. But it would also be warranted.
That LIV and its people carried themselves with the swagger of 1,000 Nick Youngs at almost every single turn — despite not having accomplished a single meaningful thing — did not make for the collapse of the league, but it certainly did not help its cause along the way.
The burn book of a LIV stan.
3. I joined Roberto Castro on Thursday on his excellent Course Record podcast.
I could talk to Roberto for hours about all of this stuff, but we kept it to 30 minutes. It was more or less a follow to what I wrote to all of you in Monday’s newsletter. We talked about the future of golf media and what I’m trying to build.
He described Normal Sport as an “old school media company for golf’s new era,” which is … perfect?
Old school merch for modern day greats.
4. Here’s a video of our Rory book literally being printed (and one more of someone flipping through it). It’s kind of thrilling to see this (perhaps only to me!) and something I’m very proud of. You can order it here.
I should receive them in the next few days and start shipping out immediately.
Now I have to go hole up to write the 2026 version.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,030 of them) and includes thoughts on Nelly as the best women’s American golfer in the modern era, Jon Rahm’s legacy and how Jack Nicklaus could have had 20+ major championships.
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.
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• 15% off to our pro shop.
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