Issue No. 96 | July 17, 2024

Hey,

I didn’t get to as much Open material as I would have liked in the newsletter this week. However, I wanted to include two things up top here before getting to everything else.

1. I wrote a piece on Rory for CBS Sports that I’m proud of. The premise is that watching guys think and emote is far more interesting than watching them play golf.

2. This is my pick.

Onto the news.

One Thing Four Things I Loved

1. Whenever you’re at a dinner party or get together, I presume one of the first three questions you ask (or you are asked) is some version of, Where are you from?

What do you say? Does it mean much to you? Is it just throwaway conversation filler?

I tell people I’m from Houston because I grew up in a suburb about 35 minutes north of Minute Maid Park. It means almost nothing to me to convey this information. My parents moved. I don’t ever go back. It’s now just a place I lived. A wonderful place, but also a footnote. Unless the person I am talking to knows somebody from my suburb, we move on to talking about something else.

It’s a bummer that this is the case, but that is the tradeoff of continually shrinking the world through technology like, you know, vehicles. It is much easier to move around and explore but much more difficult to be from somewhere for a long time.

Bob MacIntyre, though? He certainly doesn’t tell people he’s from Houston, and it does mean something to him to tell them where he’s actually from.

“I'm from a working-class background. I've got two older sisters my parents foster. We've got a foster boy just now that's been with us for six, seven years.

“I was given a great opportunity by my whole family. We used to have a horse for my sisters, and couldn't afford to do both, and my sisters gave up the horse and gave me a chance to go and travel some within Britain.”

Come on. What?! My sisters gave up the horse … and then I won the Scottish Open. It would be like Elly De La Cruz returning to the Dominican Republic, founding a team and then beating the Dodgers in a World Series in Santo Domingo. It just can’t happen.

But it did.

Golf is wonderful for innumerable reasons, but one of them is that there are so few sports in which this is even possible. In football or hoops or soccer you generally have to be preternaturally gifted with speed or height or something to win whatever the equivalent is of your national open. In golf? Is Bobby Mac preternaturally gifted? I mean maybe. But I think it’s one of the few sports where you can simply work your way into this position. You can do more work than everyone else. You can develop the dog. You can play better. And he has.

“And I was out grafting, practicing when I was young, and yeah, it was never given. I'm from the west coast. It's been difficult, obviously, weather-wise, but your face doesn't fit exactly because you're not a central built guy, and I just have to graft at it. The biggest thing for me was never give up.

“A lot of people might say, he doesn't quite have this, he doesn't quite have that, but I've got fight and that's all I need.”

The takeaways flow faster than the alcohol did on Sunday evening, but the two that meant the most to me …

1. Being from somewhere, being tethered to somewhere. All of it matters.

2. Golf rules because Bob from Oban can beat Rory from another universe and Ludvig from outer space and Adam Scott from the sporting gods.

Go watch Adam Scott and Bobby Mac hit next to each other on the range. It’s barely the same game. But tournament golf doesn’t care how you hit it or what you were gifted. It only cares about what the card says. That can be cold and harsh, for sure, but it can also be the most beautiful thing in the world.

2. Another “only in golf” moment.

Imagine Aaron Judge in a suite at the World Series, after his Yankees were just ousted by the Orioles, raising the roof for Gunnar Henderson, whose O’s were taking on the Phillies.

Laugh-out-loud stuff, right?

Golf baby …

Is that … Sahith Theegala, who [checks notes] finished T4 at the Scottish Open, going absolutely bonkers for Bobby Mac like [checks notes again] 30 minutes after finishing his rounds? I … think it is.

What a sport.

Also on Sahith: Tremendous golfer, world class human. You love to see it. Put him on all my Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup teams if he’s even in the ballpark of qualification.

3. Brian Harman was asked this week if he would still play the Open if the purse was less or even nothing at all: "Yeah, I would personally. I'm not sure everyone would, but I would."

Why?

"Because some people care more about money than I do, I suppose. I play golf for me. Like, I play golf to see how good I can get at golf. I play golf because I enjoy torturing myself with things that are really hard to do. That's just me. Most times when I get done with a tournament, I couldn't tell you within commas of how much that I made that week."

I play golf because I enjoy torturing myself with things that are really hard to do.😂

The obvious response to this is, “Well, of course you play golf to win titles and not to make money because you have made enough of it.”

Here’s my counter to that: The players who eventually reach the position at which they can afford to have this attitude probably had this attitude all along. Because you’re probably not going to get very far in golf if you are too wound up on financial outcomes. Brian Harman is who he is — an Open champ — because he truly was detached from caring about whether he was making $15,000 a year or $15,000 a shot.

There is an argument that this is still a sort of privilege, and I get that. But I think the view I’m presenting — which I argued for Jon Rahm a year ago — is just as viable.

4. I endorse the following message. It’s difficult to imagine saying it better than this. Also, this may officially make me an Old.

One Thing I Hate

My sons were watching the Scottish on Sunday, and my oldest (who is 10) was of course rooting for Ludvig because when he thinks about his swing, he sees Ludvig’s swing and for a thousand other reasons.

I was rooting for Bob. After his grass cutting dad carried him around Canada for his first win. After Rory shattered his world at this event a year ago. How could you not be rooting for Bob.¹

But the 16th left me feeling … like I was still rooting for Bob but also like I kinda was not. To be clear, he did nothing wrong. He found the most absurd sprinkler head in all of Scotland and took the drop of his life.

This happens every week. Every single week on the PGA Tour, the outcome of the tournament is affected by something just as preposterous. We just don’t normally feel the outrage we did on Sunday because it so rarely is this obvious that such a thing affects the outcome of an event.

So rarely does this happen to the guy in second with three holes to go. So rarely does it transform a scrambling par into up and down from 270 for eagle. So rarely is the delta between how it should feel and how it actually feels this enormous. So rarely are drops so obviously against the spirit of the rules.

To be clear, I ride with JLM here.

I am surely not considering 1,000 scenarios, but I do not understand why, in receiving relief from a sprinkler head — for example — you couldn’t recreate the lie elsewhere. It is insane to me that if Bob’s drive is a foot or two to the left or right, he probably does not win that golf tournament.

And perhaps that’s just … golf, a normal sport, but this egregious example is simply emblematic of hundreds of others. It’s a real problem that it feels like nobody but a bunch of us Too Online Golf Sociopaths care about.

Normal Sport

1. Dottie Pepper reported that Bob got relief on 16 because he was wearing metal spikes and stepped on a sprinkler head that he later confirmed he would not have known about if he was wearing soft spikes. But he only wears metal spikes on the front part of his cleats. “Obviously the plastic spikes at the back, you don't feel it.” Normal sport.

2. Jupiter Links Golf Club’s Kevin Kisner takes on Kentucky this week. Sure.

3. Absolutely.

4. I count 27 humans on the field of play trying to step on a ball to find it. Twenty seven.

The Infirmary

I for sure am the only person who has ever comped Jonny Flynn and the Cat. If you missed that one, you can read about it in my thoughts on Keegan being named the Ryder Cup captain.

Stat(s) of the Week

I have been reading, thinking and researching the 2016 Open at Troon this week. I remember trying to appreciate what happened that week but probably, like most things, unable to fully do so until looking back on it with some #perspective.

Anyway, here are some of the more outrageous things I (re)discovered.

• Phil gained 6.63 true strokes per round on the field. According to Data Golf (see chart below), that is a number that is expected to win 99 percent of majors. For context: Tiger gained 7.3 actual strokes per round (not sure on true strokes) at the 2000 U.S. Open.

• In the final round, the scoring average was nearly 73. There were 25 rounds of 75+ and only 13 rounds in the 60s. Two players shot in the 80s. One shot 85. Stenson and Mickelson shot a best ball 59.

• Data Golf highlights the best round of the day on their old major leaderboard pages. Stenson had the best round of Day 2, Day 3 and Day 3. Of course, Phil had the best round of Day 1.

• Stenson gained 7.4 true strokes per round. Again, DG has not done the true strokes on Tiger’s 2000 round so not sure how that compares, but Tiger’s raw number was 7.3. So Stenson’s round was at least in the ballpark.

• Phil and Stenson did a great sit-down discussing all of this. There are so many wonderful nuggets, including not being able to tell if Phil is joking when he’s cursing at Stenson and also not being able to tell if Phil is able to tell if Phil is joking when he’s cursing at Stenson.

Phil is unbelievably good at talking golf. I could (and would) listen to him sit and talk about any round with anyone. It’s a bummer he won’t get his time in the Johnny Miller seat. He would have been extraordinary at it. Or who knows, maybe he still will.

• As one reader pointed out, the best part of that video is as follows …

Question of the Week

We have two to address this week.

The first is that I don’t think you’re getting a better answer to my question about who the U.S. should hire as Ryder Cup captain if they could step outside of U.S. only guys. Technically, I was asking about golf people, but informally this is an elite answer.

Also, I threw this on Twitter and was surprised at the results. I think Adam Scott and Sergio have had pretty similar careers. Generational talents who found a lot of success at a really young age. Both have a Masters. Both have a Players. Both have been world class more or less for 20+ years.

I would probably give the edge to Sergio because he’s arguably the best Ryder Cupper of all time (which is maybe unfair to Adam Scott since he’s not even eligible for Ryder Cups).

Still, the spread should not be this wide, and I suspect is only this wide because Sergio went to LIV, which I get but also I regret perpetuating.

Take(s) of the Week

Not going to top this one from Sergio, who doesn’t leave this newsletter unscathed.

"I would say: Alcaraz winning, us winning both individually and as a team, and then the national team winning the Euro Cup. It would be amazing to have all those four things happen in the same day. It would be amazing."

1. A 21-year-old winning his fourth slam over somebody with 24 of them.
2. The national team winning Euros for the third time in five tries.
3. Beating Anirban Lahiri and Scott Vincent at Real Club Valderrama.

Data Golf Corner

What surprises you most about these numbers from the last 15 years of Opens?

• Finau at 3rd in overall SG is not something I saw coming.

• Harman at 8th, ahead of Fleetwood, Rahm and DJ, too.

• Rory and Spieth have been extraordinary, and that gap between them and Finau at third is wild. It’s the same as the difference between Bryson and Tom Hoge at all events over the last two years.

Overheard on Twitter

“It’s easy to mistake getting attention for being right or being admired, especially on social media.” -Morgan Housel

Meme of the Week

I was up late on Sunday prepping for the Open and halfway watching the Copa final when I received absolute meme gold.

• Me when Spieth goes out in 28.

• Me when the first 25 mph gust hits Bryson in the face.

• Me when Ryan Fox goes bunker to bunker on the Postage Stamp.

• Me when The Other JT makes a 1 on the 8th and they rename it the Poston Stamp.

The possibilities are endless.

As they are with this one.

Corrupt Golf Media

👉️ Ewan Murray is an excellent journalist, and his interview here of Rory ahead of The Open was terrific. Rory gave him the goods.

"St Andrews hurt way more than this one. Oh my God. I didn’t cry after this … It is St Andrews. It is the Open. A three‑shot lead on 10 … it was the 150th. The crowd support I got there was unreal."

👉️ Speaking of good Rory pieces, Joseph LaMagna’s here on Rory’s consistency as a top five player in the world is terrific.

👉️This on Viktor Hovland and what he thinks about is really interesting.

How is This App Free?

• This during the final round at the Scottish was great.

• This one-two punch has layers.

• I howled at this.

• Evergreen.

• As a great philosopher once said, I hate this for our country, but this is tremendous content … all of these fall into that category.

Love Your Work

I enjoyed this snippet on AI from Phil Mickelson financial writer Jack Raines and how it should and should not be used by creators.

Pause.

Yes.

Connecting dots is the most underrated part of writing online. I often write my way into takes I didn’t even know I had, simply from the act of writing. And while AI — say, ChatGPT — is technically more efficient and possibly even “better,” it’s also difficult to imagine using in most cases because taking out the difficulty removes the ability to discover which dots you can connect.

Exactly.

Also, this part of writing online is very underrated and part of the reason I began writing the annual Normal Sport books.

Thanks for reading until the end.

You’re a sicko, and I’m grateful for it.