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Edition No. 65 | March 16, 2024
Hey,
I know you’re probably here looking for 40,000 words on turtles and birds and frogs and a 43-year-old former Virginia Tech Hokie who made $12.5 million in his career but may now have to use a significant portion of that money to repair a shoulder he possibly blew out by throwing golf balls as hard as he could into a hill in north Florida on Thursday.
And we’ll get to all that.
But first, I need to tell you that if you understand (and identify with!) this tweet, you may need to take a few extra hours to mulch the flower bed or edge the sidewalk this morning before the golf gets going.
Just please seek some help, because you (we) definitely need it.
Onto the news.
13 Golf-Adjacent Thoughts This Week
1. I have already meandered further into #WhereDidItCrossTwitter this week than I ever wanted to, and I can happily report that it is both 1. A fool’s errand and 2. Unavoidably entertaining.
So instead of drawing straight, fading, and hooking lines on Google Earth overheads of TPC Sawgrass,1 I would instead like to discuss the funniest parts of the entire drop saga from Thursday morning.
In no particular order.
1. Harry saying, “Who’s everybody, Jordan? Who’s everybody?” Jordan responding, “TV” and pointing in the general direction of some unknown group of people behind him. Then Harry, somehow both gently and sarcastically at the same time, saying, “Oh, these guys?” It’s … incredible.
It also reminds me of when people say things like, “Well they’re saying that the U.S. and Bolivia are about to go to war over pineapple export prices,” and you’re just like, wait, who exactly is “they”?
2. Rory, a bit exasperated after Spieth’s monologue,2 saying, “I want to do the right thing” with his hands out like, What do you think I’m trying to do here? Playing with Jordan must be exhausting, having him cross-examine you on national television even more so.
3. Spieth saying, “I was looking 15 yards ahead [of where it landed] so when it hit ground … [I didn’t see it].” 😆
4. Hovland using the term, “Very speculative” at one point, like he’s about to cash out his bitcoin to get in on the Reddit IPO.
5. The poor volunteer who just wanted to enjoy a fun few days at TPC Sawgrass. Maybe get his kids or grandkids out there to run around, play the course on volunteer day later in the year.
All of a sudden he finds himself mixed up in crossfire between two of the best players of the last 20 years that has all kinds of frustrating undertones rooted in their disagreement about the future of professional golf, which is currently being taking over by the country of Saudi Arabia.
My dude just wanted a couple of hats and the chance to play 17 this summer.
6. The turtles getting dragged into it. The turtles! What a moment!
7. Normal sport.
8. Finally, Johnson Wagner entered from the pen like Billy’s less talented younger brother for one of the great moments in golf broadcast history.
It would be difficult for me to overstate just how hard this segment of Wagner trying to recreate the Rory bounce made me laugh. I’m always a little loopy at the end of these long days so that definitely played in, but every time I watched it —specifically the screenshots of him throwing — I just could not stop belly laughing.
This man is married, has two kids and has played in nearly 400 PGA Tour events, and they have him out there trying to touch 85 on the gun by throwing a golf ball straight into the ground.3
Absolutely preposterous (and amazing!) stuff.
As Garrett Morrison pointed out, it does feel like content is being created specifically for me and this newsletter.
Iconic shot
Also, somebody pointed out on Twitter that none of his pitches counted because Hovland wasn’t out there umpiring. Destroyed me.
2. Like Andy pointed out on Friday in some of the worst audio in podcast history (I don’t mean Shotgun Start history, I mean all podcasts ever), this entire saga is insane. Imagine the Packers and Lions trying to figure out if a field goal over the top of an upright went inside or outside the post.
Imagine the Twins and Yankees calling their own foul balls.
Heck, imagine Fed and Nadal calling in/out without the aid of a referee or the Hawkeye. Totally ridiculous stuff.
And yet, I think I might be with Joseph LaMagna.
There is so little in golf that generates real friction between players, and even though everyone involved in this is likable and has tremendous reputations regarding the rules, it still engendered at least a little bit of tension.
That’s great! I don’t know if it’s the fairest or best way to determine a golf tournament,4 but as a fan it’s definitely the most enjoyable.
3. It also makes for some fun sleuthing. I was on multiple text threads this on Thursday and Friday discussing physics and topography, complete with screenshots and jokes.5
Why is stuff like this so compelling? Because there is no definitive answer. It’s the same reason theories behind the U.S. struggles in road Ryder Cups is so compelling. Could be this. Might be that. Who can say?
Also, lose me on the “Rory got a benefit of the doubt that Reed would not have” tweets people have been sending me.
Yeah! That’s kinda how reputations work!
We’re talking about somebody in Rory who once pressed his ball farther into the ground following a drop from a stepped-on ball at a major championship because he was uncomfortable with the good lie he got from the drop!
So yes, what you have or have not done in the past absolutely affects ambiguous moments in the present. That’s just how it goes.
4. Last thing on this for now. The entire rule about where a ball — that’s 20 or 40 or 60 feet in the air — crosses land as the place where you get to drop is wild. Like, nobody is ever going to get that exactly right. Ever. Nobody. Half-baked solution: make all water balls an automatic reload from the exact same spot you were before (I have not thought about the implications here at all).
5. New meme just dropped.
Me, parenting
6. My family is out of town this week so I watched a lot of golf over the last few days. Even more than I normally would during a Players week. And it was cool on Friday to see Roger Maltbie get emotional when Smylie complimented him on everything he’s brought to the game and then again when he signed off from the Rory-Jordan-Viktor group after the 18th.
I don’t know Roger Maltbie, but I think the thing that resonates with fans when it comes to his broadcasting is pretty simple: He cares.
We all know the difference between doing a job and caring about a job. He seems to be pretty clearly in the latter camp.
Honestly, the whole thing kinda reminded me of this tweet, which I reference too often but think about all the time. It summed up two really fun days with Roger calling wedges, “sand irons” and chasing superstars all over Sawgrass.
7. This Roger Federer profile in GQ is extraordinary. He talks about everything. Not really missing tennis, rooting for his former rivals, how hard parenting is and how much he laments the (sometimes) lack of creativity in the game today. This part about thinking about retirement when he was still playing was so good.
I mean, a hundred percent you have flashes as you sit in the car on the way to training or something and you look outside and think, Okay, how is retirement going to be? Or: Where am I going to retire? How am I going to retire? How much longer can I play? Those questions naturally pass your mind as you think about your life and you think about your kids and where the journey’s going to go.
But I think every player has that. I’ve been asked about retirement since 2009 when I won the French Open and I tied Sampras’s record [of 14 Grand Slams]. People say, “So what else is there to achieve?” I’m like, yeah, “Good question. I dunno. But I love playing and we’ll see where it takes me.”
I dunno. But I love playing and we’ll see where it takes me.
Come on.
This was also great, about what he tried to do stylistically.
And my goal on the tour was always—playing every point in a similar way against my opponent is what he wants. What he doesn’t want is if I mix it up and have variety. So for me, seeing two guys play against each other and have 20 same points back to back to back, come on. It can be very interesting. It’s like an arm wrestle. But I like to say, “Let’s not enter the arm wrestle. Let’s enter another game.”
OK, I have something crazy to admit here.
I’ve always drawn parallels between Rory and Roger. That’s not the crazy part. I wrote about that in the appendix of Normal Sport 2. We put that piece online for free here. But Rory is not the only person I thought of when I was reading that GQ article about Fed.
I also thought about … Scottie.
There always seems to be something volcanic brewing underneath with both Roger and Scottie. Something they’re trying to keep from bubbling over. It’s no surprise that both struggled with their tempers when they were young.
As the best players in the world, they both give you almost no emotion until they give you a lot (Roger weeping with Rafa in retirement, Scottie crying in Rome last October). They come across so … placid and in control, but then they both seem almost surprised that that is the perception of them.
Both are maniac competitors, which is why I think there is a disconnect between their perception of themselves and what others say about them. But also, both seem more able to move on quickly because they don’t necessarily primarily identify as athletes
I need to think about it more, but the comp is at least intriguing to me.
8. This one bummed me out but is also kind of emblematic of where things are at right now. I was reading Joe Posnanski’s excellent newsletter this week, and here’s what he said about the Players.
I didn’t fully realize just how much the whole LIV golf thing has blown up my interest in golf. Then I realized that the Players Championship, which is an event I usually anticipate and get pretty excited about, started today. I was completely unaware.…
Not good! But also understandable!
9. This Hunter Mahan interview is excellent. Here are a few quotes.
“If you’re not totally committed, it’s going to beat you up and wear you out. That’s where I left it. I had a few tournaments left in that season a few years ago and I was so done with the grind of playing golf. It took over my life in a negative way and I had to step away.
“I loved the game but the professional game is a different thing. It’s such a high level and requires so much out of you.”
I think there is for sure a disconnect between what we — you and I — think of as golf and what professional golf actually is. It’s easy to forget.
“I’m 41 now and I’m a young person. I’ve got four kids who are ten and under. I’ve got so many things I want to do with them. I don’t want them to live my life, I want to be part of theirs.”
Aspirational.
There is such a balance in parenting of maintaining your own life and pursuing your own desires and inviting your kids into that, because I think that’s good for them to see. But if you’re like me, you will err on that side instead of erring on the side of entering into their worlds, which I struggle to do.
I really liked that last quote a lot.
10. An interesting question Jason Page asked me this week that I do not know the answer to: Do we miss Jon Rahm being at the Players more than he misses being at the Players? Or does he miss being at the Players more than we miss him being at the Players?
11. I’ll probably talk more about this Scottie article at some point later because I think he had some good quotes in there, but this on Tony Romo made me chuckle.
“Tony’s funny,” he says, “like if we’re playing, I’ll have a chip greenside like this, and Tony will literally be at times right behind, watching every move, trying to emulate. When he and Jordan get together, they can just sit and talk Golf Swing for hours and hours. I just sit there and listen.”
Can you imagine those two sociopaths (endearingly, of course) gesticulating and hypothesizing about the swing for several hours. My only addition would be to throw Phil and a camera in there and put it all on YouTube.
12. Here’s another one that made me laugh pretty hard. It’s so true.
13. Enjoy the Players this weekend!
Thanks for reading until the end.
You’re a sicko, and I’m grateful for it.
We will be doing a Masters gear giveaway at some point over the next few weeks. Be looking for it. 👀
1 Which I confess I have done in group texts this week.
2 For posterity, I think Spieth was upset because a TV person jumped in on the drop on 18 to voice where it crossed, and Spieth felt like the same thing was happening on 7, but the outside advice wasn’t being followed because it wasn’t advantageous. Again, this is his inference, not mine. I have no idea where it bounced or crossed or anything, and everything seemed to be fine in the end, but “Radar” is a Sky Sports broadcaster, and the “I don’t mean to be hypocritical” is Spieth referencing what happened when Radar jumped in on the festivities on 18. Spieth pointed back at the 7th tee and said something about media members not seeing the ball land above the red line, implying that they should be listened to on 7 like Radar was on 18. Yes, $25 million on the line, and a man named Radar is prominently involved in determining where a golf ball traveling 180 MPH like 110 feet in the air is flying perpendicular to a body of water. Fascinating. Insane sport.
3 Possibly the funniest part — other than the sound he makes on the second throw — is that the one he threw below the line is the one that most resembled what we saw on TV with Rory’s shot. And everybody tried to act like it wasn’t!
4 It’s definitely not fair to top players, either, who are going to be disproportionately scrutinized.
5 If I have to take a stance here, I have no clue if it touched above the red line, but as long as it was drawing, I think the drop — which was a lot farther back than where the ball landed! — was totally fine. It would be impossible to draw something into that water that hit below the line but also didn’t cross land above it. You’d have to draw a shot like 4 inches total right off the red line, which again is pretty impossible.