Issue No. 107 | August 30, 2024

Hey,

I can’t stop thinking about how amusing it is that the Creator Classic was played straight up and then the professional event that followed it was handicapped. High comedy.

Also, if you’re new because of this tweet where I promised to give away a Seamus headcover to one new subscriber, welcome! I hope you win. I also hope you enjoy the newsletter.

If you’re not new, don’t worry we’ll be doing plenty of giveaways for longtime subscribers as well.

Onto the news.

17 Golf-ish Thoughts This Week

1. The Creator Classic, let’s talk about it. I thought it worked. Or at least it was better than I thought it would be. Here’s why: I felt personally connected to at least some of the people playing because I’ve seen them on YouTube.

That’s half the deal (and probably more), isn’t it? We root for Rory and Spieth and Scottie because we feel like we know them through interviews they’ve done and because we’ve watched them play a lot of golf over the last several years. There is, at the very least, a sense of parasocial relationship, which is a big part of fandom in general.

When Matthieu Pavon is in contention in January, though? Do you feel like you know him? Or do you feel like you know Tyler Toney and Garrett Clark better? If you have even a tangential relationship with the YouTube world, that’s an easy answer. So while maybe the intimate format of the Creator Classic isn’t as fun as if Spieth, JT and the Boys Club were teeing it up with mics and cameras, what we got was something close to that. Not in quality but in intimacy.

Ultimately though, I’m not sure what this means.

“We want to deepen our relationship with these new platforms and influencers so they can more directly connect their fans with our world-class athletes,” said Jay Monahan. “My favorite example is the event we're hosting this afternoon at East Lake. It's the inaugural Creator Classic.

“The tournament will feature 16 popular content creators with a combined 142 million followers around the world. ... Sharing their excitement about the event, the content creators have already generated over a million video views and over 70,000 engagements across their social channels.”

This idea presumes that people watch Good Good because of the golf. But that completely misunderstands the point, doesn’t it? People might have interest in Good Good because of golf, but they watch Good Good because of the relationship. Does that translate into “influencers so they can more directly connect their fans with our world-class athletes”?

I’m unconvinced.

And aren’t the Good Good boys and the Tour competing for the same eyeballs? Isn’t Good Good part of the reason the Tour’s viewership is waning a bit?

So who’s helping who here? I actually think validation from the Tour might turn more people on to the creators it brought in than the other way around. Maybe that’s OK. Also maybe I don’t get it. None of this means there shouldn’t be some collaboration there, but the relationship as the Tour views it is not as hierarchical as it seems like it would be at first glance.

2. I won’t linger on the actual Tour Championship, but it’s also amusing to me that in trying to placate all parties, the Tour has satisfied none.

• Players are frustrated that it’s a slog to the finish line that doesn’t necessarily reward the best player in a “season-long race.”

• Fans should be annoyed (and I think some are) that only five guys have a realistic chance to win. Is this the playoffs or not? If it’s the playoffs, shouldn’t everyone have a chance?

I’ve yelled about this already, but I’m pro-true playoffs where only 16 or 24 guys make it and it means something. Don’t call it a season-long race. Call it a match play playoff. Everyone is reset at 0 and let it rip.

The whole thing right now is just …

3. Currently reading: MVP Machine. It’s excellent, and there are a lot of golf parallels. It’s mostly about player development over the last 20 years, and as someone who grew up playing baseball but finished just as Moneyball was leading into this new era of development, I found my jaw on the floor at what has become very standard practice — throwing weighted baseballs, warming up by throwing as hard as you can etc.

DJ Pie said it well on a recent Seamsters Union pod — I can’t believe I listen to a podcast called the Seamsters Union where four golf guys yell about baseball — when he compared the current way of thinking in baseball to the “drive for show, putt for dough” concept in golf. That idea in golf has been obviously debunked over and over and over again, and there are a thousand versions of that in pro baseball. That’s what this book gets at.

Two other notes.

1. There’s a lot of Rapsodo/Trackman discussion in the book, which is amusing because all I’m thinking about is Bryson trying to touch 210 ball speed and the authors are hollering about the RPMs on Gerrit Cole’s slider. Just worlds colliding.

2. Golf is for sure somewhere between its Moneyball intro and where baseball currently is (highly scientific and broken down into the most minute pieces it can be broken down into).

Strokes gained is the OPS of golf (shout out to Jeremy Brown and Scott Hatteberg), but I think there is a long way to go in the golf revolution.

I’m not sure all of it is going to be fun, either. Interesting? Yes, but like all sports revolutions, I think getting more analytical can sometimes take the beauty out of it. In other words, do you want to watch Bryson do the Wim Hof Breathing Method on every tee box before he tries to send a ball 205 at 11 degrees traj or do you want to watch Rory McIlroy swing a golf club?

In other words …

4. As I watched the end of the Women’s Open the other day, I was thinking about how there are two very different ways to cover golf. You can focus on the history and the grandiosity and the legacy of what a magnificent feat Lydia has accomplished on such hallowed grounds and the ghost of Old Tom and Young Tom and all of that.

Or …. you can talk about the hawk.

Personally, I think one can lead to the other, but I think one failure of Big Media is the rejection of irreverence in writing. The idea that everything needs to be Taken Very Seriously And Especially Major Championship Victories. Idk, man, I kinda want to talk about how hilarious it is that Lydia is hanging out with a fish and chips protecting hawk while waiting to find out if she’ll enter into the most stressful playoff of her life.

That’s why we started Normal Sport, because I think, while there is a glut of information distributors, there is equally a dearth of folks writing/meme-ing/screenshot-ing in a way that meets fans where they’re at. And I also think the humor can lead into something insightful or meaningful. This is basically a description of The Shotgun Start or Inside the NBA, the only difference is we’re doing it in written/illustrated form.

5. Did you see this answer from Jay Monahan about reducing PGA Tour cards in the future? You don’t need to read it all. It’s a lot of words to say, Whatever the players say, we’re going with.

I don’t envy Monahan’s position. He’s trying to save an organization by catering to players when the truth is that by catering to players that organization is often becoming worse for fans. The money line is at the end. It’s 900 words comma …. but also our fans. 😂 

6. Did you see this answer from Monahan in response to his a question about how Friday broadcasts are going to look different in the fall (something he mentioned earlier in his presser)?

But also!

🤔🤔🤔 

7. Tennis writer (not former Steelers QB) Ben Rothenberg is being sued by Alexander Zverev for reporting a story about domestic abuse. I don’t know that this was meant to be the takeaway, but my thought while reading that article was, Why would anyone ever try to report anything important like this anymore?

That is not to say it’s not valuable, only that because of the general crumbling of the institution — and especially the journalistic institution — and because of the cozy relationships most outlets have with the leagues (TV contracts and such) it would be difficult for me to want to work on something like that basically unless I was backed by the New York Times. I’m not sure there’s another institution that could meaningfully take it on.

8. This is so good. And something I have had to learn to do over and over and over again as a parent.

9. I for sure agree with this from Shane. I didn’t mention Keegan much in my Tuesday newsletter, mostly because I was so enthralled with Lydia and the Old Course, but I thought him winning was very cool.

It also started all these “will he or won’t he” conversations about the Ryder Cup as well, which I don’t think I care about as much as simply enjoying watching this specific scenario play out over the next year. 👇️ 

10. I also made this graph because of Keegan. Then I started filling in a few more names that were easy. It would be fun to go through the entire top 50 in the world.

11. Scottie was terrible last week at the BMW. It was his second worst finish of the season and one of his worst performances since the beginning of 2022.

He lost strokes to the field on approach for the first time since Memphis 2022, over two years ago. And yet! He still gained on the field from tee to green (barely, at 0.47 SG tee to green per round), which means he has now gained shots on the field from tee to green in 51 consecutive events, dating back to the 2022 PGA Championship.

That’s impossible, but it’s happening.

12. I was texting some other writers about this earlier in the week. And while I’m not going to get steep on the math or percentages or whatever, I think viewership at this time of the year has less to do with the Tour-LIV split (though that certainly doesn’t help) and more with the fact that everyone is sick of golf right now.

Players are sick of it — Xander: “I'm in a place where I'm trying to get over this finish line and play some really good golf coming in so I can enjoy myself.” Fans are sick of it. Media members are for sure sick of it.

It’s just too much. Everybody together now: End the season at The Open!

13. To tie this to the Creator Classic, though, I thought Rob’s response to the tweet above was interesting and correct.

And you know what? I think it’s totally OK that golf audiences are either plateauing or getting even getting smaller. With a pool that small, it actually makes some sense that as overall content diversification increases (i.e. Netflix, Hulu and so on), the concentration of customers around any singular niche decreases. Instead of losing our minds about this, though, and doing everything possible to try and increase this volume, perhaps the organizations in charge should simply cater as diligently as possible to those who remain.

Rob’s tweet is also why idk about the Tour bringing Good Good in. It might be a keep your enemies closer situation.

14. This quote from Lydia last week was awesome, and it engendered a great email from a reader named T.S. First, the Lydia quote.

Now, the email.

15. I … I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Venn diagram surround me like this one.

16. Yep!

17. I mentioned a conversation between David Perell and Packy McCormick a few weeks ago. Here’s a quote from that interview that really stood out to me because of how much I identify with it.

I can just try to put as much interesting stuff in my brain as humanly possible and hope that it bangs into each other and creates some weird idea that just pops out at a random time is exactly how this newsletter gets made.

Thank you for reading until the end.

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

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