Edition No. 57 | February 20, 2024

Hey,

Today is a fun and big day for us at Normal Sport. We have our first official partner on the newsletter, Holderness and Bourne. H&B not only makes the best clothes in golf, but they also have a story that mirrors our own.

• Somewhat accidentally started a company: ✅ 

• Care deeply about making a tremendous product: ✅ 

• Not concerned with “the way things have always been done”: ✅

We’ve had a handful of offers from a variety of companies over the last few months that made no sense for us to partner with. But instead of taking the easy money early on, we waited for a partner whose vision we identified with. H&B is that partner.

How do we know H&B is that partner? They let us illustrate their products throughout the newsletter and bring them into the Normal Sport world. They are ads but barely, which is how ads should be. Just like this newsletter is about golf, but sometimes only barely.

See what they’re rolling out for spring 2024 here and enjoy viewing their products throughout the newsletter, both today and in the weeks to come.

One Thing I Loved

Tiger talked a lot (for him) last week, and the quote I loved the most didn’t get any headlines. But I guess that’s the whole point of the Normal Sporter, isn’t it?

Here’s what he said.

“As far as the love, I still love competing, I love playing, I love being a part of the game of golf. This is the game of a lifetime, and I don't ever want to stop playing. I love being able to compete, I love being able to enjoy different conversations from across time. For instance, like today, to be able to play with two great athletes, the cross-pollination doesn't happen with other sports. And this game, I love that and I don't ever want to lose that.”

Cross-pollination is a very Cat-like way to describe playing a round of golf with Josh Allen and Aaron Hicks, but he’s also correct. Those three aren’t going to play a flag football game. They’re not going to take BP together. They’re not going to play a pickup basketball game (though if they did, they should explore Denny McCarthy as a DJ killer). They can go play golf though.

The phrase, This is the game of a lifetime, and I don't ever want to stop playing from Tiger is more amazing than it seems on the surface.

How many of us just can’t get enough of our day jobs? Tiger’s life has been structured around getting .001 percent better at his day job every day for the last 35 years. And yet … and yet … his response is still, I cannot get enough.

Two things on this.

1. In Same As Ever, there’s a great quote from Jeff Bezos about work where he says if you can get your work life to where you enjoy half of it, that is amazing. Very few people ever achieve that. I don’t know if Tiger still loves his work life, but to still love the game it is centered around is just as astounding.

2. This reminds me of the Michelle Wie quote from last summer when the U.S. Women’s Open was at Pebble. I wrote about this in the Normal Sporter last summer.

   Here’s the excerpt.

It would be difficult to find two people who have had a more conflicted relationship with golf than Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie. To see that the game, which once cast its spell over their lives, has this much staying power is beautiful.

One Thing I Didn’t Love

Brendan Porath wrote something in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter last week that gave me some pause. He was talking about the Phoenix Open and how it got out of control and what could be done about it.

Here’s what he said.

I feel like I’ve made this clear in this newsletter (and elsewhere), but I am pro-player empowerment but anti-players running the league.

My opinion doesn’t really matter, though, because …

To be clear here, I don’t think this is a great thing!

I don’t believe the incentives of the players tend to align with the incentives of the fans often enough (although I could maybe be persuaded otherwise!).

An example I go to often: Think about if NFL players had more control over how the league functioned. Do you think they would be incentivized to make it more or less difficult for new players to enter the league (something that is unquestionably good and enjoyable for fans to follow)?

We can use different language, but PGA Tour players vote on the same types of things. And even if your board was made up of folks with the most equanimity of any other professional athletes in the world – Rorys and Webbs and Schefflers – I remain unconvinced that players in power is the best direction your organization can go.

Perhaps the voting structure in the above 13-person board will limit the power of those seven players, but if I’m a fan (which I am!), I have a lot of questions about how this is going.

Stat of the Week

2 — That’s where Scottie ranks on the all-time strokes gained tee to green list right now. SG has only formally been around since 2004, but that’s still absurd. Here are your top six.

1. McIlroy: 1.95

2. Scheffler: 1.86

3. Rahm: 1.75

4. Woods: 1.75

5. Morikawa: 1.63

6. Matsuyama: 1.56

Couple of thoughts here.

1. For Rory to be 1.95 SG tee to green across 793 measured rounds is a joke. None of the next four have even 550 measured rounds. Hideki is the only one in the top six with more than 700 measured rounds, and he’s nearly a half stroke worse than Rory. I know the numbers are small, but that is so significant.

2. Sergio ranks 7th at 1.51 across 940 rounds. Sergio is an underrated all-time flusher.

3. Scheffler wins 7 percent of the time, but he’s sandwiched by two guys who win 9 percent and 11 percent. Give it time for the numbers to play out, but the putting thing seems to be real.

4. Rory saying on the CBS broadcast on Sunday that Scottie is so good everywhere else that by not going to a mallet putter (or something in that realm), he’s giving everybody else a chance to win. He was joking … but also, was he?

5. It takes humility to admit that something that has always worked is not working. Scottie has more humility than most. I can’t imagine he’s too proud and stubborn to try something different. If he does, it could be a problem.

Idea of the Week

My idea of the week also involves Scottie. It started with this NLU thread where Soly and DJ wondered if the baseball equivalent of what Scottie is doing with his approach play is hitting .400.

Data Golf jumped in and started throwing around standard deviations and IQ scores. Normal golf chatter.

This made think about how SG and other stats like those are never going to be normalized for the Regular Golf Fan. It’s useful for people like me who swim around in this stuff, but RGF is never going to be like, “Scottie just hit 2.0 SG approach on his 50-round rolling average THAT IS SIIIIIIIIIIIIIICK!!”

It’s just not going to happen.

However, if we used standard deviation and compared it to other numbers that we understand, that could be useful to RGF. Things like Scottie’s approach play is equivalent to …

• An IQ of 160.

• A vertical of 45 inches.

• Running a 3:50 mile.

• Scoring 37 PPG in the NBA.

Or even a Tiger line or chart similar to the world record line in the swimming pool during the Olympics. With $10 billion at stake, I couldn’t get within three seconds of any swimming world record number, but I can tell you that I will absolutely be bought in to that green WR line when Paris rolls around in July.

Question of the Week

I asked everyone for the equivalent of somebody writing down incorrect numbers on a piece of paper and being thrown out of a sporting event because he got them wrong. In my head, it was something like a botched coin flip, but your answers were even better.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Quote of the Week

Back to Tiger.

“I think that more than anything, that I try and do from a technical standpoint is making sure I can still hit the golf ball flush and solid. I don't have the same speed I used to have, I don't have the ability to practice the same amount of hours, but I still do work on making sure that I can hit the ball on the middle of the face. … sometimes it doesn't look pretty, but I can still hit the ball flush.”

Kind of a tough week to give this quote considering the hosel he found on Thursday afternoon, but I could legit listen to Tiger nerd out on golf talk for hours. It’s such a different and weird and interesting language, and he totally owns all of it. Even the shank he hit led to an interesting exchange.

I’ve written this before, but I think the reason it’s all so interesting to me is because it’s a language so many of us speak (or try to speak) when we go play. I’m not talking like NFL players because, you know, I’m not playing football games. But when Tiger says he has 96 front, 27 total and is trying hit a punch hook, I’ve literally been there before and said that in my head to myself (also after finding the hosel)!

Honorable mention quote of the week was Hideki after shooting a nine-birdie 62 to join Faldo, Mickelson, Snead, Nelson and Hogan as golfers who have won Riviera and Augusta (shout out JRay): "I wasn't striking the ball really well."

Me after hearing that …

Overheard on Twitter

That primal desire is, ‘Do you really see me? Do you really know me? Are you really going to be there for me if I'm desperate enough?’ And that’s what it’s always about.” -Greg McKeown (via Tim Ferriss)

Whew, that’s a good one.

I have found in life that people (myself included!) mostly just want to be seen, heard and known. We want to be reminded that we matter. That’s not a difficult thing to give away, but so often we are too focused on ourselves to actually do it.

Normal Sport

1. I guess we have to start with the Cliff Boy and his gaffe on Friday evening. It gets normalized in our weird little golf world that someone would be DQ’d for signing an incorrect scorecard. Of course, we say, that’s how it goes.

But think about what’s actually happening, and then try to imagine it happening in a different context.

What actually happened: One of the five biggest stars in the league was ejected from a game and fined six figures (maybe seven!) because someone he was playing that game with didn’t remember how many times he had attempted to do the thing he is paid to attempt to do.

It would be like, well, kind of like this only if Ja and LeBron had to add up each other’s score and double check it against their own.

Insane, ridiculous sport, and I hope they never change that hilarious rule. Legitimately! It’s part of what makes golf unique, and what makes golf unique is what makes Normal Sport possible.

2. Buddy, if you can read the following and not understand how or why this newsletter was created, then you probably should not be subscribed.

3. The funniest part here is that he (correctly) thought he could advance the ball closer to the hole by banking it off of a wooden retaining wall than by just turning around and dropping it. And the best part was that he almost made 4. Also the data snake made me laugh. Jason turning it into an illustration at the top and bottom of this newsletter amused me.

Meme of the Week

I imagine Josh Allen offering hip turn advice to the Cat here.

Crooked Golf Media

👉️ What do you think a random person would say is this person’s skill level from 1-10 at the thing he is doing after watching this video?

👉️ A lot of you missed what I was getting at here. I wasn’t pointing out that Gary Woodland was looking in JT’s bag. I was pointing out that Tiger Woods was signaling something to someone who may have been Gary Woodland after Tiger looked in his bag.

👉️ One in every 10 Icelanders writes a book in their lifetime.

👉️ I probably enjoyed this thread on All-Star Game shoes more than I should have.

👉️ My guy Rick Gehman wrote about a global tour, and it’s excellent. I have some things I would counter with, but overall really solid.

👉️ This article on Tyler Johnson and his family producing golf equipment for kids is awesome. I’ve linked to Tyler’s stuff before, but what an amazing story.

One Thought I Had

Something I was thinking about the other day.

1. What is the grand slam of golf apparel?

2. How many caddies have reached it?

I saw a photo of Ludvig playing Riviera, and in the background, Joe Skovron was putting a hoodie on, which reminded me that he’s had Puma gear (Rick), Nike gear (Tom Kim) and now Adidas (Ludvig).

I would put all of these in a different category of apparel from stuff like H&B (which is much higher end 😉), and I think Under Armour is the natural fourth leg of the slam. The options are Spieth, Mav and … ?

The best option is actually probably Steph getting into another KFT event and inviting him to caddie. I bet Skovy runs around in those circles enough that he could get that bag and finish off the apparel slam.

These are the types of things I think about throughout the day.

How is This App Free?

Here are some finds from this week.

• I laughed so so hard at this. Watch the whole thing.

• Perfection.

• Antifaldo’s week made Hideki’s heater on Sunday look pedestrian.

• More Spieth from JLM.

• This one made me laugh pretty hard. The phrase “bare calves” hits.