Issue No. 99 | July 31, 2024

Hey,

If you have ever taken a family trip with multiple kids you know that the highs are “sinking the Ryder Cup winning putt” high and the lows are “making a quad at Portrush to open your home Open” low.

I was gone for most of the last week to Colorado, playing golf, white water rafting, fishing and reading off the major season hangover with our family. It was … fun?

It was fun.

It was mostly fun.

Parenting is hard, and I keep thinking it won’t be. It’s kinda like golf in that sense. You find a new feel (family rhythm), shoot a good round (have a good week) and you start thinking irrational things like, “everything will be smooth and straightforward now!” And then the next day you start 6-8-5 (a kid screams about what brand of granola you bought), and you have to start all over again.

I don’t know if that cycle makes me like golf (or parenting) more, but it does compel me to work harder at it, to learn to have grace for myself¹ and to encourage others in their own journey.

Onto the news.

One Thing I Hate

It remains insane to me that the Olympics is an individual 72-hole stroke play event over four days at a golf course that is used regularly for another tour.

What?

Golf is the perfect individual sport with a million variations that actually work for team play. Even tennis, which has almost no team variations, manages to get actual team play into the Olympics.

I was thinking about this while watching Nadalcaraz play doubles the other day. What an amazing, delightful thing. The aging legend and the wunderkind teaming up to represent their country.

That’s the Olympics. Not another 72-hole slog with Xander outlasting Gaganjeet Bhullar and Phachara Khongwatmai for a medal.

A question I’ve been asking myself: Why do we even have teams? Like, why are Scottie and Morikawa and Wyndham even photographed together? They have next to nothing in common at this event other than the fact that they are playing golf. Is there another sport at the Olympics in which a “team” of individuals is sent that has less to do with each other than golf does?

And the irony is that the most interesting form of golf is team golf!

In games with friends recently, we have been playing two on two best ball on the front nine and then alternate shot on the back. Not every time, but some of the time. Both formats are fun, but the alternate shot stuff is enthralling, even for bad golfers like us, even with nothing on the line.

Imagine this world at the Olympics with two-man (and two-woman) teams …

Round 1: Worst ball
Round 2: Best ball
Round 3: Scramble (why not?)
Round 4: Alternate shot

We don’t care about the Zurich Classic because the teams are made up, literally put together in the weeks ahead of the event. But throw some flags on some shirts and we will — and we have proved that we will! — care about anything.

Judo? Sure. Fencing? No idea what’s happening, but I’m in. Team handball? Absolutely, brother. Dressage? As long as the horses are ‘Merican!

It’s the biggest miss. The best way to differentiate team golf. The worst possible outcome for reintroducing golf back into the Olympics.

In Rio, I think everyone was just intrigued by what golf would be. In Tokyo, I think everyone was just hoping that it would get played. But now? It has hit home just how preposterous 72 holes of stroke play is for Olympic golf.

If you watched the U.S. men’s gymnastics team on Monday evening, it’s not difficult to envision a different scenario for golf.

The best non-major championship golf in the world is team golf. Presidents Cup, Ryder Cup and NCAAs. The anxiety of playing for both your teammate and your country (or continent) does overwhelming, often indelible, things.

To wit ….

LIV tries to get this right but fails because 1. It’s just 72 54 holes of stroke play added up at the end and 2. There is no context to the teams. The Olympics could have changed that and have the context built into the event. And yet, they refused to take advantage.

That’s a huge bummer. And while we will still watch, and the golf will be fine, probably even good depending on who’s in it at the end, it will certainly not be what it could have been and probably still could be.

One Thing I Loved

This soliloquy by Andy Johnson was lovely, and I agreed with every word.

There are a million different directions we could go with what he said, but I think the one I go to in my head is straight to the idea of a global tour. Taking golf around the world.

Rory has talked about it.

I have talked about it.

What Andy is proposing could (could!) fit perfectly with a worldwide 18-tournament tour that hits compelling venues that at least give you a chance at seeing what he described.

Here’s a good one from Adam Scott at the Open that says what Andy is saying in a different way: “I think changes, it's harder to adapt [as I get] older. I knew how to play golf one way, and standing on a tee and being told drive it in the rough is the best play is really hard for me to get my head around still.”

Strategically, what Scott is describing is Moneyball on the PGA Tour. It is the 3s and layups of the Tour. The three true outcomes of pro golf. Aesthetically, it stinks compared to the alternative (long irons and creativity at Troon).

I think we can all mostly agree on that.

And while you’re not always going to get wind and weather like we saw at Troon, at least give yourself a chance by going to places that are made more interesting when that weather does hit. You keep going to TPC Twin Cities, and you aren’t even giving yourself a chance!

No offense to the people of Minneapolis (or Memphis for that matter).

Scotland isn’t the only place with great venues at which golf-crazed folks would attend with enthusiasm. LIV has proved the latter (not so much the former), and hitting up the coasts of Ireland, Australia and South Africa … man, give it to me. Put it right into my veins.

Again, is a global tour wise from a business perspective? No idea!

But selfishly I don’t care how much money a global golf enterprise makes because as a fan it doesn’t affect me.² I just want Troon and Troon-adjacent golf weeks as much as possible in my schedule.

Data Golf Corner

I went back over the last three years and pulled major championship xWins from Data Golf. For the uninitiated (or as a reminder): xWins is your expected wins based on performance for the week.

If you gain 6.0 shots on the field per round at a major, your xWins for that week is extremely high (around 1.0). If you gain, say, 3.0 shots on the field in a given major week, it’s extremely low (around 0.01).

Add ‘em all up, and you get cumulative xWins at majors over the last three years.

What stands out here?

2022-2024 Majors

• Obviously Rory’s number is tough to look at. His xWins number is higher than JT, Fitzpatrick and Cam Smith combined, and they have three more major wins than him. That’s golf, though. That’s how majors work.

• JT’s number is wild. Is JT’s major career overrated? And if so, is his non-major career underrated?

• Scottie (and Bryson): More major wins are coming if he keeps playing like this.

• Wyndham (and JT): More major wins are not coming if he keeps playing like this.

• Did not envision Thriston Lawrence ahead of Hideki, Morikawa, JT, Cantlay, Ludvig and Aberg as of three weeks ago.

• Spieth’s number in this time: 0.03. The same as Corey Conners.

Normal Sport

First of all, the Olympics is a total bonanza for Normal Sport material. A treasure trove of content. Maybe the treasure trove.

So we’ll still do a bit of golf but also mix in Paris because I keep getting tagged into all kinds of obscure stuff.

Let’s start with this one …

1. A magnifying glass to determine 1st and 2nd at an event where the participants have been training for decades. Incredible stuff.

2. Nothing screams Olympics like the country of Gabon boating past a massive fathead of Marie Antoinette (?).

3. And you would have thought this guy would be the most prominently featured police officer on the PGA Tour this year.

4. Steph Curry slicing backhands before overtime of Game 5 against the Celts.

Circles and Squares

Since we’re all chasing something, one of my buddies recently suggested that I should mix in a bit of how I’m feeling about my own personal game.

I think I may start doing that.

Maybe it will be therapeutic. Maybe I need something therapeutic.

The shortest background imaginable: My mom was an elite amateur golf (couple of U.S. women’s ams etc.) but I played HS and college baseball growing up. I’ve been adjacent to golf forever but have never completely given myself over to it until recently. I’m currently a 13.4 with the ball speed of a 3 and the scoring ability of a 28. That’s honestly probably the best way to sum things up.

This year is the first time in a while that my kids have been old enough for me to even consider really trying to work on my game, and I’ve been in pretty deep. Probably a bit too deep. Books, pods, YouTube instructional videos, panic texts to folks like Luke Kerr-Dineen about my swing.

My broad goal is to get down to ~5.

But I have no plan and feel like I float from swing tip to swing tip to swing tip, from thought to thought. From blueprint to blueprint.

Things are dark right now.

My 10-year-old beat me over nine holes in Colorado. He was playing from the up tees, and I was playing from the tips. At one point, he hit this spinny, checking pitch from like 25 yards to 2 feet for par on a par 5 and gave me a “yeah, you didn’t know I had that shot” head nod, which elicited this from me …

Anyway, I’ll go deeper on all of this in the future. Talk about what I’m trying, how I’m playing. I find it fun — and perhaps even an accountability tactic — to write about my game and my quest for improvement. I’m with Neil at NLU: Meaningless adult male competition is important, and this is an outlet for it for me.

I promise I won’t give you the shotcast version of my game in this newsletter, but hopefully it will be enjoyable and maybe even an encouragement to those of you who are chasing as well.

Also, if any of you have moved from ~12 index to ~5 or lower, I’d love to hear what plans you followed to do so or how you moved along that path.

The Infirmary

I was told by our little Normal Sport team that I had to include this or it would be included for me.

I’m sure many of you saw the lovely little photo of World No. 1 and his family at the Louvre from last weekend.

A very cool photo, for sure, and yet the only thing I could think when it came across my timeline was …….. “ Wait, is that a Preston Trail hat?”

Also, Shane gets an honorable mention for this.

Olympics Take(s) of the Week

I have been engrossed in the Olympics, and I have some takes.

• I think I’m good on Snoop. He’s great. Truly, he and Kevin Hart talking dressage was my favorite part of Tokyo. I’m just not sure I need him in every single shot from Paris.

At the ceremonies. With Dressel’s wife. In the stands at the gymnastics. He feels like a prop at this point! He’s like the Fanatics at the Presidents Cup!

• Hard agree with this.

• I thought golf, with its lip outs and crazy bounces was a sport with small margins. But then you hear Rowdy Gaines say things like, “Yeah the top 17 in the 400 fly are separated by .0000873 seconds. This should be a good race!”

Swimming is insane.

• A lot of folks are telling on themselves that they have not watched any golf over the last several years with their complaints about playing through during various sports. Is it preposterous? Yes. Were we as golf fans conditioned better than anyone to get hit with a Delta commercial while Wembanyama is throwing down on some poor dude from Belgium? Yes, yes we were.

• I’m going to overstate this for effect, but I think U.S. Ryder Cup team could take a few notes on the U.S. men’s gymnastics team. I was enthralled throughout on Monday. And the thing they did — on foreign soil in an arena where the crowd is not really for or against you — is they brought their own energy.

What was it the Clark Kent-looking dude said afterward? Something like, I have a streak going. When they nail their pommel horse routines. I nail mine. We believe that this is a momentum sport.

They weren’t scared to be vulnerable, to look stupid celebrating and letting it all go. It was infectious. You could see and feel it. Even across an ocean.

On the other hand, the U.S. Ryder Cup team on the road …

• This is awesome … I have long been a proponent of podiums in golf, and Jamie displays what it would look like at the majors since WW2. I think this is probably a clearer picture of who the best players of the last 75 years have been (even though it puts a dent in my Cat > Jack theory).

Meme of the Week

I don’t think I included this one last week, but it’s pretty great.

• When the 7-year-old hasn’t looked at water all day but storms out of his room five times in 22 minutes like he’s hydrating for an Ironman.

Corrupt Golf Media

👉️ I mentioned last week that Jamie is one of my favorite follows, and threads like this one on the wildest Wikipedia grids in golf history is an example of why. There are so many different directions a thread like that can go. My favorites: Faldo, Snead, Birdie Kim, Sophia Popov, Patty Berg. Just unreal stuff.

This on Snead made me laugh.

👉️ Justin Ray did Justin Ray stuff on the Open each day, and this one on Rory hurt.

👉️ SMartin’s niche of writing the backstories of players after they win or are in the news is 👌👌👌. Also shout out to massive Astros fan, Jhonny Vegas.

👉️ The Data Golf newsletter just keeps getting better. Their Open recap ruled, and I especially loved the part on best major seasons of the last 40 years.

👉️ This is also my take on the opening ceremonies.

👉️ This on how Wimbledon leaves nine figures on the table similar to the Masters is interesting.

How is This App Free?

• This response got me good.

• All the super fun people in the comments yelling that he wasn’t convicted really got the point of the tweet.

Love Your Work

I think about this question often …

My market of one is very clear to me in my head.

My buddy, Matt (a real person). Somebody who loves golf but doesn’t always have time to watch or play it as often as he would like because he has several kids and a thriving life. Somebody who loves the majors, loves thinking and arguing about legacies and enjoys how golf relates to other sports.

Somebody to whom golf is extremely important but not the most important thing in his life. Somebody who is amused by the weird intricacies of the game and compelled by its humanity.

Somebody for whom this newsletter is about more than just golf.

Thanks for reading until the end.

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