Edition No. 41 | November 15, 2023

Hey,

A few notes before we get started.

1. You can pre-order Normal Sport 3 on Kindle. That is currently the only platform that offers pre-orders, but we will also have options for a physical book, PDF (buy this if you care about our profit margin!) and audiobook, which you will be able to purchase on Spotify.

2. We have a November sponsor!

Frame Coffee is giving away multiple free 12-month coffee subscriptions to our readers. To be eligible to win, leave a comment on this tweet and refer at least three new people to the newsletter in the month of November.

We’ll keep track of how many folks you referred so you don’t have to. I’m doubtful that thousands of people will all refer at least three others (though that would be great!) so if you do hit the three-person benchmark, your odds of winning great free coffee for 12 months are going to be pretty good.

More on Frame: “Our mission is simple: We want to connect you to coffee that is sourced with purpose, roasted with intentionality and offered to you for a price that you can enjoy regularly.”

Ed. note: It also just tastes amazing. I’ve been drinking it for over a month now, and it is tremendous.

You can earn free shipping and simplify your morning routine with a Frame Coffee subscription today.

Onto the news.

One Thing I (Hope to) Love

I have been thinking a lot about TGL over the past few weeks. How it will work, whether it will work, what it even means for it to work. This Wired article from last week offered some interesting insight, but what clicked for me was a tweet by Michael Kim that was not about TGL at all.

Kim has obviously become very active on Twitter, which is great because he’s almost always extremely insightful and offers tour-level perspective without coming off like a pompous jerk.

Anyway, he was discussing course management and strategy for pros and how it relates to course management and strategy for amateurs. Fairly straightforward, basic stuff that I also found to be quite compelling.

It hit me that the way TGL could work and possibly even thrive is to let us into that insight. OK, Patrick Cantlay is hitting 7 iron into this green. Why? Is he trying to cut it and land it softly? Is he trying to take that left bunker out of play? What is desired trajectory? What window is he trying to hit it out of?

I would be way into this type of player commentary, and I think a lot of other people would be as well.

It doesn’t have to stop there. There are so many options. You want to captivate an audience? Like, a real audience? Get Tiger on an iPad talking spin rates and launch angles. Have Rory walk me through what his teammate Adam Scott is trying to do with the specific shot he’s trying to hit in a given moment.

For all the talk about new leagues and formats, nothing has given us anything resembling this.

And if the rebuttal is, Well that’s not how you congregate the masses, I would point you to the book, The Martian. If you didn’t read it, it’s a sci-fi story about space travel to Mars, and much of it is incredibly technical and scientific. The type of jargon that should be a turn-off to people like me who are not steep on literal rocket science.

And yet …

Did you watch the Netflix Cup on Tuesday? If you love golf, it wasn’t great. Fine, I guess, but not the best way to spend 150 minutes of your time. There was one moment that I found intriguing, though. JT was talking Carlos Sainz through why he lifts his left heel on certain drives and why he doesn’t on others. He didn’t get in the weeds, but just to hear him discuss his theory behind it was, as a golf fan, a delight.

The experience of watching and listening to brilliant people talk about the topics they know best can be (and often is) enthralling. And even if this strategy didn’t capture a big enough audience immediately, TGL could easily bring the sickos into a world they rarely get to enter and work the business plan off of that. They could start with the folks they should be focused on — golf fans who also play golf — and build from there. I don’t know that this is the path they’ll chose, but it’s the one they should as they get underway in January.

I wrote a bit more about all of this for CBS Sports this week if you want to check it out here.

Normal Sport 3

Thought No. 230 from Normal Sport 3 comes from The Open …

Though Rory, Rahm, Young and Tom Kim gave chase, it was futile. Harman rocked ‘em. And while this wasn’t the most popular outcome in major championship history, it was one of the most dominant, especially early in the week. Golf is so different. I must have written this 500 times, but beating 155 other guys who are changing every detail of their schedules to try and have the week of their lives four times a year seems impossible.

It’s not that I don’t understand how players don’t win multiple majors, it’s that I don’t really understand how they even win one.

Imagine being Rahm.

Scheffler couldn’t putt, Rory couldn’t back up Scotland, Spieth ran out of duct tape, JT was a mess, Cantlay, Xander and Moriakwa were never really a factor. There’s nobody in front of me! Oh except this one guy who has two career top 10s at majors and two total PGA Tour wins is making threes like Steph and running away from the field.

How infuriating that must be.

Crooked Golf Media

👉️ I did a major over/under pod with Andy Lack. Brooks, Rory, Spieth, JT, Scheffler, Hovland and a lot more. Hope you enjoy it!

👉️ Speaking of Andy Lack, his take on why TGL teams are associated with different cities is very thoughtful and good.

👉️ I asked Roberto Castro about the five best players he was around or saw in college. His answer was interesting.

👉️ This Billion Dollar Creator episode with Sam Parr on how to turn an audience into a business is terrific.

👉️ You should pay the $5 or $10 or whatever it is to read the Rory-Lowry-Paul Kimmage multi-parter. We’re only one article in, and it’s already great. The Cantlay-Ryder Cup stuff (understandably) got all the headlines, but I found the Rory-Lowry friendship dynamic just as interesting and compelling.

Listen to Kevin Clark.

👉️ LKD and the Golf Digest crew got steep on Gordon Sargent’s hips. It is completely fascinating.

The Infirmary

Three absolute gems this week. First, an email from Kyle M.

Kyle, I tried to DM you this on Twitter but can't because I don't pay for it. But had to share this. I think it qualifies me as a sicko. My son likes to listen to and sing this song, and now when I hear "Who me?" I can't not think of Blockie.

Also, an email from Adam K.

KP, I just sent this text to a buddy then re-read and thought, “normal sport.”

(VF is a type of driver shaft, by the way)

Finally, my favorite genre — the NYT mini games-infirmary crossover from @ANGC_Burner.

Love Your Work

Here’s a take: I think creators — writers, musicians, painters, comedians — undervalue ease of distribution in the era in which we live. Obviously, the internet contributes greatly to this — my entrance into sportswriting was starting a website in which I covered Oklahoma State football and basketball from my apartment in Dallas, Texas and which anyone in the world with an internet connection could read at any time. And the cost of building this business was like $15/ month. All of that is insane.

But we probably even undervalue it in real life. I was thinking about that after reading this tweet from Nathan Baugh.

And also the response from Dalton Mabery.

The intended takeaway based on the tweets is, “Look at how cool it is that this successful artist hasn’t completely sold out,” and yes, that is a cool takeaway. But the cooler takeaway, at least for me, is “How crazy is it that we can all make art out in the open and share it and get feedback on it and then go back and make it better?” Think about how rare that is throughout history. How few people have been afford that opportunity.

This writing is being sent to nearly 6,200 people. Any of them can easily respond and tell me what they did or did not like about it immediately. That is an extraordinary reality that we never consider because I think sometimes we’re just trying not to drown in the wave of content we’re hit with every day.

Certainly one I’m grateful for, though, and one I try to not take for granted.