Edition No. 66 | March 20, 2024

Hey,

Whew, there was a lot to look back through over the last few days.

We got an all-time Players — I mean, I literally went to the ground while watching Wyndham’s putt like Bones that one time Phil lipped out 59 in Phoenix — and yet all I could envision in the aftermath was the mustachioed man in the pullover firing fastballs into the side of a hill and hitting a push slice off the trunk of a tree on live television.

What a wonderful sport and what an incredible weekend.

Thank you to Holderness and Bourne for sponsoring this week’s newsletter. H&B rules for two reasons.

1. Their apparel is awesome.

2. They have allowed us to illustrate their best stuff throughout this newsletter.

We’re celebrating their spring 2024 collection like Jerry Pate celebrated at the first Players at TPC Sawgrass in 1982 (see below). All of the illustrations and captions in this newsletter are clickable (including the header) — some of them with H&B pieces, others with different fun surprises.

We built it so you could explore throughout.

Onto the news.

A Few Lingering Thoughts on the Players

Too much happened last week to limit this section to one thing I loved. Here’s a sampling of what I collected for the Normal Sport notebook this week.

• I wrote about (it’s probably more appropriate to say, I had the conversation about) whether Scottie is the best since Tiger. Of course, this was completely misinterpreted by [gestures at internet]. A couple of points on that piece.

1. I wasn’t comparing him to Tiger.

2. I wasn’t calling him the most accomplished player since Tiger.

3. I wasn’t even necessarily calling him the best (I arrived at a different answer).

4. He’s winning at an 18 percent (!!!) clip over the last two years so it seems like a fair time for that convo.

5. Brooks is so historically complicated.

TL;DR conclusion: Rahm and Rory are still better, Brooks is more decorated. Scottie’s trajectory is 👀 though.

• Here’s where I land with Scottie: He’s so grounded and disciplined on and off the course that this doesn’t feel like an abnormal run (even though it definitely looks like an abnormal run). With guys like Spieth and Jason Day, the putting was so extraordinary that it was unsustainable over a longer arc.

Scottie is winning without putting at all!

Rory has always been the ultimate flusher. One of the great hitters, not of his generation, but in golf history. So when it’s right, it’s the best thing in the world. When it’s not, he sometimes struggles (if you call 24 Tour wins “struggling”).

Scottie is a flusher, for sure, but he also dissects golf courses. That’s the part that’s Tiger-like. He abuses fairways and greens. He wins because he hits it great but also because he never deviates from his discipline or his plan. It’s kind of like Brooks at majors, but Scottie does it every week. It’s the mega-underrated part of his game, and also the part that makes this seem like it could go for a long time.

• I compared Scottie to Federer in a newsletter last week. I saw that being discussed more broadly. My point was not their styles, which could not be more different. My point was their emotions. Both are very quiet, almost placid while they compete, but something is always bubbling underneath. I think both are brilliant tacticians, great thinkers about their respective crafts. Neither is a gesticulator like some of their competitors. Both have mentioned that other people have said after failure that they need to just “try harder.”

It would be easy to dismiss the competitive fire because Scottie rarely screams like JT and Fed rarely emoted like Roddick. But for both of them, it seems to serve them well to keep it under wraps until they must disclose it. And it can come out at interesting times. Scottie while reliving the 2023 Players and talking about his wife. Federer while holding hands with one of his great rivals. I dunno, maybe it’s nothing. But it seems like there’s something there.

• Cashmere Keith said the quiet part out loud during happy hour with Smylie on Friday.¹ Did you guys hear it? They asked him about the ridiculous collar of rough around the 17th green — Will Knights compared it to bowling with the bumpers on 😂 — and he said something like, Well as a player, I love it. If I was watching as a fan I might not like it as much.

Kinda says a lot, no?!

• Related, I thought Rory said it perfectly on Wednesday. He was asked about how players could better interact with fans and whose responsibility that was.

“Yeah, so to me, like this is the problem with a member organization. Things are created for the members. Then once those things are created, you've got to go sell those things to fans, sponsors, media. To me, that seems a little backwards.”

“I think what needs to happen is you need to create things for the fans, for the sponsors, for the media, and then you have to go sell that to the players, tell them to get on board with that, because if they get on board and we're all part of the business now, if the business does better, we do better. That seems pretty simple to me.”

I don’t know where he got that — perhaps somebody pointed out the concept and he added his own thoughts, or he just thought of the whole thing on his own — but it’s perfect.

Also, this piece by Ethan Strauss reminded me of Rory and his openness to ideas from anyone and everyone (other than turtles).

TL;DR on that Strauss article is that people in politics interact more with thought leaders in the political world than people in sports do. Politicians use and sometimes even implement ideas that writers and thinkers in their worlds voice. There are some good and bad reasons for this

But I’ve always appreciated Rory’s willingness to consider an idea from pretty much anywhere on the merit of the idea itself. He has voiced things that he’s heard on podcasts or in articles, and he didn’t really care that the person it came from didn’t have as much credibility in the golf world as he does (which is just about everyone, which is mostly my point).

• I called Wyndham a killer on Saturday. Mistakes may have been made. But also maybe not. Killer might not be the right word, but I know what I saw at LACC. He went for it in a way some of his contemporaries have sometimes been fearful of, and you don’t hit shots like this unless you have something in you that other guys don’t have. He’s great. Underrated, and great.

• Loved this quote from Kevin Kisner on Brian Harman: “He’ll make divots until his divots look correct.”

• Maverick McNealy talking on the AirPods during Round 3 about how he made it out of the first tournament of the week and has now entered the more exciting second tournament of the week was fascinating. Good insight into how guys think about these weeks. Also, cuts matter!

• This is dumb and ridiculous, but one of my favorite things about the final round of events is how the leaderboard bug in the bottom right keeps shrinking as guys finish and are eliminated until there are only 2-4 names left on the bug.

• I think last week was pretty easily (?) the best tournament since Jan. 1, 2023.

• If you’re not enamored with Scottie, go watch his presser from last Tuesday. Seriously. If you’re truly invested in following all of this, you should at least throw it on the bluetooth on your drive to or from work or your headphones at the gym and listen to him talk. And if you don’t have 20 minutes to give to it, listen to what Max Homa said about it here.

By the Numbies

I stumbled into this one, but it amused me. I was looking for some Scottie-Tiger numbers for that column I linked above.

Anyway, I fell into this little comparison, in which both players have won 16 times worldwide and have almost the exact same total strokes gained number (note: this was going into last week’s Players, it changed slightly since then). Even their top five numbers are similar (61 for the top player, 62 for the bottom).

Some of you guessed it, but the top is JT, and the bottom is Jordan Spieth.

This seems fairly normal now, but if you would have told yourself this going into the 2016 Masters, it would have seemed unfathomable. Spieth got off to such a faster professional start than JT, but JT has more or less caught him. They have had almost the exact same career.

I think the interesting question is who you would take going forward. JT seems like the obvious choice to me because he’s significantly better from tee to green, but his struggles last year gave me pause. Spieth still feels like magic. But is he? Since Jan. 1, 2021, his SG neighbors are Tyrrell Hatton and Sam Burns. Good players, sure, but all timers like we thought Spieth was?

By the Numbies II

If you played all eight rounds at Bay Hill and the Players, your score — if you played to field average — would have been right around -2. Scottie played the two events in 35 under.

People seemed to like and understand this comp, which is interesting, because it’s basically just strokes gained. Another way of saying this is that he gained around 33 strokes on the field over those two events or between 4-5 per round.

Normal Sport

1. They just started dropping Johnson Wagner in everything, didn’t they? Just all over TPC Sawgrass. It was the best. Live From rocks because I don’t know that any other shows would even try this, and it was somehow both hilarious and instructive.

Imagine Peter Gammons trying to hit 99 off a JUGS machine after Game 3 of the NLDS. Or Adam Schefter going over the middle with Dan Orlovsky throwing him seeds and Jeff Darlington trying to cover him as they reenact a Steelers-Dolphins play from the third quarter.

Incredible stuff.

2. Over the course of two days, birds, frogs and turtles were talked about as serious impediments to golf shots hit by the No. 2 player in the world. Not humorously or “ha ha look at that cute animal,” but rather as objects that he needed to either play around or consider when determining where to drop his golf ball. Good shot by Kyrie there after he got around the elk and anteaters between him and the bucket.

3. It seems impossible not only that this man is a professional golfer but that he might be the best professional golfer of the last 15 years. If I got paired with somebody who swung it like this at the course this weekend, I would not be pleased.

4. What is it that does it for you in this screenshot? Ted’s smile? Maybe the dual cameras? For me, it’s the chair. The “I’ve sat in that chair for 183 youth soccer games and there’s nothing I hate more than trying to fold it up and put it in that nylon baggie” chair. That one. The No. 1 player in the world just setting up shop and getting a $4.5M crick worked out of his neck in that chair.

5. If you’re looking for the full Rory-turtles breakdown, I did that in the Friday newsletter.

Quote of the Week

Scottie’s GQ interview was very good. Here’s one quote from it.

“As players. you grow up watching Tiger play and win Bay Hill, win Memorial, win The Players. All these tournaments I grew up watching and dreaming of playing. Now I’m playing. Do you really need something else?

“I realize that’s part of being human. You make a million dollars, you want two million dollars. You make two, you want three. You win the Masters—OK, now I want to win the RBC the next week. And, like, it’s just us living in an endless cycle of wanting and needing more. It’s just keeping your mind focused on the things that are good and the things that you can control.

“That’s what’s frustrating—you see guys like Jon that left, and he even said it, he said: ‘Would 400 million dollars change my life?’ And he was like: ‘No, it wouldn’t.’ And then all of a sudden someone dangles…”

“It’s not surprising, and it doesn’t change my thoughts on him. Cause as humans we all have the same thoughts. We always want more. It’s just part of it. You’re never satisfied.”

But it sounds like your position is: ‘400 million dollars wouldn’t change my life—but I wouldn’t be tempted by it.’

“I think everybody gets tempted by it.”

This is about as honest and open as I’ve seen a star not named Rory speak on the subject. He basically summed up all of life — whether you’re playing golf for $4.5M a week or pounding a keyboard or engineering bridges or painting homes or selling medical equipment, all for far less than that.

The great quest for us as adults is not for wealth or glory or achievement, though we get good at convincing ourselves that those things are worthy facsimiles. Our great quest, rather, is for contentment. Elusive, hidden contentment.

The human condition.

Idea of the Week

This graphic is amazing.

The best part of watching golf is its relatability to our own games. It’s the “put the regular swimmer in the top lane at the Olympics” idea, but we actually have the data to do it! I want to know how many times I’m getting up and down from 55 yards out of a bunker vs. a tour pro vs. what actually happens when Cantlay has that shot.

That’s incredibly interesting to me and also to 100 percent of the people watching PGA Tour Live at 7:22 a.m. on a Thursday in March.

I don’t know that I need it on Sundays when the horses are coming home, but you want to do this tastefully on Thursdays and Fridays, please have at it!

The Infirmary

If you understand this, please seek help.

Meme of the Week

Starting with Spieth on the first hole.

Finishing with Spieth on the 18th hole.

Overheard on Twitter

Two great (and very unrelated!) ones this week.

“Your religion is what you do with your solitude.” -William Temple

“Twitter is a dumb bubble. Most ballers are quiet.” -Sam Parr

Crooked Golf Media

👉️ Self-aggrandizing plug here, but I wrote another one on Scottie that I’m proud of. This one is on his toughness and how if that’s going to be in the arsenal alongside some of the best ball-striking of the last quarter-century, it’s going to be a real problem for everyone else.

👉️ Joseph LaMagna comparing Boeing to NBC is excellent. Must read.

👉️ Two books you need to read: Sean Zak spent a summer (the summer) in St. Andrews. It’s excellent so far. Jon Sherman just came out with his newest book on improving your game. If you play golf but haven’t read Jon, he’ll help you get better without lifting a finger.

👉️ A lot to roll through in these Peter Malnati quotes, but my big takeaway is that one of the players who is in charge of the PGA Tour thinks the players have too much say in what happens on the PGA Tour. And I agree!

👉️ KVV on the inexplicable survival of Jay Monahan is excellent. KVV is the best reporter/writer combo in the game. Not sure it’s close.

👉️ Not sure I’ve ever laughed this hard at such a dumb tweet.

👉️ This on how to make a great daily newsletter by Kendall Baker is excellent.

👉️ Somebody saying this is how Max Homa walks on a golf course absolutely destroyed me.

👉️ This is why newsletters with limited ads (brought to you by H&B obviously) can thrive. Ad density is out of control.

How is This App Free?

• Perfection here.

• This was low-key the funniest tweet of the week. The “won’t be a problem” after Max absolutely sent one wide right off a tree.

• Telling my wife I’m exhausted from the golf and can’t handle the kids tonight.

• Dude, yes.

• I think he’s actually probably eligible?

• Rory Favre

Thanks for reading until the end.

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

Please enjoy the final illustration from today.

It will never not be funny to me.