Edition No. 51 | January 30, 2024

Hey,

One note before we get started.

1. This month’s newsletter sponsor is TRUE and they’re giving away four pairs of TRUE Lux Hybrid golf shoes (photo below) to Normal Sport readers (one every week this month).

What do you have to do to win the shoes?

Simply be subscribed to the newsletter (which you already are). This week’s winner — our last giveaway of the month — is Peyton Harris.

Thank you to TRUE for the January sponsorship, and here is a note from their founders.

TRUE linkswear is a company rooted in the game of golf. Brothers Ryan and Jason Moore grew up playing and working on the family driving range. Ryan grew into a 5-time PGA Tour winner and Ryder Cupper while Jason caddied early in his career.

No matter how big of an event the duo was part of, one thing never changed — they couldn’t find a golf shoe they enjoyed wearing, a problem they vowed to correct. Out of that pursuit arose TRUE linkswear, one of golf’s fastest rising footwear and lifestyle brands.

Mission No. 1 was creating a modern, comfortable golf shoe that looks (and feels) like your favorite running shoe. In 2023, TRUE launched the LUX Hybrid which emerged as the go-to footwear for players on nearly every major tour, led by the likes of Moore, Joel Dahmen and Christina Kim.

There is much more to golf than professional events. There is a lifestyle that surrounds the game that TRUE has embraced, creating footwear and apparel that is equally appealing in any setting.

The Global Home

The idea of a global golf tour has been around for decades. It is nothing new nor novel. But what is unique about this iteration of the discussion (which seems to pop up every 2-3 years or so) is that — because of the brokenness in pro golf at the moment — there are seemingly fewer steps to it actually happening than there have ever been before.

A global tour has never made more sense.

I read Sean Zak on the topic last week, and it clicked into place for me. Rory is pushing for it. Keith Pelley is pushing for it. I don’t believe all of the American contingent that makes up so much of the PGA Tour side (and increasingly so as LIV becomes European Tour 2.0) is pushing for it, but they also might not have a say.

You know what could be a good idea as American companies like Wells Fargo and Farmers Insurance eject from the golf industry? Pushing the game onto a global stage where securing sponsorship for a week or two of Rory, Rahm, Scheffler, Spieth, Hovland, JT and Morikawa in a given country will be no problem at all.

The Tour’s presumed two investors might be on board.

PIF likes money and widespread influence, and SSG likes good ideas (and has had some terrific success with international sports business).

The best thing LIV has ever done is LIV Adelaide. I’m not sure it’s even close. I think — in the right hands — that specific event can be replicated elsewhere. In easily marketable places like Spain and South Africa at first and the perhaps increasingly elsewhere.

For the folks saying, “You’re just parroting Rory!” I was writing about this idea seven years ago. Here are the receipts. The structure of that post shows some of my early ignorance of how pro golf works but also highlights how much it has changed over the last several years.

But the idea remains.

For the folks saying, “You hate on LIV going global but now you say you want to go global.” No. I don’t dislike the idea of government. I dislike specific governments. I don’t dislike food. I dislike the way Burger King prepares it. I don’t dislike television, I just think most shows are stupid. It is easy (but incorrect) to conflate distaste for an idea with distaste for the implementation of that idea.

Regardless, I have once again fully talked myself into all of this. As an American, I often get far too American-centric with the way I think about an inherently global game like golf. The Fried Egg boys recently discussed what it could look like to reverse that.

Of course much of this will depend on the viability of TV money in a more global structure, but it’s something I’m going to continue to consider. I also enjoyed hearing the ideas from all of you when I asked for consideration on Monday. A fascinating list of what you would do differently with a reimagined professional landscape that has my creative juices flowing.

For now, I’ll leave you with this from Thomas Bjorn.

“I don't know who benefits from this,” Bjorn recently told Bettingsites.co.uk. “LIV want to be the main tour and have all the best players, and they can get there if they want to. The PGA Tour would like to continue to be that tour and has had that status for several decades and they'd like to retain it.

“A lot of effort and money has been spent on trying to make themselves as strong as possible instead of realizing the opportunity and possibility of creating a worldwide tour that works for everyone.

“Everything is there to make this possible - it's right in front of them!”

Stat of the Week

I started my Masters research a bit earlier than usual this year and stumbled into this gem about Russell Henley.

Strokes gained leaders at ANGC since January 1, 2014 (min 10 rounds).

1. Rahm — 2.8

2. Spieth — 2.8

3. Scheffler — 2.8

4. McIlroy — 2.5

5. Rose — 2.3

6. D. Johnson — 2.3

7. Fowler — 2.3

8. Matsuyama — 2.3

9. Morikawa — 2.0

10. Koepka — 2.0

11. Henley — 1.9

One of these things is not like the other ones.

Idea of the Week

Shane takes the idea of the week for the second week in a row. This one is not so much an idea as a nod to the folks who are hustling. I’m glad he said it.

It can be easy to make fun of the PGA Show as a place for the garage and basement dreamers, but some of the coolest stuff going right now is being done by dreamers in garages and basements.

Quote of the Week

This from Tom Whitney on Saturday at Torrey was incredible.

“It’s just golf, kind of plain and simple. I have the perspective that I’m very blessed and I’m very fortunate to get to play this game for a living now. I could be at a location where I don’t want to be. I lost my older brother while he was in the service to suicide.

“There’s a lot of real life things that I’ve been through, and it makes a bad day on the golf course really not that bad. I count my blessings. I’m fortunate to go to places with great weather and great courses and play this game for a living. Like, what am I going to complain about?”

I’m not against everyone over the last few years fighting to understand their monetary value to the golf market. Truly not against it. I would be doing the same. I do the same in my own industry. But I wonder how many of us would be more generally content if we were able to view life through the prism expressed above.

Normal Sport

There were so many this week!

1. This was incredible. I just want to know if this guy is wearing plastic or metal. Has to be plastic, right. You can’t go metal on ice, can you?

2. I hope they keep the Saturday ending for the Farmers just so we keep getting Nantz from different parts of AFC football stadiums.

3. I can’t stop reading the last part of this. Throwing balls at clowns!

Willie Gay is out for the Chiefs against the 49ers because he hurt his arm throwing balls at clowns at Dave and Buster’s last night.  

The Real Boys Club

I’m not totally sure why this has bothered me so much, but Michael Kim pointed out last weekend that two of the Swing 5 players who got into Pebble won events this year (Pavon and Murray). Obviously I have no issues with that.

However, it’s weird that there is an additional category for tournament winners who are not also in the Swing 5 (Nick Dunlap is an example since he couldn’t earn FedEx points as an amateur).

When Kim asked why tournament winners are also occupying the Swing 5, the Tour told him that fields would get too big. Which, again, I get.

But … you know how you could reduce field sizes? By not having four sponsor exemptions into this signature event. Let’s check in on who got those exemptions. Oh, it’s three player directors (Peter Malnati, Adam Scott and Webb) and a member of last year’s player advisory council (Mav McNealy).

That seems … not great.

At least they’re all playing well?

McNealy, Malnati and Simpson have a combined two top 10s since last April (Scott has been excellent).

Listen, I personally like all four of those guys. I think all four are smart, engaging and good dudes. The type of people you want to talk to and be around either as a media member or a fan. I don’t blame them for any of this.

But we cannot be handing out sponsor exemptions to council members for the big boy events. We just can’t. In fact, I don’t think we can be handing out sponsor exemptions to signature events at all. You want to keep them for the AmEx and Wyndham and Deere? Fine, get some Dunlaps and some Thorbjornsens into those fields and see what happens.

But at the top? Is it a meritocracy or not?

There was a lot of talk around the Ryder Cup about golf’s boys club. That’s not exactly what was happening there (although we don’t have time to re-litigate that right now). This, though? This feels very much like a boys club, and it takes away from the competitive nature of what making it into a signature event is supposed to be.

You want to keep a Tiger exemption tucked away for any PGA Tour event? Fine, I don’t care. Let him play wherever he wants.

But for these, you are reducing the seriousness of the competition by handing out sponsor exemptions to the players who are also helping run the league. That’s not a good look for a league that has prided itself on being THE destination for competitive regular season golf play.

The Infirmary

We have two infirmary entrants this week. The first is from Porath. If you have any clue what he’s talking about, you are an absolute sicko.

The second happened at the end of the broadcast at Torrey on Saturday. Jim Nantz highlighted how Matthieu Pavon was the first French player to win on the PGA Tour (allegedly). After a moment, he said something like, “Those of you at home may be asking, ‘What about Arnaud Massy at the 1907 Open Championship?’”

/Literally nobody at home was asking this unless Massy has some great grandchildren who are into golf.

But Nantz, sicko that he is, was right. Arnaud Massy beat a collection of golfers from England, Jersey and Scotland with a 78-77 finish to win an Open at Royal Liverpool and become the third player on a list (Open winners at Hoylake) that was eventually joined by Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones, Peter Thomson, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Brian Harman.

That £50 he won is £7,500 in 2023 money, which is a bit less than the £2.3 million Harman took home last year. According to a paper of record at the time, Massy gave a speech after winning, said he was very glad to come from France to play such good golf and “exclaimed, ‘Vive l’entente cordiale’! amid loud cheers.”

This seems like an odd thing to say given that the literal translation of vive l’entente cordiale is “Long live the cordial understanding!”

But it was actually a reference to a series of agreements signed in 1904 between the UK and the French Republic that marked the end of 1,000 years (!!) of conflict between these entities and paved the way for an alliance in World War I.

Apparently Massy didn’t want the fact that he had beaten so many UK golfers in Liverpool to reignite another 1,000 years of conflict.

Anyway, Natnz is a sicko, and I might be, too, for going down this rabbit hole of history.

Crooked Golf Media

👉️ A fun tiny read on (frequent friend of the newsletter) Holderness & Bourne.

👉️ Thoroughly enjoyed this on Ricky Rubio and his up and down career. This quote stood out.

“It came so fast and so natural that I couldn’t even think (do) I want to be a professional,” Rubio said. “It was, I am a professional.”

👉️ I went on the NLU recap pod on Saturday night with Shane Bacon and KVV, and we ended up talking about AK, Dunlap, Cincy hoops, the Australian Open and which golfers you would want handling nuclear codes.

👉️ There’s a guy named CJ Chilvers who writes better about producing newsletters than anyone I’ve ever seen.

He just wrote a $5 book that’s worth $500.

👉️ This from MKBHD on scaling slowly is really good no matter what kind of business you’re in.

Overheard on Twitter

“A lesson I keep learning... The longest distance between where you are and where you want to go is a shortcut.” -Brent Beshore

A Personal Thread

My parents recently gave me a few boxes of my grandparents’ old stuff to go through. Most of it is junk, but I did stumble into a few gems, which I’ve been posting on Twitter (the first of several photos is below, and you can click through to the others).

Included so far …

• My grandmother’s scorecard from when she was the walking scorer for Jack Nicklaus, Larry Nelson and Tom Kite at the 1982 PGA in Tulsa

• A 1981 map of Augusta National

• A letter Ben Crenshaw wrote my grandfather in response to my grandfather’s original correspondence to him thanking him for a Bob Jones piece he wrote in Golf Digest

This response to that made me laugh.

How is This App Free?

One of my goals this year is to be on Twitter less than in past years, and so far I have stuck to that. I’ve actually found, perhaps counterintuitively, that my experience of Twitter and its use as a research tool to be more efficient, effect and enjoyable the less that I am on it.

Anyway, here are the finds from this week.

This from Max is amusing and kinda sums everything up.

I believe calling for the ball and de-pantsing somebody in front of all of Kentucky is affectionately referred to as a Laettner.

This is … the perfect tweet?

OK, maybe this is the perfect tweet.

It’s true …

It’s the comment that got me.

These two are not golf related, but I loved them both.

All of Patrick’s memes on the USA uniforms were on point.

This is incredible.