🤔 Opening Thought

Why does every personal golf logo look like it was constructed using MS Paint? Kate Smith and Shane Bacon are going to be billionaires once players figure out that they can actually contract this stuff out.

💀 Normal Moment(s) of the Week

The very routine not-at-all-absurd happenings from around the world of golf.

1. Jon Ram

I have no idea what’s going on here, but I would love to believe that the rules officials on the Asian Tour roll around the course in four-wheel drive Rams while the struggling PGA Tour forces its officials into golf carts that don’t come close to touching 4 MPH.

2. The TIO Problem

Last year, Viktor Hovland started playing down the wrong fairway on the 15th at Riv. This year, the Tour put up a temporary scoreboard directly in his line (imagine the NBA hanging a 90-foot banner so Steph couldn’t take 40-foot 3-pointers). So Hovland asked for TIO relief on the tee box.

Hovland: “Can I get TIO relief from that scoreboard?”
Tour: “Sir, this is a Wendy’s.”

3. Go Zillow

This seems minuscule (which is the point), but can you imagine factoring in another professional sport’s schedule into the listing of your home?

“When should we list our house?”

“People buy in the summer so they can get their kids in before school.”

“Yeah, but ESPN+ is airing 37 hours of Rickie Fowler footage of our backyard in February, and you can’t buy that kind of exposure!”

💡Trivia Question (and Giveaway!)

Congrats to Matt H. who correctly answered last week’s Harry Cooper question and was the fastest to do so. This week’s winner gets a free audio version of NS2 (Bacon apparently paying me by the reference).

Why was the Honda Classic not played in 1976?

💭 Idea of the Week

Last week, Jon Rahm won Riv after 1. Making eagle in Round 2 on the 17th hole after a blocked approach caromed off a grandstand pole and settled on the green for an eagle putt (which he made) and 2. Hitting a tee shot in Round 3 into a spot on the course that PFT Commenter said looked like a FEMA camp (he got a free drop and made par). That’s a problem! Not Rahm’s problem, but still a problem. Here’s how my buddy David said it to me …

Imagine in baseball if you hit a rollover dribbler to the shortstop that’s going to result in an inning ending double play. But instead, a streaker runs out onto the field and cuts the ball off from the shortstop, continues streaking (now with the baseball) and chunks the ball over the wall in left field resulting in a 2-run homer instead of an inning ending double play.

There are two Very Serious ways we can solve this TIO plague.

1. Kevin Van Valkenburg’s idea: Please support my campaign to hold at least one tournament a year with no drops. No out of bounds, but also no drops, no TIO relief, just golf.

Can you imagine the places Spieth would have to hit shots from?! On top of trailers, behind swimming pool slides, inside of ice cream trucks. Masters-like ratings.

2. My idea: Simply make a rule that if you’re a professional golfer playing in a professional golf tournament and you, at any point, hit a grandstand or object that was constructed for that event, you should have to add a stroke to your score no matter where the ball ends up.

If you want my thoughts on Joe Burrow’s brother, Xander, please see last week’s newsletter.

💧 Legal Drops

Speaking of drops!

Here’s a look at what we’re cooking up to release over the next few weeks and months. You will hear about the actual drops in this newsletter first

📖 NS2 Paperback Edition

That’s right, we’re printing a paperback edition — probably 100-200 copies of it — that will be available for purchase soon.

Drop: Sometime before the Masters.

📊 Golf Index

I’ve been hollering about this on Twitter for several months now so we just decided to build it ourselves. Our goal is to have every Masters score ever shot loaded into the site before this year’s Masters. Golf Index is the current working title. If you think of anything great that we should name the site, respond to this and let me know.

Drop: Sometime before Masters.

📱 Overheard on Twitter

This is both true and hilarious. If I had to commission somebody to write a golf book that would leave me in a constant state of 😂😂😂, Shane is absolutely the guy.

📚️ From the Chronicles

The 2022 Honda feels like it happened 11 years ago.

In the middle of all of this—the Phil apology, the Norman letter— Rory posted this quote on Instagram: Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. -Epicurus

It was posted with a pettiness normally reserved for the NBA offseason, not Honda Classic week. Speaking of which, there was (I think) a tournament that was played the week after Riv.

Sepp Straka won it after Daniel Berger kicked it away and Shane Lowry couldn’t take advantage. Berger made one putt on Sunday longer than 29 inches, and Lowry got hung up in an insane rainstorm at the end of the event that lasted about seven minutes.

Straka is a sweet-swinging Austrian who moved to Valdosta, Georgia, as a kid, played at UGA and . . . travels to tournaments with Diet Coke if he knows the event provides Pepsi products. He’s absolutely going to beat JT 4 and 2 on Sunday in Rome and walk around with a CamelBak of spiked diet soda at the afterparty. There won’t be enough of ZJ’s big mitts to handle the takes when that happens.

-Normal Sport 2

I stand by every word.

♥️ One Thing I Loved

On Friday night, my wife and I watched La La Land. I don’t know if I was pulled in by the fact that that Tour was in Los Angeles and I’d just finished watching Riv or if she’s actually the one who chose the movie. Frankly, don’t really care. It’s a tremendous film full of great moments.

In the middle of the movie, Seb (Ryan Gosling) signs a deal with a band that he’s, at best, tepid about. He’s on tour and his girlfriend, Mia (Emma Stone), asks if this is just what he’s going to do for the rest of his life instead of chasing his real dream of opening a jazz club.

Here’s the conversation that ensued.

Seb: What am I supposed to do? Go back to playing "Jingle Bells" so I can save money for some club no one wants to go to? 

Mia: People will want to go to it because you're passionate about it and people love what other people are passionate about. You remind people of what they've forgotten. 

It’s my favorite part of the movie, and I thought about it when Max Homa talked about how much Riv means to him and how devastated he was to lose to Thanos on Sunday. The video is worth a click.

Caring about something — like, truly caring — as was pointed out in that tweet, is such a great quality to have because it’s one that most people are too distracted to remember or not vulnerable enough to obtain.

I recently wrote a hype video for the 2025 (not a typo) Ryder Cup that will … maybe be made public at some point (?) but is being used internally right now by the PGA. In the video, near the end of it, I used Roger Angell’s famous quote about the business of caring, which you should absolutely go read. Max is in the business of caring. I’m not sure how many pros are also in that business — there are plenty of businesses to be in when it comes to golf — but it’s one of the only ones that’s this engrossing.

The business of caring. 

Damn, what a phrase.

How I want more of that in my life.

🏥 The Infirmary

True sicko behavior.

We got an email last week from a reader who confessed that my documentation in Normal Sport 2 that Harris English won the 2022 American Express kept him up at night because he didn’t know if I’d made a genuine mistake (Hudson Swafford actually won) or if he’d just stumbled upon an Easter egg within the book.

I affirmed to him that it was the latter and he responded that he’d had live bet Swafford which is why he remembered it so well and asked if this fact, combined with his lost sleep over my possible mistake, made him a sicko. I assured him it did, but then I found an even sicker sicko than him.

Somebody who, within the last few weeks, did the following and did not seem remotely ashamed of his actions.

“I got my picture taken,” this grown man began …

(I presumed he was going to go on to note some obscure golfer he took a selfie with but no …)

“… with Ken Tackett last week at WMPO.”

I howled with laughter. Howled. There’s even evidence! Truly sick behavior.

🔢 By the Numbies

$27,620: That’s how much more money Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus earned over the course of their entire PGA Tour careers than Jon Rahm earned during the first 60 days of 2023.