The Tiger-Jack Venn Diagram

Welcome to this week’s Normal Sporter, where, instead of getting to the newsletter, we should play a game of “Players Championship graphic or mug shot after obliterating a golf cart with a 2-iron.”

We have 10ish paperback versions of Normal Sport 2 left. Feel free to order (or not order) one using the button below!

💀 Normal Moment(s)

All very routine sports stuff.

1. Booster Seat

If you were up early on Saturday morning for the conclusion of Round 2 of the Players, you got an all timer with Adam Svensson and his caddie.

I incorrectly pointed out that Svensson was wearing a Jamba Juice sweater while leading a tournament that pays its champion $4.5 million. It was actually a Booster Juice sweater — apparently this is a Canadian thing, and half the country let me know.

Regardless, we got a grown man climbing on the shoulders of another grown man so he could get a peek on top of a temporary air conditioning unit (?) to find the sports equipment of the man for whose sports equipment he was in charge of carrying. All while his employer stood among air fryers and temporary ovens with one eye on Gold Boy and one on that stray cigarette sitting uncomfortably close to the propane tank.

Greatest most glorious sport.

2. Bottle Flip

Scott Stallings and his caddie were filmed later on Saturday throwing a water bottle at a tree to try and dislodge Stallings’ golf ball — which had apparently flown in it on the fly — so it could be properly identified and, presumably, so Stallings could take a drop.

 It’s unclear whether identifying your ball in a tree is still a prerequisite in professional golf, but envision Kyrie poking the scoreboard with a wooden stick or Clayton Kershaw rolling Gatorade buckets on the dirt surrounding the infield, and either of these actually affecting the outcome of the sporting event!

A $25 million pool of money, and guys are out here throwing water bottles at trees. If you’re not enthralled or at the very least amused, then I have no idea how to help you!

3. 👉️ 👉️ 👉️ 

Everything you need to know about Jordan Spieth in 15 minutes.

• 101 feet of curve a little over halfway through the shot
• Hollering at Michael, “Is that out of play?”
• Resigned, hands-on-hips 1,000-yard stare
• The ball one-hopped off somebody’s knee to stay in play
• He chipped in for eagle to make the cut
• Obviously

One person in my mentions earnestly (as in, it wasn’t a bit!) suggested that if Spieth “had any class at all” he would have disqualified himself from the tournament, which had me rolling.

The question in my head was whether we think rub of the green tends to tilt in the favor of top players more because they have loads of fans around them at all times or away from them because they have loads of fans around them at all times. In this instance it was the former, but I don’t know if I’ve reached a definitive conclusion there.

Also, Pat Mahomes throwing a bad ball that’s about to be picked but it hits a bird mid-flight and is redirected toward Travis Kelce who runs it in for a TD.

4. Min Woo’s Calves

This actually is like other sports, except that Josh Allen isn’t normally bent over the back of a spectator’s seat while he’s being worked on. Also, one commenter me if Joe Biden had his hands on Min Woo’s calves, which got me good. Where else can you wonder if a sitting president is working the lower legs of a man who hits a 2-iron 700 yards and has the greatest mustache in professional sports?

💧 Legal Drops

A look at what’s cooking.

📊 The Golf Record: We’re toward the end of cleaning up Masters data to get The Golf Record — our Baseball Reference-like statistical site — launched before the first major of the year. As it turns out, cleaning, organizing and publishing even the simplest data is quite difficult (perhaps this is why it’s never been done before!). Regardless, we’re excited to publish the site and excited to iterate it as we get feedback from all of you.

Out mission is simple: To document golf history.

If you want to sign up to receive updates on our progress or if you’re interested in what we’re building, we’ll start sending info over the next few weeks. Sign up below. Drops: End of March

💭 Idea of the Week

This one got me good.

They would have needed an excavator for poor Taylor Montgomery, who finished 5-7-7-4 on Sunday. They could have rolled Louis Oosthuizen out there on one of his John Deere machines and had him just eliminating stack after stack as Montgomery played his last four.

One last note on that, how about Alex Smalley playing 16 and 17 on Sunday in eight strokes with no birdies, bogeys or pars?

Oh, you went through 16-17 at even par, nice steady playing, fella. 

Yeah, I made a 7 and a 1.

💭💭 Idea of the Week II

Play the Presidents Cup at TPC Scottsdale to give it some juice. Play the Ryder Cup at TPC Sawgrass so we can see Tyrrell unhinged after losing a match because he careened a ball off the wooden planks at 17.

❤️ One Thing I Loved

I found a quote Jack Nicklaus gave last summer that floored me. He was talking about course management with Nick Faldo on a CBS broadcast, and he said, “I thought I was pretty good at what I did, but I didn’t trust it that much.”

Elite professional golf — hell, perhaps even not-elite amateur golf — seems to be an eternal war between “I could do this” and “but should I do this?”

The discipline it takes to get to a place where there is nobody more equipped to hit a draw 220 over water to a tucked pin and to still choose not to do it is a Venn diagram of just a few golfers throughout history. Maybe just two.

It takes outrageous giftedness to get to the middle of this Venn diagram, but it might require even more humility.

This is the story of our lives, too. To exist between the tension of “I have worked to the point where I could ________________, but at this moment in time I’m not going to because it’s not the right choice or not the right moment or doesn’t engender the flourishing of those around me” is a truly extraordinary place to exist.

📱 Overheard on Twitter

This is a better version of one I think about often: Naps. Does your view on anything in life change more as you get older than your view of naps? Kids loathe them to a sometimes-apocalyptic degree, parents crave them as if they were on the bottom rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy!

🥗 Media Diet

👉️ SMartin breaking down Scottie’s emotional intelligence and constant tussle with identity and imperfection was brilliant. One of the best things I’ve read in golf in a while.

👉️ KVV on mechanics and artists was equally terrific. Nobody engenders more professional jealousy from me than KVV.

Also this …

👉️ Shane Bacon compared Scottie to Kobe on Monday in TFE newsletter, and it was great. Here’s a sampling.

👉️ Me on how Scottie Scheffler’s boring golf is kind of the point.

👉️ What walking 10K steps a day does for you.

👉️ The Acquired episode with Ben Thompson (of Stratechery) is tremendous. Great insight on the state of media and how you build a business around it.

🚶 Must Follow

My friend Rick Gehman runs a terrific fantasy and betting website, but you don’t have to be remotely interested in either of those topics to appreciate his newsletter. It’s probably the best prep you can do for the week’s event. Click below to get it.

🏥 The Infirmary

True sicko behavior.

So much to choose from this week! We’ll go in two different directions.

The first is that Smylie is for sure a complete and total sicko. And honestly let those among us who haven’t found themselves in this exact position at some point over the last month week cast the first stone. It has replaced the “knee up, mimicking throwing 91 on the corner” move as my go-to in the kitchen when my wife and/or kids are talking to me.

The edition came when Aaron Rai closed 4-1-3 at Sawgrass on Saturday and nearly completed the 3-1-3 challenge, which, I believe would have gotten him a lifetime exemption into the Rocket Mortgage Classic. If you understand any of these words you are part of the infirmary, and judging from some of your responses many of you understood many of these words.

If you didn’t understand any of them, be not dismayed, you are a normal, well-adjusted human (maybe).

🔢 By the Numbies

11.21: Tom Hoge may have set the course record at TPC Sawgrass with a 62 on Saturday in the third round, but the real course record was set back in 2016 when Ken Duke shot 65 and gained nearly 11 strokes on the field average (according to Data Golf). Hoge gained just 8 with his 62. In other words, the field average on Duke’s day was around 76. On Hoge’s, it was 70. This matters!

Strokes gained has many shortcomings that get ignored. This, however — the ability to highlight the best player on a specific day or in a specific week — is its primary strength.

2-9: Lucas Herbert played 36 holes last week and managed to make a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Incredible.

20: That was the stroke differential between Max McGreevy’s first round and second round. He shot 69-89, and we almost got the rare but immensely gratifying “missed cut with no rounds in the 70s or 80s,” which is adjacent to my favorite combination — the “shot a round under par with neither nine in the 30s” move.

🗣️ Flagged

“The best players are the ones who are best at playing poorly.” -Tommy Fleetwood

I love it when golfers — who are obviously better at golf than me — also prove themselves to be better describers of golf than those of us who are supposed to be good at it. Tough scene, but beautiful description.

🗣️🗣️ Flagged II

“He's so comfortable being out here and he's found his craft.” -Min Woo Lee on Scottie Scheffler

He’s found his craft is an amazing phrase. Isn’t that what we’re all essentially trying to do? Find our craft, find the thing that we could feasibly, on our very best days, be one of the best in the world at? I might start using that with my kids: Yes, learn about the variety of occupations and work the world has to offer, but your aim as you mature and grow should be to go find your craft.

🤳 Meme of the Week

Me sending an absolutely fire tweet 👆️ 

Me realizing it has a typo 10 minutes after it takes off 👇️ 

💰️ Thanks, Phil

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