The Toad Handler

Edition No. 20 | July 27, 2023

I miss the Open.

What inane, wonderful fun it is to wake up at a time you used to fall asleep at just to see what Sami Valimaki has gotten himself into on the back nine at Hoylake.

A friend came over at 4 a.m. last week to watch with me, and we hollered about Spieth, argued about JT and bemoaned the failed quests of Rory, Scheffler and 153 others.

For me, someone who doesn’t get to watch a lot of golf on TV with friends, it was a delight. There is a strange and soothing solidarity to the punch-drunk interaction between those in various non-European countries waking up or staying up to watch the event.

It reminds me of this C.S. Lewis quote on friendship.

Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden).

The typical expression of opening friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." 

Onto the news.*

*If you can find me another newsletter/article/anything that references Sami Valimaki and C.S. Lewis in the same section, I will buy you fully-illustrated Chronicles of Narnia box set

Normal Moment(s)

All very routine sports stuff.

1. Imma Hunt

The media obsession (specifically from my brethren across the pond) over Brian Harman being a normal American who hunts animals was incredible.

He got asked about it all week, and the following questions came in his post-round presser on Sunday night. With the Claret Jug sitting next to him, he was asked if he would rather shoot an animal than drink from the jug!

Uh yes Mr. Mahomes I understand you have been working your entire life to win that Lombardi thing next to you, but you would rather skin a rabbit or stuff a turkey wouldn’t you — don’t lie sir, we know you would.

2. Gate-Gate

This one comes from Open Championship participant, Michael Kim, who pointed out after Gary Woodland destroyed a metal fence gate that if Woodland had been six feet closer he would have received relief. Of course.

3. I just got shat on!

Viktor Hovland was interrupted in the middle of his round by a bird who “shat on” him. I cannot think of a more perfect and hilarious person for this to happen to.

4. Toads, cool

The Open was delayed at one point because they had to bring in [walks toward mound, taps two fingers to right wrist] … the toad handler to remove this endangered fella from the back nine. I don’t even know what to add here.

5. Waggle Counter!

Imagine you’re not into golf. You’re from, I don’t know, Philadelphia. You wake up on Sunday, punch up the coffee maker, flip on the TV and start searching for some of your favorite Meet the Press talking heads to see what their opinion is on border policy or the 2024 race. A normal Sunday.

Instead you get a left-handed man holding a stick of metal next to a box counting waggles.

What is that person thinking at this moment?

Question of the Week

Who’s on the Charles Howell III Memorial “I’ve made stupid money playing golf but can still go almost anywhere and not be recognized” starting five?

You can see answers here, but this is my five.

Charles Howell III (C) — Unlisted but I believe $39M on PGA Tour
David Toms — $42M + 1 major
Brian Harman — $32M + 1 major
Ryan Moore — $33M
Ryan Palmer — $33M

There are so many people you could put on there — Nick Watney, Charley Hoffman, Matt Kuchar and 25 others — but a team of $140M earned on the Tour and probably a Q score of 0.01 (I have no idea how Q scores are calculated!) is a group I’m comfortable rolling with.

Idea of the Week

Through my crooked media connections, I had access to the world feed during The Open last week. As far as I understand it, the world feed is the main broadcast of the tournament that other broadcasts (NBC, Sky, other networks in other countries) tap into as they show the tournament to you on whatever channel you’re watching.

Here’s the thing about the world feed, though: There are no commercials. Literally, they don’t exist. No Generic Viagra or Flex Seal boys hollering at you at 4:45 a.m. No Derek Jeter in a Jeep or RAW highlights in your face. It’s just … golf. They run the announcers in and out like hockey line changes, and the only pause in action is to show the leaderboard.

I didn’t count for an entire hour, but one 5-minute stretch of counting implied that they were on pace to shot 100-120 shots/hour or over 1,000 for the entire broadcast.

Apparently (and please respond if you’re one of these people) this feed is shown in some countries as the entire broadcast. Just 13 straight hours of golf. This seems like an unsustainable business model (shout out LIV) as it must be subsidized elsewhere (government, Yasir etc.)

However, given the interest from sickos and how much of the professional golf world that’s currently up in the air and being restructured, this is absolutely a feature that should be (further) implemented into the future of the Tour. It won’t be — and I’m sure there are some very good business reasons why that’s the case — but when you have a rabid fan base hungry for a simple, straightforward product like this that you could charge almost anything for it (I’m trying to come up with a number I wouldn’t pay to have this at all events), you have something.

The obvious response here is PGA Tour Live, but PGA Tour Live — which I’m paying for — still has commercials and feels more like an add-on than it does the main event. It doesn’t feel big. The world feed felt important. But if you want to talk me into really pouring resources and attention into PGA Tour Live, I am absolutely listening.

If the Masters has taught us anything, it’s that caring deeply about your product and the presentation of it pays dividends for a long time that far surpass the cost it took to get there. The problem (or one of the problems), as with most things in golf (and business) is that short-term gain always seems more appealing.

Flagged

“I enjoy the game, and I enjoy trying to get better.” -Tommy Fleetwood

I read a lot of transcripts last week during the Open. I don’t think I saw a better quote than that one. It reminded me of the quote from Djokovic I put in last week’s newsletter: “I can carry on playing at this level because I like hitting the tennis ball.”

Both are such minimalistic quotes that I probably appreciate more now than I would have as a 24-year-old. To enjoy the game, to love one’s work is not a formula to achieve success, but it does explain how you sustain success at this level for that many years.

And it’s endearing because it’s how all of us believe we would speak about our profession as well, even though go hit 300 balls every day this week and let me know how much you enjoy the game and enjoy trying to get better.

The preservation of the joy of playing golf is important to all great careers. Everybody does that differently, but in writing about that quote I was reminded me of something Rory said last year about playing Ballybunion with Tiger.

“Going back to even his love for the game, his love of the intricacies of how to play the game of golf. The way he sees shots, the way he gets lost in the detail of how to play golf.

“Whenever you're talking about that and he's explaining it, it goes back to what I said about loving the game. He doesn't just love golf, but he loves the details of how to play certain shots and get better. He's so into that stuff. I think that's what's so cool. Twenty-five years into his career, he still loves that part of the game.”

The Last 8 Majors

Let’s talk about this chart, which shows total scores from everyone who played the last eight majors. This includes your score at the time of a MC. So if you missed the Masters cut at +5 that score is included in your other seven made cuts.

Here’s the list.

Some notes.

• How infuriating do you think it is to be 20 shots better than the third best guy, but the guy who is 79 shots worse than you is considered to have succeeded more than you have? I know coffee is for closers etc, but I can’t think of another sport that rewards being the best over a long period of time less than this one.

Oh, LeBron scored the most points this year, he must have been the best player. Well, see, actually Dame scored the most in this three-game stretch, and KD scored the most in these other two games and then Luka put up the most on January 30 so actually LeBron’s season was kind of meaningless. 

Golf is so incredibly stupid, which is also partly why it’s so damn fun.

• This list solidifies my personal theory that if you held a 1,000-hole major (which you should), that Scottie and Rory (and maybe Rahm) would be the only guys in contention for the last 300 holes.

• I haven’t shifted on anybody more than I’ve shifted on Hovland. Going into 2022, I thought he was a good player who would have a nice career. Now? I think he can legitimately be a multiple-time major champion. He has clearly unlocked the mental and physical rigor of a major championship, and I think he — like Fleetwood above — truly enjoys the game and enjoys trying to get better.

• Min Woo rocks (and has unparalleled swag).

• The four guys who haven’t missed a cut in the last two years: Rahm, Hideki, Reed Hatton. That’s so difficult to accomplish and such an impressive feat.

• Cam Young is a roller coaster.

One Thing I Loved

It got “week of a Taylor Swift album drop” overplayed last week, but the Matthew Jordan story was storybook. To top 10 in the Open a mile from where you grew up in just the second major championship start of your career?

Come on.

I thought about it a bit differently, though.

Of course it’s amazing for Jordan, who was all caught up in the moment. But can you imagine experiencing that week as his parent? I don’t know Jordan’s family or his parents, but I do know what it means to be from somewhere and for that sense of place to have real meaning.

To have the world descend on the place where your the family you raised has made so many memories and to have the kids you watched him grow up with following him down the back nine on Sunday evening at the Open just ahead of the leaders.

Buddy.

Jordan was asked about sharing a moment with his dad after finishing in the top 10 to make it into next year’s Open at Troon.

“I thought, ‘He's been out all day in the rain. I best give him a hug.’ It's the least I can do. Yeah, he was there and he was obviously extremely proud.”

It would have been cool to be Matthew Jordan last week at Hoylake, for sure. But as someone with four kids myself, I have to imagine it would have been just as cool to be his dad.

Crooked Golf Media

👉️ One of the great shots of the season and perhaps among the best I’ve ever seen happened last week.

👉️ Ernie Els torched both LIV and the PGA Tour last week. Maybe put Big Ern in charge?

👉️ Tron flying to England to try to get Tommy across the line on Sunday turned into the most interesting Open subplot of the weekend. Here’s video of one of the great moments in NLU history.

👉️ I’m proud of this Rory-Phil comp, and if you’re invested at all in Rory winning majors in the future, I think that will be an encouraging read.

👉️ This high schooler invented the best batting gloves in baseball. Really enjoyed that video.

The Infirmary

True sicko behavior within the golf community.

This got me pretty good. Open week is always a great sicko week. There’s no time during major week like Seungsu Han time.

I also felt this man’s trial quite deeply.

Very normal behavior here.

And also here.

By the Numbies

-18: That was the number that won you the Aggregate Major Championship Leaderboard Across All Of 2023 That I Completely Made Up.

1. Scheffler (-18)
2. Hovland (-16)
3. Rahm (-15)
4. Koepka (-10)
5. Schauffele (-7)
6. Cantlay (-5)
7. Fleetwood (-4)
8. Smith (-2)
9. Matsuyama (+3)
10. Reed (+4)
11. Hatton (+6)
12. Fox (+12)

Mea Clupa

Hand up, this was a bad tweet.

While I think JT has learned a lot from Tiger, I was probably overcooking that part of it. All pros have pride, especially in major championship weeks. I supposed my overall point was that JT gets a lot of shrapnel for his sometimes-sulky attitude so we should also acknowledge the flip side of that, which is that he was grinding on a day when he didn’t have to (and plenty of others didn’t). Again, overcooked, but wanted to point it out.

 Meme of the Week

My question for you: Can you begin to comprehend how much I am going to overuse this meme of Rahm? Related: Is Rahm the most meme-able person in golf history?

It was also not the only time during Open week that Rahm got meme-d. He was on the receiving end of Phil trying to talk him into something that’s “technically not illegal” during a practice round at Royal Liverpool. It’s worth scrolling through some of the replies here.

He also was not the only European Ryder Cupper who got meme-d. This one of Matty Fitzpatrick is going to be used … often.

How is This App Free?

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of all the great ones from Open week starting with this gem from Bacon, who walks us through a history of Phil’s major championship shirt choices. Extraordinary range!

Speaking of shirt choices.

I was punch drunk at this point in the weekend, but this got me so good.

Claire : this section of the newsletter as Scheffler : top 10s

We have a self-promotion this week, mostly because it took me far longer than I am willing to admit to think of this one and also because I was very proud of it.

I’m always here for a roller coaster of a tweet like this one.

If you’re a young, aspiring sportswriter/talker/analyst etc., go read that JT mea culpa above before you read this.

One thing I wish I would have known and internalized as a 28-year-old or even 32-year-old is that bad tweets, terrible articles, things you shouldn’t have said on a podcast are all going to happen. If they don’t happen, then you’re not taking enough swings.

The point then is not to curtail all bad takes. For they are an overflow of constantly toying with a line that most people don’t ever approach. Rather, the point is to acknowledge and learn from them when they inevitably happen and to give yourself (as well as others) a healthy measure of grace.