Wait, Was Jeff Bezos at that Ryder Cup Dinner?

Edition No. 30 | September 12, 2023

Hey,

It’s officially “I bought a $38 hat at Scheel’s, and I guess that qualifies me to be your flag football coach” SZN in my world. And I have now put far too much thought and time into 1. Whether my offensive playcalling even matters to this fourth-grade team’s success and 2. What to name the plays I’m calling.

For example: We have one play where the QB can either hand off or run play-action before tossing a deep out to a receiver on the far right — I mean the farthest back right — part of the field. I’ve been wanting to name the play QB Reed for my own amusement even though none of these 9-year-olds will even understand the first layer of that joke.

I may be in too deep.

Onto the news.

Normal Moment(s)

All very routine sports stuff.

1. The Pool Boy

If you thought I missed (or was ignoring) JT’s pool party last week, you would be incorrect. This photo is going to end up on a t-shirt at some point, probably one worn by Jamie Weir at the Ryder Cup.

And a bunch of folks will inevitably respond with, “Well this is actually a drill that a lot of people do, you just haven’t poked around enough driving ranges to have experienced it, and even if you did you wouldn’t understand the angles and what he’s trying to do with the positioning of his golf club,” not realizing that this explanation, this entire scenario is the perfect encapsulation of why Normal Sport was invented.

Go USA.

2. Another Gear

Many, many people have sent me this exact photo. I’m just here to say that if Toyota wants to sponsor the Normal Sport newsletter, I wouldn’t say no.

3. Head Cold

Caleb Surratt shot 67 in the first round of the Visit Knoxville Collegiate last week but apparently got so sick that he had to walk subsequent rounds with a bag of ice on his head and was eventually pulled off the golf course.

The amusing part — presuming Surratt is feeling fine in the aftermath — is watching someone push a three-wheeled cart with a bag of ice on his head while another man drives a miniature car with no windows across a field next to him. Believe this is exactly how Lewis and Clark crossed the country.

4. All the Great Courses

The Euro Tour posted this video last week, which was catnip for me because I’d never seen it before. Padraig Harrington removing a tree from the woods so he could play a shot.

Sure.

A great reminder of the famous Gary Player quote from 2020 at Payne’s Valley when he said, “All the great golf courses in the world … all are tree-lined. We worry about the Amazon cutting down the trees, and we’re contributing to the same effect. For goodness sake, stop cutting them down and plant more!

“If you don’t know how to get a golf course with great shape, brush up on your knowledge because I can tell you all the great golf courses in the world were tree lined around the greens and around the fairways.”

One Thing I Loved

This photo of Team USA from Italy last week was greatly amusing to me (as almost all out-of-context team dinner photos are).

Outside of not recognizing three of the people in this photo, I have some other pressing questions as well.

1. A bicycle hanging from the ceiling?
2. The tiniest lamps ever made?
3. How sick would it be if they rolled out on Sunday this year in the 1999 shirt Furyk has on?
4. Who facilitates the dinner questions and conversation? Low-key kinda wonder if it’s Big Stew.
5. If you didn’t have any idea … what would you say these two men do for a living?

6. Also, does Furyk kinda look like Jeff Bezos’ little brother?

NS3 Preview

I’m going to start dropping mini nuggets from NS3 into the newsletter to get you hyped for what we’re building for the end of the year. Stuff you probably forgot about (which I know because I forgot about it, and it’s my job to not forget about it).

Here’s one from the Tiger-Rory-Spieth-JT match last December.

JT and Spieth carried themselves exactly the way you believe you would carry yourself if you were lighting up 19 majors’ worth of guys on the other side of the tee box on national television: With a pettiness and bravado I thought only Draymond Green could muster.

They preened and chirped and peacocked, and at one point JT sent a long putt right for the cup, and as he turned away at the end to gesticulate for the cameraman, Spieth sprinted for the hole and grabbed the ball .0000003 seconds after it hit the bottom.

I believe that’s also the last time JT made a birdie.

We will post a pre-order link here over the next month or so (actual organization this year!)

Another Thing I Loved

This quote from the Candy Mann — who went on to win the Irish Open last weekend — summed up golf pretty perfectly.

Caught a rain delay, had a coffee and then went out and flushed it.

Golf is so simple.

It’s also ……..

…. so complicated.

Which is part of what makes it wonderful.

As for why (future Ryder Cupper?) Vincent Normann is called the Candy Mann? I’m not positive of the origin, but the first time I heard about it was when the Shotgun Start boys started chatting about how he grew up in Sweden working at a candy store.

His PGA Tour bio says: Worked in a candy store in high school and says, "I made the best ice cream, waffles, and sold candy. In Sweden, we have this thing where we pick candy. Our store had 80 different kinds of candy... and the owner said we should try most of them. Two weeks in, I was tired of candy."

Tired of candy, yes, but a nickname for life.

Also, imagine asking a normal human what these two men have in common.

By the Numbies

1.31: Here’s a statistic I found surprising — the two best seasons of Rory’s career have come in 2022 and 2023. He has gained 2.61 and 2.53 strokes in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

But that’s not the crazy part.

The crazy part is that since 2009, he doesn’t have a single season in which he produced a SG number under 1.31. Here is a list of players who were at 1.31 SG or under it over the last year.

• Jason Day (1 win)

• Brian Harman (1 major)

• Jordan Spieth (Ryder Cupper)

• Sam Burns (1 win, Ryder Cupper)

• Brooks Koepka (1 major, Ryder Cupper)

• Hideki Matsuyama

Again, the statistical seasons each of these golfers put up over the last year would have been the worst season of Rory’s career.

We talk a lot about a lot of different things, but I’m not sure we talk enough about Rory’s floor. To be that good for that long is obviously not unprecedented but certainly impressive.

Here are the SG leaders since Jan. 1, 2010 (min. 200 events).

• Rory: 2.10

• DJ: 1.74

• Rose: 1.59

• JT: 1.52

• Spieth: 1.51

• Day: 1.49

• Scott: 1.43

• Hideki: 1.40

Question of the Week

This was a fun one that got some incredible replies (that you can read through right here).

There are better answers below, but mine is probably either Phil pouring champagne in Spieth’s mouth at Hazeltine or Rory bowing on the 16th hole after a walk-off eagle on Day 1 that year. But there are so many you could go to, including the following.

I’d forgotten about this one in Paris!

Crooked Golf Media

👉️ This thread from 2018 on the 2016 Euro press conference at Hazeltine by KVV is excellent and a good reminder of what makes the Euro team so likable.

👉️ This new pod — Billion Dollar Creator — is excellent and a must-listen if you’re in the entrepreneur/online creation space.

👉️ As someone who has four kids, this thread by Matt Ragland resonated and was (strangely?) encouraging to me.

👉️ One low-key effect of this Film Room is that it provided good context for me around the Ryder Cup. I need more reasons to get excited about the Ryder Cup like JT needs more polyethylene foam, but this video really is helpful from a knowledge/expectation standpoint, which is really just a fringe benefit given how entertaining all of these are.

👉️ This NYT game where you have to connect four sets of four words is also very much my wheelhouse. Can’t stop playing it.

👉️ This is so good. The future of content.

How is This App Free?

As a noted Iowa (and Iowa State) football hater, this got me pretty good.

It … does.

What an unbelievably insane analogy.

😂😂😂😂😂

You hate to see it.

Rohm

I’m going to try and include some past Ryder Cup content over the next few weeks leading into the festivities.

First up is this insane video from Paris that I think about more often than I should. Nowhere else in golf do you get this. The best college football game you’ve been to … but on a golf course.

The Infirmary

True story here (although they’re all true, but this one definitely seems like something you could make up). I was scrolling up (not down) on Twitter the other day and I saw the photo of this tweet before I saw its author.

My first thought — I am not making this up, though my wife probably wishes that I was — was something like, “Oh, I wonder where Bryson or maybe Rickie is on vacation” and as I kept scrolling “… hmm that’s kind of strange that one of those guys would take the Rocket Mortgage trophy with them maybe it’s a Cam Davis tweet wait is he on Twitter” and I kept scrolling … “omg that’s not the Rocket Mortgage trophy that’s fancy pool decor at some resort I truly need to seek help.”

But hey, let he or she who has not confused one of the strangest trophies in golf for an awkward and unnecessarily gaudy pool statue cast the first stone.