A Winner is a Loser Who Kept on Trying

Edition No. 13 | May 2, 2023

If you’re new to this very strange, hopefully fun newsletter ostensibly about golf, welcome. I’m Kyle, and I’m glad you’re here to have a few chuckles with the rest of us.

I’m also headed out on vacation tomorrow — which I planned during Quail Hollow instead of the Mexico Open (?) for some reason, although I am proud of myself for squeezing it between newsletter sends (this Tuesday and next Tuesdayish).

Shorty today (probably lying) so I have time to go download 26 different audiobook apps on the iPad for my kids to have something to listen to while I’m out.

Also I somehow just found out this week that Tony Finau’s full name is Milton Pouha Finau, which I honestly may never recover from.

Enjoy.

Normal Moment(s)

All very routine sports stuff.

1. Tommy Boy 2

A swarm of bees invaded the Mexico Open last week, and the proper response to this — which I was unaware of — is apparently to lay prostrate until they fly all the way through. I have to say, I probably would have run for the nearby water, but I respect the commitment to the drill.

Now imagine going to an NBA game and seeing the TNT camera person laying on his/her belly on the hardwood because a harrowing swarm of insects invaded the arena.

Only sport.

2. Vision Sticks

This made the rounds during the Mexico Open last week, and Alejandro Tosti made the newsletter for the second consecutive week.

Tosti was using — I can’t believe I’m about to say this — wooden sticks with hieroglyphics inscribed on them to warm up his eyes before the second round in Mexico Open. The exercise is apparently called — again, can’t believe I’m typing this sentence — the Vision Sticks Method.

Tosti’s story might be even more incredible. He got into Mexico following a penalization at a KFT event the week before for improper usage of a shuttle (another amazing sentence), which I wrote about last week. Then he finished T10 in Mexico, and, with the aid of the Egyptian pyramid wands, got himself into Quail Hollow.

Amazing stuff.

3. What can I even say?

It might be the perfect photo.

Question of the Week

Shane Ryan is insane in the most endearing way possibly. Truly one of my favorite people in all of golf. He recently asked possibly the funniest and most ridiculous question I’ve ever seen.

I’ve thought about the answer to this question for a lot longer than I would care to admit. Additionally, it has spawned a variety of conversations with friends as well as my kids (“is he talking about Rory?” and “they would think he’s an alien”).

I think [with as straight a face as I can possibly muster to answer this question] the answer here is that the president would have to address it on the 17th hole in one.

If someone made 16 aces in a row at a tournament, you could at least talk yourself into something nefarious happening at that locale. Magnets in the holes, something tantamount to the fishing weights mega scandal from a few months ago.

It wouldn’t necessarily be logical, but the rationale would be that the Tour, the USGA, the player and his caddie, somebody in those realms was in on it. But as soon as that player showed up for his next event in another state (or even another country) and made a 1 on Thursday in the first round of the next tournament, I think Biden has to step up to the dais and answer some real and difficult questions about whether Callum Shinkwin was born on earth or not.

Media Diet

👉️ This 3 by Chad Mumm (Full Swing producer) on the Road Hole was pretty sick.

👉️ This on Justin Welsh’s rise to success in the business world is tremendous.

👉️ I enjoyed this breakdown of what a good newsletter looks like.

👉️ Twitter’s killer app is real-time search.

👉️ You could go pay $100K for an MBA (I clearly have no idea what MBAs cost these days) … or … you could just listen to this Making Media podcast with Neil Schuster on how NLU functions as a business. There are a million takeaways, but the one that has stuck with me the most has been the idea of growing as slowly as possible. It’s so countercultural, so counterintuitive and also so … sustainable. I’ve been thinking about this pod all week (the other Making Media pods are great as well, good one to throw in the rota).

The Infirmary

True sicko behavior within the golf community.

I went to Home Depot on Saturday with the kids to get some sod for our backyard (truly the most dad sentence that’s ever been typed), and we searched for a tool to scrape up some of the dead grass that’s taking up real estate near my office.

As we looked for tools, my 9-year-old pointed at the Dewalt section that contained exactly what we were looking for, and all I could think of for the next three minutes was Patrick Cantlay’s OWGR. My brain, I think, may be broken.

Also, this was every dad at Home Depot …

Couple of bonus infirmaries this week!

First, on the Mexico Open, given the makeup of that top 20, I would have to agree with this tweet. By the way, how strange that Mexico was rated as the 16th-strongest field of the year by the OWGR but was also nearly as strong of a field as the Tournament of Champions? The OWGR believes deeply that it’s harder to defeat 100 duck-sized horses than one horse-sized duck.

Lastly, this one got me good. Talking about thumb positioning (!) with DL3 (!!) has to be as sick as it gets.

By the Numbies

13: That’s how many golfers in the world are gaining more strokes per round over their last 50 rounds than Rickie Fowler. Just getting that out there.

41: Every once in a while, I’ll be researching something and stumble across the fact that Tiger Woods ranks third all-time in European Tour wins with 41 even though he’s played in, what, 11 European Tour tournaments. What a sport.

Flagged

Quotes worth thinking about.

“They say a winner is just a loser that just kept on trying” -Tony Finau

This was from last year, but I thought about it a lot after he won Mexico last week. Full Swing changed the way I thought about Finau more than anyone else in the show. Part of that is because he’s leaned into the losing instead of away from it. How easy would it have been, after winning once in your first 186 events, to simply play for money instead of for titles? He kept stacking little victories along the way, though, and now he’s a handful of (important) wins from a hall of fame career.

The other part of Finau that I love is his quest to be both a great dad and a great golfer. Here’s the quote of the series for me: “I definitely believe you can be a great golfer and a great husband and father.”

Put it on my corkboard*, stick it in my veins.

And Big Tone seems to live it out. The evidence is not necessarily the viral videos of him playing a par 3 with his kids, which happened after Mexico on Sunday night (see below), but rather the way I’ve heard him speak about his relationship with them in private when nobody else is around.

Lots of people want to be professional golfers for the benefit of being rich, famous and successful. I want to be Tony Finau — competent and excellent at my job but also present and locked in with the people who are oftentimes easiest to ignore or dismiss.

*I don’t have one.

 Meme of the Week

Might be the Claire Rogers Meme of the Week if it keeps going like this.

To be clear, I’m not anti-team golf, even on LIV. I think it’s kinda cool, to be honest, even though it gets dumped on in every way possible. This was simply an unfortunate moment that could go down in Hy Flyers lore.

How is This App Free?

Some great ones this week, and we’ll start with this from Max Homa to put majors together based on the eye test. Kinda in on it.

I literally never think about distance per shot until Andy gets in my mentions.

This hit home for me. My wife’s grandparents never understood the internet. They were always (always!) searching for me on CBS on Saturdays and Sundays and always getting Amanda instead. I finally just bought in and told them I thought I’d be on the week after next or maybe at the beginning of the next season.

Preach, brother.

Not sure why this made me laugh so much, but it did.

Sungjae by himself at the Met is chef’s kiss good.

Love Your Work

One person I’ve started following pretty closely, Nathan Barry, is fond of saying, “first-time founders obsess over product, second-time founders obsess over distribution.” If you — like me — have ever wondered how a bad product became popular, the answer is often distribution.

Example: If you have distribution of 10 million people for the potty putter, and only 0.1% of your people purchase it, that’s still more than 5x more people than the number who purchased Normal Sport 2 last year. The reason? Is the potty putter objectively a better golf product than Normal Sport 2. Possibly. But probably not.

Howevah, with enough distribution (a massive caveat given how difficult it is to create distribution), companies have proven over and over again that pretty much anything will sell.