Greetings!
Leaving the Hamptons and returning to sick kids, baseball practice and the oppressive heat of Texas in the summer has been more jarring than going from Portrush to Memphis in July. 😃
The golf world refuses to quit, too, with Brian Rolapp announcing the PGA Tour's 2028 plan in a press conference at the Travelers on Tuesday.
I’ll have some thoughts on that at some point, but for now you should read this excellent piece by a well-sourced Joel Beall, who breaks down some questions, some problems and some optimism about the future of the PGA Tour.
Name drops today: Wyndham, Saudi Arabia, LACC, Dwyane Wade and Max McGreevy.
Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at Ship Sticks.
True travel story loading. On Friday, I blew out a tire in my rental car. After changing it (nbd) and throwing the donut on, I had to drive to La Guardia on Monday morning to return the car. When I pulled in, I asked the gentleman checking me in if I would be better off going to pay for a new tire myself than letting the rental car company handle it.
He confirmed that it would likely be cheaper. So I drove a street over and paid a guy to change my tire on the side of a street in NYC. The whole experience was actually kind of incredible (and fast), but it still cost me $120 because when I rented the car, I eschewed the 28 iterations of insurance that were offered to me.
This kind of thing? It wouldn’t happen with Ship Sticks. For one, they don’t do tires. For two, they offer complimentary insurance, which is included in the cost of shipping your clubs on a trip. Someone on our team has even been the beneficiary of this insurance, so I asked him about his experience.
Word to the wise, if you're gonna ship your clubs in a soft shell bag, add a protector of some sort. I didn't do that and my driver shaft met its demise as a result. Ship Sticks covered it though. Easy, seamless and haggle-free.
Business David
That’s awesome.
Thank you to Ship Sticks for helping send us to major championships like the U.S. Open at Shinnecock and for taking care of their customers all over the globe.
Now let’s get to the news.
1. I can’t believe I’m typing this, but I really thought Wyndham …
Became a sympathetic figure on Sunday, and …
Handled the entire crowd situation with a lot of grace.
I wrote this right after the final round, but the way his mistakes were cheered was pretty insane. I’ve heard less noise vs. more noise in specific matchups, but I’ve never heard so many fans so actively (and vocally) rooting against a former major champion.
The Weight of Wyndham
Here’s James Colgan in his excellent column.
On Sunday afternoon at Shinnecock, the crowds at the U.S. Open showed us that if shame ever really did exist, it has long since left us. For the second time at a major golf event on Long Island in the last 10 months, the fans in attendance spent most of the afternoon proudly bearing their ignorance, loudly rooting against the wire-to-wire winner (and several other players, including Rory McIlroy) in a way that forced the USGA to deliver a mid-tournament apology via NBC.
James Colgan | Golf.com
This is an aside, but one thought I had while out there with Wyndham (and I admit that this is a deep cut): Perhaps TC has too much power!
All of this legitimately made me feel kind of bad for someone who pretty clearly doesn’t want to play the villain role. Was I rooting for a Scottie (and then a Sammy) comeback to touch off an amazing week at Shinnecock? I was. But not like that. Not like that.
I think some people might be saying, It’s sports … this is what happens. Have you ever been to a football game?! To which I would say that golf is just not like that. There’s too much white space and too much time to think. It is too easy to affect the outcome.
Perhaps this makes me a sports prude, but I genuinely did feel for someone who all week had handled every question about what he did at Oakmont (among other things) with a lot of grace. Even up to the very end.
Twitter tweet
2. I would also like to note that I am sympathetic to the fact that it takes a lot of internal chest-thumping to hit some of the shots Wyndham hit down the stretch and that it then probably becomes difficult to turn that off at times. I’m almost more amazed when guys are able to flip a switch off the course and engage others with even an ounce of humility.
Golf is so mentally taxing that if you’re not constantly telling yourself, I am the man. I am the greatest who has ever done this, the Morris family lineage runs through my bloodlines! then I’m not sure you have the edge you need to contend for and win major championships. Individual sport is not for the meek of spirit, at least between the lines.
And some of how Wyndham acts that rubs folks the wrong way could be attributed to this very thing. Arrogance, pride and on and on we could go. This makes sense!
It makes less sense going the other way where guys would be able to be this particular person over there on the course and win a bunch of majors but dial that back over here off the course and be more of a regular human. It’s a strange existence, and we (I) often forget that.
3. This from Mike Whan on how much money the USGA is leaving on the table is both a great long-term business strategy and also world class PRing. It can definitely be both.
“We’re not sitting around and stressing about being here and what that means,” Whan told The Athletic on Saturday morning, sitting for a conversation as the tournament’s third round played out.
“In our decision process, we put cathedrals at No. 1. Where do we want to play the U.S. Open? Operations and revenues are not at the top of the list. You could argue that’s a terrible way to think, but that’s what separates us from a (PGA) Tour stop.”
The Athletic
I believe that most companies and brands and entities are mostly similar in how they operate. There is a playbook. The USGA and R&A and PGA Tour and others like them do things mostly the same.
But I’m convinced that it’s how you frame the differences in your own organization that matter in the long run. Whan is excellent at framing. A 10/10 talker.
And when given the opportunity to highlight his own organization’s counter-positioning compared to the other of golf’s five families (PGA Tour, R&A, PGA and ANGC), he went full Wade and LeBron.
To be clear, he isn’t wrong. There were noticeably fewer people on property at times this week. Every time I got to 15 and 16, I was amazed at how easy it was for folks to watch the best players in the world from a few feet away.
This lack of fans on property may or may not make for a great product, but the USGA clearly doesn’t care. And this is the great part, it has a mission — go to amazing championship courses — and it adheres to that mission above all else.
Companies are so often prisoners of Shiny Object Syndrome — even the immovable Augusta National Golf Club — but the USGA is clearly governed by going to the cathedrals, as Whan noted.
This is a good thing, and I am delighted that the USGA seems to have a bit of a soul when it comes to this. But make no mistake, this is not benevolence for the sake of benevolence. The USGA (I believe rightly!) thinks this is the best long-term strategy for being as successful as possible as a business. And again, the way Whan frames this — business strategy cloaked as altruism — matters because it will make folks like me and many others who cover this tournament tout the greatness of the USGA (like I am doing right now!).
Lastly, the USGA had revenues of nearly $300 million, according to its 990 from 2024. Tens of millions is an ambiguous amount. Let’s say the USGA is reducing its overall revenue by 6 percent or 8 percent. That’s not nothing, but it sounds a lot less impressive to 6 or 8 percent compared to tens of millions. This is why Whan is good at what he does. Framing matters, and he is tremendous at it.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes some notes on Scottie, the best tweets of the event and a short note on Sam Burns.
By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
• An invite to our Slack channel where we watch and talk golf together.
• A free digital copy of our Rory book.
• 15% off to our pro shop.
Kyle is one of the best in the golf world at finding and synthesizing the absurd, the thoughtful and the fun things that make being a golf fan worthwhile.
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
Kyle approaches coverage of the game with both conviction and curiosity
The way Kyle has been able to mold a silly Twitter joke (normal sport) into a must-read newsletter on the weekly happenings in our silly game gives a great look into why he's one of the smartest people in golf.
There’s been no one else in golf that has tickled my funny bone as often as Kyle Porter does. He’s been instrumental in ushering in a new era of golf coverage and it’s been a pleasure to be along for the ride in that.
It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
Kyle's content is a product of a sick sense of humour, a clear passion for golf and unquestionable dedication to hard work. That's not normal!
Kyle sees golf in a way that no one else does—and we're all fortunate to get to share in that view through Normal Sport!
Normal Sport is exploratory, sometimes emotional, always entertaining. It also has one of my favorite writers in the biz at its foundation.
Kyle is a perfect curator of the necessary moments of levity that accent a sport that will drive most of us insane.
Kyle is the best columnist in sports. That he has channeled those talents through strokes gained and Spieth memes is a blessing to golf.
I’ve always enjoyed your love for golf. So often I see favoritism showed to golfers in the social media world, but I enjoy reading you telling a situation how it is regardless of the person.
.svg){kind=spacer}
