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Issue No. 226 | July 8, 2025 | Read Online
The hardest part of every newsletter for me — and it’s not even really that close — is the beginning. I always want to share something at least a little bit personal or meaningful because, well, I think because that’s what I like reading or hearing myself.
Normally that’s about myself, but today it’s about this business.
I have been grinding on our business plan — as I do from time to time — this week, and reevaluating our company values. I realized I don’t always share those as often as I probably should so here’s one of them.
Earnestness: We will be earnest at the expense of looking ridiculous. Earnestness > perfection.
The shadow side of this is that it can lead (and has led!) to some cringeworthy content. But I will always, always err on that side of things rather than the other (in which a lack of earnestness leads to bland and sterile writing).
Anyway, these are things I go through my week thinking about and grinding on. It is strangely (?) fun for me, and (so far) I think has led down some good paths as it relates to covering this ridiculous sport.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Meridian Putters.
[Jason here] When Meridian founder Ryan Duffey started naming putters he thought of his favorite vacation spots in Charleston, Savannah, Tybee, Okatie and Key West. I don’t have any personal experience with the first four locations, but I do have some experience with Key West, the city, as well as Normal Sport’s favorite putter.
As a kid I would travel down to Key West via the famous Seven Mile Bridge and stare out the window thinking, “How did they build this?” Now, as an adult, I drive around thinking about golf clubs.
How many steps does it take to mill a one-piece putter?
What’s the softest sounding face milling? (I found out it’s the Meridian Cut)
And lately … what should I get customized on my next Meridian?
Most of those questions were fueled by our conversations and Q&A with Ryan and how his expertise made the complex process sound so easy. Of course he would pivot his manufacturing company to make high-quality, affordable (Golf Digest gold awarded) one-piece putters in the USA.
Even the naming process sounds meant to be.
I'm a big ocean guy. For me, the ocean is very therapeutic. When I stay at the water, I have ideas, my mind gets cleared.
What I was thinking of is something straight and true. There's a Jimmy Buffet song that mentions the prime meridian. I was like, “Meridian … that might be it.” Meridian is a line that goes all the way around the globe, and it's straight, it's true. I was thinking, “Oh, you can make a logo with it.”
That looks like a ship steering wheel. Then it just started going.
Ryan Duffey
So if you’re like us, driving around this summer thinking of golf clubs, give Key West a spin.
OK, now onto the news.
To Geoff R. on winning the OGIO travel bag giveaway we did on Twitter last week. Speaking of giveaways, I will give away a copy of Golf Is Art 3 to our next 10 Normal Club members. Doesn’t matter when they are, you’ll have a copy headed your way if you’re one of the next 10 to sign up for the Normal Club.
Our Holderness and Bourne gear is now available to everyone — including non-members. You can check it out right here or by clicking the image below.
This Maxwell polo is one of my favorite pieces we have and one I’ve been living in the last few weeks this summer. I want it in every color they have.
Brian Campbell might be clearance shelf Russell Henley, but I had two takeaways from his win at the Deere on Sunday.
1. What he gets out of his game is outrageous.
I made a chart with money earned compared to ball speed to show who gets the most out of their game relative to their distance. Using 150 MPH as the baseline, I divided total 2025 earnings by how many MPH over 150 each player is.
Obviously Scottie is No. 1 (in everything), but Campbell checks in at No. 11, which is pretty cool.
That Russ Henley is No. 2 is maybe even more impressive than Campbell at No. 11. Anyway, here’s takeaway No. 2 from Campbell’s post-tournament presser.
2. He was asked about turning his career around following a run in which he was not even making the cut on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Look at this!
Here’s what he said.
It really was all second stage Q-School about two, three years ago. I made like a quintuple bogey on a par 3 and I thought my career was over in that moment.
That night just kind of had a self-talk with myself. Said, you know what, whatever happens is okay. Trust yourself. The next round I went out there and shot 8-under and got myself right back in there.
I guess I was like, maybe golf is not over for me. That moment was when everything changed.
Brian Campbell
That is awesome and a good reminder to not give up in either the macro (career) or the micro (Q-School). Brian Campbell winning the Deere is not the most exciting outcome of the season, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s void of any takeaways at all.
Three of them this week.
1. I cannot overstate how much I love that someone is at Wimbledon, attempting to drink in the pageantry and delight of one of the great sporting events in the world, and all they can think about is this dumb newsletter and how a sign about WiFi and bats relates to this ridiculous person sitting in a desk chair in north Texas.
2. Buddy … if Marcel Siem rocking a backwards hat on Golf Channel doesn’t signify the beginning of coffee golf season, then I think maybe you’re not ready for coffee golf season.
3. Geoff Shackelford wrote about Portrush this week, and how its internal out of bounds (made famous after Rory opened with 8 in 2019) is an ode to … cows.
Really.
In Part I we’ll look at the backstory of Portrush’s boundaries and why they remain long after the cattle have moved on to other grazing pastures.
…
In the 1951 Open won by Max Faulkner, this cattle grazing plot between the first and 18th was cut off to golfers or spectator access. Barbed wire fencing kept the cattle in and golfers out. So it at least looked and felt like a boundary to be avoided.
Geoff Shackelford
Normal … and I cannot possibly stress this enough … sport.
One of the best stretches of the year is upon us, and I thought it would be nice to look ahead a bit to next week’s Open Championship.
We will be running our last of four major championship contests during The Open for Normal Club members so hopefully this research helps you out (since I’m ineligible to win).
Here are your top 10 in terms of strokes gained at Opens since Jan. 1, 2015 (min. 16 rounds).
It’s bizarre that there are only three winners on this list.
The one that stands out most to me is probably Day. He’s been top 15 each of the last two years and has had a solid year with top 25s at two majors and a near win at the Travelers a few weeks ago.
Also, Spieth having his baby on the Monday of Open week and coming in hot on Wednesday with nine holes of practice before shooting 66-68-68-70 to win his fourth major would be extremely on brand.
We built this little thank you page for anyone who signs up for the newsletter. That means every new subscriber gets an opportunity to share their story because as one of my friends said recently, “Everybody has at least one insane golf story.”
This, it turns out, is true.
Here’s this week’s.
Being the 'sign boy' for Richard Mansell's 61 in the final round of the Scottish Open. And strutting towards scoring as though I'd shot it myself.
Diarmuid C.
[Jason here] We love some of your stories because they’re full of hilarious details and we love other ones like Diarmuid’s for their succinct snapshots of the golf experience. I don’t exactly know why shining in Richard Mansell’s shadow tickles me so much, but I wanted to share it.
We’re going to make this a more regular feature so throw your normal story here.
We know you’ve got them.
👉️ This NYT article on how streaming has sliced up the cultural unification sports brings about is excellent.
For decades, our national sports leagues … operated more like civic institutions. These organizations may have always chased the mighty dollar. But they also wanted their sports to last, so they cared about strengthening such powerful intangibles as local pride, generational fandom and public ritual. Tradition was good business. Community built loyalty. Loyalty built value.
Then came the streaming wars. Starting in the early 2010s, live sports events were one of the last types of programming that guaranteed hundreds of thousands if not millions of real-time viewers, and the leagues began to be flooded with requests from streamers, such as Amazon Prime, Peacock and Max, begging for a piece of the pie. … And that’s when the business of sustaining sports in America took a back seat, and our country’s sports leagues stopped acting like caretakers and started thinking like asset managers.
NYT
Does this next statement sound familiar?
Games jump from one service to another with so little notice or apparent logic that even some of the biggest superfans struggle to track what’s available where.
The result isn’t just inconvenient. It’s lonely. As access shatters, rituals vanish, as do the moments that make sports communal — a bar full of strangers cheering for the same team, the generational ties passed down through the seasons. Those experiences fade under a system that dictates that the more you can pay, the more you can see — until the game disappears behind another paywall.
NYT
That reminded us of this all timer.
And before anyone says that this is just a baseball, basketball and football problem, here’s how the article ends.
Although team valuations had soared alongside the fortunes of America’s wealthiest, many wealthy families still treated ownership as a legacy purchase: a long-term bet, a symbol of status, even a civic responsibility. But even they can’t compete with the likes of private equity, which brought more money to the table.
NYT
… which is now a golf problem.
I would pay real money to get new Tour CEO Brian Rolapp’s thoughts on this article, given his proximity to NFL media rights. Maybe jam on a pod about it or something??
All of this, to me, is a referendum on the Tour’s future, sure, but also more or less a subtweet about how good of a job the Masters has done in this area.
The entity that has done the best job of anyone in golf sports of not chopping up its product and selling it here and there and everywhere. That has done the best job of delivering it perfectly to golf fans.
I saw this great quote recently.
The patient inherit everything the impatient leave behind.
Farnam Street
The result, at least for ANGC is an unparalleled long-term affinity from the most lucrative demographic of fans this side of the polo world championships.
It is more difficult to trust that this will be the eventual outcome than the Masters gets credit for. It is always easier to sell out to the highest bidder, and to push that aside and trust your own product is not only great for their organization but also the sport as a whole.
Sometimes I like to go back and read the newsletter I wrote exactly one year ago. Often it feels more like 10 years ago, and I don’t think this one is any different.
It was fun to look back on Sergio and Justin Rose trying to qualify into The Open (an Open Rose nearly won) and that hilarious Trump-Biden golf spat from last summer. Keegan’s suitcase is also still unopened and still as relevant as ever.
Biggest takeaway, though, was the reminder that this photo — taken at last year’s John Deere Classic — exists ….
Here was my take at the time.
First of all, follow Jeff Marsh on Twitter or, even better, on Instagram. He took this extraordinary photo. Second of all, if an alien landed and wanted to know about “this Jordan fellow,” and you could only present him with one photo, would you show him this or the Pebble cliff pic?
Me
Jeff and I have become closer friends since then, and as noted above, I even got to write the foreword for his Golf Is Art 3 book (Golf is Art 2 actually included the Spieth photo) and Jason wrote about the portrait he made for Jeff’s Q&A.
You can check it out right here.
I love this idea below.
People on Twitter really would have you believe that this is the worst trait imaginable for someone who gives their opinion for a living, but I find it far worse to be someone who doubles down on a take that has proven to be foolish when more information has been disclosed.
One area where I have personally evolved is (obviously?) LIV. I think at first I made it into too much of a human rights issue. And while it is that, as I thought and read more and more, I realized that players are less complicated than I originally gave them credit for and that the folks establishing the league probably are, too. I think it’s mostly just about money for the players. For the princes, it’s about building a league and all the trappings that come with that.
I think it takes some humility to revise your opinion on actual things (not silly stuff like golf), but I respect people who do a lot because they are doing so in the face of what they often know will be tremendous criticism.
Thank you for reading a golf newsletter that is 2,499 words long. You are a sicko (and possibly a psycho), and I’m grateful for that. Happy coffee golf szn.
Kyle approaches coverage of the game with both conviction and curiosity
Kyle is the best columnist in sports. That he has channeled those talents through strokes gained and Spieth memes is a blessing to golf.
Kyle is a perfect curator of the necessary moments of levity that accent a sport that will drive most of us insane.
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.
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!
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.
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!
Normal Sport is exploratory, ometimes emotional, always entertaining. It also has one of my favorite writers in the biz at its foundation.
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.
It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
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.
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
