Issue No. 236 | July 29, 2025 | Read Online

[Jason here]

Normally when we’re patchworking these newsletters together, I see Kyle filling up the draft document with text and wonder, how the heck does he do that so fast? It probably comes down to the same kind of reps that let The Ho-Hum Heroes (that you’ll read about) make their craft look so easy.

I have 236 issues worth of visual reps. I know how to bring disconnected fascinations together through illustrations, but today I’m doing it in text. I decided to jump off of last week’s Scottie vs Tiger newsletter and talk about GOATs. This is my feeling in a nutshell.

Today’s newsletter is presented by Seed golf.

Two weeks ago, I messaged Seed founder Dean Klatt about joining him last minute for The Open at Portrush. He had an extra ticket for Sunday and a bonus tee time at Ballyliffin. I didn’t go, certain that if I did I would have completely neglected my illustration responsibilities. But still, for a day I was buzzing about the possibility of enjoying Ireland golf thanks to Dean.

Why am I sharing that story?

1. It makes me think about my grandfather who mused about living a life in golf.

2. I realized that Dean also lives a life in golf.

He’s someone who says, fly up to Dublin and I’ll take you to a course that will knock your socks off. Dean gets it! [note to self: Dean Knows would make a great shirt]

You’ve got to be living a life in golf to decide to start a golf ball company focused on the most heavily regulated piece of equipment we use. He started Seed as a reaction to golf getting more expensive and becoming increasingly out of reach for ordinary people. And then he reversed engineered the premium ball and made it affordable.

We are pumped to have Seed as a partner and for you to get to know and enjoy their products (and Dean’s golfing energy) like we have.

And if you’re interested, you can use the code normalsport at checkout on their site for 20 percent off (in most circumstances).

OK, now onto the GOATs

What’s in a GOAT anyway?

After Scottie’s pre-Open “What’s the point?” presser and post-Open speech I was thinking a lot about how he’s cementing his place in golf. Kyle dug into the Scottie vs. Tiger comp in Normal Sport No. 234 which shows that he’s clearly on GOAT watch.

But what kind of GOAT is he? And where does he rank in the scale of all-timers? He cares, but he doesn’t. He focuses on ordinary fundamentals and then does extraordinary things with them. If only there were a classification system to talk about GOATs….

Introducing Jason’s Unofficial GOAT Scale (JUGS): one ding dongs take on the makeup of history’s most dominant athletes. I sent my first draft of JUGS to Kyle for last week’s Tuesday newsletter, and he told me to keep working on it for this week. You don’t have to tell me to go down a rabbit hole twice. The more I got lost researching the more characters and stories popped up. Greg Maddux led to Moe Norman to Rodney Mullen to Graeme Obree, etcetera.

I would like to note that I AM NOT A BALL KNOWER and do not take any responsibility for the accuracy of the rankings. Feel free to shoot any additions, suggestions and complaints to Jason@normalsport.com 

I hope you enjoy diving into the links, nicknames and stories as much as I did.

JUGS v1.0

1. The Gifted One dominates sport by rethinking it. Although their unique mind helps them reinvent the game it can also be what ostracizes them from it. Or makes them give up the sport entirely. Sometimes in the long run they contribute to game more than literally competing in it.

• Bobby “The Bad Boy of Chess” Fischer once said “I don’t consider myself to be a genius at chess, I consider myself more to be a genius who just happens to play chess.” Is that the chess equivalent of Scottie’s “This is not a fulfilling life” or what?

• Graeme Obree smashed world records with his homemade “Old Faithful” bike made with parts from a washing machine.

• Greg “The Professor” Maddux

• Rick Barry mastered the underhand free throw and inspired… no one 🤔

• Rodney Mullen invented modern skateboarding and Andy Anderson is reinventing it. This moment from their Hawk vs. Wolf interview is a beautiful meeting of the minds from the beginnings and future of the sport.

2. The Billy Madison is so far ahead of their times and context of competition that it doesn’t feel like a fair fight when they’re on the field.

• Babe Zaharias

• Danny “Little Unit” Almonte

• Jim “Wa-Tho-Huk (Bright Path)” Thorpe

• Joaquín “JoaKing” Niemann

• Kim Jong-il

I’m not saying Jim Thorpe and Babe Zaharias were great because of their eras. They just dominated in ways that had never been done before and I think the groundbreaking-ness of their talent had something to do with the legendary status of their success.

3. The Powerhouse dominates through sheer effort fueled by an overpowering mindset, for better or for worse.

• Aleksandr Karelin aka The Russian Bear, Russian King Kong, Alexander the Great, The Experiment

  • Most people know him for not being able to lift Rulon Gardner at the 2000 Olympics, but that was only his second loss out of 889 matches.

• Lance “Le Boss” Armstrong

• Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose

• Randy “The Big Unit” Johnson

• Ray “Brickwall” Lewis

• Shaq aka The Diesel, Big Aristotle, Superman, Big Fella

• Tadej “Slovenian Destroyer” Pogačar is a recent addition after winning his fourth Tour de France in style.

What I love about Pogačar is how hard he goes even when it’s not smart or totally necessary. I could not disagree with this Reddit comment any more:

“Tadej needs to calm down and conserve his energy. He needs to attack sparingly, and surgically -- with more than trivial time gains in mind.” - Ambitious-Door-7847

Sorry Mr. Ambitious Door, they don’t call him Today Foccacia for nothing.

Speaking of going 110% 100% of the time, how powerful was Ray Lewis?

So powerful that Sport Science dedicated an entire episode to testing if he could hit harder than a battering ram (spoiler alert, he did). Also, how insane was Sport Science? It was Normal Sport before Normal Sport was a thing.

Their episode with Brad Faxon “on the hunt for the hardest lie in golf” is SNL Taco Town-esque television. I absolutely lost it when they gave him the lie that led to this…

I’m honestly surprised Bryson hasn’t adopted this show for his Youtube channel.

4. The Ho-Hum Hero is the sneakiest and most frustrating GOAT [for competitors] on JUGS. They are masters of self-discipline and constantly perfect their craft. They write sports history like it’s no big deal and afterwards give quotes like:

"Focus on the ball, not the pitcher" - Tony Gwynn

Sure Tony, as if never striking out more than 40 times in a season for 20 seasons, and never being struck out by JUGS Gifted One Gred Maddux in 100 at-bats is as easy as focusing on the ball. Sure.

• Cael Sanderson

• Efren Reyes 

• Eliud Kipchoge

• Katie Ledecky

• Steph Curry

• Scottie Scheffler

• Tony Gwynn 

While digging into Efren Reyes highlights, like one does, I found it interesting that his dominance, like Scottie’s, is best measured by the reactions of his competitors.

During the first set of the 2005 International Pool Tour King of the Hill tournament (a real event), Reyes absolutely pantsed Mike Sigel 8-0. Sigel, who was voted best living player in 2005 — gave a quote afterwards that could have been Harris English at Portrush.

“I feel like I’m playing perfect, I feel good, I feel very comfortable, but I can’t get started, I’ve been playing pool 40 years and I’ve never seen anything go like that, that all of a sudden it just looks like a one man show and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s why this game is the toughest game on the planet.”

Efren’s reaction to the match: “Well I played good today.”

Ice cold.

If you keep watching the second set, you’ll start to see the toll that Reyes’ relentlessness takes on Sigel. Every mistake needs to be captalized on. Easy shots gain weight and hard shots become stifling. He has to play perfect just to have a chance.

Again, sound familiar?

The Shotgun Start boys talked about this on their Open Sunday recap pod. How the same dynamics played out at Portrush (and at the two Masters and two Players that Scottie won) and how data sets should be viewed related to the context of playing against Scottie down the stretch. How moments matter more than Wikipedia boxes.

5. The GOAT’s GOAT lives in rarefied air pairing qualities of each of the previous JUGS categories with longevity, celebrity and a certain sauce that gives them first name legend status. They don’t really need links because their moments are engrained in our collective memory.

• Ali

• Flo-Jo

• Gretzky

• Jordan

• Lebron

• Phelps

• Serena

• Tiger

• Usain

[Kyle here] If you’re referencing the 2005 International Pool Tour King of the Hill tournament, you for sure know ball.

The Aggregate Major Champ

Hey, it’s Kyle checking in from vacation with a look at this year’s aggregate major champion, which is … not very surprising.

Some things on this list that are surprising.

• Xander almost caught Rory. Has Xander even been good this year?

• J.J. Spaun making the cut at all four majors is mega impressive. What a year.

• If you picked the end of the U.S. Ryder Cup team based on this list, I would not be mad.

• Harris English is awesome. Monster flusher, and I’m glad he’s gotten healthy. Also, if Scottie had picked tennis, it might be two-time major winner, Harris English.

• THE DEMISE OF JONATHAN RAHM HAS BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED.

• I’m … not sure I saw one of Aaron Rai’s 1,139 major shots this year.

• I stand with Jamie, this should be an annual award. Heck, we might just make it an annual award on our site.

This was a fun and different kind of Normal Sport newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it and clicked on every link. Kyle’s back next week and I’ll be off. I’ll try to convince him to do an illustrated newsletter.

Thank you for reading our handcrafted, algorithm-free newsletter about golf. We put every reference and tidbit of insanity into every newsletter we write, which is why they are frequently 1,971 words long + 31 links like this one.

While we do use digital tools that help us find information, everything you read and consumed was created from scratch by two humans who are absolutely obsessed with the game.

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