Issue No. 269 | November 11, 2025 | Read Online
Greetings!
A confession today.
I have struggled to get into pro golf this fall. This is always at least a bit of a difficulty but never more so than this year. I’m not totally sure why, but I find myself taken by 1,000 other things outside of the golf. I would love to pretend like I’m grinding over Jackson Suber’s T11 at the World Wide Technology but I’m just … not.
I just do not care about it at all.
Perhaps you feel the same. And so it feels a lot more honest to admit that and to disclose what I have been exploring and thinking about than to try and retrofit my excitement for the fall slate.
The upshot here is that I’m also so excited for golf in January. As we wind down 2025, there are so many events, players and stories to be elated about heading into 2026.
The downside of no true unified offseason for pro golf is that there is never any space to miss the experience of consuming all of this. No formal space, anyway. However, we can build it in ourselves because not everything needs the totality of our attention.
Onto a few things that do need our attention as 11 straight months of golf finally (almost) comes to a close.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Seed Golf. Dean Klatt started Seed as a reaction to golf getting more expensive and becoming increasingly out of reach for ordinary people. Normies, in other words.
Dean and I discussed a lot of this in a Q&A here.
Golf in Australia — where Dean grew up — is very much an affordable pastime, and Seed aims to help in some small way to keep it that way.
The belief that a great golf experience shouldn't cost a fortune is foundational for Seed. Golfers of all abilities benefit from using a premium, tour-grade golf ball, and their aim is to bring that sort of performance at an affordable price.
You can (and should) check them out right here. You can use the code NORMALSPORT for 20 percent off your first order.
OK, now onto the news.
1. This got me pretty good (via @strosh33).
It’s such a nice metaphor for the way most of my rounds end.
2. Wait a second … I thought that absurd European team photo on the streets of New York was CGI. You’re telling me this was real?
Even in the behind-the-scenes video of them participating in the photo shoot, Bobby Mac still looks CGI’d!
I thought before the event started that this whole photoshoot thing was very silly and that if the Americans did it, they would hear about it for the next quarter century. After watching the video of it, though, I realize it’s just one more notch on the Euro belts. Here are four things that are true.
The European side as a whole has historically cared more about the Ryder Cup experience than the American side.
This does not help them play better.
It does mean they — as an organization — tend to prepare better.
Waking up at 4 a.m. to take a possibly dumb photo in front of the Brooklyn Bridge is a sign that they have historically cared more about the Ryder Cup experience.
Possibly related — a few weeks ago we played a travel baseball team that wore purple and green uniforms. If you wear purple and green as a 12U baseball team, you’re either about to get drilled or you’re the best team in the tournament and possibly the state. Unfortunately for us, it was the latter.
That’s how I feel about an organization like the European team taking this photo.
However, I love that Luke Donald talks about how nobody else in the world has a photo like this and how that is all part of the experience for the Euro side.
The Ryder Cup is much more than a competition for the Europeans. It’s an experience. One they cannot wait to participate in every year. Again, this is not why they play better. But it is a sign that they care at the level at which every single detail is accounted for because everyone wants the experience to be as amazing as possible and everyone is bought in..
The former All Blacks coach, Gilbert Enoka, described something on the High Performance Podcast recently that seems to apply here.
He talked about how the team and staff would offload their luggage with a human chain, leading to songs, banter, and ultimately transforming a chore into an uplifting experience. But why do they do it? Because, as he describes, “Nothing is below the men and women who have the privilege to be custodians at that point in time.”
This reminds me of Justin Rose’s quote in 2023 after they won Rome.
We are united by a culture and we are united by a generation of players that have come before us. This is our time. Luke has been very clear on that message, this is our time to shine, not because this is our stage, we are just taking care of it because of the amazing role models that we've had before us that have shown us how to do it.
Justin Rose | Rome 2023
It’s so difficult to beat a team like that.
I saw Rory’s comments recently on how he feels about 2025.
They should not be surprising.
10 out of 10. It would have been nice to win The Open at Portrush, but I can't be greedy. Winning the Masters, winning an away Ryder Cup, winning my home [Irish] Open, the Players, it's a 10.
Rory McIlroy
Given all the circumstances and the fact that he finished off the slam as well as called his shot at Bethpage (not to mention, had an award named after him!), I think it’s easily the best year of his career, even if that’s not how it reads on paper. With a few events to go, here’s how his years look on paper in terms of Data Golf points.
This is why context matters.
One of the football podcasts I’ve been listening to recently always jokes about how Derek Carr and Pat Mahomes have the same career stat lines (which is amusing and actually kind of true — see below).
But context is everything just as it is with Rory’s 2025. Expectations are as high as ever, and he entered in and won three of the most monumental events of a year which will absolutely be considered the best of his extraordinary golf career.
Nearly 50 percent of you got our recent DG trivia question, but Cory B. was first.
The answer: Russell Henley, who has won just two times in the last eight years despite absolutely flushing everything he looks at.
Why do I like Data Golf and this type of information in general? Because you will sometimes hear that Russell Henley is a tremendous putter, which is something people think must be true simply because he doesn’t drive it very far (Henley is currently hanging out in the Chandler Blanchett/Andy Sullivan neighborhood in terms of distance off the tee).
Long windows of data always properly confirm or deny this type of information, just as Henley’s profile does here. The real story is more interesting — he has been an average putter, which is why he hasn’t been winning, but he’s improved a lot over the last two years. Now that I have this info, I can start to ask why he’s improved his putting, which is a much better place to start than simply assuming he’s a good putter.
Anyway, congrats to Cory B. on getting Russell H. as the correct answer.
• This on how Twitter is maybe (?) flipping its alleged policy on throttling links is both encouraging and clever.
• I love handwritten notes so this article on how Maryland basketball coach, Buzz Williams, writes hundreds of them a month (!!) was a delight to me.
• Me literally every day in my living room.
We haven’t done one of these for a while, but this from reader Jeff P. got me so good. I laughed out loud so hard at the end.
Jeff and his brother were caddies at Valhalla, which is where the story starts.
On one particular coupon day, my younger brother and I were assigned to a group from Paducah, Kentucky. These fellas couldn't play a lick, and their accents were so think my brother and I could have used an interpreter for a few player-caddie exchanges.
Anyway, this was an especially hot and humid day — as Louisville tends to provide in the summertime — and despite the aforementioned move toward inclusivity, the club never allowed coolers on the golf course. Instead, players were provided large plastic bags with ice for their beers if they wanted to drink out there. (The caddies, naturally, would bear this burden.) The guy my brother caddied for must have crushed 16 MGDs during the round, which clocked in at five hours, 31 minutes.
By the time we got to 17, my brother was for sure considering murder. His guy's best score on an individual hole to that point was a double bogey, and things were really starting to drag. The guy had already hit it three times and was now in the fairway on 17, roughly 100 yards from the green. (Interestingly, not far from the spot where Tiger drove it in the last round of the 2000 PGA, and Stevie lied to him about the yardage to make sure he hit the 60-degree for his approach instead of the 56. Cat, of course, made birdie and went on to win.)
The Paducah-ite takes a mighty lash and extracts the largest divot in the long history of divots from the Earth (Valhalla used to be bentgrass, and the course was always soaked — prime conditions for proper pelts).
This thing must've weighed 14 pounds. My brother dutifully marches seven or eight yards ahead to retrieve it and, on his return to the crime scene, the guy says: "Matt, I've got me a grass farm back home, and I'm a sumbitch if I don't take me a little piece of Valhalla as a souvenir. Why don'cha slide that beauty on into my bag?" My brother's response: "LITTLE piece of Valhalla?"
He then fulfilled the request, sliding the half-acre of turf into the long zipper pocket at the back of the bag and shouldering it for a few more blows on 17, then up the big hill on 18 to the round's merciful conclusion.
Jeff P.
I don’t know why it hit me the way it did, but “LITTLE piece of Valhalla” was such a perfect response in the context of that story.
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