Issue No. 251 | September 16, 2025 | Read Online
Greetings!
The Ryder Cup is next week. Jason is flying to the U.S. as I type this, and we will have a meetup with Normal Club members in Dallas later this week (Thursday evening). We would love for you to join the Normal Club, and we will send out details on the meetup on Wednesday.
Thank you to OGIO for presenting today’s newsletter and helping us get to Bethpage next week. We’ll be rocking their Alpha Venture Backpack — which I have been using throughout my travel this year as well as a surprise drop they have coming next week.
Keep an eye out on their Instagram and on this newsletter. We will feature their new travel product extensively and do a giveaway around it as well. Excited to show it to you and excited, as always, to be repping OGIO on the road.
If you’re traveling with something that carries stuff you really care about, OGIO makes a premium version of it (and that will be even more true starting next week).
OK, now onto the news.
What if the Scottie-Tiger comparison hyperbole not only hasn’t gone too far. What if it … hasn’t gone far enough? I was thinking about that when I saw this question on Twitter over the weekend following Scottie’s sixth win in his last 12 starts (not a typo).
The word I keep coming back to with Scottie is helplessness. There is a helplessness among other players that is very Tiger-like. Did you hear Lanto Griffin after losing to Scottie on Sunday?
“Kind of wish Scottie wasn’t here but I know all the fans enjoyed it.”
Golf.com
If you played a round of golf with Lanto Griffin, he would be (probably by a wide margin) the best player you have ever seen. You would leave wondering how Lanto Griffin is not a 7-time major champion. He’s one of the best in his profession in the world. And Scottie makes him feel feeble. Without agency. Powerless.
That’s extraordinary. And now Scottie — as I wrote about on The Infirmary — has put together yet another of the 10 best seasons of the last 40 years and dunked on Phil Mickelson’s amusing prediction from March in the process.
He’s also at least hanging out in Tiger’s neighborhood when it comes to how good his seasons have been. Tiger is the green line, Scottie is blue.
1. This made me chuckle a bit. Although maybe it’s not very normal sport-y since Jayden Daniels has been doing it for a long time now. Also, a tepid take: I think the NY crowds will be about 1/20th as bad as everyone is purporting. It’s difficult to imagine it being worse than Hazeltine.
2. It’s true that this happens in other sports. Fans catch foul balls all the time. Except that, you know, they aren’t still in play when they do!
[Jason here] Is golf the only sport where fans explicitly don’t want to catch the ball?
[Kyle back] Has to be!
3. A question.
Yes, yes it absolutely does. Reminds me of the sand brushers at Augusta National. Long poles that look like the devices pitchers use to build shoulder strength, but instead there are maintenance folks just whipping the sand off those perfectly cut greens.
4. Mr. Pork looks like he could be buddies with Norman.
There are actually three this week, and none of them are mine, although I agree with all three.
1. The first is one reader’s theory on why there are so many more top American golfers compared to tennis pros. I posted in The Infirmary this reader’s thoughts on why this is the case — specifically in the tennis world — and dropped my reaction on how things could shift away from American dominance in golf.
2. The second is this one, which I agree with. One look at Ben Griffin, and it’s easy to write him off as a golf dork (who could be a finance dork) who wears weird glasses and has a funky-but-certainly-not-beautiful move.
And yet … he’s kind of electric? I’m not totally sure why, although I suspect the pod Soly did with him recently has something to do with it. He’s one of the storylines I’m most fascinated by next week at Bethpage.
3. As I have been yelling about for the last few years, there are 10,000 problems with players being in charge of the PGA Tour, and this one is right up there near the top for me.
What self-respecting established professional is going to vote to make it easier (via PGA Tour U) for a young star like Jackson Koivun (or Luke Clanton or any of those guys) to take the very job that is making that player millions and millions of dollars.
Maybe the most misaligned incentive on the entire Tour.
• It’s honestly a bit too easy to reel in angsty Europeans who are already too hyped on the Ryder Cup. I did it here by noting that none of the poor Euro team could even beat one of their coaches at Wentworth last week. I don’t know if people were more mad about the idea or the fact that I called a vice captain a coach. And then Shane followed up here with one of his own.
• KVV joined Fried Egg Golf and wrote wonderfully on Monday about the serious and the absurd.
• Agree here. One of the great golf logos in a sea of them.
In the pantheon of underrated golf tour logos, this one is near the top.
— Jonathan Wall (@jonathanrwall)
2:04 PM • Sep 13, 2025
• Somebody tell LIV about Nielsen’s change in how they do ratings. Their LIV Indianapolis number will move from an average of 42,000 viewers per round to 43,000. Also, this got me good when it came across my timeline. Truly, who could forget?
• I felt this line so deeply. I yell to anyone who will listen that good comedians are the last truth tellers. And while that is probably a bit hyperbolic, it’s not that hyperbolic. But the underlying reason — that they make it about the listener more than they do about themselves — is not something I had considered. Brilliant stuff.
[Jason here] I would like to add comic artists to the list of thought leaders.
• As a social media native, I felt this.
• Patrick is low-key one of the funniest people in golf. Follow him if you’re not.
• As would I.
Thank you for reading our handcrafted, algorithm-free newsletter about golf. We put everything we have into every newsletter we write, which is why they are frequently 1,097 words long 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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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.
Normal Sport is exploratory, ometimes emotional, always entertaining. It also has one of my favorite writers in the biz at its foundation.
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.
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!
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.
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 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!
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 approaches coverage of the game with both conviction and curiosity
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
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.
Normal Sport is exploratory, ometimes emotional, always entertaining. It also has one of my favorite writers in the biz at its foundation.
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.
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!
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.
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 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!
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 approaches coverage of the game with both conviction and curiosity
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
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