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Issue No. 193 | May 2, 2025
You could fill up books (plural) with reasons all of us are thankful for golf. Here’s one from this week. This outrageous Zuckerberg interview dropped in which he uses the phrase “demand for friends” like humans are simply definitions in his little economics guide. Something he’s trying to solve for by using AI. Dark, dark stuff.
As was pointed out by many, golf is such a nice salve for all of this. Such a great antidote to a future that the tech boys are trying to fix with technology. Machines, for all their capabilities, are not meant to fill up the human heart like relationships are.
Bad news for Zuck.
Good news for this stupid stupid game.
Speaking of actually playing golf with friends, I had a chance to do so this morning. We walked nine holes, had a little match. It was great fun.
The only device I used the entire time? My Garmin S70 watch. It gives me front-middle-back from any place I am on the course (which is … a lot of them). I was thinking about how nice it was to not have my phone out but to still get good distances while walking and enjoying a chat with some friends.
Garmin is a presenter of this newsletter throughout 2025, and we’re thrilled to have them on board. Their suite of golf products is tremendous, and I have been a consumer of their brand since before Normal Sport was officially an LLC.
I am a huge proponent of spending good money on things you use every day, and I use my S70 literally all day every day. That it is useful and beneficial when it comes to actually playing golf is such a nice bonus for me, and it’s one of a handful of golf products that I recommend to anyone who will listen.
Still riding the wave and still wearing the S70.
OK, onto the news.
Let’s get right to it.
1. I was looking through the next 11 venues for men’s major championships, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I see no path to Rory finishing 2027 with fewer majors than Gary Player (9).
Here are those venues (I have highlighted the ones Rory is going to win).
Quail Hollow
Oakmont
Portrush
ANGC
Aronimink
Shinnecock
Birkdale
ANGC
PGA Frisco
Pebble
Old Course
And I’m probably being conservative.
That puts him right here.
Jack: 18
Tiger: 15
Rory: 11
Hagen: 11
Hogan: 9
Player: 9
Watson: 8
Sarazen: 7
Snead: 7
Palmer: 7
Jones: 7
Vardon: 7
And he won’t even be 40 yet.
2. I’m kidding (obviously), but this is a really great run of major venues. I’m intrigued by two things. The first is how PGA Frisco holds up as a PGA site. I’ve played it a few times, and it’s a little Trinity Forestian in that normies like me can have a nice day but it can also (hopefully) be a championship venue for the best players in the world. I do feel bad for them that they have to go against [squints] three of the best major venues of all time.
My other question is — I can’t believe I’m saying this — whether Pebble still stands up in 2027. I thought it was fine in 2019. Not amazing, not terrible. It was fine. But there’s something — maybe that it has a Tour event every year or that technology advancements have drowned it out or I don’t know, something else — that makes it not feel quite as big time as a Shinnecock or an Oakmont or a Pinehurst U.S. Open.
The hottest takes I have re: major venues right now are …
Pinehurst should be in the U.S. Open rota as often a possible (which it kind of is) and …
Kiawah (yes, Kiawah!) should be in the PGA rota as often as possible and …
The PGA should go to the discarded USGA venues like Chambers and Erin Hills and just let it rip at those spots. Maybe they weren’t what the USGA wanted, but they would be magnificent for a PGA Championship.
You can see all the commentary on my post right here.
3. I have made this point many times before, but it feels timely as the NBA playoffs get into full swing.
Regular season golf for many fans = podcasts and clips (maybe).
Major championship golf for many fans = actually watching the golf.
This is … fine. However, in other sports the league that runs the regular season can capitalize on the unrealized revenue during the postseason. In golf, the league that runs the regular season has to sit and watch from the sidelines while four other organizations do this. Which is pretty wild and a little normal sport-y.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Normal Sport podcast thoughts.
A Rory-Tom Watson comp.
The best argument(s) for rolling equipment back.
If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.
If you are, keep reading!
Welcome to the members-only portion of today’s newsletter. I hope you both enjoy it and find it to be valuable to your golf and/or personal life.
4. We have been talking a lot recently about what a future Normal Sport podcast would entail. I would love to any thoughts you — a paying member of this club — have about this. A line I used in the book Jason and I are currently editing is, We create for ourselves, but we publish for you guys. What do you envision, what do you desire when you think about a Normal Sport podcast?
5. Sports Business Journal recently published this piece on the future of LIV as examined by CAA Evolution’s, Michael Klein, who is a big investment banker/deal maker.
Here’s my primary takeaway from it.
“I believe [LIV has] worked incredibly hard to bring that constructive relationship forward,” Klein said. “There’s been some complexities that unfortunately were thrown out early – I think badly advised complexities; those have now been behind them. But the Saudi Investment Fund, the PIF, is one of the most consistent, most loyal, most deeply driven investors in the world. They’ve invested a tremendous amount. They’re going to continue to invest a tremendous amount, and they’ll continue to invest in LIV as a separate entity or as a partner with PGA, either way, because they have a massive belief in the growth in the golf ecosystem.”
In short, Klein said, the basic premise of the PIF’s move into golf is still true: Golf media rights are fragmented and could be much larger if consolidated, and that a team-format, Ryder-Cup style golf is still underutilized.
SBJ
Me reading the part about a massive belief in the growth in the golf ecosystem.
Here’s a question I was thinking about today: Would you rather own Good Good or LIV?
Forget what was invested into either one, which one would you rather own today based on current valuation and future potential profitability and success/growth/liabilities?
One thing we haven’t talked about enough is how little movement there has been at LIV since Rahm peaced out (Porath wrote incisively about him this week, by the way, you should read it here). Who is the best player they have signed since then?
Tyrrell Hatton?
LIV has many problems ahead. Building a good, thriving, sustainable business for the long haul takes time, and LIV’s rent-a-player methodology does not suggest that it is willing to be patient in the long term. So if the new-fangled format doesn’t catch on and the star power runs out … what are you left with other than Good Good 2.0 but with a 10-figure outlay to have built it?
6. I think the best arguments are often the simplest ones that come at something from a different angle. This from Andy with a video of Fernando Tatis hitting a baseball 930 feet with a metal bat is a great argument for … equipment modification in golf? Yes.
A true … Well, when you put it that way moment for me.
I think the two best arguments for equipment rollback are …
This Tatis video.
The question of whether you want to continue going to St. Andrews.
No rational sports fan (or person) can look at those two questions/statements and think that the current way forward is the wise way forward.
7. Jamie Kennedy, a seemingly endless well of terrific ideas and golf thoughts, put together a cool chart showing success across a player’s first 250 starts, both from a modern great player standpoint as well as an historical one.
I have a lot of thoughts and takeaways, but I guess the primary one is that Rory is having Tom Watson’s career. I think I was hung up on the fact that he couldn’t get over the four major hurdle so in my mind he was kind of in neutral at that No. 20 or No. 25 mark in terms of the best players ever. But when you smooth out the ups and downs, it begins to look a lot more like one of the 10 or so best careers of all time. Remarkable.
8. I happened upon this Derek Thompson interview with David Perell recently. It’s extraordinary. I am surely in the minority in that I really dig super nerdy stuff on writing and stories, but I honestly found the back and forth to be really beautiful.
David Perell: So what is it about this craft that warrants years, decades of your life?
Derek Thompson: What a great question. There's a simple answer, which is that it's just really fun. It's so fun to wake up, there's a blank page … to realize that there's a literal infinitude of things that you could do with that page.
There are things you can do with that page that can get you fired. There's things you can do with that page that win you awards. There's things that you can do there that will make a million people furious at you.
That kind of freedom is dizzying. Kierkegaard said “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” and I love that.
There's something so beautiful about having as your occupation, the ability to do anything. That really is the realm of writing. You can do anything.
The two occupations that I've been interested in have been acting and writing because it says, here's an audience and here's something that's blank, whether it's a stage or a page, and you can do anything on that stage and you can do anything on that page, and it's gonna make this audience over here react.
They're gonna feel something and they might not even know what they're gonna feel. When they come into the theater, when they click on the article or open up the book. You're going to change the quality of their consciousness and their emotional experience with this freedom.
Why wouldn’t you wanna do that?
Derek Thompson
Heart heart heart heart.
Thank you for reading until the end.
You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a newsletter about a single round of golf that is 1,994 words (!!) long, and we are grateful for your support of this business.
Issue No. 193 | May 2, 2025
You could fill up books (plural) with reasons all of us are thankful for golf. Here’s one from this week. This outrageous Zuckerberg interview dropped in which he uses the phrase “demand for friends” like humans are simply definitions in his little economics guide. Something he’s trying to solve for by using AI. Dark, dark stuff.
As was pointed out by many, golf is such a nice salve for all of this. Such a great antidote to a future that the tech boys are trying to fix with technology. Machines, for all their capabilities, are not meant to fill up the human heart like relationships are.
Bad news for Zuck.
Good news for this stupid stupid game.
Speaking of actually playing golf with friends, I had a chance to do so this morning. We walked nine holes, had a little match. It was great fun.
The only device I used the entire time? My Garmin S70 watch. It gives me front-middle-back from any place I am on the course (which is … a lot of them). I was thinking about how nice it was to not have my phone out but to still get good distances while walking and enjoying a chat with some friends.
Garmin is a presenter of this newsletter throughout 2025, and we’re thrilled to have them on board. Their suite of golf products is tremendous, and I have been a consumer of their brand since before Normal Sport was officially an LLC.
I am a huge proponent of spending good money on things you use every day, and I use my S70 literally all day every day. That it is useful and beneficial when it comes to actually playing golf is such a nice bonus for me, and it’s one of a handful of golf products that I recommend to anyone who will listen.
Still riding the wave and still wearing the S70.
OK, onto the news.
Let’s get right to it.
1. I was looking through the next 11 venues for men’s major championships, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I see no path to Rory finishing 2027 with fewer majors than Gary Player (9).
Here are those venues (I have highlighted the ones Rory is going to win).
Quail Hollow
Oakmont
Portrush
ANGC
Aronimink
Shinnecock
Birkdale
ANGC
PGA Frisco
Pebble
Old Course
And I’m probably being conservative.
That puts him right here.
Jack: 18
Tiger: 15
Rory: 11
Hagen: 11
Hogan: 9
Player: 9
Watson: 8
Sarazen: 7
Snead: 7
Palmer: 7
Jones: 7
Vardon: 7
And he won’t even be 40 yet.
2. I’m kidding (obviously), but this is a really great run of major venues. I’m intrigued by two things. The first is how PGA Frisco holds up as a PGA site. I’ve played it a few times, and it’s a little Trinity Forestian in that normies like me can have a nice day but it can also (hopefully) be a championship venue for the best players in the world. I do feel bad for them that they have to go against [squints] three of the best major venues of all time.
My other question is — I can’t believe I’m saying this — whether Pebble still stands up in 2027. I thought it was fine in 2019. Not amazing, not terrible. It was fine. But there’s something — maybe that it has a Tour event every year or that technology advancements have drowned it out or I don’t know, something else — that makes it not feel quite as big time as a Shinnecock or an Oakmont or a Pinehurst U.S. Open.
The hottest takes I have re: major venues right now are …
Pinehurst should be in the U.S. Open rota as often a possible (which it kind of is) and …
Kiawah (yes, Kiawah!) should be in the PGA rota as often as possible and …
The PGA should go to the discarded USGA venues like Chambers and Erin Hills and just let it rip at those spots. Maybe they weren’t what the USGA wanted, but they would be magnificent for a PGA Championship.
You can see all the commentary on my post right here.
3. I have made this point many times before, but it feels timely as the NBA playoffs get into full swing.
Regular season golf for many fans = podcasts and clips (maybe).
Major championship golf for many fans = actually watching the golf.
This is … fine. However, in other sports the league that runs the regular season can capitalize on the unrealized revenue during the postseason. In golf, the league that runs the regular season has to sit and watch from the sidelines while four other organizations do this. Which is pretty wild and a little normal sport-y.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Normal Sport podcast thoughts.
A Rory-Tom Watson comp.
The best argument(s) for rolling equipment back.
If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.
If you are, keep reading!
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 816 deranged individuals. By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
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• First access to future merch drops.
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We’re just 100 years behind (not adjusted for inflation).
