Issue No. 263 | October 17, 2025 | Read Online
Greetings!
Viktor Hovland is videoing himself taking rickshaw rides in India, and Mrs. Normal had an all time Range Goats pull this week.
An incredible run of words no matter which way you look at it.
But first!
Thank you to Precision Pro for sponsoring today’s newsletter.
Hovland could have used their Titan Elite Rangefinder to navigate his way through the crowded streets of New Delhi, which would have been perhaps the most unique use case in Precision Pro history.
Regardless, the Titan Elite’s durability and ease of use — both reasons to pick one up — would have been useful for dodging pedestrians and other rickshaws.
Or you could use it like a normal person for those 165-yard shots you have as Fall Golf SZN gets fully underway.
Check the Titan Elite out right here.
OK, now onto the news.
1. There is a bit of a challenge going around with Golf Guys trying to get their significant other to name (or write down) 30 random golfers. This started — best as I can tell — with this tweet, which I linked in a newsletter earlier this week as well.
So I had my wife try to write 30, and here’s what she came up with.
The Uihlein (ULine)-Reed-Cabrera-Horschel-Webb run is completely insane. I have no idea how she got into that particular stream.
But I was impressed overall with how little time this took and — more specifically — the fact that she spelled Rickie Fowler correctly.
2. This also led to two amazing responses.
Here’s the first.
Mrs. Normal also loves Cher, so this response delighted her.
Here’s the second.
I howled.
This reminded me of the amazing Nate Bargatze bit where he can’t believe the school calls him, the dad, instead of the mom about a piece of information they need about his daughter. It’s so, so on point.
3. I also asked my kids — ages 12, 11, 8 and 6 — over dinner to collectively come up with 30 golfers. Here’s their list.
Lucas Glover, Nicolai Hojgaard and Gary Player were all sick pulls for four kids ages 6-12.
Our team has attempted the exercise as well.
Here’s a bit of a preview from Illustrator Jason (who just sent an update that he finished at 240 with a final run of Keegan O’Toole (the wrestler?!), Oscar Niebeyer and Carl Penge, which I think he meant Wilco Nienaber and Marco Penge.) …
Business David took a rip as well.
I will likely be attempting this at some point, but I’m a bit concerned that I will fall well short of 200 and quit out of utter embarrassment and potentially a bit of shame.
My overall big takeaway is how much fun this stupid little game is. Just dudes (and women and kids) sitting around naming golfers. It has been a silly delight at a time of year when golf is a bit of a desert.
If you have your own list, please send it in. I would love to see it (and possibly publish it).
4. When Jason was in town here in Dallas, we recorded a couple of podcasts together. The first of those is Jason just sitting there asking me a bunch of questions he’s always wanted to ask me but never had a chance to.
Jason and I have worked together for four years now and been business partners for the last 12 months. But this was just the second time we’d met in person.
Part of the magic of podcasts is that it gives you the freedom to ask questions you 1. Have always wanted to ask but have been too scared to approach or 2. Should already know the answers to but for some reason do not.
That’s what I love about participating in pods, and Jason asks a ton of good ones here in an extremely fruitful conversation for us and our business.
Hopefully you get something out of it as well.
If you don’t want to watch, you can listen (and subscribe!): Spotify | Apple
5. I have thought a lot about artificial intelligence this year. Thoughts I have sometimes shared within this newsletter when they relate to the world that we are all inhabiting (esoteric golf references and missives about life?).Â
I find myself considering how my content will be affected by AI. I find myself using ChatGPT more than ever for business-y tasks. Maybe you are the same.
Anyway, when I saw this from Andy Crouch — who I genuinely believe is a genius — it rattled me. I thought it was great. I thought it was worth sharing.
Mostly, I thought it was human.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes some things I’ve been thinking about and considering as I’ve been grinding on the business side of Normal Sport for the last few weeks. Not stuff we want to share broadly but that I’m happy to share with our membership who has been supporting us over the last year…
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 1,012 crazed individuals. By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• A vote for trusted, independent media.
• The delight of helping us establish Normal Sport.
• 15% off to our pro shop.
• Access to all of our content (like the rest of this post).
Â
Welcome to the members-only portion of today’s newsletter. I hope you find the parts about golf enjoyable and the parts about our business encouraging. Â
Maybe it’s just that time of the golf year, but the truth of the last few weeks is that a lot of my creativity and energy toward this newsletter (and our podcast) has lapsed a bit because I’ve been so focused on organizing our business and working toward sponsorships for 2026.Â
This looks like a lot of Google Sheets work — creating better models for gathering and sharing metrics with sponsors, structuring our pricing for 2026 correctly and evaluating how much content inventory we even have available.
All of it is exhausting, and I am not particularly great at it (yet). It also takes away time from what I love, which is writing this newsletter and making the Normal Sport Show. Although given that we are just sitting around naming golfers, I suppose this is the right time of year to focus on such things.
If I can speak honestly, I also have this tremendous fear — almost all of the time — that everything is just going to fall apart. Mostly because Jason and I have found the work we want to be doing and we hope to have the financial fuel to continue in this direction.
I don’t believe this is rational, but it is still something I feel, especially at the time of year when we are pitching sponsor renewals.Â
Normal Sport full time in Year 1 was a novelty, I tell myself. Nobody is going to want to partner with you in Year 2. That’s a place I’ve been living in my head, which again is probably not logical but is definitely something I wrestle with. We are also constantly trying to figure how much (and what) to produce on the content side.
Maybe you own your own business and have been in this space before, too. It can be somehow both debilitating and motivating at the same time. Often in the same moment.
I presume this is how it goes for almost everyone.
Anyway, there are three graphs I want to share with you.
The first is newsletter subscribers over time.
Three things are true.
1. We have grown at about a 100 percent clip year over year since our initial launch.
2. This is not the most important chart in the world.
3. Seventeen thousand readers can be an actual business.
And yet, I still find myself thinking constantly about how to increase our readership in both the near and long term future. Maybe this is vanity. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe the content game is changing (getting tougher), but regardless we will continue trying to grow this group to include everyone who feasibly cares about bedsheets, shampoo and dogs running on putting surfaces in India.
Here’s the next chart.
This one is encouraging to me. We recently passed the 1,000 member mark and have consistently grown throughout the last year. Our hope is to continue improving member benefits so that this chart — which will experience some churn — mostly keeps going up and to the right.
And our last chart.
These are some 2025 financial numbers that I thought you might be interested in seeing. It’s a chart that I’ve been proud of throughout the year. We have maintained a consistent pace of revenue ahead of expenses with our net profit negative only because of the merch we’ve purchased to sell in the pro shop.
If you’re curious about the breakdown of revenue, here it is.
I don’t know if it’s wise to be sharing all of these charts and numbers with all of you, but I do know that I’m always intrigued by them when I read about other people’s businesses. Plus, all of you are incredibly invested (both figuratively and literally) in this business, and I’m always happy to share with folks like that.
So thank you for participating and supporting.
I hope some (any, all) of this is an encouragement to you, and I hope you know that no matter the relative success you see from people online, there are always insecurities, frustrations and fears. Always. Because we’re human.Â
We all share in these experiences, which is (strangely?) an encouragement to me to know that so many people are all collectively trying to figure out how to take the next step forward.
Thank you for reading our handcrafted, algorithm-free newsletter about golf. We put everything we have into everything we write, which is why they are frequently 1,760 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.
If you ever want to support our business, you can buy some Norman merch here (at a discount!) or pass along our site to your golf group chat and get them involved in all this nonsense as well.
Issue No. 263 | October 17, 2025 | Read Online
Greetings!
Viktor Hovland is videoing himself taking rickshaw rides in India, and Mrs. Normal had an all time Range Goats pull this week.
An incredible run of words no matter which way you look at it.
But first!
Thank you to Precision Pro for sponsoring today’s newsletter.
Hovland could have used their Titan Elite Rangefinder to navigate his way through the crowded streets of New Delhi, which would have been perhaps the most unique use case in Precision Pro history.
Regardless, the Titan Elite’s durability and ease of use — both reasons to pick one up — would have been useful for dodging pedestrians and other rickshaws.
Or you could use it like a normal person for those 165-yard shots you have as Fall Golf SZN gets fully underway.
Check the Titan Elite out right here.
OK, now onto the news.
1. There is a bit of a challenge going around with Golf Guys trying to get their significant other to name (or write down) 30 random golfers. This started — best as I can tell — with this tweet, which I linked in a newsletter earlier this week as well.
So I had my wife try to write 30, and here’s what she came up with.
The Uihlein (ULine)-Reed-Cabrera-Horschel-Webb run is completely insane. I have no idea how she got into that particular stream.
But I was impressed overall with how little time this took and — more specifically — the fact that she spelled Rickie Fowler correctly.
2. This also led to two amazing responses.
Here’s the first.
Mrs. Normal also loves Cher, so this response delighted her.
Here’s the second.
I howled.
This reminded me of the amazing Nate Bargatze bit where he can’t believe the school calls him, the dad, instead of the mom about a piece of information they need about his daughter. It’s so, so on point.
3. I also asked my kids — ages 12, 11, 8 and 6 — over dinner to collectively come up with 30 golfers. Here’s their list.
Lucas Glover, Nicolai Hojgaard and Gary Player were all sick pulls for four kids ages 6-12.
Our team has attempted the exercise as well.
Here’s a bit of a preview from Illustrator Jason (who just sent an update that he finished at 240 with a final run of Keegan O’Toole (the wrestler?!), Oscar Niebeyer and Carl Penge, which I think he meant Wilco Nienaber and Marco Penge.) …
Business David took a rip as well.
I will likely be attempting this at some point, but I’m a bit concerned that I will fall well short of 200 and quit out of utter embarrassment and potentially a bit of shame.
My overall big takeaway is how much fun this stupid little game is. Just dudes (and women and kids) sitting around naming golfers. It has been a silly delight at a time of year when golf is a bit of a desert.
If you have your own list, please send it in. I would love to see it (and possibly publish it).
4. When Jason was in town here in Dallas, we recorded a couple of podcasts together. The first of those is Jason just sitting there asking me a bunch of questions he’s always wanted to ask me but never had a chance to.
Jason and I have worked together for four years now and been business partners for the last 12 months. But this was just the second time we’d met in person.
Part of the magic of podcasts is that it gives you the freedom to ask questions you 1. Have always wanted to ask but have been too scared to approach or 2. Should already know the answers to but for some reason do not.
That’s what I love about participating in pods, and Jason asks a ton of good ones here in an extremely fruitful conversation for us and our business.
Hopefully you get something out of it as well.
If you don’t want to watch, you can listen (and subscribe!): Spotify | Apple
5. I have thought a lot about artificial intelligence this year. Thoughts I have sometimes shared within this newsletter when they relate to the world that we are all inhabiting (esoteric golf references and missives about life?).Â
I find myself considering how my content will be affected by AI. I find myself using ChatGPT more than ever for business-y tasks. Maybe you are the same.
Anyway, when I saw this from Andy Crouch — who I genuinely believe is a genius — it rattled me. I thought it was great. I thought it was worth sharing.
Mostly, I thought it was human.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes some things I’ve been thinking about and considering as I’ve been grinding on the business side of Normal Sport for the last few weeks. Not stuff we want to share broadly but that I’m happy to share with our membership who has been supporting us over the last year…
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 1,012 crazed individuals. By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• A vote for trusted, independent media.
• The delight of helping us establish Normal Sport.
• 15% off to our pro shop.
• Access to all of our content (like the rest of this post).
Â
Welcome to the members-only portion of today’s newsletter. I hope you find the parts about golf enjoyable and the parts about our business encouraging. Â
Maybe it’s just that time of the golf year, but the truth of the last few weeks is that a lot of my creativity and energy toward this newsletter (and our podcast) has lapsed a bit because I’ve been so focused on organizing our business and working toward sponsorships for 2026.Â
This looks like a lot of Google Sheets work — creating better models for gathering and sharing metrics with sponsors, structuring our pricing for 2026 correctly and evaluating how much content inventory we even have available.
All of it is exhausting, and I am not particularly great at it (yet). It also takes away time from what I love, which is writing this newsletter and making the Normal Sport Show. Although given that we are just sitting around naming golfers, I suppose this is the right time of year to focus on such things.
If I can speak honestly, I also have this tremendous fear — almost all of the time — that everything is just going to fall apart. Mostly because Jason and I have found the work we want to be doing and we hope to have the financial fuel to continue in this direction.
I don’t believe this is rational, but it is still something I feel, especially at the time of year when we are pitching sponsor renewals.Â
Normal Sport full time in Year 1 was a novelty, I tell myself. Nobody is going to want to partner with you in Year 2. That’s a place I’ve been living in my head, which again is probably not logical but is definitely something I wrestle with. We are also constantly trying to figure how much (and what) to produce on the content side.
Maybe you own your own business and have been in this space before, too. It can be somehow both debilitating and motivating at the same time. Often in the same moment.
I presume this is how it goes for almost everyone.
Anyway, there are three graphs I want to share with you.
The first is newsletter subscribers over time.
Three things are true.
1. We have grown at about a 100 percent clip year over year since our initial launch.
2. This is not the most important chart in the world.
3. Seventeen thousand readers can be an actual business.
And yet, I still find myself thinking constantly about how to increase our readership in both the near and long term future. Maybe this is vanity. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe the content game is changing (getting tougher), but regardless we will continue trying to grow this group to include everyone who feasibly cares about bedsheets, shampoo and dogs running on putting surfaces in India.
Here’s the next chart.
This one is encouraging to me. We recently passed the 1,000 member mark and have consistently grown throughout the last year. Our hope is to continue improving member benefits so that this chart — which will experience some churn — mostly keeps going up and to the right.
And our last chart.
These are some 2025 financial numbers that I thought you might be interested in seeing. It’s a chart that I’ve been proud of throughout the year. We have maintained a consistent pace of revenue ahead of expenses with our net profit negative only because of the merch we’ve purchased to sell in the pro shop.
If you’re curious about the breakdown of revenue, here it is.
I don’t know if it’s wise to be sharing all of these charts and numbers with all of you, but I do know that I’m always intrigued by them when I read about other people’s businesses. Plus, all of you are incredibly invested (both figuratively and literally) in this business, and I’m always happy to share with folks like that.
So thank you for participating and supporting.
I hope some (any, all) of this is an encouragement to you, and I hope you know that no matter the relative success you see from people online, there are always insecurities, frustrations and fears. Always. Because we’re human.Â
We all share in these experiences, which is (strangely?) an encouragement to me to know that so many people are all collectively trying to figure out how to take the next step forward.
Thank you for reading our handcrafted, algorithm-free newsletter about golf. We put everything we have into everything we write, which is why they are frequently 1,760 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.
If you ever want to support our business, you can buy some Norman merch here (at a discount!) or pass along our site to your golf group chat and get them involved in all this nonsense as well.
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