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Issue No. 199 | May 14, 2025 | Read Online
Hello!
Three quick things.
1. We are giving away nearly $1,000 worth of gear this weekend. You are subscribed to the newsletter so you are eligible. Here’s a look at how the giveaways will go.
2. Our PGA fantasy contest (with $2,500 at stake) starts on Thursday morning. Gotta get your picks in by then and also gotta be a Normal Club member to join. If you’re already a member, you got the link in yesterday’s newsletter. If you’re not, you’ll get a welcome email after signing up (it will also be on your account page under contests).
3. There are so many potential weekend showdowns at this event, that I have no idea which one I’m most excited to root for.
You have the traditional options of Rory-Bryson or Rory-Scottie or Bryson-Rory-Scottie. Then you have Morikawa vs. The Media, Xander vs. Apple’s app store and Spieth vs. reality. Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm could also be embroiled in a potential alternate shot matchup against the FCC.
And of course, Tron Carter vs. the Tiny Money team.
How will I be listening to Tron’s absolute takes on the city of Charlotte and his encounters with Tiny Money all week?
On my Turtlebox Ranger, of course. I am literally listening to [checks Spotify] Daily Mix 6 — my amalgamation of instrumental that the Spotify robot overlords cooked up for me while I slept (instrumental and movie soundtracks are all I listen to).
Anyway, I have the Turtlebox Ranger set up in my office and send the music through there. If it’s good enough to throw on the golf cart or in the bag for a round, it’s good enough for me to listen to while I type a bunch of nonsense about the PGA Championship from my backyard sanctuary.
You can check out the Ranger right here.
OK, now onto the news.
1. Rory said something on Wednesday that reminded me of Carlton Fisk and that famous home run from the 1975 World Series. You know the one.
The esteemed baseball writer, Roger Angell, has written beautifully about that moment and that game. Here’s a sampling. This quote shifted something in me several years ago (I believe I read it during the 2022 PGA actually).
What I do know is that this belonging and caring is what our games are all about; this is what we come for. It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look—I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost.
What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring—caring deeply and passionately, really caring—which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives.
And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved.
Naïveté—the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball—seems a small price to pay for such a gift.
Roger Angell | New Yorker
Come on.
Fisk, too, has spoken poignantly about it, and I promise this is a thought about Rory McIlroy. Here’s what he told Angell about that home run and that night.
I once talked to Carlton Fisk—I was writing a piece about home runs —and I asked, "Do you have any memory of that home run in the sixth game in 1975, any private memory of what it was like? We all know the famous TV shot of you going to first base waving the ball fair, pushing it to the field and it hits the foul pole and the game is won."
He said, "It's very interesting that you should bring this up. I have only seen that shot about four or five times in my lifetime. Every time I see it coming up, I leave the room or turn the set off. Because I want to keep a crystal memory of what that was like for me."
I was very touched.
Identity Theory
Back to the 2025 Masters champion. Here’s what he said on Wednesday about his near-exorcism on the 18th green at Augusta National Golf Club one month ago.
I've tried not to watch it a lot because I want to remember the feelings and … I've talked about this before, but I think when I rewatch a lot of things back, I then just remember the visuals of the TV rather than what I was feeling and what I was seeing through my own eyes, so I haven't tried to watch it back too much.
But anytime I have, I well up. I still feel like I want to cry.
Rory | 2025 PGA
You will hear from Scottie on being present in just a minute, but this is what being present looks like. It’s so difficult. It’s so tough to meld a modern sensibility where we do actually have phones and technology and you can watch literally every shot of the 2025 Masters right this very second if you want to … with a sense of presence that is from a bygone time.
Nobody wants to go back to 1425 when it was easier to be present but also, you know, easier to be eaten by a wolf or even to 1925 when it was easier to be present but also easier to fight in a war.
What we want, I think, is the more grounded (less ethereal) nature of those times. To try and capture a moment and preserve it like Rory talks about here is spectacular for anyone who was on the grounds, even more so for the person who lived through it all.
2. [Jason here] Tuesday and Wednesday before a major are basically spent reading and watching everything you can get your hands on before the action starts.
And are there any pressers more enjoyable to watch right now than those of El Numero Uno? His answers are casually controlled without feeling calculated, honest and insightful without falling into cliches, funny without being corny, and direct without being dickish.
He’s as himself in the presser as he was in his match against Grant Horvat (one week old and already more views than the final Masters rounds of 2019 Tiger and 1986 Jack, insane).
Let’s go through three of them that really stood out to me.
1. Scottie’s reply to this question slays me. “I’m not sure I totally understand the question… like why haven’t I won here, is that what you’re saying?”
2. On being present (s/o Gabby Herzig): “When I’m doing stuff with my friends, I don’t want to be at home hanging with my wife thinking about my golf swing. I don’t want to be here at the golf course thinking about being at home.
“We have certain time throughout the day and I think when you are in the present you’re able to make the most of the situations, whether it be enjoying them to the fullest or getting the most out of the work that I put in when I’m at the golf course. I think it’s a constant battle.”
3. On his superstar pairing with Rory and Xander: “I’m playing with two guys who are playing some of the best golf in the world. Xander won two majors last year and Rory already won the Players and Masters this year, so he’s playing some fantastic golf. It should be a lot of fun.
“I’ve seen that pairing before. We have a good time out there, it’s competitive. You know when I look back on my career these will be some of my fondest memories I have getting to play with some of the best players in the world and trying to compete to win tournaments. “
He’s talking about an all-time HOF career like someone talks about playing high school sports with their buddies. The best.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Why Hunter Mahan is talking about Kim Kardashian.
Another (!!) amazing Spieth meme.
My pick (probably not who you think).
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.
3. Does this shot of Spieth — which a friend sent me — remind you of anything?
Anything at all?
Nothing?
What about now?
4. This chart, which Rick Gehman made, is excellent. It shows that if you hit it 175+ off the tee, it becomes pretty difficult to lose strokes at Quail Hollow. Although of course (of course!) the guy in the photo just above has managed to do so.
5. This photo from the Tuesday evening PGA Championship dinner is pretty amazing. The way some of these guys are dressed makes it look very much like Knockoff Masters Champions Dinner (though, to be fair, some of the fits at ANGC weren’t much better).
A couple of thoughts.
1. Can no one find a suit jacket that fits? I count like four that look just OK.
2. Why is Martin Kaymer wearing a trench coat?
3. Jason Day looks like he’s about to try and raise $2.5 million for new batting cages at the University of Texas.
4. Rich Beem for sure forgot about the dinner until ~15 minutes before this photo was taken.
5. Where’s Phil? I miss this (both of these were somehow taken on the same day).
6. JT and Xander look like they’re celebrating having just graduated from a 9-month Aflac training intensive and are ready to try and make a go of it on their own.
7. The commentary on Twitter is far more incisive and amusing than mine.
Here’s one sampling.
6. Not sure it’s en vogue right now, but I love listening to Jon Rahm. He said on Tuesday that he’s watched all the Chronicles of a Champion Golfer episodes (I’m begging you to check out at least one of them) and that he learns from them all.
What I mentioned about Padraig, you get an insight into this player's mind. It's not always going to be applicable to what you have in mind, but you get to see how they thought. There's always certain things they say in certain moments that's quite interesting.
Jon Rahm | 2025 PGA
Here’s an example.
One of the best ones that's helped me was Jack when he won at Muirfield, how he says … how he had three holes left, and he thought to himself, if I finish 4, 3, 4, which would have been birdie, par, par, you win the Open.
He finishes 4, 3, 4 and wins the Open. I thought that was quite interesting.
I've thought about something like that in the past as well for myself. Going down the stretch or whatever it may be, if we get this, we win. I think I told Tyrrell that on the Ryder Cup. I think we were playing Xander and Patrick, and we were all square on 16. I told him 3, 3, 4, we don't lose. Luckily we went 3, 2, and we ended up winning.
I've definitely used that in the past, just kind of setting the target out there in your mind, and it's helped. It's not something that I thought anything of when I heard it, but then when I was on the course, it was a nice memory to have and to remember.
Jon Rahm | 2025 PGA
Rahm is a student of the game and a good historian (by golfer standards). It’s not everything, but I certainly appreciate when guys are seemingly as obsessed with all of this as the rest of us are.
7. To be clear, it would be foolish to think the calendar year slam is going to happen. To be foolish, I would like to be clear that I think it could.
Even taking it two deep is something we rarely see. Since 1972, only Tiger (2002) and Spieth (2015) have won the first two. Tiger finished T28 in his third, and Spieth played the last two holes at the Old Course in +1 when playing them in even would have gotten him in a playoff.
It is rare, too, that the Masters winner is also the favorite for the very next major. Even more so when it’s a place he’s won four times. That has likely never happened.
I don’t believe we will ever see a calendar year slam. If Tiger couldn’t do it, I don’t think anyone will. Golf has only gotten more competitive, and that trend will likely continue as more and more money gets poured into it.
If there was a year, this is what it would look like. A metamorphosis at ANGC followed by two venues that could not possibly fit any better. Rory has crushed at U.S. Opens of late, and his Quail Hollow record is Aaron Judge levels of LOL.
A calendar year slam is so unfathomable, so wild, so beyond comprehension. I remember when Spieth took it 214 holes deep in 2015, and I’m looking around like, Nobody is making a big enough deal of this!
Taking it to Portrush this year would be truly insane. The craziest. The Players, Masters, PGA and U.S. Open and you have a chance to win the super slam in a single year at the course you took apart as a 16-year-old? The one in your home country?
That can’t happen.
…
… can it?
8. Gabby did a great job navigating the Quail Hollow discourse here with the crown jewel being … [squints] … Hunter Mahan comparing a golf course to Kim Kardashian?
And actually doing it … fairly well?
“I guess I would say Quail Hollow is like a Kardashian,” six-time PGA Tour winner Hunter Mahan said. “It’s very modern, beautiful and well-kept. But it lacks a soul or character.”
NYT
Quail by Fazio is an ultra-hydrating, par-protecting formula for a healthy-looking, pouty course. This overseeded ryegrass balm instantly quenches dry, chapped fairways in silky moisture for up to 24 hours, maintains the first cut barrier, and visibly improves the look of bunker lips.
Two additional points, and they are related.
Rory said on Wednesday that it’s just same old Quail.
I thought it was going to feel different just because it was a major championship, and I got out on the golf course yesterday, and it felt no different than last year at the Wells Fargo.
Rory | 2025 PGA
This is not great! But it was echoed more eloquently by my guy Andy Lack on Twitter. I think he nailed the reason everyone is kinda out on this as a major site.
Can't speak for anyone else, but for me personally the bigger problem is having a regular PGA Tour venue host a major than it is actually Quail as a golf course, which is really not that bad.
I just don't think a regular PGA Tour venue should ever host a major. Excluding the Masters, which will always operate in its own space, majors rule because no has the answers to the test, so speculating about what we are going to see and how the course is going to play adds a unique element of intrigue that we rarely get week to week on the PGA Tour.
I just think Tour courses should never be in the pool of usable major venues.
Andy Lack
All of this has now gone too far the other day, just as it did with Torrey four years ago. This happens somewhere every year, and every year all is forgiven as long as what Davis Love III said in Gabby’s article actually comes to fruition.
“Is it going to be exciting on TV? Oh yeah. It’s going to be awesome.”
DL3 | The Athletic
9. The 2017 Quail Hollow leaderboard after 54 holes was pretty wild. We keep preaching distance and ball speed, and there’s little Kevin Kisner, and short Pat Reed and little Scott Brown and light hitting Chris Stroud.
A reminder: Nobody knows anything.
10. So of course … here’s a pick.
Someone from the final pairing at the Masters … who also contended to win the U.S. Open at Pinehurst … and has played in multiple Ryder Cups … and wears the gear of a famous sneaker company.
Rory?
No.
How about this guy …
Thank you for reading until the end.
You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a newsletter about golf that is 2,924 words (!!) long, and we are grateful for your support of this business. Let’s have a PGA!
Issue No. 199 | May 14, 2025 | Read Online
Hello!
Three quick things.
1. We are giving away nearly $1,000 worth of gear this weekend. You are subscribed to the newsletter so you are eligible. Here’s a look at how the giveaways will go.
2. Our PGA fantasy contest (with $2,500 at stake) starts on Thursday morning. Gotta get your picks in by then and also gotta be a Normal Club member to join. If you’re already a member, you got the link in yesterday’s newsletter. If you’re not, you’ll get a welcome email after signing up (it will also be on your account page under contests).
3. There are so many potential weekend showdowns at this event, that I have no idea which one I’m most excited to root for.
You have the traditional options of Rory-Bryson or Rory-Scottie or Bryson-Rory-Scottie. Then you have Morikawa vs. The Media, Xander vs. Apple’s app store and Spieth vs. reality. Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm could also be embroiled in a potential alternate shot matchup against the FCC.
And of course, Tron Carter vs. the Tiny Money team.
How will I be listening to Tron’s absolute takes on the city of Charlotte and his encounters with Tiny Money all week?
On my Turtlebox Ranger, of course. I am literally listening to [checks Spotify] Daily Mix 6 — my amalgamation of instrumental that the Spotify robot overlords cooked up for me while I slept (instrumental and movie soundtracks are all I listen to).
Anyway, I have the Turtlebox Ranger set up in my office and send the music through there. If it’s good enough to throw on the golf cart or in the bag for a round, it’s good enough for me to listen to while I type a bunch of nonsense about the PGA Championship from my backyard sanctuary.
You can check out the Ranger right here.
OK, now onto the news.
1. Rory said something on Wednesday that reminded me of Carlton Fisk and that famous home run from the 1975 World Series. You know the one.
The esteemed baseball writer, Roger Angell, has written beautifully about that moment and that game. Here’s a sampling. This quote shifted something in me several years ago (I believe I read it during the 2022 PGA actually).
What I do know is that this belonging and caring is what our games are all about; this is what we come for. It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look—I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost.
What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring—caring deeply and passionately, really caring—which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives.
And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved.
Naïveté—the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball—seems a small price to pay for such a gift.
Roger Angell | New Yorker
Come on.
Fisk, too, has spoken poignantly about it, and I promise this is a thought about Rory McIlroy. Here’s what he told Angell about that home run and that night.
I once talked to Carlton Fisk—I was writing a piece about home runs —and I asked, "Do you have any memory of that home run in the sixth game in 1975, any private memory of what it was like? We all know the famous TV shot of you going to first base waving the ball fair, pushing it to the field and it hits the foul pole and the game is won."
He said, "It's very interesting that you should bring this up. I have only seen that shot about four or five times in my lifetime. Every time I see it coming up, I leave the room or turn the set off. Because I want to keep a crystal memory of what that was like for me."
I was very touched.
Identity Theory
Back to the 2025 Masters champion. Here’s what he said on Wednesday about his near-exorcism on the 18th green at Augusta National Golf Club one month ago.
I've tried not to watch it a lot because I want to remember the feelings and … I've talked about this before, but I think when I rewatch a lot of things back, I then just remember the visuals of the TV rather than what I was feeling and what I was seeing through my own eyes, so I haven't tried to watch it back too much.
But anytime I have, I well up. I still feel like I want to cry.
Rory | 2025 PGA
You will hear from Scottie on being present in just a minute, but this is what being present looks like. It’s so difficult. It’s so tough to meld a modern sensibility where we do actually have phones and technology and you can watch literally every shot of the 2025 Masters right this very second if you want to … with a sense of presence that is from a bygone time.
Nobody wants to go back to 1425 when it was easier to be present but also, you know, easier to be eaten by a wolf or even to 1925 when it was easier to be present but also easier to fight in a war.
What we want, I think, is the more grounded (less ethereal) nature of those times. To try and capture a moment and preserve it like Rory talks about here is spectacular for anyone who was on the grounds, even more so for the person who lived through it all.
2. [Jason here] Tuesday and Wednesday before a major are basically spent reading and watching everything you can get your hands on before the action starts.
And are there any pressers more enjoyable to watch right now than those of El Numero Uno? His answers are casually controlled without feeling calculated, honest and insightful without falling into cliches, funny without being corny, and direct without being dickish.
He’s as himself in the presser as he was in his match against Grant Horvat (one week old and already more views than the final Masters rounds of 2019 Tiger and 1986 Jack, insane).
Let’s go through three of them that really stood out to me.
1. Scottie’s reply to this question slays me. “I’m not sure I totally understand the question… like why haven’t I won here, is that what you’re saying?”
2. On being present (s/o Gabby Herzig): “When I’m doing stuff with my friends, I don’t want to be at home hanging with my wife thinking about my golf swing. I don’t want to be here at the golf course thinking about being at home.
“We have certain time throughout the day and I think when you are in the present you’re able to make the most of the situations, whether it be enjoying them to the fullest or getting the most out of the work that I put in when I’m at the golf course. I think it’s a constant battle.”
3. On his superstar pairing with Rory and Xander: “I’m playing with two guys who are playing some of the best golf in the world. Xander won two majors last year and Rory already won the Players and Masters this year, so he’s playing some fantastic golf. It should be a lot of fun.
“I’ve seen that pairing before. We have a good time out there, it’s competitive. You know when I look back on my career these will be some of my fondest memories I have getting to play with some of the best players in the world and trying to compete to win tournaments. “
He’s talking about an all-time HOF career like someone talks about playing high school sports with their buddies. The best.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Why Hunter Mahan is talking about Kim Kardashian.
Another (!!) amazing Spieth meme.
My pick (probably not who you think).
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 828 crazies. By becoming a Normal Club member, you will receive the following …
• Our very best stuff during major weeks.
• First look at new merch (I promise it’s coming).
• The pleasure of helping us build an independent business.
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