Hello,
I built a golf specific Connections game for all of you today. First one to respond with a perfect board (please don’t cheat) gets one of our new Norman hats.
Good luck!
Name drops today: Andrew Waterman, Blockie, Bronson Burgoon, Stefano Mazzoli, Bruce Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Rule 9.6.
Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at OGIO and their new Renegade Go bag.
Even though there’s a new PGA Tour event called “The GO” (seriously), let it be known that OGIO did it first (barely!).
The Renegade Go bag (sorry to pause here, but I need to say that I truly cannot believe that there is also a PGA Tour event called The GO) can be worn as a backpack or carried like a duffel. Built to go where you go, however you go. Or if you go to The GO.
Everything I have from OGIO rules from a durability, functionality and aesthetic standpoint. Cannot wait to get my paws on one of these.
Alright, now on to the news.
Past life
If I would have told you on January 1 or February 1 or March 1 or maybe even April 1 or May 1 that a player who was in college on all of those dates would make the FedEx Cup Playoffs but Brooks Koepka would not, you probably would have laughed at me.
And yet … here we are.
Koepka called his showing this year “pathetic,” which … yes.
But I also think these results for both Koivun and Koepka are indicative of where both players are at. It’s extremely difficult for us to conceive of the idea that Jackson Koivun is (or J.T. Poston or Bob MacIntyre are) better than the great Bruce Koepka.
But I think it’s just … undeniably true.
Part of this is because Koivun is undeniably great, and the traj looks like Anthropic’s growth rate chart. But also some of it is because Koepka is no longer excellent and honestly might not even be that good.
I have been on the “Brooks will never win another” block for a while, but to be fair I’m on that block with a lot of guys. Now I wonder if he’ll ever be competitive again. One top 10 this year on the PGA Tour. He’s ranked behind Oliver Lindell and Mac Meissner in SG since Jan. 1. Even at the majors — where he has historically made hay — he had just one top 25 in 2026 and zero top 10s since winning Oak Hill.
None of it is good. All of it is bad.
I didn’t have some broad, sweeping point here other than I thought it was pretty crazy that Koivun made the playoffs and Brooks did not. It’s also just a little jarring to have been doing this long enough to have seen the entire arc of somebody’s career (probably). From the Challenge Tour to the major assassin to whatever this is.
[Jason jumping in …]
I think you might be unfairly selling Brooks a bit short here. He had some hand injuries this year and we never really expected him to immediately kick ass after his return from LIV. I think the more interesting question is (for this comp and others), when you think about players getting their form back, what age do you cap it at? Could you imagine Brooks winning (or even wanting to compete) at 46?
[OK back to Kyle]
To address the question above, I think of 40 (or maybe early 40s — into the 41-43 age) as that number right now. More than anything, both that number and Koepka’s arc should shed some light on how crazy it is that Rory and Phil have existed at that level for 20+ years. It’s impossible, and yet they’ve done it. Even guys like Rose and Adam Scott are extremely impressive in this regard. To be fair, it’s getting easier to stay great into your mid 40s in golf, but I wouldn’t say staying great for 20-25 years has been normalized yet. That still takes terrific ambition and work (and probably some luck).
So yes, all of this is a commentary on Koivun but it’s also a commentary on players who are top 20 or 25 for multiple decades. It’s not as rare as winning five majors. But it’s a career achievement that we don’t really recognize as often as we should until somebody like DJ or Brooks falls off and we think, Oh yeah this never happens for that length of time.
1979
• At LIV Bedminster last week, Charl Schwartzel spun one back off the green and into a hazard … where a fish ate it?
Schwartzel took a drop and made four, but I believe the drop was because his ball wasn’t playable in the hazard to begin with, not because an animal took it. Here’s the rule (can’t believe there’s a rule for this).
I think I’ve said this before, but I’m obsessed with the phrase “virtually certain” and believe it should be incorporated into daily life more often.
I’m virtually certain I will remember to get the kids from school. I’m virtually certain I turned the stove off. I’m virtually certain you are wrong.
1984
This one has been in my repository for a while (yes, I have a repository for golf memes), situated between Rickie and the Cat. Here’s how it looks in my files (and yes, there are hundreds).
Anyway, Patty McDonald used it perfectly this week.
Here are players who had a top 10 finish on the PGA Tour this year.
Ben Silverman
Marcel Schneider
Jon Rahm
Jeremy Paul
John Parry
Joaquin Niemann
Stefano Mazzoli
Zach Johnson
Manuel Livira
Trace Crowe
Bronson Burgoon
Jacob Skov Olesen (who had two!)
Such strange times for the beautiful boy, whose last top 10 anywhere was June 2025.
1990
“There isn't a golf fan on the planet who doesn't want to see me play a big Tour event, and I get that.”
-Blockie -Bryson
All time good. And honestly?
[whispers]
[softly]
He’s not really wrong.
For 99 percent of pro golfers who enter a tournament, my feelings about that tournament change 0 percent. Some of them entering may change it negative percent.
Bryson is one where, if he’s in it, it immediately becomes a different thing altogether (I think we can exclude LIV events from this). Rory and Scottie as well, obviously. Who else? Maybe Rahm? Andrew Waterman? Is that the whole list?
Do you think differently about an event if Fitz, Morikawa, Xander, Cantlay, Spieth, Gotterup, JT, Hatton, Wyndham, Hideki or Ludvig are involved? Probably not. Maybe Xander if you’re heavily invested in the Xander app?
Regardless, it’s a shockingly small list.
2004
I have read this tweet many times. I’ll quote it here.
If I could be onstage and talk about any topic right now, it would be this:
Because of AI, time is compressing, and no one's really talking about it.
We are all expected to do so much more over the course of a single day than I think any previous period in history.
I don't know about you, but I find myself doing the amount of work in the span of a single day that even just 18 months ago, would have taken me two to three weeks to complete.
This is great and wonderful, and thanks to AI, I can work much more efficiently, without the bottlenecks that have created so much lag time for me in the past.
However, it raises the expectation bar, the mental load, and decision fatigue at an exponential rate.
I don't think we're compensating ourselves and each other for this dramatic shift in information processing, and as a result, we all just expect better quality work in less time for the same amount of pay.
Stepping away from my computer at the end of the day, most days, I am in a daze. I don't know that our brains were meant to do this much context switching and this much high-level direction-giving every single day.
And no, I don't think agents are the answer to this question.
I think this is a serious philosophical question we are all going to have to come to terms with, because as that expectation bar continues to raise, we need to find a way to advocate better for ourselves and our personal time.
AI is fantastic, and I love it. But I also find myself working 10x more now than I have over the last ten years, and I'm not sure that that is a net positive.Kaleigh Moore
The pace we all feel because of AI (maybe not all, but a lot of us in knowledge jobs) is not sustainable. Not how we were created to interact with the world. Not how things were meant to be.
I am pro-AI, broadly-speaking. I think it is an extraordinary piece of technology. I’m not necessarily a doomer (though you could talk me into that path, perhaps). I use it every day for research or questions or to help me think through a problem (though I don’t use it for writing). I’m fine with my kids learning on it.
What I’m wary of is two-fold.
1. How its existence fundamentally changes the expectation on human output (see above) and how exhausting that can feel.
2. How difficult it is going to be for human content creators to break through the avalanche of noise starting now and into the future (and even more so for the next generation and beyond).
I think these things are probably related to each other. I also think there is some hope for the humans, especially as it relates to content creation. And also that true human voices and leadership will be more important than ever. But it’s going to be an all out war that humans won’t win by simply working harder.
2040
I’m fascinated by the whole thing and will keep writing toward it. Thank you for indulging me and for trusting us with your inbox. We take it (this oftentimes very stupid thing) quite seriously! And as always, we remain handmade and algorithm-free.
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