If You Beat Scottie and Rory, You Probably Win the PGA

Greetings!

Major championship weeks absolutely rule. Let’s get right into it.

Name drops today: Padraig Harrington (obviously), Blockie, Alexander Zverev, the entire Fitzpatrick family and Annie Duke.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

This newsletter is presented by our friends at Cobra.

Here is a thing that happened this week: I played in a tournament at Trinity Forest on Monday morning and didn’t hit the ball that great.

On Monday evening, our entire family went to the driving range where I fiddled with the FutureFit33 settings on my Cobra OPTM driver — which is the most adjustable/fittable driver in golf nbd — while my kids played Go Fish on the TopTracer. Normal sport.

My wife looked over and said, “What are you doing?” I responded that I was trying out some different loft and lie settings and that, “the OPTM has 33 loft and lie settings for optimized ball flight, tighter dispersion, and more distance.”

OK, I didn’t say that last part, but — more importantly — I started flushing it after figuring out the right settings.

Since partnering with Cobra, we've gotten some feedback about how underrated Cobra is. Essentially what Jason’s go-to-gear-guy TEJ (The Equipment Junkie) has been saying for a while now. Most popular OEM drivers have 8 settings, three have 12, one has 16, and Cobra has … 33?! An underdog out-innovating the big dogs in Philly this week? Sound familiar? Expect anything different?

Thank you to Cobra for its partnership in Normal Sport this year.

Check out the Cobra OPTM

OK, now onto the news.

8 Thoughts on the PGA (and other things) This Week

Jason and I will be cooking all week from afar.

No trip to Aronimink for me this year because my daughters have a dance recital on Friday (which I’m actually pumped about). What this often means, however, is more (and more comprehensive) content because we can watch everything on TV and not get lost in the sauce out on the golf course.

Here are eight thoughts/takes/positions I have going into the second major of the year.*

*Subject to change in the next two days.

1. Hayden Martin and I dropped a new pod on Tuesday previewing the PGA. Hayden has become my trusty co-host on the Normal Sport Show, and we’ve had a lot of fun hollering about all of this stuff. Today’s edition involves five storylines we’re each intrigued by at this PGA. Plenty on Scottie, Spieth’s slam, what to expect from the golf course and why the PGA’s identity is a little ambiguous. If you enjoy the pod, we would appreciate you subscribing, commenting etc. etc. wherever you listen. Thank you!

Five storylines for the PGA Championship – Episode #29

The Normal Sport Show · Episode

Spotify

2. I threw this out on Twitter, but I figured the newsletter would be an even better space for it: I was going through it the other day, and realized that our inventory of sponsor-able content across newsletter, podcast and social for all of 2026 should get between 8-10M impressions (not including Caffeine TV).

We've increased that output a bit from what our plan was at the beginning of the year and still have some space available. So if you want to get your brand/company in front of our audience of a couple hundred thousand wonderful, beautiful, smart and lovely golf fans, there's plenty of opportunity to do so. You can just respond to this email.

3. Scottie and Rory have faced nearly 2,300 golfers at the four majors since the start of 2022. Only 2 percent of those golfers have beaten both of them in the same week. Double digit golfers have not beaten Rory and Scottie in the same week since the 2021 PGA Championship. The one Phil won!

When you think through it, this makes sense. Rory and Scottie are going to end up as two of the 10 best golfers of all time, and they may both be in the middle of their respective primes. But it’s still wild to see it written down on paper like that.

Here are the only six golfers who have gotten them in the last year and a half (they all happened at the same tournament — last year’s U.S. Open).

J.J. Spaun
Bob Mac
Hovland
Hatton
Carlos Ortiz (!!)
Cam Young

What a group.

The takeaway: If you beat Rory and Scottie this week, you’re probably either winning or coming close to it. Such an easy proposition: Just beat two guys ….

Something this poor fella knows a thing or two about.

Alexander Zverev is 10-17 against Alcaraz and Sinner.

4. This interview with Blockie by Alan Shipnuck is terrific. The thing that strikes me about Blockie is the same thing that strikes me about everyone with charisma: They often don’t even know exactly what makes them charismatic and magnetic.

I’ve referenced this video a few times, but in the same way Rory and (especially) Scottie don’t know how to explain how they do what they do, Blockie and people like Blockie don’t always know how to explain why they are the way that they are.

Also, Blockie three years after Oak Hill is a lot more enjoyable as a personality than Blockie three weeks after Oak Hill, which he seems to be aware of and references often.

5. Rory talking about the golf course is something.

I like the style of golf. I like the bunkering. There's a lot of bunkers. I think it provides quite a nice bit of variety with shorter par-4s, a couple of longer par-4s. The par-3s, there's three pretty long ones and a shorter one.
I think in this day and age I'm not sure if it's going to test all aspects of your bag. … As I said, strategy off the tee is pretty nonexistent.
Rory McIlroy | 2026 PGA

Cool.

It's, basically, bash driver down there and then figure it out from there, which I think is a lot of these newer -- newly renovated -- I think about Oak Hill in 2023, here. When these traditional golf courses take a lot of trees out, it makes strategy not as much of a concern off the tee.
Rory McIlroy | 2026 PGA

I don’t want to turn this into an equipment debate [fiddles more with FutureFit33 settings] — and you can read Garrett Morrison for that — but I am bummed that it sounds like a little bit of Oak Hill 2.0 because that means only, like, seven guys can win.

Rory did add this on the greens.

The greens are the main focus this week, and I think getting yourself in the right sections of the greens, making sure you leave yourself below the hole for the most part. That's the key this week.
Rory McIlroy | 2026 PGA

Andy previewed the greens here for Fried Egg Golf, and it’s predictably wonderful.

I’m pessimistic that this will be the Creativity Open — and also bummed about that — but at least mildly hopeful that the PGA will make angles matter a little bit based on where they put the pins and if they can get it going firm (an admittedly big if).

Yes, they're talking about you, Mink.

6. I was going through strokes gained leaders across the last 20 rounds going into the PGA Championship, and a couple of things stood out. Here are the leaders.

1. Cam Young: 3.2
2. Scottie: 2.8
3. Ludvig: 2.6
4. Rory: 2.6
5. Rahm: 2.4
6. M. Fitz: 2.3
7. Morikawa: 2.2
8. A. Fitz: 2.2
9. Xander: 2.1
10. Cantlay: 2.1

Here’s what stood out …

• Cam Young has officially unseated Scottie as the hottest player in the world. This probably happened a while ago since Cam has won twice since Scottie won last, but it’s officially official now. Shackelford said after Doral that Cam should be the favorite to win the PGA. After sitting with that for a while, I still probably disagreed because Scottie has as many arrests as he does finishes outside the top two at the PGA in the last three years, but I could see how and why that would be the case. The Leap has been made.

• The “Rahm sucks” talk has been overblown. Rahm is fine. The “Rahm is not sharp enough to contend at majors right now” talk on the other hand is quite real.

I really do want to pick him, but I just can’t.

• I’m surprised Matty Fitz’s number is this low. Hurt by one (really) bad tournament at Quail Hollow last week, but he has three wins in his last five starts!

• Speaking of Fitz, I was talking to somebody a few days ago about how insane it is for brothers to be among the 10 hottest players in the world at any point. Think about the odds of that! Think about all the great junior golfers who never make it and how many things have to go right just to be a moderately successful pro, much less one of the 10 best at any given time.

• I’ve never done a deep dive here, but I found this article, which says the odds of making it to the Korn Ferry Tour for a dedicated junior are .02 percent. That’s one KFT player! And the Fitzpatricks produced two top 10-level players in the world?!

• What’s even crazier is that nobody in the family looks the part. Does this scream, “Looks like a pair of top 10 athletes in the world in their respective sport”?

I think this is something we’ll look back on years from now and think, Wow, we kinda underrated how insane that was at the time.

Mother's Day at The Fitzpatricks.

7. OK, let’s talk about Jon Rahm’s presser and specifically this answer to a great question from Shane Ryan. Aside: I could listen to Shane Ryan and Jon Rahm mentally joust for hours.

Anyway, you should really watch the entire exchange — YouTube version here — but if not, Shane asked Rahm whether he would, knowing what he knows now, go back and make the same decision about going to LIV.

Here’s what Rahm said.

We all think what could have been and what couldn't have been. It's inevitable.
If you made all the decisions -- whatever decision you've made or choice is thought through and made for the reasons that you think are proper reasons, there's no sense in dwelling on it. In fact, you shouldn't really be unhappy about it. At least there's nothing that you regret.
Jon Rahm | 2026 PGA

In other words: Humans can’t operate like that because we would all drive ourselves crazy. This is, I think, the right way to view things. We can only make the best decision possible in a given moment.

Annie Duke says this well in her book, Thinking in Bets.

What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge.
Annie Duke

Again, Rahm is smart and seemingly (?) emotionally mature enough to understand this, and I appreciated his ability to answer Shane’s question in this manner.

However!

Looking into the future is a completely different story.

Q. Going back to Shane's question, you said you don't look back and think about what you could have done differently but you do learn.
So what did you learn from the decision to go to LIV? What have you learned since making that decision?
JON RAHM: That is for me to know, and that's about that.
Jon Rahm | 2026 PGA

Totally a “two things can be true” situation, which is what it seems to be. You can make a decision that is good in the moment because you have fully thought through all the information you can possibly have at that time. But also, you can learn from it going into the future and internalize the idea that you wouldn’t do something similar again.

It’s easy to rush to either extreme and say, This was a great decision, and I don’t regret it or This was a terrible decision, and I do regret it.

Rahm seems to be saying, This was a good decision for me at the time — it was the right decision — but also I wouldn’t do it again. Whether you agree with why he did what he did or not (I definitely don’t!), I still appreciate his willingness to walk a thin line of thoughtfulness that most are unwilling to wrestle with.

8. Here’s a fun stat.

Strokes gained over the last 12 months.

Rickie Fowler: 1.5
Bryson DeChambeau: 1.4

Boy do we talk about those two players differently. In fact, here are all the golfers with a better SG number than Rick over the last 12 months.

Scottie
Rahm
Cam
Fleetwood
Rory
M. Fitz
Henley
Xander
Ludvig
Bob Mac

That’s it.

Rickie is low key (like really low key) playing some really solid golf, and I agree with Shane that seeing him win a major would be pretty high up on my list of guys I’d love to see.

Spieth is an obvious No. 1, and I’d probably have Scottie (five before age 30) and Rory (calendar year slam?) ahead of Rickie, but Rick would definitely be top five, and his first major at this stage would be a nice little boost for today’s newsletter sponsor, too 😏.

Thank you for reading our algorithm-free golf newsletter that is sometimes even about golf. We enjoy drawing and writing it every single week but especially during major championships and especially during major championships involving Blockie and Padraig Harrington.