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Special Edition | May 12, 2025 | Read Online
PGA week is rarely the most exciting major week on Monday. It has, however, often been the most exciting major week — at least in recent years — on Sunday.
Off the top of my head …
2024: Bryson-Xander with a side of Scottie’s arrest.
2023: Brooks gets [holds up five fingers].
2022: Mito gets electrocuted, JT (somehow) wins.
2021: Phil repeatedly dunks on Brooks, gets to six. An all-time major.
2020: Morikawa beats 28 people who all finished between T2-T6 on Sunday.
2019: Brooks-DJ at Bethpage
2018: Tiger nearly catches Brooks at Bellerive.
2017: JT at Quail Hollow.
2016: OK maybe this one wasn’t that interesting.
But that’s banger after banger after banger, and given how well most of the top players are playing right now, I suspect we get another one this weekend.
Let’s take a look at the syllabus for this week and some opportunities for you to win some straight cash homie from us over the next seven days.
Thank you to Meridian Putters for presenting today’s newsletter.
It is maybe the biggest “rolling putts in the office while watching the golf on TV” week of the year, and there’s no better option for working on your stroke than a Meridian putter.
I recently asked founder Ryan Duffey about what the challenges are around starting a putter company. His No. 1 should tell you a lot about what type of company he’s running.
One of the challenges I've had is communicating that this is a good putter. It's all being done in the United States, and it can be done in the United States. And you don't have to pay … it's still a challenge.
I look around and I go, “I don't get why it's so difficult to offer a reasonable price. We're just going to start at 250. We are small enough that we can do that. I can throw your initials on the putter for 30 bucks. We can make the putter your own for very reasonable prices.” That's just the way we operate.
Ryan Duffey
My recommendation: The Key West.
It’s a tremendous, beautiful putter at about half the cost you might normally pay. Thank you to Meridian for supporting us. And thank you, reader, for supporting the businesses that support Normal Sport.
Onto the news.
Following our Masters contest — won by reader Eric P., who got his name and will have his photo on our winners page right here once he sends it over — we are running it back for this week’s PGA at Quail Hollow.
Here was Eric’s winning team at ANGC. Elite, elite stuff.
This week’s contest is again for members only (link for members is behind the paywall at the bottom of this email), and we have a 1925 PGA-sized purse available to our participants. We also widened the net a bit in terms of the payouts.
Here’s a look (these amounts are currently incorrectly allocated on the Splash page but should be updated by Thursday).
1st: $1,500
2nd: $500
3rd: $250
4th: $100
5th: $100
Last: $100
You can view our FAQs here — including what states and countries are eligible (currently only the U.S., other than Washington and Nevada).
If you become a Normal Sport member, you will receive a welcome email from us with a link to the contest. A scenario that could play out: You become a member today and 18x your annual investment by next Monday.
It won’t happen 😉 … but it could.*
*I said literally the exact same thing about Rory winning the Masters.
We will do one giveaway after each round of play this week. You have to do exactly nothing except for be subscribed to the newsletter (which you are).
Round 1: Box of Seed golf balls with the Normal Sport logo.
Round 2: Precision Pro Titan range finder
Round 3: Meridian putter (your choice!)
Round 4: Turtlebox Ranger (your choice of color!)
That’s nearly $1,000 of giveaways for you guys just to celebrate a major championship week!
Here are the folks who have won gear from us so far this year.
Month | Winner | Prize |
|---|---|---|
January | Charles C. | Meridian putter |
February | Trevor H. | Ireland trip from Seed |
February | John G. | Box of NS merch |
February | Dave F. | Free Normal Club sub. |
February | Matthew H. | Seamus headcover |
March | Jen P. and David H. | Turtlebox Ranger |
April | 24 winners in all | Gear from Turtlebox, Meridian, OGIO, Seed Golf and Precision Pro |
It does still feel a bit like Augusta was a fever dream. I think I slept? I think I typed a bunch of words? In running through and editing the book Jason and I are working on, you can sense the whole thing shift at some point from “haha, this is a fun Masters week” to “holy crap are we really really doing this?!” It’s been fun to read back on.
All that to say, I’m glad to be staying home for the PGA this year.
Two reasons I’m doing so: 1. The Normal Sport travel budget is less Sepp Straka sized and more Brian Harman sized. 2. My daughters have a dance recital that I have missed the last 2-3 years because I’ve been at the PGA. I’m happy to be home and hopeful that we get the same event we got last time I stayed home for a PGA.
Reminder that we are taking some extra time (think Tom Kim, not Ludvig Aberg) with each newsletter and sending out our thoughts on each round early a.m. the following day (unless, of course, the bat signal goes up late Sunday and we need another 3,000 words on a Rory calendar slam).
Here’s our slate for this week.
Monday, May 12: This update post
Tuesday, May 13: Regular Normal Sport email (free)
Wednesday, May 14: Final tournament thoughts and picks (paid)
Thursday, May 15: Nothing (a bunch of tweets)
Friday, May 16: Thoughts on R1 (paid)
Saturday, May 17: Thoughts on R2 (paid)
Sunday, May 18: Thoughts on R3 (paid)
Monday, May 19: Thoughts on R4 (paid)
Tuesday, May 20: Regular Normal Sport email (free)
A lot of our coverage this week — as was the case during the Masters and PLAYERS — will be for Normal Club members only. Not all, but a lot. You can join right here and not miss a thing. Here’s what one nice member said during the Masters.
I just wanted to relay that the value of the membership has been far past my expectations and the membership is never not going to fit into the budget now.
Normal Club Member
Here’s our schedule for the week in illustrated form.
You can gift a Normal Club membership to friends, family and/or the passionate lovers and defenders of Quail Hollow in your life. You don’t have to be a member to do this. You can use this link right here.
This post will continue for Normal Club members below, and includes …
What I fall asleep thinking about.
How many more months we can stay in business.
How the Savannah Bananas are influencing Normal Sport.
If you are reading this, that means you are a Normal Club member. I write a bit more in depth from here on out about our business because I view you as someone who is …
1. Helping us build that business and …
2. Probably interested in our story or entrepreneurship in general.
Also, if you don’t have the link to the PGA Championship contest, here it is.
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
1. What are we? It’s the big business question I find myself asking most often. Are we a media company? An organizer of audiences for future products? A publisher? A network? I genuinely don’t know at this point, but it’s the lighthouse off in the distance that I’m squinting to try and see as frequently as possible.
I fall asleep thinking about it and often wake up doing the same. To be clear, this is not torturous. It is fun for me. I love building this business and it is completely delightful to think about it constantly. My only hope is that all of it comes through in the way we treat you, the reader and the consumer of our products.
Jason sent me this Savannah Bananas clip on Monday, and there was one line in there that knocked me off my feet. The founders were talking about how much money they lost at the start by building up their fan base because all they cared about was the future.
We had to get fans first before we focused on money.
Jesse Cole | 60 Minutes
More businesses should operate like that.
(including mine).
2. I have been feeling a little existential since the Masters: In a “What are we going to do now … top that?” kind of way. I mean, sure, Spieth could make the slam club seven by beating Scottie in a playoff in which he putts with his 3 wood and makes Greller build a little Ebenezer of golf balls next to the creek on 18 after his drive lands in the middle and miraculously kicks back out. All of that could feasibly happen, and that might get within striking distance of what happened at ANGC, but the odds of that happening are only like 30 or 40 percent.
In the same way it would feel natural for Rory to look around and think, Huh, well … OK … I guess we’re just playing golf the rest of the year, I have kind of been finding myself thinking, Huh, I guess I have to just … write about things that … aren’t the career slam in the most dramatic fashion possible for the rest of the year?
I know that feeling will probably dissipate once we get into the good stuff on Thursday and Friday, but it’s definitely been lingering for the last month.
Here is our lifetime subscriber graph.
Again, I care about this as it relates to the story we can tell our sponsors — growing at 30 percent is better than growing at 3 percent! — but it’s not necessarily something I’m fixated on as a business owner.
[Jason here] A thought on this: When golfing with strangers, I’ve noticed that saying I work for a golf newsletter with 17K subscribers and over 800 paid members that’s read by at least one major winner and several other Influential Golf People gets more of a reaction than if I say I … make illustrations of Amish Tyrrell Hatton and fantasy Johnson Wagner memorabilia for a living. [/Jason leaving]
It’s weird how numbers work that way (shout out to the OWGR).
Here is our lifetime paid membership graph.
We hit 800 during Masters week, and now our 2025 goal of 1,000 looks within reach, which is 1. Crazy to me and 2. Exciting and encouraging for the future.
One thing I care a lot about as it relates to the health of our business is how much runway we have. Here’s an estimate of what that looks like.
This is money in the bank divided by monthly expenses. If we stopped making any revenue tomorrow, this shows how many months we could stay in business.
Revenue went up a lot in April but so did expenses. Giving away $4,000 for a fantasy contest tends to do that, but going back to the Bananas theory, we are just trying to build fans.
We’ll worry (more) about the money part later on.
OK, that’s it for this month.
Hope you guys enjoy this kind of stuff. I certainly like thinking about and considering it.
Thank you for being a member of the Normal Club. I’m grateful for it.
Let’s have ourselves a PGA Championship.
Kyle Porter
Founder | Normal Sport
Special Edition | May 12, 2025 | Read Online
PGA week is rarely the most exciting major week on Monday. It has, however, often been the most exciting major week — at least in recent years — on Sunday.
Off the top of my head …
2024: Bryson-Xander with a side of Scottie’s arrest.
2023: Brooks gets [holds up five fingers].
2022: Mito gets electrocuted, JT (somehow) wins.
2021: Phil repeatedly dunks on Brooks, gets to six. An all-time major.
2020: Morikawa beats 28 people who all finished between T2-T6 on Sunday.
2019: Brooks-DJ at Bethpage
2018: Tiger nearly catches Brooks at Bellerive.
2017: JT at Quail Hollow.
2016: OK maybe this one wasn’t that interesting.
But that’s banger after banger after banger, and given how well most of the top players are playing right now, I suspect we get another one this weekend.
Let’s take a look at the syllabus for this week and some opportunities for you to win some straight cash homie from us over the next seven days.
Thank you to Meridian Putters for presenting today’s newsletter.
It is maybe the biggest “rolling putts in the office while watching the golf on TV” week of the year, and there’s no better option for working on your stroke than a Meridian putter.
I recently asked founder Ryan Duffey about what the challenges are around starting a putter company. His No. 1 should tell you a lot about what type of company he’s running.
One of the challenges I've had is communicating that this is a good putter. It's all being done in the United States, and it can be done in the United States. And you don't have to pay … it's still a challenge.
I look around and I go, “I don't get why it's so difficult to offer a reasonable price. We're just going to start at 250. We are small enough that we can do that. I can throw your initials on the putter for 30 bucks. We can make the putter your own for very reasonable prices.” That's just the way we operate.
Ryan Duffey
My recommendation: The Key West.
It’s a tremendous, beautiful putter at about half the cost you might normally pay. Thank you to Meridian for supporting us. And thank you, reader, for supporting the businesses that support Normal Sport.
Onto the news.
Following our Masters contest — won by reader Eric P., who got his name and will have his photo on our winners page right here once he sends it over — we are running it back for this week’s PGA at Quail Hollow.
Here was Eric’s winning team at ANGC. Elite, elite stuff.
This week’s contest is again for members only (link for members is behind the paywall at the bottom of this email), and we have a 1925 PGA-sized purse available to our participants. We also widened the net a bit in terms of the payouts.
Here’s a look (these amounts are currently incorrectly allocated on the Splash page but should be updated by Thursday).
1st: $1,500
2nd: $500
3rd: $250
4th: $100
5th: $100
Last: $100
You can view our FAQs here — including what states and countries are eligible (currently only the U.S., other than Washington and Nevada).
If you become a Normal Sport member, you will receive a welcome email from us with a link to the contest. A scenario that could play out: You become a member today and 18x your annual investment by next Monday.
It won’t happen 😉 … but it could.*
*I said literally the exact same thing about Rory winning the Masters.
We will do one giveaway after each round of play this week. You have to do exactly nothing except for be subscribed to the newsletter (which you are).
Round 1: Box of Seed golf balls with the Normal Sport logo.
Round 2: Precision Pro Titan range finder
Round 3: Meridian putter (your choice!)
Round 4: Turtlebox Ranger (your choice of color!)
That’s nearly $1,000 of giveaways for you guys just to celebrate a major championship week!
Here are the folks who have won gear from us so far this year.
Month | Winner | Prize |
|---|---|---|
January | Charles C. | Meridian putter |
February | Trevor H. | Ireland trip from Seed |
February | John G. | Box of NS merch |
February | Dave F. | Free Normal Club sub. |
February | Matthew H. | Seamus headcover |
March | Jen P. and David H. | Turtlebox Ranger |
April | 24 winners in all | Gear from Turtlebox, Meridian, OGIO, Seed Golf and Precision Pro |
It does still feel a bit like Augusta was a fever dream. I think I slept? I think I typed a bunch of words? In running through and editing the book Jason and I are working on, you can sense the whole thing shift at some point from “haha, this is a fun Masters week” to “holy crap are we really really doing this?!” It’s been fun to read back on.
All that to say, I’m glad to be staying home for the PGA this year.
Two reasons I’m doing so: 1. The Normal Sport travel budget is less Sepp Straka sized and more Brian Harman sized. 2. My daughters have a dance recital that I have missed the last 2-3 years because I’ve been at the PGA. I’m happy to be home and hopeful that we get the same event we got last time I stayed home for a PGA.
Reminder that we are taking some extra time (think Tom Kim, not Ludvig Aberg) with each newsletter and sending out our thoughts on each round early a.m. the following day (unless, of course, the bat signal goes up late Sunday and we need another 3,000 words on a Rory calendar slam).
Here’s our slate for this week.
Monday, May 12: This update post
Tuesday, May 13: Regular Normal Sport email (free)
Wednesday, May 14: Final tournament thoughts and picks (paid)
Thursday, May 15: Nothing (a bunch of tweets)
Friday, May 16: Thoughts on R1 (paid)
Saturday, May 17: Thoughts on R2 (paid)
Sunday, May 18: Thoughts on R3 (paid)
Monday, May 19: Thoughts on R4 (paid)
Tuesday, May 20: Regular Normal Sport email (free)
A lot of our coverage this week — as was the case during the Masters and PLAYERS — will be for Normal Club members only. Not all, but a lot. You can join right here and not miss a thing. Here’s what one nice member said during the Masters.
I just wanted to relay that the value of the membership has been far past my expectations and the membership is never not going to fit into the budget now.
Normal Club Member
Here’s our schedule for the week in illustrated form.
You can gift a Normal Club membership to friends, family and/or the passionate lovers and defenders of Quail Hollow in your life. You don’t have to be a member to do this. You can use this link right here.
This post will continue for Normal Club members below, and includes …
What I fall asleep thinking about.
How many more months we can stay in business.
How the Savannah Bananas are influencing Normal Sport.
Normal Sport is supported by over 820 Normal Club members who can’t get enough of this ridiculous game. By becoming a member — for .082% the cost of a Quail Hollow initiation fee (allegedly) — you will receive the following …
• The satisfaction of launching Normal Sport in Year 1.
• All of our content during major championship weeks.
• Free entry into our four major contests (see here).
• A deeper dive into our business and how it’s going.
We, like Bryson, appreciate everything you do for us online.
