Issue No. 210 | June 3, 2025 | Read Online

With the NCAA golf tournament serving as a little appetizer before last weekend’s NCAA baseball tournament, I jotted down a take I think I believe: The NCAA baseball tournament is superior to (and more enjoyable than) March Madness (and the NCAA golf tournament might be too!).

I’m not totally sure why I think this, but I’ll try to explain with a few reasons below. Maybe it’s the fact that I feel more tethered to baseball having grown up playing it. Maybe it’s the fact that top tier seeds can (and do!) lose very early in the tourney.

Or maybe it’s just the fact that Fresno has a kid named Lee Trevino, which I found amusing and amazing.

Today’s newsletter is presented by Garmin.

As I’ve stated here numerous times, the S70 watch by Garmin is one of my favorite things — golf or otherwise — that I own. I gave one away last year to someone who nearly guessed my U.S. Open step count to the exact step (13 steps off!), and I’ll be doing the same again this year when I get to Oakmont next week.

To participate, you’ll have to get a guess in on Twitter when I send the tweet (it will look similar to this one).

Until then, here are three of my favorite features when it comes to the S70.

1. Front-middle-back yardage into every hole at every course I play without even having to pull out a range finder. Honestly, worth the cost of admission right there.

2. Customizable faces. I love that I can customize the “home screen” with basically any data (though no Data Golf … yet).

3. Connectivity to phone/heart rate monitor etc. It’s just automatic every time, no fiddling with it or messing around when I’m running, working out or playing golf.

I’ve worn Garmin watches for the last six years, since before I even knew Normal Sport was going to be a thing, and I could not recommend this one more for those of you who are into golf (which, given that you’re reading a newsletter about the U.S. Open step count of a man you’ve probably never met … I’m guessing is all of you).

OK, now onto the news.

Strokes Gained

After he ripped through Muirfield Village, I got to thinking about Scottie’s recent run and started trying to come up with ways to describe just how outrageous it is.

I’m not even sure the wins or the Tiger comps are properly conveying the level he’s currently playing at. I can say things like “He’s had Hale Irwin’s entire career in the last 40 months!” and people just kind of yawn and say yeah, I mean Hale Irwin was OK.

Hale Irwin was one of the 50 best golfers who’s ever lived!

And Scottie has matched his entire career over the last three and a half years.

I don’t think strokes gained properly conveys what he’s doing, either, because, similar to some of the advanced baseball stats, I am unconvinced that people understand what a gap there is between, say, 1.25 and 2.00 SG/round. That chasm is grand canyon-sized, but on paper it can kind of make you shrug.

So I decided to do something a little different and unconventional.

I went back and looked at the 12 tournaments Scottie has played this year.

Pebble (T9)
Phoenix (T25)
Genesis (T3)
API (T11)
PLAYERS (T20)
Houston (T2)
Masters (4th)
RBC Heritage (T8)
Nelson (W)
PGA (W)
Colonial (T4)
Memorial (W)

Good stuff, right?

Well how about this?

In those 12 events, I looked at the median finisher. If there were 70 players in the field, I looked at how No. 35 played. If there were 156, I looked at ~No. 78 and so on. Then I added up the scores of this hypothetical player. Most of the time this player made the cut. Sometimes, depending on how the cut broke, he missed.

To be fair here, the 72nd or 35th or 50th player in any given tournament is world class, one of the best on the planet (sometimes a multi-time major champ like Xander Schauffele who finished 72 in a 144-golfer PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP field).

So I added up all those scores, and that median combined player shot around +8 for those 12 events. Right around even to slightly over par per event. That’s probably about what I expected. Regardless, the point is that the median player in those events was +8 this year.

In those same 12 events, Scottie is … -140.

One hundred and forty strokes under par.

One hundred and forty strokes better than the median five months into the season. That seems impossible, doesn’t look correct when written down.

And yet, it’s absolutely true. 

Furthermore, if you finished 10th (in the top 10!) in each of these events, you would 1. Be considered one of the three hottest players in the world right now and 2. Have shot a combined 106 under par, which means you were still 34 shots behind Scottie.

This, by the way, is effectively what strokes gained is. The way I calculated it is not exactly correct, but SG simply measures how much better you were than the field (i.e. the average). My number looks cooler because it’s the aggregate across 12 events, but it’s not any different than being 3.0 SG/round for the year, according to Data Golf (which is where Scottie is).

Outrageous stuff, even if I’m (literally) running out of ways to describe it.

Speaking of outrageous and finding new ways to describe Scottie’s run, thank you to Matthew M. for this inspiring email…

Subject: Burning question on everyone’s mind, probably

Are we going to see Bennett's onesie in Scottie's championship closet?

Yes Matthew, yes we are. And yes, we are always open to unsolicited illustration ideas.

Quote of the Week

Jack Nicklaus on Scottie Scheffler.

Scottie had just finished saying that he didn’t think very often about dominating (even though he’s won his last three events by 1,000 strokes). He tries to stay in his lane and do his thing. This sounds simple and easy and like something he should say and that anyone would say. But it belies the truth, which is that he is exceptional at actually doing it.

More Jack.

Can you imagine sitting next to somebody with 18 majors and hearing them say that?

Or that?

Scottie does play like Jack used to play. Fairways, middle of greens and make a couple of putts. It takes insane discipline to do this, and obviously this undervalues how complete both of their games are (and were), but Jack is not wrong in pointing out the similarities (maybe we even see Scottie slipping on another green jacket the gear of a group of YouTubers at some point).

Scottie gets an unnecessary boost on the Milkshake Mile.

Take of the Week

OK let’s get back to my NCAA baseball > NCAA basketball take. Here are five reasons I think it’s true.

1. Nobody ever knew the baseball players, but now we don’t know the basketball players as well as we used to either so that part of the playing field has been leveled.

2. It’s not commodified to the gills. I don’t have to sit through Samuel L. Jackson and Chuck Barkley yelling at each other with everybody involved trying to see how much money they can make off the thing. It feels — I know this is silly and archaic and probably not even true — more pure.

3. Upsets come easier but moving on is harder. It’s kind of the best of both worlds. It’s fairly easy for Kennesaw State to upend Clemson with an ace, but then it’s very difficult for Kennesaw State to actually win the regional because they get to their fourth starter and he’s throwing like 77 with no movement. We do enjoy the upsets, but I refuse to believe we actually want 12 seeds in a Final Four. Baseball gives you both.

4. Baseball is weirder than hoops, and there were like 25 normal sport moments in the games I caught over the weekend, including guys with their shirts falling off my Pokes losing their regional to Duke because a runner took the wrong route to first base.

5. Both sports have too much stoppage time, but basketball can be unwatchable inside the last five minutes because of the fouling and reviews and timeouts and substitutions. These baseball games seem to have a bit of a better rhythm.

6. On campus games > corporate games in NBA arenas.

I don’t know that this is a reasonable (or even good) take, and while I don’t begrudge anyone who thinks this is a stupid take, I do think I actually believe it. The series I’m most excited about next weekend: Tennessee — whose ace sits at 98 (and may be insane) — at the Hogs on Saturday night. It will be awesome.

Take of the Week II

I caught some of the U.S. Women’s Open, but between badminton and bocce ball with the kids, probably not as much as I would have liked (if you want a deeper dive, you should listen to Meg!).

However, from what I saw, 1. Erin Hills ruled and 2. I agree with this Soly take.

Joseph LaMagna is the one who turned me onto the idea of consequential shots, and there are really two levers to pull when it comes to those shots.

1. Risk/reward lever
2. Context lever

The USGA is good at both. We want each shot to have as wide a variance of risk and reward as possible. Think about the second into 15 at ANGC. The risk is that you might dump it in the water and make a six (or a 13).

The reward is that you might have 6 feet for a three.

Erin Hills does that well, and the context of a major championship — where every single shot from Thursday morning on — is a separate (but just as meaningful) lever. When you pull both of those in the same week — I think TPC Sawgrass does this very well every year — you get some of the best weeks of the golf year.

Normal Sport

Some good ones this week.

1. Jordan Spieth legit nearly domed somebody up from about 20 yards away on Sunday. Scary and hilarious all at the same time (he made par).

2. What a headline here.

3. If you were to show this photo to someone who didn’t know golf, who do you think they would guess is the professional athlete in this photo?

4. Wins a $4M golf tournament, is delivered a poopy baby. Honey, I thought you said your round would only take three hours. I’m tired. Here you go.

Scottie is every dad everywhere.

Also, it led to one of the great tweets of the year.

5. Sure. Why not?

I mean … might as well.

6. You for sure do not want to be measuring my brain activity during a round of golf. Or at least you do not want it published. (I am glad Garmin can’t do this with the S70 … yet).

To be fair, in 2019 Bryson was training his brain while watching Deadpool, obviously. By now he probably has a secret implant that he’ll soon debut on Youtube: I Played With a Robot in My Brain or something.

Corrupt Golf Media

 👉️ With that last illustration you know we love hats here, and Jamie’s hat game is the best of social media. More of that. (I got eight correct by the way).

👉️ This got a little buried, but Shack on Lucas Glover’s claim that players are having their backup drivers tested instead of their gamers was good.

👉️ Best thing I read all week: 28 slightly rude notes on writing.

👉️ This on the similarities between OKC and those GS dynasty teams is stunning.

How is this App Free?

Some absolute gems this week.

• This one got me pretty good (though the term “runt” for a child makes me mildly uncomfortable).

• We need to address this at some point.

• Perfection.

• OK, maybe this is perfection.

Love Your Work

David Perell has been publishing some amazing writing on Twitter recently, and this really stuck with me.

Try to write the most honest impression of what it’s like to be inside your brain might be too terrifying for many (yeah, but what if they paired Spieth and Greller in alternate shot?).

In all seriousness, this is definitely something I think about when I write. Self-awareness is way underrated in writing, and for the type of communication and writing I’m doing, it is paramount. Writing — especially dispatches from places like the Masters and U.S. Open — can be a type of shared experience or connection, even if many of us have never met.

There is some beauty in that. And this piece is hopefully a good example of it.

Thank you for reading a golf newsletter that is 2,549 words long. We are sustained in part (in large part) by readers who are fans that decide to join the Normal Club.