Greetings all my “still theorizing about the Presidents Cup and already thinking about the Ryder Cup rosters” sickos. Welcome to another edition of a newsletter built very specifically for you.
On Monday, we talked about the team side of things. Today, we’re going to focus on individuals. Let’s jump right into it.
Name drops today: Geoff Ogilvy, Zach Bauchou, Austin Eckroat, Ian Poulter, the Fitzpatricks and the Kims.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Charlie Golf Co.
We all love sport at the highest level, and I have built a professional career around this very thing. But to me there is still nothing better — not experiencing the Ryder Cup up close, the Masters, nothing — better than sharing sports-related moments with my kids.
I am embroiled in this right now with my fall flag football and 13U tournament baseball coaching duties. And Charlie Golf Co. started a business geared toward this very thing — getting all of us out on the field of play more often with our kids.
There are a million ways to build a company. Cheap hype, quick profit. We all know what that looks like. But Charlie Golf Co. bags have a top-shelf quality with prices that parents can (and want to) actually afford.
In a world focused on optimization, growth and bigger profits, Charlie Golf Co. is focused on moments and the people who make them. Check out their bags right here.
And now, onto the news.
1. We should start with Scottie. I think we have already determined that he is a marathon runner, not a sprinter. And the 3-1-0 record will obscure just how mediocre he was (for him) throughout this event. Yes, he played well against Nico Echavarria on Sunday, but before that, he …
• Made two birdies in his first four ball match and watched Sam Burns carry them to a 1UP win.
• Lost in alternate shot 1 down while gaining 1.3 shots, which was pretty decent.
• Lost 2.5 shots in Saturday four ball on two birdies (he may have had a conceded birdie in there that didn’t count). That’s four total birdies in 35 holes (and two in his last 32) for someone who was averaging nearly five per 18-hole round this season.
• Was benched for alternate shot on Saturday.
Overall, he was about 0.0 SG for the week outside of the individual match on Sunday. That’s just not good enough for the best player in the world and the best player anyone has seen since Tiger Woods.
People were furious at Brandt Snedeker for benching him (we’ll get there), but they should have been more upset that Scottie made himself so bench-able.
The weird part for me is that these seem like the exact types of events Scottie would crush at. He’s a sociopathic competitor who played team sports growing up and loves taking it to guys right in front of them. But for whatever reason — probably several of them — he hasn’t grown into the sprinter we thought he would be.
2. All of that means this will be a massive talking point at Adare Manor next year, which will infuriate him. I think Scottie — like most multi standard deviations performers — is constantly trying to do things on his terms. Prep, play, talk. All of it. Look at some of his answers to questions this year.
Look at his answer to Cara on Sunday. His terms, not hers.
And team events are about constantly being pliable to different situations.
This actually makes me appreciate players who can adapt to it well — Rory and Rahm come to mind — because I think team golf is actually more different than I have maybe considered it to be over the last 10-15 years.
It’s not a different sport, but it is very different. Different things to think about. Where should I play this based on where those two guys are and also where my partner normally hits a shot from 220? What’s the right leave here for my guy? I know I can hit this leave, but can he?
Not his terms.
Again, that’s OK. Tiger was the same way. But I think it might mean we have to think of Scottie as an above average team golf player and not the perma-No. 1 that he is on the individual side. I’m not positive people will do this … mostly because it feels insane. But it speaks to just how different these weeks are. And also, please remind me of this when he goes 4-0-1 at Adare Manor and baptizes Tommy on Sunday in that little pond up by 18.
3. There is an interesting flatness across the board on this U.S. side. I don’t mean energy, either. I talked about this re: captains and players on Monday, but it’s also true within the hierarchy of players. You could argue that Europe and the International team both have a pretty clear pecking order when it comes to alphas in these weeks.
Rory
Rahm
Tommy
Si Woo
Tom Kim
They all know they’re going all five. They all take on the mantle of leadership, take the arrows for everyone else. Step into the role and seem to relish it. They blend in to the humility of the team overall but also everyone knows where to look when everything is going sideways. Who is that for the U.S.?
Scottie?
Wyndham?
Cam Young?
Gotterup?
JT?
Cantlay?!
Honestly … it was supposed to be Spieth. I remember Phil talking about this. The next generation of U.S. superstars built to take this on. The Rory role. Unfortunately, Spieth has been worse at golf than Mac Meissner (literally) over the last 12 months, and the U.S. struggles in these weeks with who to look to. This is probably something the U.S. has always struggled with a little bit — even when Tiger was peak Tiger — which is bizarre to say considering it routinely produces most of the best players in the world.
Gimme a P, for Problem.
4. Si Woo and Tom Kim are incredible for this event. The perfect blend of great golf and performative nonsense throughout the week. I can’t get enough because it seems like they can’t get enough.
Here’s Geoff Ogilvy.
Tom's a fantastic player. The Kims make an incredible pair. They're fun to watch. They bring so much energy to this team. And they're very reliable, and they win us a lot of points. As I said, they just bring so much to this team. They're great. We love having them on our side.
Geoff Ogilvy
They aren’t as good at golf as Adam Scott and Hideki have been over the years, but they make this event far better because, well … Adam Scott and Hideki aren’t doing stuff like this. At these events, this is half the fun. Maybe more.
I have more below on how the International team has turned this event into must see golf TV every year, and these two are an enormous part of that. Think about how boring and listless the Internationals would be without them. I said this on the pod, but Tom Kim has turned me all the way back around on him. I’m in.
Presidents Cup Bowl awarded to the Dog of The Week
5. Couple of things here. The first is that Jackson Koivun played … good. He didn’t carry the U.S. like Cam Young did, but I would say after his OB ball on Thursday, he was very solid. We don’t need to make the overall performance into something that it’s not.
However!
Data Golf doesn’t have a category for what went down over those last few holes on Sunday. Consider how much the event was in the balance in the last hour of the day …
[Very late in singles] The model briefly jumped up to …
63% USA
17% INT
20% Tie… a few minutes ago and I thought it was a bug. But the INTs, needing 3 points, were AS on 18 with Hideki/Morikawa, 1UP with Lee/Bridgeman, AS with Henley/Taylor, and 1DN with Si Woo/Koivun.
Shows how critical that win on 18 was by Collin.
Next model update: INTs just 1.7% to win, 7.5% to tie.
Data Golf
And Koivun tied the 17th with a par and then did this on No. 18.
Here’s the full video.
So yeah, we shouldn’t use a couple of twirls as evidence to send him out first at Adare Manor, but within the context of this moment — with the cup very much still up in the air as he’s finishing up the last two holes — as he stared at the best player on the International team and hit those two shots? I mean, come on.
The Always Online golf crowd definitely over-indexes on club twirling and anything generally related, but when the twirling is clearly an overflow of how locked in you are and how thrilled you are to have hit this shot in that moment, I do think it says something about the type of player you are on big stages. It is not nothing.
Also, not all shots are created equal. We can argue whether that’s fair or not, but I won’t be debating whether it’s true or a reality. Because when we think about Jackson Koivun as a future member of Team USA, we’re going to think about how he closed out Si Woo and effectively the Presidents Cup (though technically Jacob Bridgeman made the winning putt) as a 21 year old who was facing someone named Baylor Larrabee in the NCAA finals just four months ago.
Far Future members of Team USA
6. I would like to announce that I’m not taking any questions on JT right now. I have written extensively — like extensively extensively — on the importance of JT in the U.S. team room at these events. However, his play was so bad at times this week and the U.S. has developed so many other guys that I’m just not positive anymore.
He’s still a solid player, but we’re a long way from top five in the world JT, and he’s almost unplayable in alternate shot.
What do you do with him if the Ryder Cup started tomorrow? You probably take him because I think the value he adds as a team leader is greater than the difference in value you would add with J.J. Spaun playing better golf than JT. But I will admit that this position is also getting more difficult to defend.
He lost 5 shots to the field this week. The worst U.S. player, worse than Ryo Hisatsune and equivalent to C-Bez. And again, you’re not taking him because the golf is great, but the question is just how bad the golf has to get to not take him at all?
I need a winter to think it over.
Somewhere in Dallas
7. Any longtime Normal Sport reader knows that Cam Young has not always been my favorite player. He has seemed joyless and maybe even surly, though I think JLM has talked me into the fact that he’s nobody other than himself, which is a very likable thing to be, especially in the oft-performative arena of professional sports.
I should note, though, that I have grown to love him at these team events. He’s engaged, locked in, yelling for his teammates, fist pumping all over the yard and — at least this week — he was the best golfer in the field.
Eight golfers played in both this year’s Presidents Cup and last year’s Ryder Cup. Here’s how they rank by SG in both events.
1. Cam Young: 15.6
2. Scottie Scheffler: 2.8
3. Xander Schauffele: 0.3
4. Collin Morikawa: 0.0
5. Russell Henley: -0.1
6. Patrick Cantlay: -1.3
7. Justin Thomas: -4.2
8. Sam Burns: -7.2
There’s probably a lot to talk about in that bottom group. But we’re definitely not talking enough about Cam Young at the top. The unquestionable best player for the U.S. going to Ireland next year.
8. Hayden Martin brought this up on the Normal Sport Show on Tuesday (click below to watch), but should these team events be on three-year cycles?
Here’s what he proposed …
Year 1: Americans vs. Internationals (Presidents Cup)
Year 2: Internationals vs. Europeans (TBD Cup)
Year 3: Europeans vs. Americans (Ryder Cup)
This would be cool for multiple reasons.
1. It would take the game to more global arenas.
2. It would give the U.S. a year to regroup.
3. It would give us a chance to see the European machine more often.
4. It might (?) help the Internationals attract more young people the same way the Ryder Cup did on the European side (how many of those guys grew up dreaming of winning cups?)
It won’t happen for one reason.
1. It is not as commercially lucrative without the Americans.
I am for it for all the reasons above. And while I think the Presidents Cup is probably disadvantageous to the U.S. because it’s such a lose-lose proposition, I also think the Europeans would spin it into a dry run for the Ryder Cup and convince themselves it’s an advantage in ways the Americans just don’t.
Way into it. Won’t ever happen.
9. Question: Is Chris Gotterup an alpha or the alpha?
It doesn’t look pretty, but I think that is often the point. It never looked pretty with Pat Reed or Ian Poulter either. They just … won.
I was so impressed with how badly Gotterup and also Wyndham seemed to want the ball. Gotterup definitely got a “if he’s even close to the team, you have to take him because I know what I watched this week” boost for future cup teams.
Honestly, Wyndham kind of did, too.
He was the U.S.’ second-best player in terms of SG, even though he went 1-4-0. Again don’t always trust SG in these weeks obviously because of losses like this one.
I think Wyndham was probably a little worse than his SG suggests — his Saturday performance was a little dodgy — but he still instilled confidence in me both in how he played, how he called out the crowds and in how engaged he seemed in every single match.
10. I was terrified to say it, but I agreed with Scottie sitting on Saturday afternoon in alternate shot. On paper, this was very stupid. But the matches aren’t played on paper, and I think part of the point of having depth on a team is to be physically, mentally and emotionally ready for Sunday. As these weeks get bigger and bigger with more pomp and circumstance, this becomes even more important because of how draining the whole thing is.
KVV indirectly noted this here …
There are a million factors, but the (probably very noisy) math seems to support sitting one match vs. pushing it to the limit. I don’t know. You could probably talk me into different directions here, but I definitely didn’t think it was a slam dunk, no brainer to play Scottie given these numbers and how he had been playing to that point on his own ball.
Twitter tweet
11. It will probably go unnoticed, but this International team was bad bad. A reminder that if you pulled U.S. players who were the equivalent of the Internationals in terms of Data Golf ranking, this is what the team would have looked like.
Wyndham Clark
J.J. Spaun
Ryan Gerard
Patrick Reed
Keegan Bradley
Michael Thorbjornsen
Harris English
Jordan Spieth
Johnny Keefer
Zach Bauchou
Blades Brown
Austin Eckroat
Ignore briefly that this team may have actually beaten the real U.S. team and consider how weak that 12-man lineup is. And this is the equivalent of the squad that had the U.S. down three going into Sunday singles.
Two things are true ..
• The U.S. was awful the first three days. This is a team it should rout.
• The Internationals have built something meaningful.
So much of the Presidents Cup is “what does this mean for the Ryder Cup?” which is unfair to an International side that has legit nearly won three of the last six of these events.
They deserve credit for what they have put together. It sometimes feels like the U.S. struggles to put together good culture and chemistry even though they have the stars and stripes as the thing that unites.
The International team has nothing except each other.
They're so committed to this team. It's a different thing to do to commit to sort of the shield and the International team when we're all from somewhere else. But we're bonded by that fact, that we're all from somewhere else and we've all traveled all around the world to play out our dream in the U.S. That's the bond.
Geoff Ogilvy
The biggest compliment I can pay the International side is that they have turned this event from a sometimes laughingstock into a must-see tournament. Not the Ryder Cup, no, and it never will be. But something that, over the last decade, has gotten better every time it has been played.
Thank you as always for supporting Normal Sport. In a world obsessed with constantly providing more and more and more stuff, we remain handmade, bot-free and immensely invested in the craft of creating something great for our community.
Greetings all my “still theorizing about the Presidents Cup and already thinking about the Ryder Cup rosters” sickos. Welcome to another edition of a newsletter built very specifically for you.
On Monday, we talked about the team side of things. Today, we’re going to focus on individuals. Let’s jump right into it.
Name drops today: Geoff Ogilvy, Zach Bauchou, Austin Eckroat, Ian Poulter, the Fitzpatricks and the Kims.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Charlie Golf Co.
We all love sport at the highest level, and I have built a professional career around this very thing. But to me there is still nothing better — not experiencing the Ryder Cup up close, the Masters, nothing — better than sharing sports-related moments with my kids.
I am embroiled in this right now with my fall flag football and 13U tournament baseball coaching duties. And Charlie Golf Co. started a business geared toward this very thing — getting all of us out on the field of play more often with our kids.
There are a million ways to build a company. Cheap hype, quick profit. We all know what that looks like. But Charlie Golf Co. bags have a top-shelf quality with prices that parents can (and want to) actually afford.
In a world focused on optimization, growth and bigger profits, Charlie Golf Co. is focused on moments and the people who make them. Check out their bags right here.
And now, onto the news.
1. We should start with Scottie. I think we have already determined that he is a marathon runner, not a sprinter. And the 3-1-0 record will obscure just how mediocre he was (for him) throughout this event. Yes, he played well against Nico Echavarria on Sunday, but before that, he …
• Made two birdies in his first four ball match and watched Sam Burns carry them to a 1UP win.
• Lost in alternate shot 1 down while gaining 1.3 shots, which was pretty decent.
• Lost 2.5 shots in Saturday four ball on two birdies (he may have had a conceded birdie in there that didn’t count). That’s four total birdies in 35 holes (and two in his last 32) for someone who was averaging nearly five per 18-hole round this season.
• Was benched for alternate shot on Saturday.
Overall, he was about 0.0 SG for the week outside of the individual match on Sunday. That’s just not good enough for the best player in the world and the best player anyone has seen since Tiger Woods.
People were furious at Brandt Snedeker for benching him (we’ll get there), but they should have been more upset that Scottie made himself so bench-able.
The weird part for me is that these seem like the exact types of events Scottie would crush at. He’s a sociopathic competitor who played team sports growing up and loves taking it to guys right in front of them. But for whatever reason — probably several of them — he hasn’t grown into the sprinter we thought he would be.
2. All of that means this will be a massive talking point at Adare Manor next year, which will infuriate him. I think Scottie — like most multi standard deviations performers — is constantly trying to do things on his terms. Prep, play, talk. All of it. Look at some of his answers to questions this year.
Look at his answer to Cara on Sunday. His terms, not hers.
And team events are about constantly being pliable to different situations.
This actually makes me appreciate players who can adapt to it well — Rory and Rahm come to mind — because I think team golf is actually more different than I have maybe considered it to be over the last 10-15 years.
It’s not a different sport, but it is very different. Different things to think about. Where should I play this based on where those two guys are and also where my partner normally hits a shot from 220? What’s the right leave here for my guy? I know I can hit this leave, but can he?
Not his terms.
Again, that’s OK. Tiger was the same way. But I think it might mean we have to think of Scottie as an above average team golf player and not the perma-No. 1 that he is on the individual side. I’m not positive people will do this … mostly because it feels insane. But it speaks to just how different these weeks are. And also, please remind me of this when he goes 4-0-1 at Adare Manor and baptizes Tommy on Sunday in that little pond up by 18.
3. There is an interesting flatness across the board on this U.S. side. I don’t mean energy, either. I talked about this re: captains and players on Monday, but it’s also true within the hierarchy of players. You could argue that Europe and the International team both have a pretty clear pecking order when it comes to alphas in these weeks.
Rory
Rahm
Tommy
Si Woo
Tom Kim
They all know they’re going all five. They all take on the mantle of leadership, take the arrows for everyone else. Step into the role and seem to relish it. They blend in to the humility of the team overall but also everyone knows where to look when everything is going sideways. Who is that for the U.S.?
Scottie?
Wyndham?
Cam Young?
Gotterup?
JT?
Cantlay?!
Honestly … it was supposed to be Spieth. I remember Phil talking about this. The next generation of U.S. superstars built to take this on. The Rory role. Unfortunately, Spieth has been worse at golf than Mac Meissner (literally) over the last 12 months, and the U.S. struggles in these weeks with who to look to. This is probably something the U.S. has always struggled with a little bit — even when Tiger was peak Tiger — which is bizarre to say considering it routinely produces most of the best players in the world.
Gimme a P, for Problem.
4. Si Woo and Tom Kim are incredible for this event. The perfect blend of great golf and performative nonsense throughout the week. I can’t get enough because it seems like they can’t get enough.
Here’s Geoff Ogilvy.
Tom's a fantastic player. The Kims make an incredible pair. They're fun to watch. They bring so much energy to this team. And they're very reliable, and they win us a lot of points. As I said, they just bring so much to this team. They're great. We love having them on our side.
Geoff Ogilvy
They aren’t as good at golf as Adam Scott and Hideki have been over the years, but they make this event far better because, well … Adam Scott and Hideki aren’t doing stuff like this. At these events, this is half the fun. Maybe more.
I have more below on how the International team has turned this event into must see golf TV every year, and these two are an enormous part of that. Think about how boring and listless the Internationals would be without them. I said this on the pod, but Tom Kim has turned me all the way back around on him. I’m in.
Presidents Cup Bowl awarded to the Dog of The Week
5. Couple of things here. The first is that Jackson Koivun played … good. He didn’t carry the U.S. like Cam Young did, but I would say after his OB ball on Thursday, he was very solid. We don’t need to make the overall performance into something that it’s not.
However!
Data Golf doesn’t have a category for what went down over those last few holes on Sunday. Consider how much the event was in the balance in the last hour of the day …
[Very late in singles] The model briefly jumped up to …
63% USA
17% INT
20% Tie… a few minutes ago and I thought it was a bug. But the INTs, needing 3 points, were AS on 18 with Hideki/Morikawa, 1UP with Lee/Bridgeman, AS with Henley/Taylor, and 1DN with Si Woo/Koivun.
Shows how critical that win on 18 was by Collin.
Next model update: INTs just 1.7% to win, 7.5% to tie.
Data Golf
And Koivun tied the 17th with a par and then did this on No. 18.
Here’s the full video.
So yeah, we shouldn’t use a couple of twirls as evidence to send him out first at Adare Manor, but within the context of this moment — with the cup very much still up in the air as he’s finishing up the last two holes — as he stared at the best player on the International team and hit those two shots? I mean, come on.
The Always Online golf crowd definitely over-indexes on club twirling and anything generally related, but when the twirling is clearly an overflow of how locked in you are and how thrilled you are to have hit this shot in that moment, I do think it says something about the type of player you are on big stages. It is not nothing.
Also, not all shots are created equal. We can argue whether that’s fair or not, but I won’t be debating whether it’s true or a reality. Because when we think about Jackson Koivun as a future member of Team USA, we’re going to think about how he closed out Si Woo and effectively the Presidents Cup (though technically Jacob Bridgeman made the winning putt) as a 21 year old who was facing someone named Baylor Larrabee in the NCAA finals just four months ago.
Far Future members of Team USA
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,050 of them) and includes some JT thoughts, more on Cam Young’s greatness and a closer look at some of the U.S. alphas.
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