Issue No. 235 | July 25, 2025 | Read Online

Yesterday, I spent 14 hours in a motorized vehicle with four kids who all have some absolute takes so I’m running on E when it comes to finishing off a few of my own today.

Me laying in bed after that 14-hour drive.

Given that our demographics look like this, though …

… I’m sure a lot of you can empathize with the plight.

Speaking of … congrats to Jonathan S., who won our last major championship contest of the season. These contests — pick eight players and seven scores count — are available to our Normal Club members, and we had around 20 folks walk away with over $11,000 in prize money.

We are planning on doing the same again next year, and would love for you to join us in the Normal Club.

Here’s Jonathan S. on his win.

Today’s newsletter is presented by Ship Sticks, which similar to this newsletter, has been focused heavily on Ireland of late.

Ship Sticks recently did a dream trip giveaway that is sending folks to Royal Portrush, Royal County Down, Portmarnock, Castlerock, Ballyliffin and Portstewart. Because I was so locked into The Open Championship, I failed to pass along the contest details to all of you in a timely manner (🙃), but I wanted to mention it anyway because I’m excited that Ship Sticks clearly cares about the same things we care about at Normal Sport and we are thrilled that they are a partner.

If you haven’t used them, you should (we always appreciate it when you support the businesses who support us), and they even created this little landing page for any Normal Sport readers to get 20 percent off their first order.

You can check it out right here.

OK, now onto the news.

14 Final Thoughts on the 2025 Open Championship

We’ll close the loop with some final Portrush takes, a couple of thoughts from the Sticky Note Open and … I’m scared to get into it … a bit of Ryder Cup talk.

1. Here are Scottie’s numbers at the majors since the start of 2022.

• 16 starts
• 4 wins
• 12 top 10s
• 7 podiums (top three)
• 1 missed cut
• 62 rounds played
• 29 rounds in the 60s
• Gained strokes on field in 53 of 62 rounds
• 182 strokes better than the field
• $20.6M earned

What’s more impressive? Being 182 strokes better than the field across 16 golf tournaments or having as many arrests as you have missed cuts over the last four years?

2. One thing I was thinking about on Sunday as Rory waved goodbye to his legions is that we got two guys who will probably end up among the 10 best golfers in history winning three of the four majors this year. If in January you would have told me that J.J. Spaun would win Oakmont, I would have been concerned about what the major Wikipedia grid looked like. But if you care about history, I’m not sure you could have drawn up the rest of it any better.

3. I want to publicly state once and for all that this photo of a young Haotong and Phil is maybe my favorite unintentional hilarious photo in golf. Every time it pops up, I can’t stop laughing. It’s just such a hilarious combination of two people plus Phil’s pinstripes and Haotong’s sweater. It’s perfect.

One way to look at The Open, by the way, is that Scottie kept Rory from winning in his home country. Another way to look at it is that Scottie saved Rory from getting dunked on by Haotong Li in his home country.

4. Not an Open Thought but we just want to say that today is a great day to buy an H&B x Normal Sport polo like this blue Maxwell jewel featuring Norman. You can check it out right here.

And you can see the rest of our pro shop over here. We’ve put a lot of thought and care into what products we’re stocking in the pro shop and think you’ll enjoy each and every one of them.

5. I thought this point from Soly about how cameras on the ground contextualize the golf so much better than cameras in the air was salient.

The first photo looks insane. Like I would need four clubs and six shots from there.

The second photo looks like a pretty straightforward shot that any of us could pull off with the right distance control.

Context matters greatly, and major championships are the easiest places to show off this context. I want as much of it as possible.

6. This Data Golf graph is somehow both a point for Scottie becoming a 10-time major winner and also against it.

Let me explain.

For it: Scottie has basically matched Tiger’s first 25 majors in terms of strokes gained per round and cumulatively.

Against it: We’ve kind of been here before with Rory and Brooks. Maybe not here here, but since their first eight majors, they have combined for a collective two after that.

I had a friend text me this week asking if Scottie can get to 18. My response was that I have concerns about him getting to eight. Yes, the numbers are historic. Yes, he came to all of this later than most and that seems to help him stay grounded. Yes, it feels like he can pretty easily win four more of these.

And maybe he will.

But I will say that this is always how it feels when somebody who clearly is an all-timer picks off a couple in the same year. And while not all players experience the same downturns, all players eventually do experience downturns.

Maybe it’s not as emotional as it was for Rory or as financially driven as it was for Brooks. But wine glasses happen. Tweaked backs happen.

The last part of this Roberto Castro tweet is instructive — 10/10 things have to go right to win majors. Scottie is erasing some of that so that maybe only 9/10 or 8.5/10 have to go right, but that’s still a lot of things that have to go right, and getting to Palmer, Watson and Player is so, so many.

If I had to make a prediction right now, I would say he gets to seven, which would probably make him a top eight golfer of all time. 🫠 

7. One thing I was thinking about is that Scottie is challenging my theory that you have to be a complete psychopath to be an all-time great. Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe I just grew up in an era where that was true. Tiger, Jordan, Brady. All pretty strange humans. All pretty great players.

Scottie can sometimes be a bit of a loner, but he is also shockingly well-adjusted for one of the all-time greats. I haven’t been around the tennis guys like I have in golf, but it reminds me a bit of them from afar. Fed and Nadal anyway. Not sure I would call Djokovic “well-adjusted.”

8. I enjoyed this normal sport moment at the end of Scottie’s speech on the 18th green.

“I feel like I've got the best support team that I could possibly have. Everybody does such a good job of working together. Everybody is so humble, and they just do a really good job. Thank you all very much, especially you guys at home.”

Straight into …

“To the agronomy team this week, this course was in great condition. This golf course played amazing. It was extremely healthy turf. It was a really tremendous week, so shout out to the grounds crew.”

I love my parents so much.

Now let’s talk about the guys who grow the grass. 

9. I’m not sure how many people were listening early on Sunday, but Smylie told a great story on the broadcast about how Chris Gotterup essentially made him retire and get into media. Just watching him at an event in (I believe) Puerto Rico, and Smylie was like, Welp, which channel needs some help?

Beth Page is a links course… Beth Page is a links course…

I was texting with a Ryder Cup executive earlier this week about Gotterup, and I told him I don’t really think two weeks in Scotland and Ireland should move someone who has been the same player over the last six months as Denny McCarthy onto the Ryder Cup team. But then he went out and fired 63 in R1 of the Sticky Note Open, and a couple more weeks of this and we’re going to have a real conversation on our hands.

10. This quote from Tommy rules.

The Masters is so different than everything else in golf, but also … so is The Open. Those two and the Ryder Cup stand alone in my book. The PGA feels like an elevated elevated Tour event, and the U.S. Open feels like a week in which everyone just yells loudly and is miserable half the time because the course is too difficult or the wind isn’t blowing or the officials won’t prescribe a ruling.

I personally love the U.S. Open, but it definitely has a different energy than the Open Championship, which stands alone as the most rooted golf event in the world. It is, of every other tournament, the most about the golf.

11. One normal sport thing I was thinking about this week: Local rules.

You’re basically saying, “I know these are the rules, but actually we’re going to amend them a little bit because these are our rules.” It’s literally house rules but for golf, and any course or tournament can do it. That’s pretty weird, right?! Like, if the Bucks moved the 3-point line back 2 feet for home games next year and called it court rules, that would be weird!

Also, now that I think about this, I would be way into it in other sports. You have a bruising OL and a deep RB room? Make your home field just 30 yards long. Splash brothers? Move the home 3-point line back to half court. Amazing staff? Move those fences in to men’s league softball distances!

Maybe golf has it right!

12. I love that these two images are somehow part of the same event. I don’t know that I love it more than the Masters, but … I think I might. They’re so different, The Open and the Masters. One is buttoned up and wonderful. The other is wild and uninhibited. Both are great. But I think I prefer the latter.

13. I was deep into the 1878 Open Championship last Saturday evening for reasons that I don’t totally remember, and I stumbled into this final leaderboard.

Couple of thoughts.

1. They played The Open in October in Scotland? What the hell?

2. The playoff for fourth place is sick. Bring it back. You’re telling me you wouldn’t watch Wyndham, Fitz and Haotong play No. 5 for a couple hundy grand, followed by Rory, Xander and Bob Mac settling that 7-8-9 range? Come on.

14. My U.S. Ryder Cup team if I had to pick today for the matches in Sept. Bolded = players who are auto qualifiers that I have to take.

Scottie
Xander
Bryson
Harris English
Henley
Spaun
JT
Spieth
Griffin
Burns
McNealy
Morikawa

I actually will not be taking any questions at this time. See you guys next week.

Thank you for reading our handcrafted, algorithm-free newsletter about golf. We put everything we have into every newsletter we write, which is why they are frequently 2,157 words long like this one.

While we do use digital tools that help us find information, everything you read and consumed was created from scratch by two humans who are absolutely obsessed with the game.

If you ever want to support our business, you can buy some Norman merch here or become a Normal Club member right here.