Issue No. 219 | June 18, 2025 | Read Online

In case you missed it over the weekend, we have our first merch drop available in the Normal Sport pro shop, and it’s open to everyone right here.

You can see that collection below.

There are a number of different ways to support our business as we try to make our way in Year 1, and getting steep in the pro shop is a good one. In building it, I’ve realized that I want to put Norman — our sheep — on everything (and we will!).

Also, I got a lot of questions over the weekend about how and why this dumb sheep became our logo. I actually wrote about that recently. The story is, as with most things related to this newsletter, as ridiculous as you would imagine.

Before we get to the news, today’s newsletter is presented by Garmin.

There was a lot of “what would a scratch golfer shoot at Oakmont?” energy coming from the U.S. Open last week. And while both of those dreams — being a scratch golfer and also playing Oakmont — can feel pretty far away, you can actually get at least part of the experience with Garmin’s R50 simulator and launch monitor.

I’ve used the R50, and it’s a terrific device with easy setup and gameplay. It also offers a built-in simulator with the ability to play courses directly on the monitor (see above) or to use a projector.

I’m not all that sure I want to submit my game to the Oakmont test — whether it’s digital or in real life, but thankfully Garmin offers the opportunity to play 43,000+ other golf courses as well. OK, maybe I’d try the front nine at Oakmont. I think I can beat J.J. Spaun’s 40 going out. Don’t think I have the 32 coming in, though.

OK, now onto the news.

13 (Almost) Final Thoughts on the U.S. Open

1. I didn’t talk about Hovland in our Monday newsletter after his mini ejection on Sunday, but he remains an elite character in a sport bereft of even mid-level ones. I loved that Neil called him out in the post-finale NLU recap pod for being maybe the most interesting man in golf. The rare part of all of this is that a main character is so beloved. Yeah, you’ll get NPCs that are universally liked, but it’s because they’re NPCs. They are, by definition, harmless. Viktor is not harmless, and his overall approval rating is at levels maybe not seen since George W. in October 2001.

Maybe Vik’s next YouTube swing rabbit hole includes adopting a move from GW.

2. Three other Viktor thoughts.

1. I love that he is learning how to contend without his stuff.

2. I loved this quote, and it’s something I can learn from and apply to my own life.

Be kind to yourself. Have grace for yourself. Apply both of those to the people around you, sure, but also to yourself. I forget that part. Maybe I forget both parts at times, but I definitely forget the second part.

3. He is the artist everyone purports Bryson to be. He might be THE Artist.

I think my favorite quote (from anyone) during the entire event came from Hovland on Saturday evening. He’s in the second to last pairing in the final round at freaking Oakmont, and he’s not even thinking about winning because he’s so lost in his art.

Norwegian Da Vinci!

Also, this was the take of the week. All the way into it.

3. One of my favorite dumb moments from being on site was seeing Bones, who was walking with the last pairing, taking the flag to J.J. Spaun’s caddie.

Spaun’s caddie needed to leave it in for the last pairing to play 18, although I contend it would have been one of the great moves in major history to just take it out while Adam Scott and Sam Burns were trying to play 18.

Tournament’s over, sorry boys. 

4. Speaking of Adam Scott … Sunday was a reminder of just how difficult this is to do at age 44 in any major that’s not an Open Championship (and even in an Open Championship). It would have been a wonderful story, and Scott would have fit better than perhaps anyone else on the leaderboard into Oakmont’s historic list of winners.

After closing the last five holes 5-5-5-4-5, though, Scott didn’t even lock up U.S. Open status for 2026, and now his streak of 96 consecutive majors played may start to wobble a bit after the next few.

Scott, by the way, gave a very Adam Scott quote on Sunday evening.

He always seems to be in control of the moment, himself and the entire stage. In control of his quotes and understanding how everyone perceived him on Sunday.

In control of everything except his golf ball on Sunday on the back nine.

Also, I am getting old as well, but this has become my favorite major championship template.

Justin Rose at The Open and the Masters, Adam Scott at Oakmont. Who’s next? Where are Bubba Watson and Brandt Snedeker at? Can Tom Watson play Portrush?

5. By the way, I got to thinking about Scott’s career on Sunday morning and how I would rank it historically. It’s a difficult one because he’s been so great for so long but also only has one major (and a Players). At some point, I want to create a dynamic pyramid of the 100 best players of all time, and I think I would slot Scott over guys like Angel Cabrera or Curtis Strange.

I think it’s more difficult to play in 96 straight majors than to win two of them. Otherwise we would value Andre Iguodala and Jack Morris over Klay Thompson and Kirby Puckett.

It’s an interesting argument, though, and I would listen to both sides of it, especially given Scott’s underwhelming major championship record (relative to his overall talent).

6. One normal sport thing that I truly do not understand is not looking at leaderboards. Can you imagine Mark Daigneault not looking at the scoreboard with 3 minutes left in Game 6 of the NBA Finals?!

And yet, here’s our U.S. Open champ …

Yeah, but what if you only need a three putt?? I guess whatever works for you, but this seems completely wild to me!

Also, one underrated thing that got erased by his make was how dead at the hole that putt was. I was standing at an angle where I could see the last half of the putt going right to left so perfectly, and the only thing I could think about the entire time was how absolutely perfect the speed was. Incredible given the moment, even more so the conditions and the slog of the day.

7. I heard the NLU boys do this exercise on their pod briefly on Sunday evening, but I thought I would roll through the last seven months of 2024 for Spaun to see where he was ranked in Data Golf, and who is in those positions right now.

June — 164: Brian Campbell
July — 110: Sam Ryder
August — 64: Rickie Fowler (!)
September — 67: Min Woo Lee
October — 80: Brian Harman
November — 60: Kevin Yu
December — 75: Jacob Bridgeman

My first thought was Kevin Yu is 20 spots ahead of Brian Harman?! My second thought was, Can you imagine Brian Campbell (or Jacob Bridgeman!) winning the U.S. Open next year?

We are in a pretty nice golden era of stars and superstars winning major championships. Leading into this was …

Scottie
Rory
Xander
Bryson
Xander
Scottie

Which is decent!

And so when this happened 20 years ago, I think there was more of a fear of it triggering a run of Guys People Don’t Root For (GPDRF). That’s not the case right now, which makes it much easier to enjoy when somebody like Spaun wins a major championship.

8. Here’s a weird one.

Augusta National winner where the course played a total of 30,220 yards across four rounds: 277 strokes.

Oakmont winner where the course played a total of ~29,488 yards across four rounds: 279 strokes.

But boy do we view these two tournaments and setups differently. The Masters is regal and wonderful and Hey, you can go get a score. It is all right there! The U.S. Open is a total bloodbath. And yet, Rory and Rose were just two shots better for the week than Spaun was.

I don’t think anyone is arguing that Augusta National is easier than Oakmont with rough up to your ankles, but what par does to people’s emotions is really fascinating.

Inversely, imagine if they made the par-3 8th a drivable par 4 and the par-4 15th a par 5 and played it at 72 instead of 70? Spaun would have won at -9, and everyone would be losing their minds. You changed absolutely nothing about the course or anything other than a number on a card, and people would be calling for a demolishing of Oakmont Country Club.

That amuses me greatly.

So do the responses here.

9. I absolutely do not want to get into an architecture/setup/statistical debate, though I will say that I prefer Pinehurst or Shinnecock as a U.S. Open venue and Augusta National as a major venue. Hack-it-out rough does not thrill me in general, although it did delight me for most of Sunday’s final round.

As has been noted by a lot smarter people than myself, it does seem that in an effort to protect 280 as a winning score in the modern era, the USGA either needs to glass up the greens or grow up the rough. Or in some (often glorious) cases, both.

I understand why you would want to grow up the rough during a wet spring in which you simply cannot get the greens cooking. As an aside: imagine if they would have been able to get the greens crispy, too! Michael Kim said he heard horror stories from folks who were at Oakmont in 2007. Just awful stuff!

The U.S. Open is supposed to be difficult. So I get all of that.

What I don’t get is why you wouldn’t simply roll the equipment back at the professional level so you have more margin to play with and more levers to pull (or not pull) when it comes to setting up a golf course.

The more equipment advances, the fewer options you have to make the course difficult, and the more levers you have to pull. As Andy pointed out for most of the week, when this happens, the harder it becomes to separate a golf tournament on the skill of the players.

Again, I am a dumb when it comes to a lot of this stuff, and I know driving accuracy as a stat isn’t everything, but the top 10 didn’t seem to reflect the accuracy test a lot of people were purporting this tournament to be.

And yes of course missing the fairway was a massive penalty and you couldn’t really blow it all over the yard, but based on the above, it doesn’t seem like accuracy — which is what this week was supposed to be about! — necessarily correlated greatly with playing well.

To be clear, I’m OK with all of this.

I thought Garrett said it very well here. I don’t love it the most in terms of major tests, but I’m OK with it and thought Sunday was truly amazing.

10. Congrats to Scott H. and Chris M. on winning the following giveaway last week as two of our newest members (we randomly selected two who joined last week).

We will absolutely continue doing stuff like this, especially as we build out the pro shop and have more options for giveaways.

Here’s what Scott said about supporting Normal Sport.

11. I am convinced that the weirder and crazier a golf tournament is, the better golf twitter gets. My No. 1 all time day was 2017 Sunday at Birkdale when Spieth stole souls. But this Sunday was really good.

A sneaky underrated and great golf twitter day (and weekend).

12. Am I the only one who thought it was so weird that NBC went straight from Sam Burns going full Nomar Garciaparra on the 8th hole while waiting for the horn to blow into Tiger putting for eagle on No. 13 at Torrey Pines in 2008?

Not since Portrush —> Memphis has there been a more jarring transition than Thriston Lawrence slowly meandering his way around Oakmont straight into Tiger pounding the San Diego sky with his fists as 20,000 roaring fans got him and his broken leg to the house.

Then after all of that finished up, they just went straight back into Burns hitting his shot on No. 8 like nothing ever happened! I know Anti was joking, but there legitimately has to be some people out there today who think they had a dream about the 2008 U.S. Open on Sunday, and they’re fearful to tell anyone.

Also this got me pretty good.

13. I think I have decided that my dream board is one that has no ties in the top 10 and every score on the right-hand side separated by exactly one with every player in the top 10 from a different country. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. I wouldn’t think it’s ever happened. This is about as close as I imagine you could get to it.

This is the hard-hitting analysis you surely come to this newsletter for.

I do not know why I’m like this.

But I’m thankful many of you are, too.

It’ll be summer hours for us this week (Jason is in Greece, and I am at the neighborhood pool, which is kind of like Greece if you close your eyes for long enough).

We’ll be back on Friday with some final U.S. Open thought and then on to a recap of Cromwell at the beginning of next week.