Greetings!
A lot to get to today, but I would be honored for you to read this piece I wrote about my daughter. She would have turned 10 (!!) yesterday.
I haven’t written about my experience of her death since late 2015, but I wanted to check in at the 10-year mark and hopefully offer some encouragement to anyone who’s going through something devastating.
Also, I appreciate Jason making this illustration. I did not know he was going to do it so when I opened up the newsletter to edit it this morning, it hit me pretty hard. 🥹
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OK, now onto the news.
Jason and I recorded a new episode of the Normal Sport Show, which dropped toward the end of last week. I talked about 12 things I’m thankful for this year, and a few of them even pertained to golf.
One thing that came up is my gratitude over getting to cover Scottie and Rory, both of whom will likely end up being top 15 players in the history of golf.
Rory probably doesn’t have a chance at the 50-7 Club (50 PGA Tour wins, seven major championships) but Scottie, at age 29, actually does. He’s currently at 19 and four, and while 50-7 is a long way away still, it’s at least a not unrealistic thing like it is for … everyone else who is currently playing professional golf.
Jason asked me if I said the same thing about Spieth. I answered that yes, I absolutely did. And I will apologize for exactly none of it.
Here’s the relevant graph.
Please go ahead and show me on this graph which line is Tiger’s age 19-22 season and which is Spieth’s. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Now, do I think Scottie’s success is more sustainable? Absolutely, yes, mostly because we’ve seen it for a longer period of time. But also, their best year profiles [whispers] don’t really look that different.
Here’s a fun one …
Spieth in 2015 (allegedly the greatest putting year in golf history): 0.65 SG
Scottie in 2025: 0.66
That’s insane.
I will never change my opinion that Spieth — who was truly generationally great at an outrageous age — was going to become an all timer. I’m not sure how anyone would have thought anything different.
Two of them today, one golf (barely) and one not.
1. What if I told you at the beginning of 2025 that Ben Griffin would …
Win a point at the Ryder Cup or …
Have his wedding covered by People Magazine.
Which would have been more likely?
Somehow all of them happened over the last several months. The latter involving ceremonial monkeys and the hilarious phrase Refined Tropical Luxury-Themed Palm Beach Wedding. Here’s an amazing Very Normal Sport excerpt.
The ceremony was officiated by Doug Sieg, the CEO of money management firm Lord Abbett.
People
Perfection.
Snowball cocktails were provided by Normal Sport.
2. This one is somehow the non-golf one, but I do have to say I love getting tagged into these situations.
Also kinda reminds me of Bryson’s protractor era.
via Reddit
And Viktor Hovland’s WITB video from last week where he pulled out:
one bag of mixed nuts (the second bag was stolen by monkeys)
a level
extra weights from his Stack System days
Never change.
Also this clip was great.
While we have confirmation from several of our current sponsors, we do have a few open spots for 2026. If you’re interested in hearing more, you can fill out this short form right here.
One thing I realized this year is that the most powerful feature of this newsletter is probably the personal network it creates for me and for the relationships our business has.
I could work on developing those business relationships for the next 50 years, and — because of the network all of you have — I could never come close to matching the reach or leverage of the newsletter right now.
All that to say, if you have any contacts at any interesting brands who have products and stories that you love that you think would be a good fit to sponsor our newsletter and podcast I’m very open to receiving introductions. Examples of brands that were mentioned in the survey: Vuori, LMNT, Hyperice, Oura, Whoop, Stance, tons of golf brands etc.
Last week, I interviewed Clay Hood, who is the founder of Precision Pro. The last question I asked him was about what he would tell aspiring entrepreneurs. I loved his answer.
The number one thing I would say is that it just takes longer than you can imagine. It's harder than you can really imagine.
I do feel like you you need to really enjoy what you're doing, whether it be the product or community or some aspect. … if you're doing something that you're not interested in, I think it would be challenging.
Normal Sport Newsletter No. 278
The more I read and think about building a business, the more I think this is the single most important thing a founder can do: Find something that is enjoyable to them. Something that doesn’t feel like work.
Obviously, anything we build is going to have some elements of work. But if you can find something that rarely feels like work, it just seems far more likely to succeed for innumerable reasons.
I have thought about our podcast a lot this fall as we’ve experimented and tried different things. And the answer I keep defaulting to is, Do what you enjoy. Whatever gives you juice. Anything else will lead to burnout. I have written about this idea before, and every time I consider it, it seems so obvious. But when you’re in the middle of building, it’s actually not.
So it’s always a good thing for me to come back to and to remember when I’ve been out wandering for a little while.
We appreciate you reading our handcrafted, algorithm-free newsletter about golf. We put everything we have into every newsletter we write, which is why they are frequently 1,285 words like this one. Everything you read and consume was created from scratch by two humans who are absolutely obsessed with the game.
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