Issue No. 232 | July 19, 2025 | Read Online

*A huge shout to my guy, Joe Musso, for the title of today’s newsletter, which I think perfectly described Saturday at The Open. Not sure I know anybody better at turns of phrase and quips, like that one, than Musso.

Let’s start with a confession.

I watched the last hour hoping Scottie would pull a Rosey and find a hosel (or two!) straight into the Atlantic.

Not proud of it and not mad if Scottie does go on to win. For historical purposes, six- and seven-shot victories are nice to talk about and look good on the resume. But for our purposes — for enjoying the last day of major championship golf for the next 264 days — the best player on the planet leading everyone by 4+ after a bogey-free day is not ideal.

Yeah, I — very strangely because I like him a lot and love getting to cover him — found myself rooting quite hard against Scottie Scheffler on Saturday afternoon.

Today’s newsletter is presented by Meridian Putters.

One of the themes of Open week is how much creativity is involved in the gameplay. It’s something you hear from almost every player who comes off the course. Using parts of their minds that aren’t accessed in the week-to-week slog of pro golf.

It is honestly one of the best parts of this championship.

And I would say something similar about Meridian and their handcrafted flat stick made in the U.S.A. They, like players at The Open, put every ounce of creativity and thoughtfulness into their product.

Here’t their founder, Ryan Duffey.

For four or five years, I've been telling people Meridian's all about feel.
I don't know if it's the right move to not make a torque-less putter, but I know right now we're sticking to what makes us Meridian, which is putters that provide different feels to the player and putters that are high quality and that look clean.
We're the putter company that thinks that when Tiger says he likes to hook putts, you don't get that with a torque-less putter. We're in that camp where feel matters, and we're sticking with it.
Ryan Duffey | Normal Sport

You can (and should!) check them out right here.

OK, now onto the news.

15 Thoughts on Round 3 of The Open

1. I played some golf last night with a friend who pays attention to all of this but isn’t a complete sicko. We were talking about Scottie of course, and I told him that the two championship characteristics Scottie contains that impress me most are …

His ability to always make the safe, correct decision.
His distance control.

Obviously you have to be a flusher and you have to make some putts, but it’s those two skills in conjunction with one another that lead to weeks like this.

On Saturday, specifically, it was the distance control. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a long shot, short shot, sidehill lie, none of it matters, he manages his distances better than anyone else in the field or the world.

Here’s how Trevor Immelman said it.

They aren’t heroic 10 of 10 shots. They’re just high quality shots in pressure situations, and he is playing them in an area that’s just 10 feet too long and 10 feet too short. His approaches are almost never out of that box, which makes Luke Kerr-Dinnen’s breakdown of Scottie’s dominance is as relevant as ever.

The explanation? Scottie keeps is as simple as possible.

Going into tomorrow I'm going to step up there on the first tee and I'm going to be trying to get the ball in the fairway, and when I get to the second shot I'm going to be trying to get that ball on the green. There's not really too much else going on.
Scottie Scheffler

Question: What hole is this from?

Answer: You probably can’t tell me because it could be from one of 10 or 12 or 14 different holes on Saturday (or Friday or Thursday).

2. And then when he is out of position, he leans on that first trait, which is always making the right decision. Making par from both of these spots is stupid, but it’s because he didn’t try to hit the hero shot in either instance.

He trusted his short game, and the result was a bogey-free 67 to put the jug on ice.

It’s all just so impressive.

Who’s going to try and take it from him?

3. Here’s a weird takeaway I had from Saturday: I think Scottie is the best athlete in the field. I don’t know that anybody watching golf for the first time is thinking this because he’s not necessarily traditionally athletic (the Open Radio broadcasters have likened his swing to a strange ballet and an octopus falling out of a tree).

But it’s one thing to hit your distances on a driving range with no slopes and no wind. To do it in major championship conditions off of weird lies and in strange spots? You have to be an athlete — not to mention a good reader of lies — to accomplish that.

This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …

Thoughts on Rory’s two-ball trick.
Why Haotong Li is may be a problem.
How Bryson would solve slow play.

If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.

If you are, keep reading!

Welcome to the members-only portion of today’s newsletter. I hope you both enjoy it and find it to be valuable to your golf and/or personal life.

4. I mentioned this briefly on Friday, but this time four years ago, Scottie had 0 PGA Tour wins. Look at this Data Golf graphic of first 70 starts on the PGA Tour.

There was talk — real talk! [raises hand] — of whether Scottie was a closer and whether he had what it took to be a star on the PGA Tour. Watch this!

His 71st start on the PGA Tour was a win at the Phoenix Open, and if he wins tomorrow, that will be 17 wins, four majors, two Masters and two Players since then. That doesn’t include his two Hero World Challenge wins or his gold medal.

A top 20 career of all time in less than four years. It must be the best “I mean there were kind of signs of this but not this” four-year run in golf history.

[Jason here] Kyle forgot to mention that with a win tomorrow, Scottie will tie Jim Furyk, Curtis Strange and … Harold "Jug" McSpaden (1908–1996) with 17 victories. Those guys are T50 all time in PGA Tour wins, and McSpaden who gave a quote that might parallel the feelings of Scottie’s contemporaries right now.

In 1995, McSpaden said to Byron Nelson, "If you wouldn't have been born, I'd have been known as a pretty good player."
Jug McSpaden

5. Speaking of being a top 20 player of all time, it turns out that people are very spirited about this idea. I’m not going to get steep today — maybe tomorrow — but I will say this …

There’s a difference between most skilled and most accomplished. When I say “best,” what I actually mean most accomplished, not most skilled.

Carlos Correa is arguably better at baseball — in absolute terms — than Babe Ruth, but we don’t talk about baseball like that. Sadom Kaewkanjana would probably kick Bobby Jones’ ass in golf, but I don’t really think we should just erase the past because the sport has gotten better and more competitive.

I do think there is room to handicap the rankings based on these truths, but I view them more as tiebreakers than I do determining factors of the list itself.

6. Bryson was asked about slow play on Saturday, and his answer was great.

It's very simple. It's not difficult at all. You eventually time everybody for their whole entire round. Very simple.
Nobody wants to do it -- because people are too scared to get exposed, which I am an advocate for. I'd love to be timed, and I have no problem with that.
Bryson

He went on to say that to keep individuals within the group honest, you could keep them on an individual timer if the group fell behind. Kind of like a chess clock I think? Like, a player puts his bag down, and the juice is running again.

Anyway, the overall idea — a total time for the entire round — is very cool and led to this note, which amused me greatly.

Bryson’s new system + this.

7. A normal sport thought I had while Harman was making double at No. 1: Can you foot rake your footprint as a ball is trundling back down toward it?

The rule — this is obvious in retrospect but I was existing in that weird delirium of an Open Championship week — is as follows.

Normal stuff. Also, I believe that was the last time we saw Brian Harman on Saturday.

8. Two strange thoughts I had about Sunday.

1. I legitimately believe the best chance for someone to catch Scottie is that Scottie goes OB on 1 to start the fourth round. I think if he finds that fairway, the engraver can start to stretch his fingers. (Here are a few other amusing ways it could go sideways for Scottie).

2. I also legitimately believe that Haotong Li is the best hope we have of someone catching Scottie. He seems just crazy enough to think that he’s Chinese Scottie — or maybe that Scottie is American Haotong — and just delusional enough to go shoot 64. Unfortunately, all of those are also reasons he is the most likely of anyone in the top 10 to shoot 83.

Also, shoutout to whoever edited his Wikipedia nickname to Scheffler Slayer.

9. The R&A released a statement about Shane Lowry’s ruling on Friday evening that included the phrase — I am not making this up — “the naked eye test is satisfied.”

Only sport.

10. Rory’s start was a dream, but it also had a Scottie-shaped black cloud hanging over it the entire time. Like, yeah you might go out in 31, but Scottie just needs to go out in 33 (which he will and did).

Still, the scenes are preposterous, although personally a bit difficult to get emotionally invested in from 5,000 miles away. Maybe I would feel differently if I was there? Maybe I would feel differently if he hadn’t won the Masters?

Regardless, the moment on 12 was all time.

Imagine this: You just won the slam. You’re back at the place where you’ll always be from. Where people are proud to say that they hail from the same country as Rory McIlroy. Where they’re expecting 250K plus this week, and most of them are there to see you. Your hope is dwindling, Scottie is snuffing the light.

You just hit two golf balls on one swing on the previous hole. You need something. Anything really. And you pour a 60-footer in the heart. Everybody on the property knows what happened. They may not know how it happened, but they know exactly what happened.

I haven’t quite been able to get there with the Rory and Northern Ireland storyline this week, but that moment legit gave me chills. And a good reminder that moments matter at majors. Winners matter, obviously, but moments do, too. And it will be hard for that one to be topped, even on Sunday afternoon.

11. I thought Rory’s comments afterwards were interesting and some good insight into who he is. I’ve written it before, and I’ll do so again, but he’s no killer. No Tiger. Maybe not even Scottie. He’s just a guy who got it all and in some ways — even though it’s been normalized across 15+ years — can’t believe that any of this is real.

Here’s what he said to NBC after the round.

If I hadn't have won the Masters, I would have felt differently [coming into this major]. I just came here ... it's almost a celebration of what I've been able to accomplish. And I want to celebrate with them too. I've tried to embrace everything this week, and I'm having an incredible time. I'm really enjoying myself, and I feel like I've given myself half a chance and I'm excited for that tomorrow.
Rory McIlroy

This is not something you would ever hear the Cat say. But Rory has never wanted to be the Cat, which is probably for the best. He’s a dog in the arena and can get where he needs to competitively, but he has a romance to him that other guys (I think even Scottie?) just do not have. It makes for such an interesting combination of player and person, one that has been a delight to try and figure out and cover.

12. Speaking of things that were a delight.

Imagine Anthony Edwards going up for a dunk and finding another ball at the rim. Or Tarik Skubal throwing a 96 MPH slider and his shortstop also throwing a pitch at the same time. Imagine Alcaraz hitting a serve that hits a ball rolling across the court, and Sinner tries to hit them both. Imagine this.

That’s what it felt like when Rory hit two balls on the 11th on Saturday. I have legitimately never seen anything like that before. What a strange, strange game.

First time?

13. Here’s a good one from Andy Lack, who has thought way more about the all time rankings than I have.

Golf history corner for the five people that care about it: Scottie's pace is pretty incredible. I thought about what Scottie would have to do over the next 10 years to pass Rory as the best player of the post Tiger era and it's really not much.
To pass Rory all-time in career accomplishments, Scottie would need to win 2.3x per year, and win two of the next 40 majors (one of them has to be a U.S. Open.) And now, if you pass Rory, you are a top 10 golfer of all time.
Essentially, if you expect Scottie to continue to win twice a year (this feels insanely low), and nab two of the next 40 majors, he will sleepwalk his way into being one of the 10 greatest golfers of all time before his 40th birthday.
This almost feels like Scottie's floor. We are witnessing something very, very special. One of the five to seven best humans to ever pick a club stuff.
Andy Lack

One of the five to seven best humans to ever pick a club.

14. One cool moment on the broadcast on Saturday happened late in the day when Scottie was on the 13th tee, and Rory was on the 17th green, which backs up to the 13th green. This happens not infrequently on property where two of the top players cross each other or play into each other’s corners, but it almost never comes through on TV.

This time it did, and I thought it brought some gravity and context to the moment with Scottie looking down on the guy whose country he’s invading and Rory looking up at the guy whose world he has entered this week.

Two of the best to ever do it — legitimately probably two of the 10 best golfers of all time — and for a brief moment, they were in each other’s orbit.

15. The constant mental battle in pro golf is the seesaw that bounces wildly from “cares too little” to “cares way too much.” I have written this before and surely I will again, but Scottie’s third superpower when it comes to championship golf is that he doesn’t have to find that balance.

It’s just who he is.

Many other athletes …

Scottie …

He just lives in this place where, in the short term, he cares a lot, but in the long term, he doesn’t care at all. And that seems to be a perfect elixir for him to play the best non-Tiger golf of the last 25 years.

Enjoy it tomorrow. It might not be exciting, but it will definitely be special. We talk all the time about how we wish we would have enjoyed what Tiger was doing when he was doing it.

Well, he’s doing it again.

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History tomorrow.