A thing you may have missed last fall: We have a podcast now!
Our first episode of 2026 will drop in the next week or so.
In it, I will — against my better judgement — be making the case for why we should start thinking about Scottie on Tiger’s level.
We would appreciate it if you would subscribe at any of the following locations.
Or wherever you listen to nonsense online.
Name drops today: Shohei Ohtani, plumbers, firemen, Nick Kyrgios, Jordan Spieth (of course), Darth Vader and Si Woo Kim.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Holderness and Bourne.
We are fired up to be partnering with our friends at H&B for another year of (many) layers and terrific colors. I am dying to get my hands on (and throw Norman onto) the new Sullivan quarter snap you see above.
You can (and should!) check out more of their quarter snaps colors right here.
OK, now onto the news.
You can't go undefeated if you don't win your first event of the year.
I got the following email earlier this week.
This may sound ridiculous, but can we substantially limit the Scottie word count? I fully respect that he’s incredible and historically good. I just find him unbelievably boring to read about.
I don't hate him. I don't dislike him. He just doesn't move my needle. He has zero Tiger, zero Jordan, zero Shohei, zero [insert any magnetic or magical athlete] in him. I’m guessing I’m not the only one whose brain quietly powers down at peak Scottie coverage.
Normal Sport reader
You, dear reader, are not. My own family members have Scottie fatigue. However, I take all of this as less of a directive and more of a challenge.
It’s kind of on me if I can’t make someone who will go down as one of the 10-12 best golfers in history seem at least mildly interesting. But the point you make leads me to something I realized last week: Golf fans — and probably sports fans — are predisposed to dismissing any inkling of the idea that Scottie right now is as good as Tiger once was.
Why?
Well I think there are three main reasons. The first is the disposition, as outlined above. It’s the one my wife has consistently espoused to me. Scottie doesn’t fist pump after huge putts like Tiger did. He’s not electric. This is mostly true.
The second reason is that he does not look very cool. He looks like your favorite neighbor’s favorite neighbor. Someone who rarely lets the leaves pile up in his side yard. Somebody who definitely has a ping pong table tucked away in the corner of his garage and definitely paid $95 for a custom paddle.
Tiger always looked cool. OK, always looked cool on the course. His swing was perfect. He hit all the notes. Scottie sometimes looks like he’s just fighting to stay upright. He not only doesn’t hit all the notes, he doesn’t even know (or care) what they are.
The third reason is that Tiger was a wunderkind. The chosen one from age 4. And he somehow fulfilled the prophecies. Scottie was great — U.S. Junior Am winner etc. — but it wasn’t foretold that he would win 10+ majors so we are perhaps a bit more wary that it could happen.
For all of these reasons, it’s difficult for our brains to comprehend that these two athletes might be equals. It seems more likely that Scottie and Brian Scalabrine would be equals than Scottie and Tiger Woods.
And yet (!) it has definitely become fair to compare Scottie and Tiger. Or at least it has become not crazy. Not after four years of this from Scottie. Not after he’s had Nick Price’s career in the last 23 months.
There are 100 ways to pit players from different eras against one another, but the three most compelling reasons I can find in any case that is being made for Scottie as Tiger’s equal are as follows.
(Also, I want to be clear that I think Tiger is and always will be a more important golf figure than Scottie. Literally changed the industry. Probably created jobs like the one I currently have. Scottie can’t do that. This is simply about their golf)
1. The SG argument: Scottie is living in Tiger’s strokes gained neighborhood and has been for a while. One of these lines is Tiger’s age 27-29 SG number, and the other is Scottie’s. The sample size here is not small.
These are entire years. Thousands of shots, dozens of tournaments.
This is … extraordinary. Scottie Scheffler — quite definitively — was better than Tiger Woods when they were both age 27, 28 and 29.
Here’s another way to look at it.
Age 27-29 | Scottie | Tiger |
|---|---|---|
Wins | 18 | 12 |
Majors | 3 | 2 |
Avg. SG season | 3.08 | 2.86 |
Yes, Tiger’s age 27-29 seasons were some of the worst of his prime. But … what if they’re some of the worst of Scottie’s prime too?
Yes, Tiger accomplished so much from age 20-26 that Scottie did not. But … what if Scottie lasts a few more years than Tiger did at this apex? I mean, the traj of these DG points charts look pretty similar to me! But again, we are conditioned to believe that one is better simply because he did it earlier.
What if Scottie just got started a bit later?
There is, as they say, a long way to go.
This leads us to ….
2. The longevity argument: The most vociferous rebuttal to any Scottie-Tiger talk always goes back to total wins and total majors. These are great points.
But here’s the thing. Scottie is somehow getting better every year (literally every year for the last five, he has gotten statistically better). He also seemingly has more off-course stability to set him up for the next 10-12 years. Tiger won one major after age 33. He won just four times after his 300th start (Phil won 22 after his, by the way).
Tiger, without question, burned brighter than anyone in history, including Scottie (so far). But how do you measure greatness? Is it more impressive to live between 3.4-4.0 SG for 10 years or to be at or around 3.25 for 15 years?
Maybe more importantly, which one will lead to more a more decorated resume? I would love for Scottie to just live here for another 10 years so we can find out.
3. The plumbers and firemen argument: While it’s not true that Tiger was playing plumbers and firemen in the early 2000s like Old and Young Tom may have been back in the early 1900s, he was playing fields that were not as good as the fields Scottie is playing. Coincidentally, the reason Scottie is playing better players is because the amount of money Tiger brought into the game led to these elite fields.
Also, equipment.
Can we agree that golf equipment is more forgiving this year than it was five years ago and 15 years ago and 20 years ago? I think we can broadly agree on that.
What that means is that flushers have a harder time separating. Gaining strokes on the 156th guy in the field is tougher because that 156th guy is no longer a journeyman with a beer belly, horrific wear pattern on his irons and a driver that goes every direction.
No … that 156th guy is now Christo Lamprecht or Cam Davis, both of whom flush, both of whom have a floor that is helped by equipment updates and both of whom finished near the bottom of the barrel at the Amex last week.
What Scottie is doing is outrageous. He has five (!) wins by 4+ shots since last May and three finishes outside the top five in that same timespan. What?!
More impressive than anyone since Tiger for this window of time.
And if he continues stacking seasons like last year and the year before that and this one, the conversation is no longer going to be, Wait, is he the best since Tiger? That question has already been answered.
Instead, it’s going to be — against all odds and despite what our brains are currently telling us — Wait … is there actually a chance that he’s better?
1. As the golf year revs up, we got some gems this week, starting with this gentleman watching the Amex through binoculars in his robe, wielding either the largest phone ever created or possibly Garmin’s new handheld launch monitor.
Regardless, a great normal sport moment to start the season.
2. I’ll write about this a bit more below, but I’ve been watching a lot of the Australian Open, and for some reason players enter the court through this hall of mirrors that can be turned into different backgrounds. Bizarre stuff.
3. Sure.
(also, might be AI-generated … not sure I care at this point).
4. Other sports are starting to #getinvolved.
I am going to abuse this one.
Shoutout to the owners of the wild Normans we saw at the PGA Show last week. It's surreal to see the signs of your support walking around in the world. If you want to get in on the action check out our pro shop and stay tuned for the new collection coming before the Masters.
• This piece on fake tennis biographies driven by AI is wild, and while the end product is ridiculous right now, it’s not difficult to see it getting better and better and better in the future. To the point that a decent facsimile of a biography on Justin Thomas or Tommy Fleetwood or like Alejandro Tosti could eventually be written.
An important reminder in light of this is that AI will never be able to do three things:
Report.
Give perspective on something it witnessed.
Tell you what it feels.
People who do those three things will win. Everyone else is in trouble.
• I went on with Nate Moore recently to talk about my career and what I love about running this business. You can listen here.
Some great ones this week and a few leftovers from the CFP as well.
• Nobody memes better than Claire.
• I somehow missed this from last August, but it’s so money. Several million 30-50-year-old golf playing males immediately nodded in agreement (and maybe some shame).
• This was great. S. Him.
This article by Colin and Samir on the creation of The Office was excellent.
It’s about how the producers purposefully made it difficult on themselves with one-camera scenes because the friction is the point.
It’s the constraint that made The Office what it turned out to be.
As the show grew, Greg Daniels was asked why they didn’t use a studio or a bigger production team, and his answer was simple: "what makes creating the show hard is what makes it good."
Colin and Samir
I love that. The year of friction! It reminds me of something I read in the Dense Discovery newsletter recently.
So here’s to 2026 – a year of ongoing tinkering, inevitable bugs and the slow satisfaction of making some things (mostly) by hand in a world that increasingly doesn’t.
Dense Discovery
And we’ll end with what I can promise is the first Colin/Samir-Dense Discovery-Rory McIlroy 1-2-3 in the history of everything.
I like the work. I like the process. I enjoy doing challenging things. And I think if you can make that the important part, and you just make that routine, then you don't need motivation to do it. It's your lifestyle. It's what you do. And it's, I guess, who you identify as.
Rory McIlroy
It’s what you do. Doing difficult things is what you do. The friction is the point. Because in a world obsessed with the removal of it, things produced with ease become commodities and thus not very valuable at all.
Easy to say. Difficult to live out. Hard to make part of your lifestyle.
But always worth it.
Thank you for reading our ridiculous golf newsletter. Every edition — and everything we make — is handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason. The friction of it — how long it takes and how many times we go over it — is very much the point.
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