Issue No. 256 | September 26, 2025 | Read Online
A thank you to Meridian Putters for sending us to New York for boots on the ground coverage this week!
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — I laughed out loud at the halfway point of the first day of matches when Keegan Bradley was interviewed with the last match still on the course. He was asked about being down 3-0 and what that felt like.
“Well, it’s not exactly what we wanted.”
It’s difficult to convey the seriousness with which he said it. No hint of sarcasm, no chuckling at just how badly things had actually gone. To say the start was not exactly what Keegan and the U.S. wanted is to say that the RSM Classic is not the Masters.
We’ll get to all of that and more below with 10 thoughts (OK a few more than that) on Friday at the Ryder Cup.
But first!
Thank you to Holderness & Bourne for sponsoring today’s newsletter and having our backs covered (literally) at Bethpage.
We’re looking good, feeling good and getting lots of compliments on our H&B x Norman merch.
One interaction we had in the media center.
Claire Rogers (nobody knows more style ball than Claire): “Jason, what are you wearing? Is that a cashmere or something, it looks so soft.”
Jason [winks at Kyle]: “It’s H&B, it’s cotton fleece, the softest thing I own.”
OK, now onto the news.
1. It all started so wonderfully with The Great Exhibitionist nearly driving the first and making a long-ish 3 to go 1 UP alongside fellow emotions merchant, Justin Thomas.
It felt like the U.S. didn’t win another point for the next three hours. JT was awful. Russell Henley and Harris English were somehow worse. The U.S. had one player (one player!) gain strokes in the morning session. No surprise who it was.
A 3-1 start is just difficult to come back from against a team like Europe. It can happen, but it usually doesn’t. And the infuriating part is that it seemed like the U.S. was missing easy shots and Europe was pulling off the most difficult, impossible shots imaginable.
There was one 20-minute stretch in the foursomes matches where Rahm hit a ball that was basically underground to like 12 feet, and Hatton followed it by hitting a ball through a branch it was sitting next to right to the middle of the green.
A lot of this.
2. A stat from Elias Sports Bureau that back this up: A team has overcome a 3-1 or worse first-session deficit to win a Ryder Cup five times (Europe in 1957, 1985 and 2018 and USA in 1949 and 197). That last one — Europe in 2018 — flipped quickly, too, as Europe lost the opening sesh, 3-1 but won the afternoon 4-0 to go up 5-3 on Friday evening. The remainder was a complete and total rout.
3. I don’t truly believe this, but you could probably talk me into Tommy as the best player in the world right now. He and Rory embarrassed English and Morikawa, and then he turned around and made big putt after big putt alongside Justin Rose in the afternoon. The top three in strokes gained for the event look like this.
🇪🇺 Fitz
🇪🇺 Tommy
🇪🇺 Rory
That’s going to be tough to overcome. And as shaky as Tommy has been in closing out PGA Tour wins, he’s almost the exact opposite at the Ryder Cup. I know exactly what he’s going to do at all times, and he just goes out and does it.
Send help.
4. Speaking of difficult to overcome, how good is this?
Soly pointed this out, but Europe is so good at getting its stars to raise the level of its less experienced players. Its titans — Rahm, Rory, Fleetwood and Hovland (or Rose?) — are so good at getting the best out of their partners. Something the U.S. has sometimes struggled to figure out.
5. [Jason here] What was the atmosphere like at Bryson’s opening tee shot? I have no clue, check Twitter. I was stuck in traffic at a stand still next to a guy holding a sign that said:
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
GOLF BALLS, BASEBALLS
TRUMPS GOT BALLS!
Yes, Ryder Cups encourage allegiance, but today’s HUGE patriotism by the home crowd reached new heights that, a lot of people are saying, will never be reached again.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Some thoughts on Scottie.
What I think Keegan got wrong.
Why the U.S. is still very much in this.
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 1,002 (!!!!) crazed individuals. By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• A vote for trusted, independent media.
• The delight of helping us establish Normal Sport.
• Access to all of our content (like the rest of this post).
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.
6. Apropos of nothing, the way Paul McGinley pronounces “Rahm” delights me. The way Dan Hicks pronounces “Cantlay” … not so much. Also, Faldo definitely has not changed. He was unprepared, never seemed to know what was going on and trailed off several times when talking about specific points.
This remains a bummer. He’s arguably the greatest European player (and one of their great Ryder Cuppers) of all time. I want his insight and his wisdom. And I can’t ever seem to get it.
7. My Scottie take is actually a Rory/Rahm take. It takes tremendous skill to adapt from tournament stroke play to team match play. They aren’t completely different sports, but they are different enough that it can expose (and has exposed) even guys like Tiger, Phil … and now Scottie.
I’m the c̶a̶p̶t̶a̶i̶n̶ Scottie now.
There are two easy explanations, but neither of them land completely. The first is that Scottie lacks juice. Which is kind of true sometimes, but I also watched Whistling Straits. He had all the juice and thrashed Rahm on Sunday in a week when Rahm was carrying the whole team on his back.
The second explanation is this …
But that misses a bit as well because Scottie won the Nelson — of all tournaments — by like 22 shots. So he does have that gear.
He just couldn’t find it on Friday.
The boring truth is probably some combination of bits above combined with an off day, a bad partner — if you would have paired Henley and JT together in the morning, idk if they would have been competitive in the Junior Ryder Cup.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I do know they aren’t mounting an historic comeback without his contribution. Also, way in on this idea.
8. Speaking of The Juice, has there been a better 0-2 performance in Ryder Cup history than what Bryson did today?
He got stuck with JT in the morning and Benny Booms in the afternoon, but proved that not only is he not a “captain’s nightmare” but he might be the emotional center of a U.S. team that has lacked one at times.
He’s also objectively playing tremendously, alongside the newest Bronx Bomber, Cam Young, who also played quite well in the afternoon. I still don’t love Cam’s disposition, but if you hit it like that and make — count ‘em! — five birdies in 13 holes, you can carry yourself however you want.
Cam from the block IYKYK
9. How good were those last two matches? McGinley was way into it. Just ecstatic over the level of golf that was being played. And I concur. So many monstrous shots, big swings, important moments and long putts — honestly, I have rejected the idea that Europe just makes more putts at these things, but today’s matches made that rejection extremely difficult. They were sweeping in 12-footers like they literal kick ins!
Also, that last hole in the Rory/Lowry-Burns/Cantlay match felt like it was the highest leverage moment of the week so far. Europe wins it, and it’s curtains. U.S. wins it, and they are in it. It landed with a split, which was probably the right outcome but didn’t swing the event the way it could have.
10. [Jason here] My Friday notes reads like Ryder Cup Where’s Waldo page. It started next to Keegan’s dad wearing a KEEGAN’S DAD bracelet. Very sweet. Then I saw the biggest American hat in the world, an Irish guy with a busted nose, acorns falling on peoples’ heads, and contrary to what people on Twitter think, got called Tommy [checks Tommy Tracker] 21 times. My day ended facing a full on chant. Only at the Ryder Cup.
11. Two random observations. There seemed to be a concerted effort on the U.S. side to put their arms around each other on the first tee. I appreciated it, even if the more the Americans attempt to emulate the Europeans, the worse it seems to go.
The second observation is that it was truly insane that the president of the United States walked players (well, one player) to the first tee.
You know Benny Booms had to be thinking — even if only for a split second — how in the world did I end up here?
not a sight you see at every golf tournament 😳
— Alan Bastable (@alan_bastable)
3:31 PM • Sep 26, 2025
12. The decisions I disagreed with Keegan about.
• Having Henley hit on the odd holes when he’s a lot shorter than Scottie.
• Clearly favoring vets in Session 1. I think that’s short-sighted.
• Playing JT in the afternoon session over Xander (worked out fine).
Everyone was mega critical of the English-Morikawa pairing in foursomes (Data Golf ranks it as the literal worst foursomes fit from a statistical standpoint).
I guess I was fine with it (?), although after watching both of them, I’m not sure where you can play either again before Sunday.
13. I have said a lot of stupid things this year. Up near the top, though, is saying as recently as late July that Cantlay should not be on this team. I think he would now be my second pick to be on this team after Bryson. I do not understand why guys like Tommy and Cantlay transform into monsters in this event and struggle in majors, and somebody like Scottie does just the opposite. It makes what Rahm and Rory (and Bryson) do even more impressive.
14. Is there any hope for the Americans? No. Is there any way the Europeans fall off in a big enough way that the red, white and blue could get back in it? Also no.
The silver lining (I guess?) is that Rory was going for the throat on 18 on Friday evening and didn’t get it. I have no doubt he would have given a full Broadway bow to the monstrous grandstand on 18 after making it 6-2 and putting it out of reach.
My prediction is that the U.S. gets it to something like 9.5-6.5 by Saturday evening and wins a close (or sort of close) one on Sunday afternoon.
This rings (and remains) true.
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 1,942 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 merch here.
Issue No. 256 | September 26, 2025 | Read Online
A thank you to Meridian Putters for sending us to New York for boots on the ground coverage this week!
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — I laughed out loud at the halfway point of the first day of matches when Keegan Bradley was interviewed with the last match still on the course. He was asked about being down 3-0 and what that felt like.
“Well, it’s not exactly what we wanted.”
It’s difficult to convey the seriousness with which he said it. No hint of sarcasm, no chuckling at just how badly things had actually gone. To say the start was not exactly what Keegan and the U.S. wanted is to say that the RSM Classic is not the Masters.
We’ll get to all of that and more below with 10 thoughts (OK a few more than that) on Friday at the Ryder Cup.
But first!
Thank you to Holderness & Bourne for sponsoring today’s newsletter and having our backs covered (literally) at Bethpage.
We’re looking good, feeling good and getting lots of compliments on our H&B x Norman merch.
One interaction we had in the media center.
Claire Rogers (nobody knows more style ball than Claire): “Jason, what are you wearing? Is that a cashmere or something, it looks so soft.”
Jason [winks at Kyle]: “It’s H&B, it’s cotton fleece, the softest thing I own.”
OK, now onto the news.
1. It all started so wonderfully with The Great Exhibitionist nearly driving the first and making a long-ish 3 to go 1 UP alongside fellow emotions merchant, Justin Thomas.
It felt like the U.S. didn’t win another point for the next three hours. JT was awful. Russell Henley and Harris English were somehow worse. The U.S. had one player (one player!) gain strokes in the morning session. No surprise who it was.
A 3-1 start is just difficult to come back from against a team like Europe. It can happen, but it usually doesn’t. And the infuriating part is that it seemed like the U.S. was missing easy shots and Europe was pulling off the most difficult, impossible shots imaginable.
There was one 20-minute stretch in the foursomes matches where Rahm hit a ball that was basically underground to like 12 feet, and Hatton followed it by hitting a ball through a branch it was sitting next to right to the middle of the green.
A lot of this.
2. A stat from Elias Sports Bureau that back this up: A team has overcome a 3-1 or worse first-session deficit to win a Ryder Cup five times (Europe in 1957, 1985 and 2018 and USA in 1949 and 197). That last one — Europe in 2018 — flipped quickly, too, as Europe lost the opening sesh, 3-1 but won the afternoon 4-0 to go up 5-3 on Friday evening. The remainder was a complete and total rout.
3. I don’t truly believe this, but you could probably talk me into Tommy as the best player in the world right now. He and Rory embarrassed English and Morikawa, and then he turned around and made big putt after big putt alongside Justin Rose in the afternoon. The top three in strokes gained for the event look like this.
🇪🇺 Fitz
🇪🇺 Tommy
🇪🇺 Rory
That’s going to be tough to overcome. And as shaky as Tommy has been in closing out PGA Tour wins, he’s almost the exact opposite at the Ryder Cup. I know exactly what he’s going to do at all times, and he just goes out and does it.
Send help.
4. Speaking of difficult to overcome, how good is this?
Soly pointed this out, but Europe is so good at getting its stars to raise the level of its less experienced players. Its titans — Rahm, Rory, Fleetwood and Hovland (or Rose?) — are so good at getting the best out of their partners. Something the U.S. has sometimes struggled to figure out.
5. [Jason here] What was the atmosphere like at Bryson’s opening tee shot? I have no clue, check Twitter. I was stuck in traffic at a stand still next to a guy holding a sign that said:
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
GOLF BALLS, BASEBALLS
TRUMPS GOT BALLS!
Yes, Ryder Cups encourage allegiance, but today’s HUGE patriotism by the home crowd reached new heights that, a lot of people are saying, will never be reached again.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Some thoughts on Scottie.
What I think Keegan got wrong.
Why the U.S. is still very much in this.
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 1,002 (!!!!) crazed individuals. By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• A vote for trusted, independent media.
• The delight of helping us establish Normal Sport.
• Access to all of our content (like the rest of this post).
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.
6. Apropos of nothing, the way Paul McGinley pronounces “Rahm” delights me. The way Dan Hicks pronounces “Cantlay” … not so much. Also, Faldo definitely has not changed. He was unprepared, never seemed to know what was going on and trailed off several times when talking about specific points.
This remains a bummer. He’s arguably the greatest European player (and one of their great Ryder Cuppers) of all time. I want his insight and his wisdom. And I can’t ever seem to get it.
7. My Scottie take is actually a Rory/Rahm take. It takes tremendous skill to adapt from tournament stroke play to team match play. They aren’t completely different sports, but they are different enough that it can expose (and has exposed) even guys like Tiger, Phil … and now Scottie.
I’m the c̶a̶p̶t̶a̶i̶n̶ Scottie now.
There are two easy explanations, but neither of them land completely. The first is that Scottie lacks juice. Which is kind of true sometimes, but I also watched Whistling Straits. He had all the juice and thrashed Rahm on Sunday in a week when Rahm was carrying the whole team on his back.
The second explanation is this …
But that misses a bit as well because Scottie won the Nelson — of all tournaments — by like 22 shots. So he does have that gear.
He just couldn’t find it on Friday.
The boring truth is probably some combination of bits above combined with an off day, a bad partner — if you would have paired Henley and JT together in the morning, idk if they would have been competitive in the Junior Ryder Cup.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I do know they aren’t mounting an historic comeback without his contribution. Also, way in on this idea.
8. Speaking of The Juice, has there been a better 0-2 performance in Ryder Cup history than what Bryson did today?
He got stuck with JT in the morning and Benny Booms in the afternoon, but proved that not only is he not a “captain’s nightmare” but he might be the emotional center of a U.S. team that has lacked one at times.
He’s also objectively playing tremendously, alongside the newest Bronx Bomber, Cam Young, who also played quite well in the afternoon. I still don’t love Cam’s disposition, but if you hit it like that and make — count ‘em! — five birdies in 13 holes, you can carry yourself however you want.
Cam from the block IYKYK
9. How good were those last two matches? McGinley was way into it. Just ecstatic over the level of golf that was being played. And I concur. So many monstrous shots, big swings, important moments and long putts — honestly, I have rejected the idea that Europe just makes more putts at these things, but today’s matches made that rejection extremely difficult. They were sweeping in 12-footers like they literal kick ins!
Also, that last hole in the Rory/Lowry-Burns/Cantlay match felt like it was the highest leverage moment of the week so far. Europe wins it, and it’s curtains. U.S. wins it, and they are in it. It landed with a split, which was probably the right outcome but didn’t swing the event the way it could have.
10. [Jason here] My Friday notes reads like Ryder Cup Where’s Waldo page. It started next to Keegan’s dad wearing a KEEGAN’S DAD bracelet. Very sweet. Then I saw the biggest American hat in the world, an Irish guy with a busted nose, acorns falling on peoples’ heads, and contrary to what people on Twitter think, got called Tommy [checks Tommy Tracker] 21 times. My day ended facing a full on chant. Only at the Ryder Cup.
11. Two random observations. There seemed to be a concerted effort on the U.S. side to put their arms around each other on the first tee. I appreciated it, even if the more the Americans attempt to emulate the Europeans, the worse it seems to go.
The second observation is that it was truly insane that the president of the United States walked players (well, one player) to the first tee.
You know Benny Booms had to be thinking — even if only for a split second — how in the world did I end up here?
not a sight you see at every golf tournament 😳
— Alan Bastable (@alan_bastable)
3:31 PM • Sep 26, 2025
12. The decisions I disagreed with Keegan about.
• Having Henley hit on the odd holes when he’s a lot shorter than Scottie.
• Clearly favoring vets in Session 1. I think that’s short-sighted.
• Playing JT in the afternoon session over Xander (worked out fine).
Everyone was mega critical of the English-Morikawa pairing in foursomes (Data Golf ranks it as the literal worst foursomes fit from a statistical standpoint).
I guess I was fine with it (?), although after watching both of them, I’m not sure where you can play either again before Sunday.
13. I have said a lot of stupid things this year. Up near the top, though, is saying as recently as late July that Cantlay should not be on this team. I think he would now be my second pick to be on this team after Bryson. I do not understand why guys like Tommy and Cantlay transform into monsters in this event and struggle in majors, and somebody like Scottie does just the opposite. It makes what Rahm and Rory (and Bryson) do even more impressive.
14. Is there any hope for the Americans? No. Is there any way the Europeans fall off in a big enough way that the red, white and blue could get back in it? Also no.
The silver lining (I guess?) is that Rory was going for the throat on 18 on Friday evening and didn’t get it. I have no doubt he would have given a full Broadway bow to the monstrous grandstand on 18 after making it 6-2 and putting it out of reach.
My prediction is that the U.S. gets it to something like 9.5-6.5 by Saturday evening and wins a close (or sort of close) one on Sunday afternoon.
This rings (and remains) true.
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 1,942 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 merch here.
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