Issue No. 220 | June 20, 2025 | Read Online

Over the last few days, I have received a handful of emails and/or had in-person interactions in the vein of, Hey, this ridiculous thing you’re doing on the internet has legitimately stirred my affection for golf.

I’m not sure anything delights me more.

Because maybe the immediate outcome of all of this is that people pay closer attention to Portrush or Bethpage, but inevitably the eventual outcome is more golf played by the person who has been bitten (or re-bitten).

Over the next 10 days I am playing …

• In a church league championship match (nbd).
• A 36-hole day with some of my best friends.
• In a Fried Egg event with my dad.

Watching and thinking about golf is fun, and I do it a lot. But if that is where it terminates, I think we might be missing the bigger picture. These (above) outcomes are I think what we’re all going for, and if this extremely silly newsletter encourages people to enjoy pro golf and that enjoyment, even implicitly, pushes toward those outcomes of playing more golf with friends and family. Well, that’s the best to me.

So thank you to those of you who have encouraged recently.

Your words are more of a buoy than you know.

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

Will I be using the Titan Elite Rangefinder for those rounds I noted above? I absolutely will. Some reasons.

You can see front, center, and back of green distances in the display. (I should probably only look at center … related: I won’t).
It’s difficult to lose. You can set up phone alerts if you leave it behind and find its last location.
The design is … well … elite. It’s protected by a precision aluminum shell that can take any impact.
Lightning-fast display. It locks onto targets instantly with vibration for quick readings. I loathe slow play, and using the rangefinder certainly helps get things moving. Can you imagine trying to triangulate distances off sprinkler heads from some of the spots we play from as amateurs?

The Titan Elite Rangefinder is a great product, one that’s been in my bag for a while now and one I have found to be a nice benefit to my otherwise-very-mediocre game.

OK, now onto the news.

12 Final Thoughts on the U.S. Open

1. The Wyndham stuff from the Oakmont locker room is truly strange. Tron reported last Saturday night that he destroyed a few lockers and posted photo proof.

I actually understand guys going nuts on the course — we’ve all been there — but when you’ve had a chance to cool off and still going crazy in the locker room by destroying lockers? That seems to speak to a much deeper psychological (?) or emotional (?) problem than just “hey, golf is tough, Oakmont sucks, I threw a club.”

I generally like Wyndham and have only ever had good interactions with him, but it does seem as if he’s a little unstable at times based on some of the stories I’ve heard.

I’m not going to lose my mind just because Oakmont is historic and Hogan won there and all of that. I am going to say that this is not professional behavior, and whatever Wyndham has going on I hope he gets sorted out because he’s a mega talent that I legitimately enjoy watching.

Life is hard. Nobody is exempt.

Also, is the pope subtweeting the 2023 U.S. Open champ?

2. For my money (which is not a ton), there’s no better Twitter follow right now than Jamie Kennedy. His thread on J.J. Spaun’s winning putt is excellent and the type of thing I wish I had more time to type up.

Here’s the crux.

I was back behind the green wondering if he was going to three putt, and then I saw the speed about 75 percent of the way there and thought Yeah, he won the U.S. Open. And then it dropped.

It was truly a remarkable golf moment, up there with anything I’ve ever seen.

3. My top five “most chaotic major final rounds I’ve ever covered” power rankings in terms of how many different things were going on.

I thought about these for exactly 11 seconds so if I missed one, please email me Jason.

2016 U.S. Open (DJ ruling)
2017 Open (go get that)
2025 Masters (Rory)
2015 U.S. Open (Chambers madness)
2025 U.S. Open (this week)
2016 Masters (🫠)
2024 U.S. Open (Rory-Bryson)
2014 PGA (Rory/Phil in the dark)
2021 U.S. Open (10-car pileup of lambos)
2019 Masters (The Cat)
2022 Open (🫠)

I think 2022 Open is actually the most panicked I’ve ever been, trying to figure out how I was ever going to write about Rory breaking the drought at the Old Course. However, it wasn’t necessarily that chaotic.

Guessing Oakmont looks a bit different this week.

In writing these down, I have realized that U.S. Opens are almost always chaotic on Sundays, no matter whether we know who’s going to win or not (except when Brooks wins and leaves no doubt). I didn’t feel this year’s as deeply as some because I was mostly agnostic about who won, but there was still so much going on for the last two hours.

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

Tyrrell Hatton’s roller coaster interview.
Tons on the Ryder Cup, including my case for Spieth.
A new most meme-able player in the world?

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. This video of Hatton is pretty awesome. It would have been so perfect if — on the week above all other weeks that everyone was losing their absolute minds — Hatton had won. We didn’t quite get that, but I think we got the entire Hatton experience in two minutes in that video.

Also, when I envision Hatton, this is the exact face I see in my head. Except I never know if it’s because he’s joyous beyond belief or because he’s trying to ironically get through a murderous string of words.

5. Before the final round started on Sunday, I got steep on the final round from 1973. I was trying to figure out what the 2025 comp would be and whether there was a Scottie angle in play there.

Here’s what I found.

Johnny Miller wasn’t even on the radar after three rounds. Not even on the radar!

Then Sunday looked like this.

This would have been tantamount to Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, who was six back going into Sunday, shooting a 64 to win at 4 under. Or maybe Scottie shooting a 64 to win by one at 2 under. That one sounds a bit more plausible.

6. It’s probably time to have a Ryder Cup discussion. There’s still a long way to go as it relates to these teams, but two points here. The first is that this is what my team looked like a month ago when I went on the NLU pod.

Scottie
Xander
Bryson
Morikawa
JT
Spieth
Cantlay
Henley
English
Burns
Berger
McNealy

Another month of play, and I’ve put Spaun and Griffin in and taken McNealy and English out. Spaun will be there on points anyway. So my new 12 looks like this.

Scottie
Xander
Bryson
Morikawa
JT
Spieth
Cantlay
Henley
Spaun
Burns
Berger
Griffin

I would feel good about this team if the matches started this week.

7. Four other points here.

1. People are really worked up about new blood and young, hungry kids and whatever other trope you want to trot out there.

This the boys club you’re trying to break up?

I get it. They sucked in Europe. But I think picking a road team should be a very different exercise than picking a home team, and we can have that conversation for Adare. I’m just not sure we need to overhaul a dream team that absolutely pummeled Europe at Whistling Straits. Will Europe be better than they were when they got caught between generations? Absolutely, so maybe the score will be 16-12 instead of 19-9. 😃

Also, this made me laugh when I tweeted out my team.

2. I get that this is not the best course fit team. Cam Young and Tony Finau are absolutely on the watch list, and I’m willing to have that conversation come September. Finau has been a Ryder Cup dog, and I’m OK with him. But he’s not playing great right now and has probably not been good enough over the last six months. As for Cam? Sure, if he busts through the door, but his disposition doesn’t scream, “Gonna be an amazing emotional leader!” And yes, you need that less here than you do in Europe, which is why I’m monitoring.

3. Cam is one of my first three out along with Mav and Harris. Last three in are Henley, Berger and Griffin.

4. Here’s a profile.

Ranked No. 22 in the world (Data Golf).
Better over last six months than Burns, Xander, Griffin, Mav, English, Reed (as well as Ludvig, Hovland and Rose).
Better over the last three months than Cantlay, Xander, Morikawa, English, Henley, Berger (as well as Bob Mac, Lowry and Hatton).
Has won three majors.
Is part of the heart of the U.S. team.

Now imagine leaving that guy home.

You can’t. Or you shouldn’t.

People are out there acting like Spieth is ranked 200 in the world when the reality is that he’s having his best season since 2021 and has finished in the top 25 in six of his last nine events. Now imagine going to Bethpage and losing with that guy at home.

We honestly may never recover as a country.

5. “But he’s ranked 22nd in the U.S. team standings!” I could not possibly care any less. A lot of guys accumulated points in 2024 when Spieth was going through it with his wrist. He’s been really solid so far this year.

6. Brooks? I’m good. Wyndham? No. Reed? I’ll have a conversation with you after The Open. Novak? Same.

7. Keegan? The incremental value he adds over, say, Daniel Berger is overwhelmed by what you lose in having your captain also play in the matches. That would be a complete and total mess.

8. And to be honest, after talking to some people at the U.S. Open, it doesn’t sound like things are going perfectly in the lead up to Bethpage as it is. That, more than the team construction, is concerning given that Luke Donald has been falling asleep to a playlist of Edoardo Molinari naming potential pairings.

9. Haha, shocking that I have a lot to say about the Ryder Cup. Last one, though. There’s a lot of “this team suuuuuuuuuuucks” talk. That’s just not true. What is true is that this team has players whose names aren’t as sexy as Europe’s.

Keith Mitchell is not sexy. Check that, Keith Mitchell is sexy, but he’s not a sexy Ryder Cup name. However, he’s been objectively better at golf over the last six moths than Viktor Hovland and Ludvig Aberg. That feels stunning, but it’s true.

I think sometimes when someone is the best player from his country, we automatically think that person is tantamount to the best players other countries. But the reality is that the U.S. is deep on talent and players, even if you don’t love the names, and will be loaded up come New York.

8. Is Scottie becoming the most meme-able player in the world?

He would be taking the mantle from Rahm. Spieth is in the mix as well.

Might need a power ranking at some point.

9. My wife — Mrs. Normal — absolutely cooked in our U.S. Open family draft, finishing at +55 and winning by 13. I got vaporized by literally everyone in my family who participated (including the five-year-old by 21 shots!), and if the puppy would have had any draft picks, she probably would have gotten me, too.

Might be time to re-evaluate some life choices.

10. Speaking of contests, we had a tie in our Normal Sport U.S. Open fantasy contest. Here were the two teams that split the $1,000 top prize and $500 second place prize.

A couple of absolute ball-knowers here.

Both Rasmuses and Chris Gotterup? In this economy?!

I reached out to the winners. Here’s what one had to say.

As far as my team goes, it was really hard not to pick the best player in the world right now and future Ryder Cup stalwart, Ben Griffin (shout out Mr. Soly Solomon). In all seriousness, what he and Keegan are doing this year has been incredible. I felt like they were natural picks for this course (a lot of my picks had to do with course fit) along with the true no. 1, Mr. Scheffler.
I also tried to pick some guys who would be off the beaten path a little (The Postman, the other Rasmus) as well a couple other guys who have been playing well this year (Mav, Greyserman). I also think Gotterup will win multiple times on the Tour and might even sneak a major; he’s got the talent and absolutely mashes the ball. He could go on a run like Griffin in a few years.
Adam R.

11. On Sunday, I was reminded that at the majors — and Opens probably most of all — making picks on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday is absolutely outrageous. At 5:45 on Sunday evening, I couldn’t even tell you who was going to finish in the top 10!

And we’re supposed to pick somebody five days earlier!

12. Rory talked again last Sunday, which was unexpected, but not before he did this, which was also unexpected and very sick.

Never seen anything even remotely like this before. Looks fake!

Here’s what he said about the upcoming Open Championship.

I didn't realize how emotional I was going to be [in 2019] at Portrush. I think that was a thing I was unprepared for more than anything else. I remember I hit a shot into 12 or 13 Friday night obviously trying to make the cut. I remember the roar I got when the ball hit the green, and I felt like I was about to burst into tears. Just that support and that love from your own people. So I was unprepared for that.
I need to just get myself in the right frame of mind to feel those feelings again.
Rory McIlroy

That sounds more like the Rory we have grown to love.

He added this.

I think, look, if I can't get motivated to get up for an Open Championship at home, then I don't know what can motivate me. Yeah, as I said, I just need to get myself in the right frame of mind. I probably haven't been there the last few weeks.
But as I said, getting home and having a couple weeks off before that, hopefully feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, will get me in the right place again.
Rory McIlroy

I don’t need to re-litigate this entire thing, but I think Rory is a little disoriented right now and confused about what he wants and what direction he’s going in. Failure does that to us … but so does success. How many stories do we hear about people who sell their companies or summit the mountaintop in their given industry only to turn around and wonder who they are and why they’re here?

It seems like this is (obviously?) what’s going on here, and while it’s unfortunate, it’s also extremely common and understandable. I look forward to whatever it looks like for him to emerge from the other side of that, but until then I’ll quote Viktor …

I've been tearing myself down a little too much. … Just got to take that with me and be a little bit kinder to myself.
Viktor Hovland

Thank you for reading until the end.

You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a newsletter about golf that is 2,838 words (!!) long, although definitely not even close to as sick as Viktor is.

We are grateful for your support of this business.