Issue No. 242 | August 26, 2025 | Read Online

On Sunday evening, Mrs. Normal and I were working on the kitchen or dinner or something, and I told her something I presumed she would excited about: “The golf season is finally over!”

Her response was both emblematic of her general disposition toward the PGA Tour and also sort of correct. “False!” she said. “The season is never over.”

This is … true.

Here’s what Scottie said on Sunday at East Lake.

Imagine Josh Allen saying this after losing the AFC Championship. “I’ll take a couple of days off and be ready for New England, which is who we play in 18 days.”

What a bizarre sport and league.

We will get to more on the end of the PGA Tour season as well as more than you probably want on Keegan’s Ryder Cup decisions shortly, but first a thank you to Seed Golf for presenting this newsletter and for partnering with Normal Sport all year.

Last week Seed sent me (Jason) and our Normal Club giveaway winner Trevor + a friend to Ireland for the Links Challenge at Carne and Enniscrone. We’ve got some fun stories to tell here and on normalsport dot com down the road, but for now I wanted to share something I realized during the trip.

Seed balls are awesome to play with and to lose.  

I realized this on the 3rd hole at County Sligo called Metal Man. Great course great hole name. Dean and I were both having trouble with the lip of a bunker. I hit one that came back and hit the next one into ankle-high grass behind the bunker. If you thought we could find a ball that was 6 feet away from my divot, you would be wrong. Irish grass has the frustrating ability to eat golf balls up. Lost balls stay LOST.

We donated a lot of Seed balls to the courses on our trip, which got me thinking “Are Seed golf balls the perfect Irish golf ball?” No one likes losing balls, but you’re going to lose them anyway, so why not take some of the burn away by playing affordable golf balls? Drop another one and keep playing.

That felt very much in the spirit of enjoying Irish golf. It’s not even exclusive to Irish golf.

If you want to play an awesome ball that doesn’t bum you out too much when you lose it, check out Seed. And if you never lose golf balls, bravo Calvin Peete, you’ll like their most durable ball The County Mile.

Use discount code NORMALSPORT for 20% off your first order.

OK, now onto the news.

One Thing I Loved

One thing I thought about a lot regarding Tommy’s journey to win No. 1 on the PGA Tour is how difficult it must be for him as it relates to his peers.

We talk often about letting yourself down or letting the people around you down or letting fans down or letting those of us who root for Tommy down. But we rarely consider what it means to struggle in front of the people you share a profession with.

And yet, those are often the people I consider most when I think about succeeding or failing in my own job. Within that, though, Tommy seemed to retain a joy and an almost irrational optimism that belied failure after failure.

He maintained at every turn that he loved coming to work — something that’s far more valuable than winning $10 million — and spoke after his win about the importance of being a kind and good human first and a successful athlete second.

All of this culminated for me when Justin Rose — who just flattened Tommy two weeks ago in his ongoing bid for that first victory — whipped out his iPhone like someone attending his first pro golf tournament on Sunday afternoon.

It says a lot about Rose and a lot about the Euro Ryder Cup team (they must just make more putts!). But it says a lot more about Tommy. That he is someone who his peers delight in rooting for. That he has in seemingly every way remained optimistic and joyful.

It is a rare and good thing to be that great at golf. But it is a much rarer and better thing to be that beloved by the people you spend every single day with who are also trying to destroy your world every time you tee it up.

One Thing Jason Loved

[Jason here] Watching Rose film Tommy bringing it home made me wonder why he’s so beloved by his peers and fans (especially Tron). It made me think of a few things. Like the old saying “God loves a trier” or what F1 legend Niki Lauda said during his Laureus Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.

Daniel Pink makes an interesting case that upward counterfactual thinking (what if I made more putts?) actually makes perpetual runner-ups more equipped to win compared to other losers.

In Tommy’s case, it was years and years of what ifs and public pain. I love the way Jain’s letter to Tommy comic captures how he got through the gauntlet and why it makes Sunday’s victory that much sweeter.

Normal Sport

1. A very normal thing that one of the stories of the year — Fleetwood chasing and catching his first victory — may have only happened because … the rules of the league changed about a third of the way through the season.

2. Roberto Castro recently noted that the final level of Tour Sauce (stuff only pros do) is lining up outside the driving range ropes at a 30-player event when nobody else is even out there (which Hideki did last week).

I would like to submit this. Walking over to your kids and having them kiss your putter in the middle of a round for both $10 million and (potentially) a spot on the Ryder Cup team. The final boss. The Sauce Boss.

Take of the Week

Very much related to all the Tommy stuff: Storytelling is undefeated. It’s difficult to manufacture the built-in drama of a star like Tommy trying and failing so many times, but the Tour could definitely do a better job of this in general, and as Brian Rolapp noted last week, if the product is excellent — and the product very much includes meaningful narrative arcs like Tommy’s — then the commercial side will take care of itself.

Case in point. ⬇️ 

What I’m Hearing

There is an uncomfortable amount of behind-the-scenes buzz about Ben Griffin being left off this U.S. Ryder Cup team.

And listen, did I scoff at the idea of Ben Griffin as recently as two months ago? Probably. You can almost certainly find that tweet or at least talk to someone who I had a private conversation with. But did Ben Griffin 1. Earn his way onto the team and 2. Become one of the most valuable players for the U.S. in the process? Absolutely.

Griffin is currently the seventh-ranked player in the world (Data Golf) and has been the third-best American over the last three months.

Why are these rumors persisting?!

Many are saying there are concerns about his creatine use.

I’m kidding.

At this point, reading between the lines, it seems like the captain’s pick locks are as follows …

JT
Morikawa
Cantlay

With three of Keegan, Griffin, Burns and Young rounding out the team. This flipped for me as recently as Sunday evening after I wrote that I thought Griffin was a lock. There’s too much chatter to consider that the case now, and Wednesday’s presser (which I’ll be at) will be fascinating.

If Keegan wants to take himself (and I honestly can’t blame him at this point), then the easy move is to cut Morikawa — who has one top 10 since April — and bring Griffin, Burns and Young. I’m fine with this!

What I will not be fine with is leaving Griffin off the team in favor of a playing captain as well as Morikawa, who has just had a weird and deflating year.

Here’s a look at the head to head between Griffin (on the left) and Morikawa (on the right) since the PGA.

This would be much more of a boys club move than anything that happened in Rome. And they’ll still probably get away with it and win the event, but I feel terrible for Griffin (if it happens) and will be just generally bummed out by the entire thing.

Also, I am all worked up about a hypothetical that may not happen and even if it does probably won’t affect the outcome of the event.

Send help.

Stat of the Week

Since the end of March, Scottie …

• Won five times.
• Was beaten at multiple events by five golfers.

Fleetwood beat him three times. Rose did too. Spaun, Henley and Rory got him twice. Nobody else beat him in a single tournament more than one time.

He just tied Ben Hogan in consecutive top eight finishes. Sometimes it feels like everyone is like, Yeah well he’s been a decent amount better than Ben Griffin since the PGA and then JRay is out here saying, You got the wrong Ben!

Corrupt Golf Media

The Mules have been let loose, and Adam Schupak got the goods last week.

Here are James Hahn and Robert Garrigus.

Would — I cannot emphasize this next part enough — watch.

Here’s the thing about the Mules. They actually make some good points.

When Hahn notes that the players should not be making decisions or that Spieth should not be receiving all these sponsor exemptions — these are good takes!

But they put them out there in the least self-aware way possible — yelling about playing a three-time major winner for sponsor exemptions?! — and so the quotes and the actually halfway decent points just get thrown in with the rest of the social media drivel.

How is This App Free?

If you understand this comment, you are 1. In too deep and 2. Probably cackling like I did. GGG is Gabby Golf Girl, who played in last week’s Creator Classic at East Lake.

😂 😂 😂

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