Issue No. 217 | June 15, 2025 | Read Online

OAKMONT, Pa. — One programming note before we get to Round 3 thoughts: Our pro shop is now open for everyone, not just members. You can check it out right here.

There’s plenty in there right now, and if you become a Normal Club member, you’ll get first rip at the Holderness and Bourne gear we’re dropping over the next week or so.

Onto my thoughts on Round 3 of the U.S. Open.

But First!

Today’s newsletter is presented by Ship Sticks.

There’s nothing like the final day of a major championship. One minute, it’s peak tense, as stressful as this dumb little golf world gets. The next minute, everybody is gone, back to their regular lives.

That will be the case again 24 hours from now, and a lot of the folks in attendance here at Oakmont will be using Ship Sticks to get their clubs from Oakmont back to where they’re from (or where they’re going).

If you’re doing this (or traveling anywhere with your clubs), you can get 20 percent off by using the code normalsport at check out.

Ship Sticks allows golfers to skip airport stress and costly airline fees with complimentary insurance, real-time tracking, dedicated support, and on-time delivery.

In the same way that Normal Sport offers white-glove email golf newsletter delivery, Ship Sticks offers white-glove shipping for golf clubs and luggage.

It is a tremendous service, that I have used personally and could not have had a better experience with. Remember, normalsport at checkout for 20 percent off shipping your clubs on your next golf trip.

OK, now onto the news.

12 Thoughts on Round 3 of the U.S. Open

1. A trio of mea culpas before we get to the goods.

1. I said the following on Saturday about Rory: I haven’t found myself caring about his rounds, whether he makes the cut, whether he doesn’t. It would probably be more fair (and accurate) to say that I’m not as invested as I normally am in how he plays. Semantics, maybe, but wanted to note that (more on Rory below).

2. On Friday, I noted this glove-on-the-belt thing as possible serial killer behavior and got called out for not knowing ball. Hand up, that’s on me. Apparently doing this keeps your glove dry and fresh, compared to stuffing the glove in your back pocket. I still think it looks bizarre, but may need to give it a try.

3. I said last week that Matt Wolff was a top 200 Data Golf player. Matt Wolff is not even close to a top 200 Data Golf player.

But we still love his work on the Pee Wee Herman documentary.

OK, I think that’s all the mea culpas. For now.

2. I was reading Joe Pompliano’s write up of Oakmont this weekend, and this stood out to me as a hilariously normal sport thing.

For its first 50 years, Oakmont remained true to Fownes’ vision, featuring sprawling views and no interior trees. But after the 1952 U.S. Open, writer Herbert Warren Wind described Oakmont as an “ugly, old brute of a course” that lacked beauty. Stung by the criticism, members embarked on a “beautification” plan. Over the following decade, Oakmont planted around 5,000 trees (including oaks and pines) throughout the course.
Huddle Up

The entire course of golf history was altered because a sportswriter (a lowly sportswriter!) called a club “ugly” and a “brute.” There is a hilarious middle school aspect to so many more adult interactions than we would care to admit, and this is certainly representative of that. Ten thousand trees were planted and torn down because Herb wrote something in his notebook about 191 acres in western Pa.

Amazing.

Additionally: The train horns and honking on the highway is truly mind-boggling normal sport behavior. Guys hear a cricket fart from 200 yards away in their backswing, but we’re all fine with 18-wheelers traveling 75 MPH and blowing people’s faces off with horns that sound like jets taking off.

3. I want to focus on the four leaders today, and let’s start with the guy at the top. There’s not a ton of juice behind Burns on site this week (or in the media center), but I’ll be riding for him on Sunday. Why? Couple of reasons.

1. He’s a dog. You follow a 65 at Oakmont with a 69 to lead the U.S. Open, and you get canine status in my book.

2. He answered the bell over and over. So many tremendous shots coming home, including this filthy spinner on 17.

3. Something I’ve been banging the drum on all week: It has to be so difficult to watch your bestie ascend to become not just one of the better players of his generation, but potentially one of the best players of all time.

I asked Burns about this on Saturday evening, and his response was incredibly gracious.

Watching him do that and watching him have success, it brings me a lot of joy, and him and his wife Meredith and Bennett, they're just an unbelievable family.
It's been such a joy to watch how they steward that success to others around them, and just the amount of respect that we have for them is very high.
Sam Burns

Which only makes me want him to win even more.

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

Thoughts on why Viktor may be the sickest sicko.
A note on Adam Scott’s longevity.
Rory speaks!

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.

Chapter 1: Having Fun In The Trees

5. Viktor is a maniac. A true one of one and something that most of his contemporaries are not: A character. Perhaps the sickest sicko on the property this week.

As I type this at 9:05 p.m. local time, he is still talking and gesticulating with his coach and caddie on the driving range about 200 yards to my left, even though he is one of four human beings under par at Oakmont this week.

Just before the late-night range session, he dropped a total gem that I think sums him up as well as I’ve ever heard a single quote sum someone up. Here it is.

Sure, we would all like to win, that's why we practice so hard. But there's also like a deep passion in me that I want to hit the shots. Like I want to stand up on the tee and hit the shots that I'm envisioning. When the ball's not doing that, it bothers me.
Viktor Hovland

That is some sick, sick stuff and gets at Hovland’s ethos perfectly.

Sure, most guys out here love the game, but he is unique even among the sickos. I heard Paul McGinley on Live From, urging him to get off the range, to not worry about trying to improve another 1 percent by tomorrow.

But I think that misses the bigger point, which is that this is where he thrives. By getting lost in the sauce at 9 p.m. on Saturday night of a major, he is being exactly himself. I don’t know if that’s the best route for everyone to win a major, but I do think it’s probably the best route for him to win a major (which I think he will do more than once).

6. To talk about Adam Scott, let’s go to a quote from J.J. Spaun.

I mean it's kind of everything that you prepare and hope to have the opportunity to have at these big events, let alone just getting into them [is] so hard.
J.J. Spaun

This is Spaun’s ninth major. He’s 34 years old.

Scott is just 10 years older. This is his 97th major.

He played his first in summer 2000, when Viktor Hovland was 2 years old. He played his second one year later and hasn’t missed a single one since then. He’s played ninety-six consecutive major championships.

That is truly remarkable. And yeah, maybe Scott’s career has been disappointing compared to what everyone thought it might be at one point — especially after blowing the 2012 Open Championship — but a million guys out here would sign up for playing 97 majors at the beginning of their career. That is so much meaningful golf over the course of 25 years.

And he has a chance on Sunday to redeem any disappointment there might be with what he has or has not done by touching off the Augusta-Oakmont double (and throw in a Players Championship as well).

The crowds here know it, and he absolutely does, too. He knows — and has more or less admitted — that this is probably his last stand. There will be some desperation in the air on Sunday, which will make the last 18 all the more compelling.

It would be super fulfilling. Everyone out here has got their journey, you know. Putting ourselves in these positions doesn't just happen by fluke. It's not easy to do it. I really haven't been in this kind of position for five or six years, or feeling like I'm that player. But that's what I'm always working towards.
It's not that easy to figure it all out.
But if I were to come away with it tomorrow, it would be a hell of a round of golf and an exclamation point on my career.
Adam Scott

As Scott walked off on 18 on Saturday evening, regal as ever, boring holes into the eyes of the volunteers walking with his group as he thanked them and handed them autographed golf balls, one man’s voice rose above the rest.

Scott stepped onto the bridge he would cross to sign his card, and someone yelled, “You’re the best in the world, Adam!” That’s not exactly true. But it has definitely been true a lot over the last 25 years, and it may indeed be true again on Sunday.

Storylines at these majors come from unexpected places, and this one is right up there with Rose at Troon last summer. I don’t know if it will happen, but I do know that I would love it if it did.

7. Another day, another thought on Rory. I wholly expected him not to talk on Saturday following his round, but for the first time after a major round since winning the Masters, he actually did.

It … wasn’t pretty.

If you haven’t seen the video, you can watch it below.

I have been watching, talking to and covering Rory for a long time. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen him look that unsure of himself or a situation.

I would like to officially double down on what I wrote on Saturday about how he is experiencing this weird post-Masters downer. This directionless void after touching off the goal of a lifetime. This is not uncommon for achievements like that one. Scottie talked about this very thing on Saturday evening. Olympians talk about it all the time.

What do I even do next?

How Rory has handled everything deserves critique. I’ve done it and stand by it. I think he’s been a bit ridiculous at times and has not been the professional we have come to known.

However, I also sympathize.

Rory lives an exhausting life, and we have all felt what it’s like to get back to our regular routing after a mountaintop experience. It’s strange, and that’s after, like, watching our kid win a youth baseball tournament, not closing the Masters to complete the career slam.

So yeah, I guess what I’m saying is that there is some grace to be had here.

Rory is clearly going through it.

The potential outcome here — even for reasonable people — is to say, “Oh he’s so soft. Tiger would never do that” and for the unreasonable people to say much worse. But the truth is that we love Rory because he’s decidedly not Tiger. And to experience the valley right after the mountain is about as relatable as being a human can be.

That’s not to say he gets a pass. He needs to talk and to not smash tee markers and all the silly stuff he’s done over the last two months. It’s only to say that while I can in no way identify with his specific life experience, I can appreciate the position he’s in and find his odd reaction to what has maybe been the unfulfilling ending of a lifelong dream to be — in a strange way — an extension of the humanity we have come to love.

8. Oh man, this made me laugh.

Oakmont’s forgotten [failed] rough stimp meter.

9. This is very well said.

I don’t really have anything to add. I just wanted to include because I think Ben is smart, and it’s a very normal sport thing that the sport we all love is almost a different sport altogether when it’s played at the highest level from the level it’s played at in the regular season. It would be like if the NBA playoffs were three on three or included a slam dunk contest for 10 points to start the game or were played by FIBA rules or something.

Strange stuff.

10. Scottie isn’t really in it, but he isn’t really not in it, either. He missed a 4 footer on No. 1 and a 2 footer (!) on No. 8, or he would be 2 over and just six back. It probably won’t happen, but he absolutely could go out in 31 tomorrow and at least make things interesting just as the leaders are getting rolling.

We got more chaos than we bargained for here in 2016 so maybe we’re due for a very straightforward and normal finale here.

But somehow I doubt that’s going to be the case.

Today’s Scottie range thought.

11. This satisfied me more than it should have. Though the dream is obviously to have 1-2-3-4-5 down the left and 5-4-3-2-1 down the right. We got so close!

Also, it led to this sick, sick stat from JRay.

@KylePorterNS 1955 LPGA Titleholders final board
— Justin Ray (@JustinRayGolf)
11:10 PM • Jun 14, 2025

12. Great take here.

The field is now in his world got me pretty good.

Had to do it.

14. Saturday was awesome. This might not be the most exciting golf course for major championship golf. It also might not be the greatest major leaderboard of all time. But the sun falling over one of the great American venues with four guys trying to keep their heads above water and get into the final two pairings. Golf shots all over the yard. High, low, spinny, flighted, draws, cuts, flops and runners. It was pure golf produced by one of the purest courses ever built.

Was it as thrilling at, say, Augusta is every year?

Of course not. But that last 90 minutes hummed, and we get to do it all over again for another 18 holes in the finale.

Thank you for reading until the end.

You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a newsletter about golf that is 2,665 words (!!) long, although definitely not even close to as sick as Viktor is.

We are grateful for your support of this business.