Issue No. 266 | October 28, 2025 | Read Online

Greetings!

In case you missed this last week, we dropped a couple of different things.

1. A new collection of Norman attire in our pro shop. See below for a few of the pieces.

2. I don’t know that anyone was asking for it, but I wrote my story — how all of this happened. Why I got into sportswriting to begin with. How I fell in love with golf. You can read it all right here.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Holderness and Bourne, whose gear I can’t stop wearing this fall. Between their Ventura vest and Jackson pullover — both of which we have put Norman on and will be available very soon — I can’t get enough.

One thing I was thinking about the other day as it relates to Holderness is how easy it would be to rest on their laurels and how much they refuse to do it.

This is harder than it seems.

Here’s what Alex Holderness said in a recent Q&A that we did.

This fall’s Ventura vest is part of that inspiration as well as part of H&B’s innovative AIRATION collection, which features a technical fabric yet, designed with micro perforations engineered for optimal airflow, comfort, and athletic performance. All I know is that it feels great in the cool fall weather, even in the trees looking for your ball, and I hope they never stop aspiring to building terrific products.

OK, now onto the news.

Let’s Run it Back

We are doing something a bit different this week. Jason and I have set aside a few weeks this fall to work on bigger projects. Books we’ve had in the hopper and non-newsletter initiatives we’ve been dreaming about.

This week, we’re trying to finish off our book about the 2025 Masters, which is basically just a collection of my writing from that week as well as a few new essays I added in throughout the year on Rory and that week.

We’ve been working with Greig Anderson from And Golf. to help us put it all together. Greig is a fellow sicko and his direction has been fantastic. Just three guys in the weeds discussing how much space a quote like “break 50 this week, Bryson!” should take up on the page. An absolute blast. Here’s a preview that I’m not sure I’m supposed to disclose, but I also can’t help myself.

Anyway, in light of the time we need to put into that project this week, we decided to simply run back a portion of that Masters week content. Maybe you missed it the first time around. Maybe you, like us, have thought about that round 1,000 times since then. Maybe you just need something to get you juiced up today.

Hopefully this assortment of thoughts from our Saturday newsletter at the 2025 Masters (with a few notes in retrospect!) helps with all of that. It was entitled, appropriately, There Is No Going Back.

From: Saturday, April 13, 2025

1. We know one thing on Sunday with Rory is irrefutable: There will be tears. We just don’t know why. I once told Rory that he reminds me so much of Federer. Every tournament, he said to me, he absorbs the crowd, receives everything from those around him, but he doesn’t give them much.

Then, at the very end — like Fed collapsing at Wimbledon and crying on the grass — it all comes pouring out.

That will happen again on Sunday.

Ed. note: I could not have imagined on Saturday just how much would come pouring out on Sunday.

Either 11 years of frustration and fear and fury will sink down forever into these hills, or he will weep his eyes out at the best chance he’ll ever have to do the only thing he ever wanted.

We are at the point of no return.

You know it. I know it. Most importantly, he knows it. The question: Is everyone ready to hang on for five hours while all of that teeters just above the void?

2. This is, almost unquestionably, the best he’s ever played here. The most complete he’s ever been. He’s driving it like an absolute monster — his first two drives on Saturday were a combined 700 yards — but it’s that 75 percent holdy wedge that’s going to help him win the tournament.

It’s the shot we used to scream about from 125 and in. He figured it out, though, and I’ve never seen him hit it better.

Ed. note: Of course he doubled the first on Sunday. Of course of course of course. 

Current strokes gained ranks this week.

Driving: 2nd
Approach: 1st
Ball striking: 1st
Tee to green: 1st
Overall: 1st

Is this really happening?

The hats are inevitable.

3. My question: Does he want the fight? The answer through 54 is a resounding, “hell yes.” One person fairly close to Rory told me this week is the most relaxed he’s ever seen him in his career. I don’t know why that’s case, but it does undoubtedly seem to be the case.

It’s also the case that he is hitting championship golf shots. No. 1, No. 4, No. 5, No. 9, No. 11, No. 12, No. 15 (!!) and No. 17 come to mind from his round on Saturday. All just proper big boy championship shots.

You know Bryson’s going to brawl, all hopped up on nothing but driver shafts and desire. He’s going to walk to the first like Tyson in his prime. Punching the air, dancing as he goes. He must be a nightmare to play against, to have on your hip for 18 holes.

Rory said on Saturday night that he would stay in his own world. With Bryson off doing whatever Bryson does, Rory said he would be in a cocoon throughout the day.

Rory wanted the whole damn world on Saturday afternoon. Will he bring that same energy to Round 12 with somebody who already cleaned his clock?

Ed. note: They both kind of faded on Sunday, but Rory had done enough the first three days (somehow!) to win the tournament.

5. Bryson is the greatest character. Almost cartoon-like. Whipping up the fans on 16 and 18, running up the crosswalk to scoring, slapping hands like Cal Ripken making the rounds at Camden after he broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games played streak.

Hitting balls under a full moon.

Pounding bags and bags of balls, nearing quadruple digits for the week.

Individual sports are constructed with a universe of characters, and there have been few better ones over the last decade than Bryson. He is easy to hate and has also somehow become almost endearingly easy to love.

Mostly though? I appreciate his absurdity and how it helps my own personal chess board as I move pieces around and think about how they compare and contrast. How brilliant it is when not everyone’s the same.

13. I thought on Saturday about how this wouldn’t have meant as much to Rory in 2011 as it does right now. How, in a lot of ways, this carrot of the Masters has perhaps preserved the ambition of his career.

KVV and I got to talking about (personal) paths not taken on Saturday morning, and as happens at tournaments like this, we begin to tie our lives to what’s playing out on the course.

During our chat, I was reminded of this quote from Rory about La La Land.

If he wins that 2011 Masters, maybe he’s the same complete player he is now, but also maybe not. Paths not taken are paths not taken, but I suspect he’s grateful for how it all turned out and how much winning a 5th major — this major — would now mean.

14. And now we’re at the end. There is no going back. Saturday felt like Sunday.

How do we recover?

It has already been the best Masters maybe since I started covering golf, and its closing act somehow portends to be the greatest of them all.

Ed. note: I had no idea — no idea — just how true this statement would be.

The implications are staggering.

There are only two options: Rory is either going to win the Masters or again have his heart shredded (again) by Bryson. Those are the only two scenarios. Corey Conners is not walking through that door. Neither is Scottie. Or Ludvig. Nobody.

It’s Rory or Bryson. That’s it.

Ed note: ⤵️ 

It feels like Phil at Kiawah. You reached the point of no return in the third round where it was like, Well, this is going to be historic either way, and I have no idea how it’s going to go!

After Rory birdied 5 on Saturday, I started feeling that way. He’s either going to win the Masters and restart the chase, or he’s going to have his soul stomped on by the YouTube Golfer in front of a world that’s partly desperate for that very thing.

15. Dreams.

I walked the last eight holes with Rory’s group on Saturday. There were backups on 16, 17 and 18. Rory leaned on his club, the solo Masters leader, staring up in space.

What could he have been thinking?

What could he have been feeling?

Was he considering the nervous child who clearly had the full suite of skills from a preposterous age? Was he thinking about the 8-year-old version of himself who chipped into the washing machine?

Was he thinking about the 21-year-old who lost it all?

Or the 3-year-old with the finish of a future champ?

Dreams don’t really come true.

Not the ones we have as kids. Everyone grew up dreaming of being a big leaguer, of making the winning putt at the Masters. It doesn’t actually happen, though.

But sometimes it does. Very rarely. Almost never. But sometimes.

Why do you love him? Why does this matter to you?

Why does this matter to me? Why do I care?

Everyone has a different answer.

I think for me it’s the ways he wrestles with his dreams. It’s the almost embarrassment that he was given all the gifts.

It’s that he has recognized that the preservation of his own humanity was more important than these gifts all along, but he also still wants the spoils.

That’s a difficult truth. The toughest reconciliation.

He has, as KVV pointed out, warred and failed. Stumbled and fallen. Triumphed and trusted. Lost his cool and lost his way. He has rarely (maybe never), though, lost himself.

And on Sunday, when he gets to the first tee with the Large YouTube Golfer at his back and No. 5 within his grasp, you know that he will know everything that’s at stake.

And that it will be more difficult for him than maybe any golfer in recent memory to quiet all the noise, to quell all the voices.

He is not a robot.

This is why you love him.

He is the most human superstar in sport.

The washing machine was full of dreams.

On Sunday, no matter what happens, the water will flow.

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 2.043 words. Everything you read and consume was created from scratch by two humans who are absolutely obsessed with the game.

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