Time to Blame the Podcasters

4. I’ve said this many times, and I will continue saying it. If we’re not going to change equipment, why don’t we change par? It would give tournaments like Detroit more credibility, and I think sickos would really love it.

I thought about this during the final round at Detroit last weekend. The restoration there visually looked incredible, but guys still shredded it to pieces when it came to scoring. So … stay with me here … why not shorten Nos. 3, 4, 8 and 14 and make them, respectively, a par 3, par 4, par 3 and par 4. Par is now 66, and the winning number is now -2 (which would have been sweet!).

Maybe this is not what casual fans want — it’s probably not — but I think one of these dartboard shootouts that’s looking for an identity should do this and see how it affects the emotional reception of the tournament.

5. I decided while watching last week that Rasmus has one of my favorite rarely-talked-about swings in golf. Some Ludvig in there. Some Cantlay in there. It’s so quiet and pretty. Could watch it all day.

6. I feel this and believe this deeply. I don’t know if you have had the same experience I’ve had of late, but I have found my desire to create and publish online wane a bit because of what a war it is to compete with all the nonsense that gets made every day.

Perhaps that’s a cop-out position by me, but I’ve definitely been exploring what it could mean on the physical product side. I find my own heart longing for tangible things to replace the up and down movement of my thumb on a piece of glass that seemingly has no end.

7. I get the Joe Posnanski newsletter in my inbox even though I don’t really follow baseball all that closely. Why? He writes in an aspirational way. With heart. With feeling. Without care for whether it’s perfectly grammatically correct.

This week’s newsletter was about the Dodgers and the MLB trade deadline, which I care almost nothing about. But then again, Posnanski barely writes about baseball. He writes about the psychology and emotion of being a fan. Of being a human.

An example.

Absolutely provocative! And — depending on how you view things — absolutely true. But the point is not whether I agree with Pos or I don’t. The point is that he thinks about the game and its tentacles in a brilliant and emotional way. He doesn’t get lost in VORP and xWar and whatever else — even though he does care about those things and does sometimes write about them.

I have never cared that much about help side defense and where the left end goes when you’re in cover 3. I want to know how a game made you feel or how you’re thinking about your team’s draft or why you root for whoever you root for. That stuff is just so much more interesting to me, and a shout out to Joe Pos for fostering that love for that type of sports fandom in me.

8. This is excellent.

Nobody is perfectly aligned enough with the cultural zeitgeist to know what’s going to be a hit and what’s not. Which is an argument in favor of just making as many high quality pieces as you are able to in a world that brings you a lot of joy and letting the chips fall wherever they’re going to fall.

I will always, always, always argue for “all things being equal, do whatever is most life-giving to you because that is the thing that will allow you to take as many shots as possible, and inevitably some of them will eventually fall.”

Easy to say.

Difficult to trust.

9. The U.S. Amateur starts next week. I got a press release on it the other day. There are two 15 year olds in the field. There’s a 63 year old. Folks from Vermont, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Hawaii (basically all the license plates we lacked on our Colorado trip), Paraguay, Singapore, Vietnam and Iceland. All teeing it up at Merion to figure who the best one is. There is something beautiful about both the meritocracy of golf — it literally does not matter what Miles Russell did last week or last month or last year — and also the global breadth of the game. There is little like it. Maybe nothing at all. This is true at all levels, but it’s easier to see and internalize at this one.

10. I listened to a lot of interesting podcasts and interviews on my drive home from Colorado last week. The best one I listened to was with DHH, who some of you know as the inventor of Ruby on Rails (normal sport). He’s incredibly smart and terrificly opinionated. Here was the best thing he said on this particular pod.

That is so good. So self-aware.

I don’t think I’m particularly good at either of these things, partly because I’m prideful about what people think about me and horrible at artificial constraints, but his prodding here was such a great encouragement to become better at both for the sake of the product you have (and also the one you’re building for the future 👀 ).

Thank you for supporting Normal Sport. We’re coming! Not like Spieth is coming, either. Actually coming. Scared about that but also so excited.