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loIssue No. 202 | May 18, 2025 | Read Online
He flirted with the lead all day. Got it to 7 under at one point on the back. Played the Green Mile relatively well. Smashed drivers off the deck.
Tried to will himself into real contention at a major for the first time.
He did his best.
And then he just got vaporized by one of the best players of the last 25 years.
I could describe it in detail for you.
But I don’t need to.
This says it all.
Si Woo has seen unspeakable things.
Vince dot gif.
The 2025 PGA Championship is over.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Seed Golf. While we cannot promise Seed’s golf balls will be free of mud, we can tout them — whether you play them up or down — as the best value in the golf ball market.
It’s the ball I have in the bag right now, and it’s a ball you should try out, too.
I asked founder Dean Klatt recently what the hardest part of making a golf ball is. His answer? … Everything.
From a golfer's perspective, I would scope out what I wanted the [ball] to do. How fast I wanted it to come off the club face, what type of spin I wanted, how far it would accelerate through the air, what the peak height would be, what the direction was, how far it would fly, how far it would run out, all that type of stuff.
Then we take it to the lab, [to] the guys that actually knew what they're doing, and say, How do we engineer something that will have this level of performance? It had to perform equally or as close as possible to the market leading products.
Otherwise the brand wouldn't have taken off nor survived if it did take off.
Dean Klatt
Because the golf ball is so heavily regulated, it was perhaps easier for a company like Seed to get close to what the big boys were doing but for a much lower cost.
That creates value for you, the consumer, the loser of many blocked and hooked drives that end up buried in the mud, or even worse … in the middle of the fairway with mud on the side of them.
Kidding.
Mostly!
OK, now onto the news.
We will announce our giveaways on Monday morning. I haven’t forgotten!
1. Scottie looked off balance over the first two and a half days. Not bad, per se, but not great. Not, you know … Scottie. The 33 going out on Saturday was nice. He looked like he was finding his way: “I just found kind of the right sequence today and was seeing my shots really well,” he said.
Then came the final five.
He didn’t miss a shot (shout out Data Golf for pointing this out).
Let’s recap the five holes.
No. 14: 1.55 SG
No. 15: 0.64
No. 16: 0.32
No. 17: 1.42
No. 18: 1.30
Add it all up, and that’s just over 5.0 strokes gained over the last five holes. In other words, the field played those holes in even par and he played them in 5 under. With the board gathering and swirling at the very top, Scottie cleared the table with one swipe, and now the tournament is over.
Everyone always asks what is the Green Mile and never how is the Green Mile.
2. There comes a time in every major when the winner shows his hand. Most of the time it happens on Sunday. Rarely, it happens on Friday. Never on Thursday. Saturday afternoon is prime time for such a thing.
Scottie’s fist pumping eagle on No. 13 at ANGC last year in the third round comes to mind. Rory’s eagle-eagle finish at Hoylake in 2014 does, too. Spieth’s Masters was over that Friday afternoon when he nipped his fourth flagstick of the day.
This one? You knew as it was happening exactly what was happening. That time when you can see the tournament may be tilting is wild because somebody is swinging to put guys on the mat, and you can’t stop watching to see if they’re going to connect.
Spoiler: He did, and this little anecdote from someone who was there — where you could literally see the tournament turning — was lovely.
3. It was the shot into 17 that did it for me. Not one hour earlier, Bryson tried to do too much with 9 iron on this very hole and dumped it into the water. He said afterward that he caught a bit of wind and “the wind just pumped it, nothing I can do.” The wind hit it, surely, but nothing he could do? It was hooking off the club, and you can’t put five in play at that moment. On Thursday morning? Maybe. But not on Saturday afternoon.
Scottie on the other hand? Whew, watch this.
It’s not fancy, but taking water out of play and pounding the middle of the green guarantees 3 on a hole that was playing nearly a half stroke over par, the hardest hole on the course all day.
A championship level golf shot.
Quail Hollow may not give you a ton of optionality, but it does demand some real golf shots, which I appreciated and has not always been true of recent PGAs. This was not even the best shot Scottie hit on the closing stretch, but it was the most impressive one to me, the one that most easily explains why he’s such a champion.
The putt is icing of course, but this shot was emblematic of how he was kind of searching for the groove for the first 45 holes, and how easily he found it coming home.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members, and it will include some thoughts on the following …
• Some thoughts on Rory’s hot driver.
• A good NBA comp for Scottie (there are many).
• Some hilarious Si Woo quotes.
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. I know I compared him to Jokic in last week’s back-and-forth with Joseph LaMagna, but I actually think Scottie might be Tim Duncan. Never going to wow you in a vacuum, not going to win the combine or the dunk contest and you’re never going to end up on the wrong side of a SC Top 10 play against him.
But if you want to roll with him, you’re going to have to endure an unusual level of sustained greatness for longer than you are comfortable with.
That it’s boring is a feature, not a bug. If you want to take Scottie down in a championship setting, you are going to have to withstand an onslaught of consistent performance on a plane you might be unfamiliar with.
Also, both do that crazy eyes/mouth hanging open thing when something doesn’t go their way.
 |  |
5. Si Woo has seen some things recently. Scottie hit him with 61-63 at the Nelson just two weeks ago en route to a 39-shot victory over the rest of that field. He described what that felt like recently to Dan Rapaport.
Every description was better than the one before it.
  |   |
That last screenshot is the “too small” of golf, which is what everyone is right now against Scottie, who has gained 22.1 strokes on the field in the last three rounds he’s played with Si Woo.
No wonder he looked like this in the aftermath.
6. On Friday, Max had an amusing quote after hitting his tee shot on No. 14 from 341 yards to 2 feet.
It was not the best shot I ever hit. I was aiming one yard inside the right bunker, so I toed it like the perfect amount. I looked up slightly scared of it going left, but obviously it was still a good drive. I mean, you don't hit it there intentionally unless you're Scottie or something.
Max Homa
So of course Scottie hit it from 304 yards to 3 feet (on purpose) on Saturday.
Of course.
7. Want to talk something other than Scottie? Nah, not yet. But we will.
Here’s a list.
Jack
Tiger
Palmer
Player
Snead
Faldo
Phil
Hogan
Watson
Nelson
Seve
What do those men have in common?
Multiple Masters wins and at least one major championship elsewhere. So three plus total majors and at least two of them are green jackets. Scottie joins them tomorrow if (when) he wins.
A decent group.
8. Bryson continues to drive it like a monster. Here are his ball speeds on holes where he hit driver.
No. 1: 194
No. 2: 192
No. 3: 188
No. 5 190
No. 7: 192
No. 9: 194
No. 10: 193
No. 11: 194
No. 12: 194
No. 15: 195
No. 16: 195
He’s like one of those freak pitchers who gets stronger as the game goes on. Who’s throwing 97 in the 8th on his 110th pitch after barely touching 95 in the second.
Unfortunately for him, he’s losing strokes on approach, which has to get cleaned up before he’s going to win one of these.
I dug through the numbers a bit on Saturday evening, and it looks like he’s losing from 50-125 yards. Those short, pitch-y shots like the one he won the U.S. Open with last year. That’s so fixable, and if he finds it by Oakmont that might be three majors for the Big Boy as well.
During his post round interview with Kira Dixon, Bryson was crushing a cookie like he was discussing snacks with Bob Does Sports guys on Youtube. When asked about good parts of his game he said “This cookie is good.” Forever the entertainer. It’s great to have him in the mix.
9. Alex Noren, eh? Torn hamstring, eight rounds since last September. Now playing in the final pairing of the second major championship of the year, a tournament in which I’m not sure if I could have told you definitively whether he was in the field as recently as Friday morning.
Well, the bad part of it is that it takes a long time to heal, and it was 90 percent torn. So I had that 10 percent left to make it heal back so I didn't have to have surgery. If it was actually torn, I would not play right now. That was lucky but also bad at the same time.
Alex Noren | 2025 PGA
Normal sport stuff.
10. I have some takes on the Rory nonconforming driver, but after writing like 1,000 words on it I figured nobody wanted to read that on the last night Spieth would ever lead Scottie in major championships. He’s led him for 10 consecutive years, and that probably lasts just 24 more hours.
Anyway, my primary take is that it’s absurd that …
1. There is random testing but also …
2. No real punishment.
The point of randomly testing guys for anything is to dissuade them from doing something. There is random drug testing in the Olympics, and the punishment is a ban from your respective sport. But if you combine random driver testing with no punishment then you are only hurting the top players, who will leak out and are the only ones anyone cares about playing with a hot driver. This is … bizarre to me!
It’s very normal sport to have a rule that only 1/3 of any given field is held to (that’s how many were tested this week). And the response from some is, Well, it’s random testing so it should work for the whole field. But there’s no punishment so it doesn’t!
Put a real punishment in play, and the random testing will work. Otherwise, you’re just incentivizing the mules (who, again, nobody cares about if they have hot drivers) to get away with hot drivers and simultaneously disincentivizing the superstars — who will be embarrassed and could bring embarrassment to their manufacturer (Rory has literally said this!) — from playing with drivers as hot as those of the mules!
We’re talking about tiny, probably insignificant, margins.
But it is a loophole that needs to be closed up. Anyway, more on this tomorrow (hopefully Rory will actually talk about it at some point).
11. I would like to issue a mea culpa here on giving Scottie and Xander crap for their mud ball complaints on Thursday.
I did note that I see the other side and understand where they’re coming from, but I read Porath on Saturday, and he said it so much better than I did.
I find it hard to condemn players for skipping press obligations while also condemning them for being whiners. To be clear, it’s rather easily done. Media, social media, and past players-turned-media can critique everything six ways to Sunday. But I find it difficult to do in a way that’s intellectually honest.
The perspectives of Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffle on mud balls immediately after their first rounds were incredibly valuable. We got two major winners explaining their viewpoints and feelings on the matter, and how it impacts their craft, which very few on the planet can speak to. They were specific and measured, relatively unemotional.
You don’t have to agree with it, but it’s not “soft” or whining. This is what we want, these perspectives from the scant few who could express them as elite players.
TFE
No notes.
12. It was so great to see Rahm back in the mix at a major. I will double and triple down on him as an all timer for the following reason.
SG per round through first 150 PGA Tour events (plus majors).
Rahm: 2.10
Scottie: 2.06 (139 events)
Rory: 1.99
Spieth: 1.84
Morikawa: 1.70 (130)
Xander: 1.59
JT: 1.58
Koepka: 1.31
Bryson: 1.26 (148)
DJ: 1.09
Generational, and one so-so year (that wasn’t actually that bad) doesn’t change that for me. Also, you can tell he’s bothered by it, which is both great and fits who we believe him to be!
Hard to express how hungry I may be for a major, about as hungry as anybody can be in this situation. Very happy to be in position again.
Rahm | 2025 PGA
13. Couple of final notes and tweets before the last 18.
• I’m fine with the T Mobile activation if it means fewer commercials!
• Was the tree spitting Scottie’s ball back out fair? Should we throw it into the woods since that wasn’t fair? Or is that different than the mud ball?
• Loved this quote from Big Tone:
Yeah, the hardest part is, I would say, for me, is just not getting ahead of yourself and not thinking too far ahead. No matter what type of start you get off to, 72 holes is a marathon. But Sundays in major championships are their own marathon. It's like an individual race.
Once you get yourself now into contention, it's a whole different race now on Sunday than it was the first 54 holes. The nerves are there, no question. All of us will be feeling them.
Big Tone | 2025 PGA
• This on Jhonny Vegas’ hat got me so good. Incredible Twittering.
• So did this.
• And this after Aaron Rai nearly domed somebody up on Friday afternoon.
• And one final one on Scottie.
What a strange last 366 days it’s been. Scottie’s arrest. Scottie’s freedom. Bryson-Rory at the U.S. Open. Rory losing the Masters 28 times before finally winning it. And now Scottie again, on the precipice of major No. 3. It has been nearly 20 years since we have had six majors in a row that we were won by eventual multiple-time champions. That run was Tiger-Tiger-ZJ-Angel-Padraig-Tiger. This run would be just as good: Scottie-Xander-Bryson-Xander-Rory-Scottie.
Thank you for reading until the end.
You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a newsletter about golf that is 2,829 words (!!) long about a single round of golf, and we are grateful for your support of this business.
loIssue No. 202 | May 18, 2025 | Read Online
He flirted with the lead all day. Got it to 7 under at one point on the back. Played the Green Mile relatively well. Smashed drivers off the deck.
Tried to will himself into real contention at a major for the first time.
He did his best.
And then he just got vaporized by one of the best players of the last 25 years.
I could describe it in detail for you.
But I don’t need to.
This says it all.
Si Woo has seen unspeakable things.
Vince dot gif.
The 2025 PGA Championship is over.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Seed Golf. While we cannot promise Seed’s golf balls will be free of mud, we can tout them — whether you play them up or down — as the best value in the golf ball market.
It’s the ball I have in the bag right now, and it’s a ball you should try out, too.
I asked founder Dean Klatt recently what the hardest part of making a golf ball is. His answer? … Everything.
From a golfer's perspective, I would scope out what I wanted the [ball] to do. How fast I wanted it to come off the club face, what type of spin I wanted, how far it would accelerate through the air, what the peak height would be, what the direction was, how far it would fly, how far it would run out, all that type of stuff.
Then we take it to the lab, [to] the guys that actually knew what they're doing, and say, How do we engineer something that will have this level of performance? It had to perform equally or as close as possible to the market leading products.
Otherwise the brand wouldn't have taken off nor survived if it did take off.
Dean Klatt
Because the golf ball is so heavily regulated, it was perhaps easier for a company like Seed to get close to what the big boys were doing but for a much lower cost.
That creates value for you, the consumer, the loser of many blocked and hooked drives that end up buried in the mud, or even worse … in the middle of the fairway with mud on the side of them.
Kidding.
Mostly!
OK, now onto the news.
We will announce our giveaways on Monday morning. I haven’t forgotten!
1. Scottie looked off balance over the first two and a half days. Not bad, per se, but not great. Not, you know … Scottie. The 33 going out on Saturday was nice. He looked like he was finding his way: “I just found kind of the right sequence today and was seeing my shots really well,” he said.
Then came the final five.
He didn’t miss a shot (shout out Data Golf for pointing this out).
Let’s recap the five holes.
No. 14: 1.55 SG
No. 15: 0.64
No. 16: 0.32
No. 17: 1.42
No. 18: 1.30
Add it all up, and that’s just over 5.0 strokes gained over the last five holes. In other words, the field played those holes in even par and he played them in 5 under. With the board gathering and swirling at the very top, Scottie cleared the table with one swipe, and now the tournament is over.
Everyone always asks what is the Green Mile and never how is the Green Mile.
2. There comes a time in every major when the winner shows his hand. Most of the time it happens on Sunday. Rarely, it happens on Friday. Never on Thursday. Saturday afternoon is prime time for such a thing.
Scottie’s fist pumping eagle on No. 13 at ANGC last year in the third round comes to mind. Rory’s eagle-eagle finish at Hoylake in 2014 does, too. Spieth’s Masters was over that Friday afternoon when he nipped his fourth flagstick of the day.
This one? You knew as it was happening exactly what was happening. That time when you can see the tournament may be tilting is wild because somebody is swinging to put guys on the mat, and you can’t stop watching to see if they’re going to connect.
Spoiler: He did, and this little anecdote from someone who was there — where you could literally see the tournament turning — was lovely.
3. It was the shot into 17 that did it for me. Not one hour earlier, Bryson tried to do too much with 9 iron on this very hole and dumped it into the water. He said afterward that he caught a bit of wind and “the wind just pumped it, nothing I can do.” The wind hit it, surely, but nothing he could do? It was hooking off the club, and you can’t put five in play at that moment. On Thursday morning? Maybe. But not on Saturday afternoon.
Scottie on the other hand? Whew, watch this.
It’s not fancy, but taking water out of play and pounding the middle of the green guarantees 3 on a hole that was playing nearly a half stroke over par, the hardest hole on the course all day.
A championship level golf shot.
Quail Hollow may not give you a ton of optionality, but it does demand some real golf shots, which I appreciated and has not always been true of recent PGAs. This was not even the best shot Scottie hit on the closing stretch, but it was the most impressive one to me, the one that most easily explains why he’s such a champion.
The putt is icing of course, but this shot was emblematic of how he was kind of searching for the groove for the first 45 holes, and how easily he found it coming home.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members, and it will include some thoughts on the following …
• Some thoughts on Rory’s hot driver.
• A good NBA comp for Scottie (there are many).
• Some hilarious Si Woo quotes.
If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.
If you are, keep reading!
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 835 crazies. By becoming a Normal Club member, you will receive the following …
• Our very best stuff during major weeks.
• First look at new merch (I promise it’s coming).
• The pleasure of helping us build an independent business.
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