Greetings!
Here I am after wrangling four kids with my wife out of town, navigating school cancelations during an ice storm, trying to lock down a few final sponsors for 2026 and only sleeping intermittently with two of the greatest semifinals in recent slam history going on in an entirely other time zone. ⬇️
But we’re here.
And the takes are keeping me warm after a week of freezing.
Let’s get right to them.
Name drops today: Brad Fabel, Justine Reed, Alex de Minaur, Michael Kim.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Garmin, whose Approach S70 is managing my Australian Open-affected heart rate as well as my run of 10,000-step days (we’re up to 60 now despite the freeze here in Dallas!).
We have loved working with Garmin and are perhaps most excited in 2026 to learn more about their Approach G82 device. The G82 is a handheld launch monitor, which may or may not be able to properly read the trajectory of someone (me) who is — in KVV’s words — “the most offline flusher I’ve ever seen.”
You can get a sneak preview of the device here. I’m pumped to get my hands (and hopefully some of your hands) on one.
OK, now onto the news.
1. I have been watching a lot of the Australian Open over the last 10 days. More than I’ve ever watched before. And what I’ve found is that I am both enjoying the matches that are being played but also thinking ahead to the potential matches that will be played in the coming days. The buildup of drama across two weeks for Sinner-Shelton, Alcaraz-Zverev or Iga-Rybakina makes those matches feel even bigger than they already are.
Honestly, it has made me wish (even more than I already did) that one of the golf majors was match play. The PGA is the most obvious choice here, but you could talk me into one of the Opens, too.
This won’t happen for a lot of reasons (mostly TV), but if you could figure out how to spread the matches across 36 holes to keep stars from getting bounced early by the randomness of 18 holes, I think the entire thing could be a smash hit.
If you need to make it 10 days to give guys rest, make it 10 days. If you need to make it two weeks, make it two weeks. Make a whole huge thing out of it like the tennis majors do.
I am far from the first person to suggest more match play golf, but it is pretty strange — and a bit normal sport-y — that the category of golf played by most amateurs in the world is hardly played by professionals at all. It would be like if the NBA was six on six or something close to what you grew up playing and what all amateurs play but not quite the same.
2. The harder part to fix about a match play major — in TV terms — is that when you get to the semis and finals, there aren’t enough matches going on. It’s the same problem the made-for-TV Thanksgiving matches have had. Too much walking, not enough golf.
I think you could probably solve for this by having eight matches going at all times over the last four days to help sort out the exact order of the top 16. So if you lose in the round of 16, you still have three more matches to play to try and finish ninth in the event.
You’re telling me you wouldn’t be fired up about [takes final 16 from 2025 PGA Championship] the following matchups in the round of 16?
1. Scottie vs. 16. Rahm (!!!!!)
8. Keegan vs. 9. Fitzpatrick
4. Davis Riley vs. 13. Si Woo
5. Pendrith vs. 12. Joe Highsmith
3. Harris English vs. 14. Denny McCarthy
6. J.T. Poston vs. 11. Ben Griffin
7. Johnny Vegas vs. 10. Ryan Gerard
2. Bryson vs. 15. Niemann (!!!)
Come on! Anyway, those were my (possibly crazed) thoughts as I rooted for Tien against Zverev late into Monday evening.
3. Since we’re here talking about the Australian Open and what golf’s major championship organizations can learn from it … how good was the 1-point slam?
I’m not sure it would hit as hard in golf, but you could attempt the exact same thing. Over 18 holes, an amateur couldn’t beat Rory, but over one hole? It’s possible!
I think the AO has done such a great job of just trying things in ways I’m not sure golf orgs always have. Not all of it works, but they have embraced their less historic, sillier identity compared to the other three.
[Jason here] This is essentially a more elaborate version of the KLM Open's Beat the Pro, which always thrills me. Also, Kyrgios celebrating his point against an amateur is savage. I need Keegan Bradley fist pumping at Shinnecock on a Tuesday afternoon this year in the face of the winner of the Metropolitan Am.
4. We dropped a new podcast on Friday. You can listen (or watch!) on Spotify right here or on YouTube below. We are planning on a better rhythm of these in 2026, and this one was a fun short-ish one to start with me yelling about Scottie for 40 minutes and Jason trying to poke holes (of which there are many) in my theories.
It also led to Jason asking if Tiger gaining 4.01 strokes per round was one of the best seasons ever. Definitively … yes.
Thank you to OGIO for sponsoring this one.
Their new Renegade Vault (which I unboxed during the pod) rules.
A couple more Australian Open notes as well as a Brooks and Pat Reed take and a Rory-Djokovic comp after the jump for our Normal Club members. If you’re not one, you can sign up right here.
Welcome to the members-only portion of today’s newsletter. Thank you, as always, for indulging my tastes — be they golf, tennis or business — and supporting our work!
5. I watched Brooks’ presser live earlier this week and had some very of-the-moment thoughts after he spoke, which I’ll repost here.
Brooks has always intrigued me. I think beneath the badass "I win majors, make a ton of money and married a model" sheath is someone who is more emotional than he sometimes knows what to do with and has more depth than he wants to let on.
Yeah, sometimes he's not that complex but strangely is almost always difficult to figure out. There seems to be a self-awareness there and an emotional IQ that he's rarely willing to disclose.
I think Brooks probably struggled to reconcile the person he always claimed to be with everything that LIV espoused. Maybe even more than he thought he would.
The most fascinating thing about today's presser was not what he said but rather how emotional, nervous and almost sad his tone was at times. Not the tenor of a man unaffected by life.
I'm glad he's back. He's fun to cover and to think about and try to solve. He's also a terrific champion that should not be throwing aways his golf years playing against the Magic Sticks and Iron Heads at ridiculous events that carry no historical weight.
Me
Brooks has always had texture, and that has only increased as he has gotten older. If I was a counselor or therapist, and I could only choose Tour players as clients, he would almost certainly be my No. 1 pick. I’m convinced there is more going on there than he discloses (which I don’t blame him for!)
People like that interest me greatly, and while I’m probably making all of it into something a bit bigger than it actually is, he’s always been a fun one to dig in on to try and see what’s beneath the surface.
6. The Fried Egg boys did a good job rehashing some of the best Patrick Reed quotes here. However, they missed what was my favorite exchange of all time. Here’s Golf.com with the details from the embedded ball incident at Torrey five years ago.
“Hey, bud, they say it didn’t bounce and so I checked it and I believe it broke ground, but I’m going to let you make that call,” Reed said to [rules official Brad] Fabel.
“What are you talking about?” Fabel asked.
“Embedded ball,” Reed said.
“Oh, where’s your ball,” Fabel asked.
“Since I picked it up to check, I mean it seems like it broke ground, but I want you to double-check,” Reed said. “They say it didn’t bounce.”
“Mind if I stick my finger in there?” Fabel asked.
“Might be the only way to check, isn’t it?” Reed said.
“Yeah, I feel a lip on it,” Fabel said.
“Yeah, I mean I thought so, but I just wanted to double-check,” Reed said.
Golf.com
“Mind if I stick my finger in there” is an all timer, but don’t let it distract you from the condescension of “Might be the only to check, isn’t it?”
All of that led to this accidental burner tweet (ostensibly from Justine) from the main Patrick Reed account.
I have been adamant about the fact that all of the villains — or even perceived villains (Reed, Brooks, Poulter, Bryson, Sergio, Hatton) — left for LIV and this fact made both the PGA Tour and European Tour worse.
What is a story if not a war between heroes and villains?
Even if it’s only on the Euro Tour in 2026, Reed being back in the mix is good for the narrative drama of professional golf (see above accidental burner tweet along with the numerous Fried Egg quotes).
Lastly, I thought this was a really great point by Ben.
Quiet part out loud, and now it’s been uttered (both actually and implicitly) by two guys with a combined six majors and 18 PGA Tour wins.
7. I fell asleep on Thursday evening as Alcaraz closed out the second set against Zverev. I woke up three hours later in shock that they were late in the fifth set.
As you can probably tell, I’ve been entranced by the tennis.
Some of this has been recently exacerbated by Andy Roddick’s excellent, excellent podcast. But also, I find the geometry of tennis, the athleticism it takes to play at the highest level and (most importantly) what it discloses about what you’re made of late in slams to be enthralling.
The fifth set at a slam (especially as late in the tournament as the semis) is not really about tennis in the same way the back nine at a major is not really about golf. Rory’s Masters win being the best most recent example … that one wasn’t about golf at all!
To watch Alcaraz impose his championship will against someone who still can’t seem to decide whether he’s a dog or not was spectacular.
And that was the second best match of the night!
Five hours later, Djokovic dragged Sinner into the deep end for the fifth set of their match, which was genuinely awe-inspiring.
Two things I learned from watching on Thursday/Friday.
You don’t want to find yourself in the deep end with Novak on a Friday night at 2 a.m. at a slam. Not good. Dude is 38! I get tired after playing one game of doubles pickleball, and he’s staving off a 24-year-old who will probably go down as one of the 10 best to ever do it. That’s not tennis. It’s something else entirely, which is spectacular to watch.
It must absolutely suck to be Gabriel Diallo, who is ranked No. 41 in the world and got torched by Zverev in the first round. Because then you have to turn around and watch that same guy play twice as good and lose to someone else before the finals. What are you thinking if you’re Gabriel Diallo going to Roland Garros or Wimbledon?
As was (rightly) pointed out, it sucks not to be the No. 41 player in the world but to be the No. 6 player in the world, like Alex De Minaur (straight sets loss to Alcaraz) or Ben Shelton (straight sets loss to Sinner).
What do you even do? Where do you go from there?
Tennis is so much different than golf in the sense that marginal advantages make huge differences over time in ways that they do not in golf.
Or maybe they do in golf …
Also, sometimes Twitter — like the tennis on Thursday and Friday — is very good.
Thank you for reading our ridiculous golf newsletter.
Every edition is handcrafted by me (Kyle) and Jason. We love writing it. It’s all we think about. Every edition is labored over. We appreciate your support of it.
Greetings!
Here I am after wrangling four kids with my wife out of town, navigating school cancelations during an ice storm, trying to lock down a few final sponsors for 2026 and only sleeping intermittently with two of the greatest semifinals in recent slam history going on in an entirely other time zone. ⬇️
But we’re here.
And the takes are keeping me warm after a week of freezing.
Let’s get right to them.
Name drops today: Brad Fabel, Justine Reed, Alex de Minaur, Michael Kim.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Garmin, whose Approach S70 is managing my Australian Open-affected heart rate as well as my run of 10,000-step days (we’re up to 60 now despite the freeze here in Dallas!).
We have loved working with Garmin and are perhaps most excited in 2026 to learn more about their Approach G82 device. The G82 is a handheld launch monitor, which may or may not be able to properly read the trajectory of someone (me) who is — in KVV’s words — “the most offline flusher I’ve ever seen.”
You can get a sneak preview of the device here. I’m pumped to get my hands (and hopefully some of your hands) on one.
OK, now onto the news.
1. I have been watching a lot of the Australian Open over the last 10 days. More than I’ve ever watched before. And what I’ve found is that I am both enjoying the matches that are being played but also thinking ahead to the potential matches that will be played in the coming days. The buildup of drama across two weeks for Sinner-Shelton, Alcaraz-Zverev or Iga-Rybakina makes those matches feel even bigger than they already are.
Honestly, it has made me wish (even more than I already did) that one of the golf majors was match play. The PGA is the most obvious choice here, but you could talk me into one of the Opens, too.
This won’t happen for a lot of reasons (mostly TV), but if you could figure out how to spread the matches across 36 holes to keep stars from getting bounced early by the randomness of 18 holes, I think the entire thing could be a smash hit.
If you need to make it 10 days to give guys rest, make it 10 days. If you need to make it two weeks, make it two weeks. Make a whole huge thing out of it like the tennis majors do.
I am far from the first person to suggest more match play golf, but it is pretty strange — and a bit normal sport-y — that the category of golf played by most amateurs in the world is hardly played by professionals at all. It would be like if the NBA was six on six or something close to what you grew up playing and what all amateurs play but not quite the same.
2. The harder part to fix about a match play major — in TV terms — is that when you get to the semis and finals, there aren’t enough matches going on. It’s the same problem the made-for-TV Thanksgiving matches have had. Too much walking, not enough golf.
I think you could probably solve for this by having eight matches going at all times over the last four days to help sort out the exact order of the top 16. So if you lose in the round of 16, you still have three more matches to play to try and finish ninth in the event.
You’re telling me you wouldn’t be fired up about [takes final 16 from 2025 PGA Championship] the following matchups in the round of 16?
1. Scottie vs. 16. Rahm (!!!!!)
8. Keegan vs. 9. Fitzpatrick
4. Davis Riley vs. 13. Si Woo
5. Pendrith vs. 12. Joe Highsmith
3. Harris English vs. 14. Denny McCarthy
6. J.T. Poston vs. 11. Ben Griffin
7. Johnny Vegas vs. 10. Ryan Gerard
2. Bryson vs. 15. Niemann (!!!)
Come on! Anyway, those were my (possibly crazed) thoughts as I rooted for Tien against Zverev late into Monday evening.
3. Since we’re here talking about the Australian Open and what golf’s major championship organizations can learn from it … how good was the 1-point slam?
I’m not sure it would hit as hard in golf, but you could attempt the exact same thing. Over 18 holes, an amateur couldn’t beat Rory, but over one hole? It’s possible!
I think the AO has done such a great job of just trying things in ways I’m not sure golf orgs always have. Not all of it works, but they have embraced their less historic, sillier identity compared to the other three.
[Jason here] This is essentially a more elaborate version of the KLM Open's Beat the Pro, which always thrills me. Also, Kyrgios celebrating his point against an amateur is savage. I need Keegan Bradley fist pumping at Shinnecock on a Tuesday afternoon this year in the face of the winner of the Metropolitan Am.
4. We dropped a new podcast on Friday. You can listen (or watch!) on Spotify right here or on YouTube below. We are planning on a better rhythm of these in 2026, and this one was a fun short-ish one to start with me yelling about Scottie for 40 minutes and Jason trying to poke holes (of which there are many) in my theories.
It also led to Jason asking if Tiger gaining 4.01 strokes per round was one of the best seasons ever. Definitively … yes.
Thank you to OGIO for sponsoring this one.
Their new Renegade Vault (which I unboxed during the pod) rules.
A couple more Australian Open notes as well as a Brooks and Pat Reed take and a Rory-Djokovic comp after the jump for our Normal Club members. If you’re not one, you can sign up right here.
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 1,019 crazed individuals. By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• A vote for trusted, independent media.
• The delight of helping us establish Normal Sport.
• 15% off to our pro shop.
• Access to all of our content (like the rest of this post).
.svg){kind=spacer}
