Greetings to all. It’s been too long. Let’s get right into it.
Name drops today: Naval (sure), Ezra Klein, Zach Lowe, Rory’s pants, Troy Aikman (as Patrick Reed), Sam Bankman-Fried and two Petes (Hegseth and Pistol).
Truly the newsletter that has it all.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Garmin.
Orange is the new official color of October. Thanks to Eugenio. Thanks to … fall.
While you’re out searching for the perfect pumpkin (shout out to one of my favorite books as a kid), think about picking up something else orange as well.
Like Garmin’s Fenix 9 Pro. The Fenix 9 Pro has so many features for so many sports that some of them sound made up. You be the judge of what’s real.
31 days battery life in smartwatch mode.
Yardages to layups and doglegs.
43,000 preloaded golf courses.
Virtual caddie gives dispersion based on your shot history with a club.
A voice feature that shouts “don’t blade it!” in your backswing.
Swing tempo training - backswing time divided by the downswing time.
There are so many reasons why Breaking 80 Sean calls it the best golf watch he’s ever used and why you should consider one when picking out that Pistol Pete pumpkin.
The Fenix 9 Pro is (speaking of Oklahoma State things) on the “Viktor Hovland range accessories” end of Garmin’s products. And they truly have something for nearly every outdoor activity you can think of.
And now, onto the news.
1. This by Brody Miller on Scottie’s willingness to eschew money for freedom and independence is excellent. Reminds me of this from Naval.
It is very refreshing to see a modern superduperstar (not a star or superstar but a superduperstar all-time great) look around and say, Yeah but why? Why do I need another $2 million? Why do I need another sponsor? I have enough.
This is rare, and it is aspirational. A position of privilege, for sure, but also others in that position of privilege aren’t saying it or doing it (see: Spieth’s quotes in that Brody piece).
It is also instructive to those of us who aren’t making $50 million a year playing golf. We (I) say we (I) don’t value money over freedom, independence and time. But my Google Calendar tells a different story. My time spent at my desk tells a different story.
I am convinced that all of us will look back at some point and wonder why we tried to accomplish marginally more. Why we attempted to earn an extra 5 percent. Instead of just being satisfied with what we had. I am convinced that you cannot put a price on living a life where you have true independence.
I was walking in my neighborhood up to the gym at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday because why not? And I was thinking about how you could not 5x my salary and convince me to go into a world where I gave up that independence. Again, privilege. And something I consider a lot and am immensely grateful for. I’m glad to see Scottie do the same.
2. Newsletters are dead. Fair. Maybe even true.
But a human connection built on years of consistency and personal sharing in a way that brings about joy? Will always be undefeated.
The medium (constantly) changes. The human condition (always) stays the same.
3. Extremely normal sport.
4. In response to my “Spieth is Texas A&M” post last week, I got this excellent email from a reader. The end was too good.
Standards are high.
Maybe hyped on itself a bit too much.
Wants to be one of the big dogs soooo bad.
We’re not shocked if they pick off a big one here and there.
Big expectations still.
Lotta money for a “meh” end product.
Likely to be seen with Pete Hegseth.
A&M is Bryson.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,050 of them) and includes what we’ve been working on during the “offseason,” some AI notes, a bit on sports gambling, the SBF lookalike game and the best golf tweets of the last week.
5. I love the non-main PGA Tour season (don’t call it an offseason) for two reasons. The first is that I get to rest a bit. Enjoy being outside, coaching kids’ teams etc. The second, though, is because we get to add a few things to the repertoire. We get to experiment. See if going down a rabbit hole produces something worthwhile.
I don’t want to disclose too much because some of this still may not get built and published in full , but this “offseason” exploration has thus far included …
Working on a Baseball Reference-like site but for golf (long-time readers will remember that we tried this before but it didn’t totally work in a pre-Claude world).
Exploration of a Ryder Cup mini franchise within the Normal Sport universe
Testing out a print product
Progress on our kids book
This leads to ebbs and flows here on the newsletter and on our show — when they’re in Bermuda, we’ll be in the lab but when Rory is going for three straight at Augusta, you’ll get daily newsletters — but all of it is quite life-giving for us.
6. This on how sports gambling has taken over mainstream places like ESPN is sad. It’s probably a little less true in golf, but it’s still there. Still pervasive.
Something I think I think: The pressure to keep the revenue line pointed up and to the right across all sports leagues has led to an increasingly bad product. That is, because ESPN or NBC are overpaying for the NBA (for example), we get more commercials and more gray area advertising that appeals to our worst vices (sex, gambling, addiction etc.)*
Golf is no different. The commercials during the Presidents Cup were unwatchable (especially for my kids), and betting is all over (though as noted above maybe not as ubiquitous as some other sports).
Because of the diversification of media across different mediums (Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Netflix et al.), it’s more difficult for companies like Disney to make as much money on their products (the games they have the rights to). Therefore they need to make more money per viewer, and the folks willing to pay more money per viewer are the ones that appeal to our most carnal desires.
*I’m not necessarily anti-betting broadly. As a profession, I don’t find it to be a lot different than picking stocks, for example. But I am anti-the companies that are simply preying on folks who are addicted to throwing their money away.
7. This on AI by Ezra Klein is immense. This was probably the part that I identified with the most.
I don’t find these questions easy to answer. I don’t even find them easy to clearly pose.
Ezra Klein | NYT
Klein posits (in part) that “the story of modern society human beings [is] trading comprehension and control of their world for technological and economic advancement.”
There is a world, the experts say, where humans would never have to work again. That may appeal to some, but it sounds horrific to me. Work — when approached appropriately — is so good and right and maturing.
Often difficult, yes, but the struggle is part of its goodness. The friction reminds us that we are human and not gods. It lets us wonder.
I don’t want a world without it.
Also, if you want to read about AI as a spiritual issue and not just an economic, intellectual and emotional one, this is the single best thing I’ve read this year (or any year) on the topic. It rocked me.
8. And Eugenio as SBF may have rocked me even more.
Also, this logo from Jason is so awesome. Would wear!
9. Zach Lowe is writing again. Writing matters. I am convinced that there will eventually be a backlash to the tsunami of digital content that is produced on a daily basis. Slow, methodical, good, tangible (👀) writing will still matter.
(I also might just be telling myself all of this to relieve the anxiety of starting a company in which the primary product is writing at a time in history in which nobody reads).
Anyway, here’s Zach on writing and ball.
But writing ignites other parts of your thought process that might go dormant without it: word choice, language, sentence structure, the underpinnings of communication. Putting words on paper—the permanence of it—forces you to take an extra beat and make sure your material holds up: Does this trade really make sense? Would this rule change actually work, or does it have bad ripple effects? You game out your own ideas. You interrogate them. That process takes you to new places, notions you hadn’t contemplated.
…
Reading also has to keep mattering as technology shatters attention spans and rewires our brains in ways we never imagined or really asked for. If humans stop reading and writing, parts of our brains will wither.
…
The use of AI to create bogus art—poems, essays, music—is, frankly, gross. Part of being a human is the struggle to create, to articulate—to try to express something authentic, to fail, to try again.
I recently dropped my daughter off at a birthday party where the parents boasted about asking ChatGPT for advice on what color balloons to use. I hear more and more about relying on AI to set vacation itineraries. Have we really gotten this lazy? Do people no longer derive satisfaction from researching hotels, restaurants, excursions, color schemes?
Using your brain that way is definitional to, like, being a living person.
Zach Lowe
Again, so much of the modern world is built on this attempt to completely remove friction from our lives. In other words, to make us more comfortable. The removal of friction should never be the goal because removing it would rid ourselves of the struggle. And the struggle is both what helps produce great work and what makes us human. In other words, play blades.
10. Some truly incredible golf and golf-adjacent tweets this week, starting with this one on Spieth.
That was in response to my predicted 2027 Ryder Cup team. I’m definitely counting him out.
This one from BP is so niche and great.
(I would quietly love it if Spieth and Reed reunited at Adare). Not quietly. I would be fists balled, two hands raised over my head for four consecutive hours.
This got me …
Though, as one commenter pointed out, I often feel fear and awkwardness more than I do intimacy.
But in that same vein …
I howled at that. Why do we always say, “hop”? Why not “bound,” “vault,” or “leap”?
Also, the Rory pants jokes were rampant, but this was (by far) the best one.
That is exactly what he looked like. I would know after spending three straight days last weekend coaching my travel ball team.
Thank you as always for supporting Normal Sport. In a world obsessed with constantly churning out more and more and more, we are laboring to slow down, to handcraft and to build something that you always look forward to spending time with.
Greetings to all. It’s been too long. Let’s get right into it.
Name drops today: Naval (sure), Ezra Klein, Zach Lowe, Rory’s pants, Troy Aikman (as Patrick Reed), Sam Bankman-Fried and two Petes (Hegseth and Pistol).
Truly the newsletter that has it all.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Garmin.
Orange is the new official color of October. Thanks to Eugenio. Thanks to … fall.
While you’re out searching for the perfect pumpkin (shout out to one of my favorite books as a kid), think about picking up something else orange as well.
Like Garmin’s Fenix 9 Pro. The Fenix 9 Pro has so many features for so many sports that some of them sound made up. You be the judge of what’s real.
31 days battery life in smartwatch mode.
Yardages to layups and doglegs.
43,000 preloaded golf courses.
Virtual caddie gives dispersion based on your shot history with a club.
A voice feature that shouts “don’t blade it!” in your backswing.
Swing tempo training - backswing time divided by the downswing time.
There are so many reasons why Breaking 80 Sean calls it the best golf watch he’s ever used and why you should consider one when picking out that Pistol Pete pumpkin.
The Fenix 9 Pro is (speaking of Oklahoma State things) on the “Viktor Hovland range accessories” end of Garmin’s products. And they truly have something for nearly every outdoor activity you can think of.
And now, onto the news.
1. This by Brody Miller on Scottie’s willingness to eschew money for freedom and independence is excellent. Reminds me of this from Naval.
It is very refreshing to see a modern superduperstar (not a star or superstar but a superduperstar all-time great) look around and say, Yeah but why? Why do I need another $2 million? Why do I need another sponsor? I have enough.
This is rare, and it is aspirational. A position of privilege, for sure, but also others in that position of privilege aren’t saying it or doing it (see: Spieth’s quotes in that Brody piece).
It is also instructive to those of us who aren’t making $50 million a year playing golf. We (I) say we (I) don’t value money over freedom, independence and time. But my Google Calendar tells a different story. My time spent at my desk tells a different story.
I am convinced that all of us will look back at some point and wonder why we tried to accomplish marginally more. Why we attempted to earn an extra 5 percent. Instead of just being satisfied with what we had. I am convinced that you cannot put a price on living a life where you have true independence.
I was walking in my neighborhood up to the gym at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday because why not? And I was thinking about how you could not 5x my salary and convince me to go into a world where I gave up that independence. Again, privilege. And something I consider a lot and am immensely grateful for. I’m glad to see Scottie do the same.
2. Newsletters are dead. Fair. Maybe even true.
But a human connection built on years of consistency and personal sharing in a way that brings about joy? Will always be undefeated.
The medium (constantly) changes. The human condition (always) stays the same.
3. Extremely normal sport.
4. In response to my “Spieth is Texas A&M” post last week, I got this excellent email from a reader. The end was too good.
Standards are high.
Maybe hyped on itself a bit too much.
Wants to be one of the big dogs soooo bad.
We’re not shocked if they pick off a big one here and there.
Big expectations still.
Lotta money for a “meh” end product.
Likely to be seen with Pete Hegseth.
A&M is Bryson.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,050 of them) and includes what we’ve been working on during the “offseason,” some AI notes, a bit on sports gambling, the SBF lookalike game and the best golf tweets of the last week.
By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
• An invite to our Slack channel where we watch and talk golf together.
• A free digital copy of our Rory book.
• 15% off to our pro shop.
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