Issue No. 257 | September 27, 2025 | Read Online
A thank you to Meridian Putters for sending us to New York for boots on the ground coverage this week!
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — I … don’t even know where to begin. I have a lot of tweets, a lot of takes a lot of podcast appearances that I need to scrub over the next 24 hours.
Europe is doing to the United States what the United States did to Europe during the last Ryder Cup over here: mercilessly dominating with superior performance, superior duos and an unrelenting desire to not only win but to do so in a manner in which nobody from the other team ever forgets the score.
We’ll get into all of that and more in my thoughts from Bethpage below.
But first!
A huge thanks to Seed Golf for sponsoring today’s newsletter. Seed — based in Ireland — is a bit of our enemy this week at the Ryder Cup, but still our favorite when it comes to golf ball brands.
If you’ve never heard of them, the similarities between their business and the European Ryder Cup team are definitely there. A bit of an underdog, a bit of a chip on their shoulder, entering America with something to prove and a quality of performance that is almost beyond belief.
You can check them out right here.
OK, now onto the news.
There are so many different directions we could go …
1. Let’s start here. I thought Brandel said it well. He called it “the absolute finest performance I've ever seen from a team. This European team’s performance is equivalent to what Tiger Woods did at the 2000 U.S. Open … what we saw yesterday & today is unprecedented.”
Jamie Kennedy added to that.
The stat Brandel used to back it up was that Europe played foursomes in 16 under yesterday and won 3 and 1. The U.S. played foursomes in an equally remarkable 16 under today … and lost 3 and 1.
That’s pretty astonishing.
2. So we know Europe is playing tremendously. The question for me becomes why is Europe playing so tremendously, and why is the United States — filled with equally great (if not better!) — players not playing as tremendously?
That is a question I will take away from today and from this event: Why?
Why does Europe make more putts? Why do their missed putts even look like they’re going in while the U.S. missed putts have no chance (Europe’s missed putts are much closer statistically).
3. The first thing I notice on the course: Europe looks so much more comfortable. This is vague and perhaps nonsensical, but they look relaxed over every shot, every putt and in every single situation. Maybe even more so, the U.S. side looks incredibly uncomfortable. They never look ready to embrace the moment or the match. This is curious to me because the U.S. is filled with great competitors and major champions.
This is perhaps not a popular opinion, but this is cultural and organizational. It just is.
4. We all know that organizations can become more than the sum of their parts. In any arena, any discipline, you can take a group of people and overperform the level at which, on paper, you should perform.
The one reason that Apple beat BlackBerry and Google smoked Yahoo is probably actually 1 million little reasons and details that seemed unimportant at the time but added up to an overwhelming excellence in the end.
Why do we treat these teams any differently?
Shane Ryan had a great thread about how rolling Morikawa-English out again on Saturday was emblematic of American incompetence. His thread ended with this.
The U.S. organization very clearly lacks the attention to detail that the European one has. While immense talent can sometimes overcome these seemingly inconsequential gaffes, when the sides are equal, the one that has truly put the work on will often be the one that thrives.
5. Another reason Europe looks more comfortable and makes more putts: Its top players are complete and total dogs.
Rory? Dog.
Tommy? Dog (at the Ryder Cup)
Hovland? Dog
Hatton? Dog
Rose? Dog
Rahm? The Dog
I was there in Italy. The U.S. didn’t want that smoke from the opposing crowd. Didn’t want a minute of it.
Europe?
"This is the reason I get up in the morning. This is what I love doing. I love being part of this team."
Shane Lowry
The Euros craved the inane rhetoric today and yesterday. Craved it. Rory took in all the emotion he could possibly handle and unleashed some sentences my kids can never see. And somehow, he was even more devastating with his clubs.
If you tell the crowd to shut the f*** up, and then hit it to 3 feet to end a match, you might be are a dog!
Hitting it to 3 feet to possibly win the match after telling the crowd to "shut the f*** up" is kinda sick.
— Kyle Porter (@KylePorterNS)
2:53 PM • Sep 27, 2025
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Some (more) thoughts on Scottie.
Notes on the Ted Scott-Francesco Molinari dustup.
One more reason Europe makes more putts.
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 1,002 (!!!!) 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.
• Access to all of our content (like the rest of this post).
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.
6. And here’s one more. There is a genuine love for one another that the U.S. side just doesn’t have. That’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way things are. And you can tell me that this has nothing to do with making putts, but I’ll never, ever believe you.
Try to imagine the Americans — any two American players — doing this …
Because while genuine love for one another may not be directly correlated to making putts, it’s definitely correlated to feeling unified and comfortable in intense and uncomfortable situations, which again, is why they make all the putts to begin with.
7. [Jason here] The Tommy Tracker (every time someone calls me Tommy lad) reached 61 today and hit peak levels of WATTBA when Ken Griffey Jr. acknowledged it in the media center.
Not that there would be anything wrong with it.
Getting called Tommy all day was actually the most innocent heckle I heard. The idiots were out in full swing and Brendan Porath described the atmosphere, and source, perfectly in tonight’s Fried Egg Golf newsletter.
The European duo were the focus of the crowd, another red flag. When there’s more fervor for shouting dumb jeers at the opponent (Rory) than there is for boosting the home side, the opponent is in a good place. It may be personally uncomfortable to deal with, but in terms of the golf match, the disproportionate heckling was a sign of an absence of things to cheer for.
Brendan Porath | Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting
Mean comments are just mean, but I find the uncreative jeers far more offensive. After hearing so many hollers fall flat I will be making an official media request to have an AI 8-Mile Eminem at the entrance of every event to screen fans’ material.
8. This week really highlighted for me just how bad the Euro teams were in 2016 and 2021. They just had nothing in 2016, and in 2021 they had a bunch of old guys and Rory running on E.
If they’re competent at all, they’re going to win in New York, Rome, Spain and Mars if and when the Ryder Cup is eventually played there.
9. Credit to Jamie Kennedy for coming up with the original version of this stat, but since Jan. 1, 2022, Scottie has won …
• 26 percent of golf tournaments he’s played.
• 13 percent of available Ryder Cup points.
Don’t know what to say here. He doesn’t look like himself. He’s hit some great shots, sure, but he — like everyone on the U.S. side — looks uncomfortable and a bit out of sorts.
Imperial plans trying to fit into a metric competition. This scene was directly inspired from media center dining.
Max Homa said something on the NLU live show on Friday evening that was interesting about how team events afford you less personal practice time than normal, and that is exactly how Scottie is playing.
And yes he’s also had some tough draws.
Scottie has only made six birdies in 32 four-ball holes this week, which would be great for you and me at Bethpage Black but is pretty mediocre for the best player in the world on a golf course that’s getting completely demolished.
10. This was so embarrassing. And again, emblematic of how much better Europe is at the details of this event.
The chant attempts look a lot like the US captaincy strategy
— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp)
10:33 AM • Sep 27, 2025
Who should be in charge of making the first tee good for the Americans? I don’t know that anyone should!
But when you see what the Euros do on the first tee (over there and over here), it becomes a prism through which to see how much more thorough they are from top to bottom at running a world class organization.
11. The whole Justin Rose-Ted Scott-Francesco Molinari-Bryson DeChambeau-Greg Bodine incident was amusing. Rose’s interview afterwards was telling. He talked about how much he respected Scottie and how he goes about things and lives his life.
Not a peep about Bryson. As an American fan, I don’t really care that this is true, but the subtext is that Bryson is, uh, not very well liked in the European team room.
Also, Ted Scott getting in Francesco’s grill was pretty incredible.
I also thought it was pretty soft that Bryson and Scottie wouldn’t talk afterwards!
12. Tommy and Rosey. We need to discuss. Over the last three holes yesterday and the first 15 today, they shot a best ball 58. And while one of Viktor’s alien friends watching this week would think that Tommy is not only the best player in the world but maybe the best player who has ever lived, he somehow wasn’t even the best player in his pairing on Saturday.
Rose is timeless. A lion. You could convince me he’ll be doing this for eight more years. He’s such a professional, but he — like Rory and Rahm — has learned how to be a great individual player and a great team player in events like this. He embraces his role on every team.
In listening to guys talk after the matches, part of me wonders if they care more about winning Ryder Cups than majors. I think some of them actually do (!), and Rosey might be near the top of that list.
13. This made me laugh.
So did this.
14. What to root for on Sunday? I think something historic. The U.S. problems are clearly (?) organizational. Not worse players. Not fewer putts made. Not a horrific captain (although he hasn’t been great).
There are 1,000 things to address. Maybe 10,000 things. I’ve been radicalized this weekend. I think it all needs to be rebuilt.
Will a 20-8 drubbing on your turf in what was supposed to be one of the great Ryder Cups of the last 20 years lead to that rebuilding? I would think so.
I guess … I would hope so.
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 2,000 words long like this one.
While we do use digital tools that help us find information, everything you read and consumed was created from scratch by two humans who are absolutely obsessed with the game. If you ever want to support our business, you can buy merch here.
Issue No. 257 | September 27, 2025 | Read Online
A thank you to Meridian Putters for sending us to New York for boots on the ground coverage this week!
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — I … don’t even know where to begin. I have a lot of tweets, a lot of takes a lot of podcast appearances that I need to scrub over the next 24 hours.
Europe is doing to the United States what the United States did to Europe during the last Ryder Cup over here: mercilessly dominating with superior performance, superior duos and an unrelenting desire to not only win but to do so in a manner in which nobody from the other team ever forgets the score.
We’ll get into all of that and more in my thoughts from Bethpage below.
But first!
A huge thanks to Seed Golf for sponsoring today’s newsletter. Seed — based in Ireland — is a bit of our enemy this week at the Ryder Cup, but still our favorite when it comes to golf ball brands.
If you’ve never heard of them, the similarities between their business and the European Ryder Cup team are definitely there. A bit of an underdog, a bit of a chip on their shoulder, entering America with something to prove and a quality of performance that is almost beyond belief.
You can check them out right here.
OK, now onto the news.
There are so many different directions we could go …
1. Let’s start here. I thought Brandel said it well. He called it “the absolute finest performance I've ever seen from a team. This European team’s performance is equivalent to what Tiger Woods did at the 2000 U.S. Open … what we saw yesterday & today is unprecedented.”
Jamie Kennedy added to that.
The stat Brandel used to back it up was that Europe played foursomes in 16 under yesterday and won 3 and 1. The U.S. played foursomes in an equally remarkable 16 under today … and lost 3 and 1.
That’s pretty astonishing.
2. So we know Europe is playing tremendously. The question for me becomes why is Europe playing so tremendously, and why is the United States — filled with equally great (if not better!) — players not playing as tremendously?
That is a question I will take away from today and from this event: Why?
Why does Europe make more putts? Why do their missed putts even look like they’re going in while the U.S. missed putts have no chance (Europe’s missed putts are much closer statistically).
3. The first thing I notice on the course: Europe looks so much more comfortable. This is vague and perhaps nonsensical, but they look relaxed over every shot, every putt and in every single situation. Maybe even more so, the U.S. side looks incredibly uncomfortable. They never look ready to embrace the moment or the match. This is curious to me because the U.S. is filled with great competitors and major champions.
This is perhaps not a popular opinion, but this is cultural and organizational. It just is.
4. We all know that organizations can become more than the sum of their parts. In any arena, any discipline, you can take a group of people and overperform the level at which, on paper, you should perform.
The one reason that Apple beat BlackBerry and Google smoked Yahoo is probably actually 1 million little reasons and details that seemed unimportant at the time but added up to an overwhelming excellence in the end.
Why do we treat these teams any differently?
Shane Ryan had a great thread about how rolling Morikawa-English out again on Saturday was emblematic of American incompetence. His thread ended with this.
The U.S. organization very clearly lacks the attention to detail that the European one has. While immense talent can sometimes overcome these seemingly inconsequential gaffes, when the sides are equal, the one that has truly put the work on will often be the one that thrives.
5. Another reason Europe looks more comfortable and makes more putts: Its top players are complete and total dogs.
Rory? Dog.
Tommy? Dog (at the Ryder Cup)
Hovland? Dog
Hatton? Dog
Rose? Dog
Rahm? The Dog
I was there in Italy. The U.S. didn’t want that smoke from the opposing crowd. Didn’t want a minute of it.
Europe?
"This is the reason I get up in the morning. This is what I love doing. I love being part of this team."
Shane Lowry
The Euros craved the inane rhetoric today and yesterday. Craved it. Rory took in all the emotion he could possibly handle and unleashed some sentences my kids can never see. And somehow, he was even more devastating with his clubs.
If you tell the crowd to shut the f*** up, and then hit it to 3 feet to end a match, you might be are a dog!
Hitting it to 3 feet to possibly win the match after telling the crowd to "shut the f*** up" is kinda sick.
— Kyle Porter (@KylePorterNS)
2:53 PM • Sep 27, 2025
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
Some (more) thoughts on Scottie.
Notes on the Ted Scott-Francesco Molinari dustup.
One more reason Europe makes more putts.
Normal Sport is supported by exactly 1,002 (!!!!) 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.
• Access to all of our content (like the rest of this post).
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.
6. And here’s one more. There is a genuine love for one another that the U.S. side just doesn’t have. That’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way things are. And you can tell me that this has nothing to do with making putts, but I’ll never, ever believe you.
Try to imagine the Americans — any two American players — doing this …
Because while genuine love for one another may not be directly correlated to making putts, it’s definitely correlated to feeling unified and comfortable in intense and uncomfortable situations, which again, is why they make all the putts to begin with.
7. [Jason here] The Tommy Tracker (every time someone calls me Tommy lad) reached 61 today and hit peak levels of WATTBA when Ken Griffey Jr. acknowledged it in the media center.
Not that there would be anything wrong with it.
Getting called Tommy all day was actually the most innocent heckle I heard. The idiots were out in full swing and Brendan Porath described the atmosphere, and source, perfectly in tonight’s Fried Egg Golf newsletter.
The European duo were the focus of the crowd, another red flag. When there’s more fervor for shouting dumb jeers at the opponent (Rory) than there is for boosting the home side, the opponent is in a good place. It may be personally uncomfortable to deal with, but in terms of the golf match, the disproportionate heckling was a sign of an absence of things to cheer for.
Brendan Porath | Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting
Mean comments are just mean, but I find the uncreative jeers far more offensive. After hearing so many hollers fall flat I will be making an official media request to have an AI 8-Mile Eminem at the entrance of every event to screen fans’ material.
8. This week really highlighted for me just how bad the Euro teams were in 2016 and 2021. They just had nothing in 2016, and in 2021 they had a bunch of old guys and Rory running on E.
If they’re competent at all, they’re going to win in New York, Rome, Spain and Mars if and when the Ryder Cup is eventually played there.
9. Credit to Jamie Kennedy for coming up with the original version of this stat, but since Jan. 1, 2022, Scottie has won …
• 26 percent of golf tournaments he’s played.
• 13 percent of available Ryder Cup points.
Don’t know what to say here. He doesn’t look like himself. He’s hit some great shots, sure, but he — like everyone on the U.S. side — looks uncomfortable and a bit out of sorts.
Imperial plans trying to fit into a metric competition. This scene was directly inspired from media center dining.
Max Homa said something on the NLU live show on Friday evening that was interesting about how team events afford you less personal practice time than normal, and that is exactly how Scottie is playing.
And yes he’s also had some tough draws.
Scottie has only made six birdies in 32 four-ball holes this week, which would be great for you and me at Bethpage Black but is pretty mediocre for the best player in the world on a golf course that’s getting completely demolished.
10. This was so embarrassing. And again, emblematic of how much better Europe is at the details of this event.
The chant attempts look a lot like the US captaincy strategy
— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp)
10:33 AM • Sep 27, 2025
Who should be in charge of making the first tee good for the Americans? I don’t know that anyone should!
But when you see what the Euros do on the first tee (over there and over here), it becomes a prism through which to see how much more thorough they are from top to bottom at running a world class organization.
11. The whole Justin Rose-Ted Scott-Francesco Molinari-Bryson DeChambeau-Greg Bodine incident was amusing. Rose’s interview afterwards was telling. He talked about how much he respected Scottie and how he goes about things and lives his life.
Not a peep about Bryson. As an American fan, I don’t really care that this is true, but the subtext is that Bryson is, uh, not very well liked in the European team room.
Also, Ted Scott getting in Francesco’s grill was pretty incredible.
I also thought it was pretty soft that Bryson and Scottie wouldn’t talk afterwards!
12. Tommy and Rosey. We need to discuss. Over the last three holes yesterday and the first 15 today, they shot a best ball 58. And while one of Viktor’s alien friends watching this week would think that Tommy is not only the best player in the world but maybe the best player who has ever lived, he somehow wasn’t even the best player in his pairing on Saturday.
Rose is timeless. A lion. You could convince me he’ll be doing this for eight more years. He’s such a professional, but he — like Rory and Rahm — has learned how to be a great individual player and a great team player in events like this. He embraces his role on every team.
In listening to guys talk after the matches, part of me wonders if they care more about winning Ryder Cups than majors. I think some of them actually do (!), and Rosey might be near the top of that list.
13. This made me laugh.
So did this.
14. What to root for on Sunday? I think something historic. The U.S. problems are clearly (?) organizational. Not worse players. Not fewer putts made. Not a horrific captain (although he hasn’t been great).
There are 1,000 things to address. Maybe 10,000 things. I’ve been radicalized this weekend. I think it all needs to be rebuilt.
Will a 20-8 drubbing on your turf in what was supposed to be one of the great Ryder Cups of the last 20 years lead to that rebuilding? I would think so.
I guess … I would hope so.
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 2,000 words long like this one.
While we do use digital tools that help us find information, everything you read and consumed was created from scratch by two humans who are absolutely obsessed with the game. If you ever want to support our business, you can buy merch here.
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