Greetings to all on one of my favorite weekends of the year.
More on that below.
Name drops today: Gary Hallberg, Matthew Riedel, Kevin Hazzard, Tom Lehman, Nick Price and Twix minis.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Charlie Golf Co.
Here’s a question: How did you start playing golf?
Putting balls into cups in your living room? Maybe taking swings with a plastic club in a mirror? Or perhaps chipping balls into a bucket in your front yard?
Sometimes golf that’s barely considered is actually the best kind of golf.
Charlie Golf Co. built a company that gets your kids saying “I’m going to go hit some balls.” It doesn’t have to be on a course. It doesn’t even have to be at a course.
Golf, you see, is all over.
You should check out the new camo bags from Charlie Golf Co. (depicted above by Jason). They are spectacular, perfect for the fall and a terrific gift option for the upcoming holidays (unless of course you want to hold off for the Norman-themed bags we have coming as well!).
Check out their camo bags right here.
And now, onto the news.
1. There’s not much good golf to speak of right now, but I have to say the Asia-Pacific Amateur has been wonderful. Firm, windy conditions at a course that looks both thrilling and difficult to play? All the way in. Just watch the first two minutes of shots here!
Throw in KVV’s on-site coverage for The Fried Egg, and it’s been an awesome event.
It also got me thinking about how much power Augusta National has when it comes to contextualization. In our podcast this week, Hayden and I discussed how much the Hong Kong Open (!) meant because its winner — John Catlin — received an invite to both the 2027 Masters and Open Championship.
In golf, we lack the prism of the World Series or Super Bowl that other sports have that helps contextualize even the most minute details and transactions: What does this 5th round pick mean for the Seahawks’ Super Bowl chances?
The Masters (and The Open) helps solve for this and gives some real depth to what we’re watching and experiencing in the golf world.
2. Michael Brennan. I’ve been thinking about him since he won in Japan. Is he a star? Not yet. Could he be? Absolutely. Here’s the first line on his Wake Forest bio.
Tied for third in Wake Forest history with eight individual titles. The only Deacs with more wins are Bill Haas (10), Gary Hallberg (9) and Curtis Strange (8).
I am way into guys who improve year over year for several years in a row. I think of Ryan Gerard and Matt Fitzpatrick as recent examples.
Look at Brennan’s SG totals since 2022.
The jumps have been large, too. They don’t look huge on paper, but to go from -1.7 to +0.8 in five years, linearly, is crazy impressive. The situation is being monitored for sure.
3. When I was a kid, my parents were hesitant to let us dress up for and celebrate Halloween. I don’t hold it against them and I understand why that was the case. Maybe you grew up in a similar type of home or environment.
Now? I think it might low-key be my favorite holiday. Not what the holiday represents itself, but rather what it does to our neighborhood.
One big night — usually with great weather! — of parents and kids running around, hanging out in each other’s yards, talking, laughing, watching games on projectors, hollering at their kids to “put the candy away but first give me all your Twix minis.”
In a world in which yesteryear gets way overdone when it comes to how good it actually was, Halloween in our community — at least to me — truly does feel like the best of a culture in which people were certainly more present where they were.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,050 of them) and includes an awesome look at KFT grads, more on the new project I’ve been working on and a sheep review of the best book I’ve read in 2026 …
4. Historical golf data. If you listened to our podcast this week, I disclosed probably more than I intended regarding a project I’m working on that I’ve wanted to exist for the last 10 years and that I’ve messed around with for the last few.
Recently, I have gotten extremely steep on building out a place to answer questions like …
• How do you compare players in different eras like Sarazen and Phil?
• How should we reference Tour events that have had 10 different names?
• How many Tommy Armours were there?
• Wait who are the SG leaders at The Players, and how is this guy second??
All of this is incredibly nerdy and niche and perhaps I’m one of only a handful of people who cares about any of it. However, I care about all of it a lot, and I’ve found myself in that stage of an adventure where I’m just obsessing over it day and night. That’s fun for me because it doesn’t happen all the time.
5. Along these same lines, I have been thinking a lot (too much) about how to evaluate a player’s career. What matters more? What matters most? How much more does a major podium (top three) matter than a top 10? How much do you weight a loaded Memorial victory in 2025 vs. one that happened in 1979? Should a player’s peak be considered his best five-year stretch or his best ten-year stretch?
None of this matters. But also I think about it all the time. So I’m not sure how to reconcile those two things. There is beauty in order. I have always felt that even if I didn’t know how to articulate it. When I was a kid, I would use a mechanical pencil to write baseball stats and figures down on a yellow note pad. I would try to order these chaotic worlds I meandered into.
Now, as a 41 year old, I’m still doing the same. Sometimes it’s with words. Sometimes with numbers. But I think the through line to all of it is order. How can I take what is messy and make it orderly and neat and delightful?
I’m not always great at it [see: 2,500-word golf newsletters], but I do think the effort is always worth it.
[Jason here] While Kyle has been thinking about how to evaluate a player’s career, I’ve been thinking about how to describe the magic that some players and teams seem to take on in the biggest moments.
Some wins have more magic than others. Sometimes the winners don’t even have the magic! It’s fascinating to see a team like the Brewers vibing in early October and feel like they’re going to win the whole thing.
How do you describe that magic? And how can the Phillies get some? I don’t know but I like thinking about it. [back to Kyle]
6. Drew Murdock caddies for Matthew Riedel on the KFT, and he writes a Substack about his adventures. This idea — a caddie writing about his experiences on a minor league circuit — sounds extremely cliche. But the writing is the exact opposite.
His recent piece about the 20 KFT grads was tremendous. Mostly because he’s around these players a lot and has terrific stories. Must read stuff.
Here’s a sampling from his take on Blades Brown …
[Matthew] Riedel and I were sitting in player dining in Chicago after the fourth round. [Cole] Hammer had played the third round with Blades, and we were quite interested to hear his thoughts.
He sat down looking like he’d just seen a ghost and said, That was the most impressive round of golf I’ve ever seen.
To be fair, any time you watch a 61 that includes birdieing the final six holes, you’re probably gonna walk off the golf course speaking in hyperbole. But I’ll never forget how flabbergasted Cole was at lunch that day.
And he’s seen some ****.
Drew Murdock
Every profile is like that. An awesome read.
7. This is a good, short clip I stumbled across (as you can imagine, my social algorithm is mostly clips of people talking about books and majestic golf swings).
Twitter tweet
Walking and reading. As far as mental clarity goes, it’s tough to beat that combo. Easy for me to forget when I’m neck deep in a project on the computer, but I agree with the clip that when I’m moving around and reading, I feel 10x better than when I’m not.
8. I don’t think I’ve written about this book yet in the newsletter (apologies if I have!), but I read it recently and did so in ~24 hours.
It’s incredible. Probably my favorite book of the year and one that sits at the crossroads of so many controversial topics that will 1. Take you on an amazing adventure and 2. Have you thinking about what you would do in different complicated social situations throughout (like — in the specific instance described in the book — whether helping an ebola patient is … ethical?).
Five of five sheep.
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 on one of my favorite weekends of the year.
More on that below.
Name drops today: Gary Hallberg, Matthew Riedel, Kevin Hazzard, Tom Lehman, Nick Price and Twix minis.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Charlie Golf Co.
Here’s a question: How did you start playing golf?
Putting balls into cups in your living room? Maybe taking swings with a plastic club in a mirror? Or perhaps chipping balls into a bucket in your front yard?
Sometimes golf that’s barely considered is actually the best kind of golf.
Charlie Golf Co. built a company that gets your kids saying “I’m going to go hit some balls.” It doesn’t have to be on a course. It doesn’t even have to be at a course.
Golf, you see, is all over.
You should check out the new camo bags from Charlie Golf Co. (depicted above by Jason). They are spectacular, perfect for the fall and a terrific gift option for the upcoming holidays (unless of course you want to hold off for the Norman-themed bags we have coming as well!).
Check out their camo bags right here.
And now, onto the news.
1. There’s not much good golf to speak of right now, but I have to say the Asia-Pacific Amateur has been wonderful. Firm, windy conditions at a course that looks both thrilling and difficult to play? All the way in. Just watch the first two minutes of shots here!
Throw in KVV’s on-site coverage for The Fried Egg, and it’s been an awesome event.
It also got me thinking about how much power Augusta National has when it comes to contextualization. In our podcast this week, Hayden and I discussed how much the Hong Kong Open (!) meant because its winner — John Catlin — received an invite to both the 2027 Masters and Open Championship.
In golf, we lack the prism of the World Series or Super Bowl that other sports have that helps contextualize even the most minute details and transactions: What does this 5th round pick mean for the Seahawks’ Super Bowl chances?
The Masters (and The Open) helps solve for this and gives some real depth to what we’re watching and experiencing in the golf world.
2. Michael Brennan. I’ve been thinking about him since he won in Japan. Is he a star? Not yet. Could he be? Absolutely. Here’s the first line on his Wake Forest bio.
Tied for third in Wake Forest history with eight individual titles. The only Deacs with more wins are Bill Haas (10), Gary Hallberg (9) and Curtis Strange (8).
I am way into guys who improve year over year for several years in a row. I think of Ryan Gerard and Matt Fitzpatrick as recent examples.
Look at Brennan’s SG totals since 2022.
The jumps have been large, too. They don’t look huge on paper, but to go from -1.7 to +0.8 in five years, linearly, is crazy impressive. The situation is being monitored for sure.
3. When I was a kid, my parents were hesitant to let us dress up for and celebrate Halloween. I don’t hold it against them and I understand why that was the case. Maybe you grew up in a similar type of home or environment.
Now? I think it might low-key be my favorite holiday. Not what the holiday represents itself, but rather what it does to our neighborhood.
One big night — usually with great weather! — of parents and kids running around, hanging out in each other’s yards, talking, laughing, watching games on projectors, hollering at their kids to “put the candy away but first give me all your Twix minis.”
In a world in which yesteryear gets way overdone when it comes to how good it actually was, Halloween in our community — at least to me — truly does feel like the best of a culture in which people were certainly more present where they were.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,050 of them) and includes an awesome look at KFT grads, more on the new project I’ve been working on and a sheep review of the best book I’ve read in 2026 …
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• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
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