Issue No. 245 | September 2, 2025 | Read Online

Some exciting news coming later this week as we drop Episode 0 of the Normal Sport Show. You’ll hear about it in the newsletter, and we’re pretty excited about publishing it for you guys. I have deliberated like Patrick Cantlay over a big shot in starting this show, and I’ll get into why that’s the case in Episode 0.

We would love (and it would help us) for you to subscribe on YouTube right here.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

We will get to all the normal moments of the last week in a moment, but first a thank you to the presenter of today’s newsletter, Meridian Putters.

Meridian, like the event we’re about to discuss, makes a product that is even greater than the sum of its excellent parts.

The thing that’s in my head when I think about Meridian comes from when I interviewed founder, Ryan Duffey, a few months ago.

We were talking about torque-less putters, but that was just the vehicle for this philosophy, which Ryan espoused. A philosophy for the fact that feel matters. How it looks matters. How it performs matters.

The paintbrush matters.

I don’t know why I loved that quote so much, but I think it says a lot about how Meridian views putting in general. It’s not a math equation. It’s a canvas. It’s not a physics problem. It’s an open road. That’s the way we view the world as well.

OK now onto the news.

One Thing I Loved

What did you think I was going to write about here?

If you saw any of the European Masters over the weekend, you probably also saw this clip of Matt Wallace crying his eyes out over the fact that he knew he didn’t do enough to be considered for what would have been his first Ryder Cup spot.

I’ve gotten some emails, some DMs, some communication about why I’m so obsessed with this event and why I spend so much time talking about it.

Some of this is fair. There has not been a super competitive Sunday at the Ryder Cup since 2012, and there is a way to look at all of this as simply a money-making extravaganza for either the European Tour or the PGA of America.

Maybe it is I who has been duped into caring about this ridiculous set of exhibition golf matches every 730 days. That is certainly on the table.

But then I see Matt Wallace weeping after winning $240,000 at a golf tournament, and I am reminded that I have not been duped. It really is that meaningful. It really does mean as much as I think it does. Maybe more.

Why though? Why is that the case? Why does it mean this much?

There are a thousand answers to that question, I suppose. The lowest hanging fruit is that golf is lonely and the Ryder Cup is communal. Losing, winning, getting torched, winning big. It doesn’t matter. Community is undefeated. Who isn’t desperate — golfer or just regular human — to be a part of something like that?

But the less obvious answer is that the Ryder Cup has taken on this quality where it is very much more than the sum of its parts. The Presidents Cup is the sum of its parts. A fun and good team event that produces a very cool week. The Ryder Cup is beyond that. It is magical. I’m not totally sure why this is the case. I don’t think anyone is sure why this is the case. But it does seem to be the case.

I recently wrote a script for a Ryder Cup hype video, and the phrase that overwhelmed me — and that I used as the through line in the video — was Only Here.

Only here do grown men weep not about the shots they hit but the friends they carried. 
Only here do regal hands shake with such a heavy fear.
Only here do roaring villains make such tremendous kings. 
Only here do wars and miracles mean the exact same thing. 

Only here does the beginning echo until the very end. 
Only here can you smell the tide turning on what was supposed to be a rout. 
Only here do your friends hold on when you have nothing left to give.

In what other place does the business of caring still hold this much weight?
Where else does the price of our emotion return so great a gift?

Not all events are created equal.

Some only endure because we’re supposed to care about something bigger than self. Only here do we remember that the very thing we crave the most, well, it’s been there with us all along.

Only here.

The script was an attempt to get at the soul of the event. Maybe it got part of the way there. I don’t know. But I do know that I will keep trying to figure out what it is, what the thing is that makes this event and this week so special and upends men like Matt Wallace at what should have been a celebratory finish in Switzerland.

There is truly nothing like it.

Normal Sport

1. Congratulations on your recent success in hitting a ball around a field fewer times than the other people who were walking around the field here is your alligator skull to commemorate the week and your victory.

Andrew Martin wins the Tailor-made Building Services NT PGA Championship (the Tailor-made-don’t-call-it-Taylormade is sending me)

2. Sure we can get four grown men to move that block of astroturf so you can get into a small body of water for your next feat of athleticism. Some extremely normal stuff.

3. If you know where to look, Normal Sport moments are truly everywhere. They are not limited to golf or even sports, although this one was specifically about the Ohio State-Texas game on Saturday (kind of).

From the Archives

In light of Europe running it back with 11 of their 12 in Rome plus the other Hojgaard, it feels appropriate to resurface these bits from the last few years.

I wrote this last summer.

And this one after JT got picked for Rome.

It makes sense that Americans would be upset that X player did Y that should have gotten him onto Z team. We are (allegedly) a meritocracy, and golf is (allegedly) a meritocratic game. But if you’ve ever played team sports. Even if you’ve ever coached your kids’ teams, you understand that part of the magic of a great team is cohesion. This doesn’t seem like it should apply to an individual sport like golf, but how many Ryder Cups must we sit through before we say, You know what, it does seem like the team that is closer emotionally plays above its baseline more than the one that is not as emotionally close.

The boys club stuff has been used derogatorily in the past, but Europe has been leaning on it for years and will do so more than ever at Bethpage (with just one new player from Rome).

Quote of the Week

I think the stage of re-enchantment is the sweetest one because you are choosing — even after all your naiveté has been shattered — to engage in an enchantment with the world. I think about this all the time as it relates to normalized things like flying in an airplane. I am never not enchanted when I fly somewhere because the idea of flying in a metal box around the world is insane.

Anyway, the idea of re-enchantment is compelling to me because I think it gets me to a place of gratitude which is the state I want to (but rarely do) live in.

How is This App Free?

• This one upended me.

• I love the CFB/golf crossover deep cuts. This one is great.

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 1,531 words long like this one.

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