Issue No. 238 | August 12, 2025 | Read Online

We taught our kids poker recently. It’s been a blast. Judge away.

Two of them, though, bet like absolute drunks. Check raises with nothing. All ins with a mid pair. It’s just completely sociopathic stuff to the point that they actually become impossible to play against because you truly never know what they are (or are not) holding. Oftentimes, neither do they!

You’ll trap them into something they should be bailing out of immediately and they hang on to the end of the rope until the river hits and they clean you out. Then they’ll put you all in with Q-Q after they just played (and raised) with 7-5, 6-5, 9-7 and 3-2 consecutively.

Honestly, the only comp I have for it is that facing my kids in poker with all their quirks and idiosyncrasies must be what it feels like to face Jordan Spieth in match play at the peak of his powers (more on this shortly).

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OK, now onto the news.

12 Thoughts on the Last Week in Golf

We are straying a bit from the traditional Tuesday newsletter in favor of a few thoughts that are still rattling around in my head. Let’s get right to it.

1. This putt from Tommy on 17 on Sunday was honestly one of the worst efforts I’ve ever seen (JJ Spaun hit one at the Players earlier this year that made me gasp out loud). I’ve hit this putt like 900 times where it’s barely halfway there and nothing but an act of God will keep it from missing by two cups.

Here’s the Spaun putt from Sawgrass.

The Tommy thing is difficult because he’s among the five easiest guys to root for (Hovland, Ludvig, Min Woo (?), Sahith) and it’s weird because — with seven Euro Tour wins and his Ryder Cup achievements — he’s broadly a good champion.

However, the data would suggest that when he’s in position to win going into the final round, he either falls out of it or barely gets it done (six of his seven wins on the Euro Tour have been by one stroke or in a playoff).

This from Data Golf is not what you want to see. Lowering your expected wins by nearly three when you’re in the top three going into the final round is … bad.

I suspect the “he can’t win on the PGA Tour” thing is in his head, too. We’re talking about somebody who once admitted that he was thinking about what Tron would say if he won/lost at an event (I believe the Canadian Open) so he is clearly considering things he probably shouldn’t be thinking about at the end of these tournaments.

All of this, though, has only made him more likable. The willingness to reengage the fight, embracing the questions following his failures and his obvious dejection in the face of tremendous losses. All of it is relatable. All of it is compelling. All of it makes his actual career path far more interesting than it otherwise would be.

2. I loved this quote from Justin Rose after his win.

What a cool visual.

The immense task of every all-timer is to find slivers of who they used to be at times when they need them most.

In many ways, this is more captivating than following their peak years, mostly because there is true joy (and even sometimes surprise) in them when they are able to complete the task. In the peak years, it’s hard to feel anything other than dejection at losing or relief at winning. In the post-peak years, expectations are different and relief turns to true delight that they could find what was at various times probably considered lost.

Also, Rose is going to (easily) go down as a top 10 player in the post-1983 era. I could see him getting as high as probably eight on this list, and I think the argument against Furyk would be pretty strong as well. Also: How about Rory nearly catching Vijay in less than half the starts? 👀 

3. A reminder that Holderness and Bourne is giving away a $500 box of Ryder Cup gear to Normal Sport readers who are also following Holderness on Twitter. You can do that right here. We will draw a lucky winner later this week.

 4. Joseph LaMagna wrote about how ridiculous it is that Rickie Fowler is now in every elevated/signature/whatever they’re called event in 2026, and it is spot on (read it here).

Not Rickie’s fault, of course, but that fact that we are deciding real history in a league based on who mortgage companies and banks think will sell tickets is a farce. To be honest, it’s embarrassing for the league, and if any other league did this they would be laughed out of the room.

It would be like the NFL saying, Well to make the playoffs you need to win your division but also we’re going to let the Chiefs play three extra games to see if they can get in because they are popular. People would lose it (and they should). The Tour remains stuck between release patterns (competitiveness and entertainment).

We’re talking about playoffs?!

5. Speaking of other leagues, the whole Rory skipping Memphis issue last week was hilarious. People were Big Mad about it, even though it was tantamount to the NBA making a rule that if you win 70 regular season games, you’re automatically in the Finals and then everyone being angry at the Thunder for not playing in the first three playoff rounds because “it’s bad for the league.”

Maybe don’t have a system where it makes more sense for superstars to sit out than for them to play?

Rory should skip this week as well! So should Scottie. Both would still easily make it to East Lake and be plenty rested for the final four rounds. Also, because there are no starting strokes this year at the Tour Championship, there is zero difference between being No. 30 and being No. 1.

6. How would I change this? There are 100 ways you could change it, but I would for sure shrink the postseason so that less than 40 percent of your regular participants made it (which is where we’re currently at). To be honest, as czar of golf I would probably get rid of the playoffs altogether but barring that I think I would …

• Take the top 40 from the regular season.
• Make a week-long festival in a northeast venue (get out of Memphis and ATL).
• Play six rounds instead of four.
• Make some of it match play if you want.
• Create some sort of celebration of the season (awards, trick shot contests etc.)

That week-long event would be way better than the three-week slog the playoffs represent right now. I do think making it to East Lake as one of the 30 best players across an entire season is truly a meaningful thing. It’s something players take pride in, and there’s a reason that making that 30 gets you into major championships.

So I like that. But I think shrinking the playoffs in general would make the regular season more meaningful, and extending the finale to six rounds would get rid of some of the randomness a four-round event can bring about. You want to be this year’s PGA Tour postseason champion? Go beat Scottie over six rounds. Good luck.

7. If there were 2025 playoffs for golf media, Jamie Kennedy would be hard to beat. He’s been the best golf follow on Twitter this year, and I’m not sure it’s close. His updated Wikipedia grid HOF entries post is amazing.

Here’s my favorite one.

Whose is that? It’s Greg Norman after 54 holes.

Makes LIV feel a lot more fitting.

8. I said a version of this on the NLU podcast this week, but I was thinking on vacation about how the Ryder Cup is the most fun thing in the world to yell about because you’re basically trying to construct a team for just five games, and you could argue there are 1 million ways that should be done.

There’s nothing really like that in sports. Maybe, what, Olympic basketball? But that always feels less controversial because the 10th, 11th and 12th guys barely play, and if they’re playing poorly, they don’t have to play at all. Not the case with the Ryder Cup. It’s just such a fascinating exercise that everyone (who pays attention) has a legitimate opinion on. There’s no facsimile for it.

9. My team as of today.

Scottie
Spaun
Xander
Bryson
Henley
JT
Morikawa
Cantlay
English
Griffin
Young
Burns

I’m officially off of Spieth. If you want to replace Burns with Keegan or Gotterup or McNealy or even Spieth, I’m fine with it. I wouldn’t argue very hard against it. But if I had to pick without the in-depth statistical information the captains have, that would be my squad.

Also, I’ve been saying this, but I’m extremely amused by the discourse. For some reason, I was off of Cantlay last week (temporary insanity, I suppose), but he really has been solid throughout the year and better than almost every European even though the narrative around him right now is very much that he sucks.

These narratives are swirling around much of the American team, even though the reality is that most of them are playing much better than Twitter would make it appear.

Here are the top 14 Americans/Europeans over the last six months. Ten of them are Americans.

10. I’m not saying Europe would have Jackson Koivun on its Ryder Cup team, but I am saying there would definitely be a few encrypted WhatsApp group chats between vice captains with the idea floating around.

He has been the eighth-best player in the world over the last three months!

11. Normal sport. Elite athletes.

12. One of the great tweets of our time.

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 1,922 words long like this one.

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