Hello,
It has been an exciting week behind the scenes here at Normal Sport. Nothing I can announce yet, but haven’t been this excited about a project in a long time. There will be hints below, and I’ll let you guys know what’s coming as soon as I can. If you’re a Normal Club member and hanging in Slack, DM me. I’ll share what i can.
Name drops today: Arlo White, Nick Kokonas, DHH, Babe Ruth, the Dodgers and Rasmus Hojgaard.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Holderness and Bourne.
Word on the street is that it’s the summer of cotton, and there is no better product in that space than H&B’s Oliver shirt.
Unlike some of what you’re going to read below, H&B Peruvian Pima cotton is actually a great investment of your money (and they even have their fall colors loaded up, which you can check out right here).
I wrote a lot today about what it means to create something great in the non-digital world. H&B has done that, and they do it over and over again across all their categories.
Thanks to them for supporting. Thanks to you for checking them out. Thanks to my wife for tolerating my overflowing closet.
And now, onto the news.
1. Obviously the LIV news has taken up the lions’s share of oxygen in golf this week.
The league (allegedly) got funding from BC Partners, which has a stake in GSE, the agency that represents Bryson (and other LIV players). All of that is extremely normal sport, of course, but it gets weirder.
Yet the path to a final agreement for LIV has turned into a complex, multi-party negotiation, according to the people involved, with BC Partners and other possible investors seeking assurances that LIV’s star players will stay with the league.
Several leading players, including Jon Rahm, are owed guaranteed payments worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars under contracts that extend beyond this month, when the PIF has said it will cease funding the league.
Financial Times
The PIF is considering paying off those contracts at a discount to settle any potential liability as well as to avoid bad publicity, leaving the players positioned to sign fresh deals with the BC Partners-backed circuit that would include cash as well as equity in the new league, according to those close to the negotiations.
Financial Times
Rahm is still owed nine figures, and they’re gonna give him shares of Lesion 13 to make up the difference? Surely that will go over well!
2. I have no reaction to any of this other than to be exhausted. Right here, in the middle of Jackson Koivun’s emergence, pro golf turns the other way and is like, Well I do wonder what the interest rate will be on the line of credit from the investment firm that helps fund Bryson’s crew. That seems far more interesting and thrilling than whether Koivun will be on the Presidents Cup team!
Like, I just don’t care.
I thought this take from my guy, Nick Kokonas, was terrific.
As has been the case for a while, Bryson seems to be the straw that stirs the drink here. Just as everything related to the Cavs revolved around LeBron for the first seven years of his career, everything related to LIV revolves around Bryson. That is the position he enjoys being in the most, and it’s unsurprising that an entity tethered to GSE would fund the future of this operation.
And honestly this is what LIV should have been all along: A modest league that tries to build up over time. The amusing part to me is that now you have an army of LIV bots stanning for a roided up version of … the Asian Tour? The Sunshine Tour?
That is all fine and good. Whatever. But nobody should have been pretending like LIV was some solve for golf, some sort of antidote to what’s wrong with sports or the real way to [closes eyes and winces] … grow the game.
3. And certainly let’s not — under any circumstances — blame the podcasters and newsletter writers for the 1.0 version of the product not working.
This is both outrageous and an abdication of responsibility.
If Normal Sport fails, you will absolutely not in any way hear me say “Well if No Laying Up and Fried Egg hadn’t been there first, it would have crushed” or “If not for AI, I think we could have made it.” No, just be better. Do the thing better. Play better. Pivot. Fight for it. Do something — anything — other than pin the blame at the feet of folks outside your organization.
My list of pet peeves is not super lengthy, but abdicating responsibility is probably at or near the top of the list (right next to entitlement).
Related. ⤵️
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes a GIF of one of my favorite swings right now, why we love so
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Kyle is a perfect curator of the necessary moments of levity that accent a sport that will drive most of us insane.
I’ve always enjoyed your love for golf. So often I see favoritism showed to golfers in the social media world, but I enjoy reading you telling a situation how it is regardless of the person.
Kyle's content is a product of a sick sense of humour, a clear passion for golf and unquestionable dedication to hard work. That's not normal!
Kyle is one of the best in the golf world at finding and synthesizing the absurd, the thoughtful and the fun things that make being a golf fan worthwhile.
Normal Sport is exploratory, sometimes emotional, always entertaining. It also has one of my favorite writers in the biz at its foundation.
There’s been no one else in golf that has tickled my funny bone as often as Kyle Porter does. He’s been instrumental in ushering in a new era of golf coverage and it’s been a pleasure to be along for the ride in that.
Kyle approaches coverage of the game with both conviction and curiosity
Kyle is the best columnist in sports. That he has channeled those talents through strokes gained and Spieth memes is a blessing to golf.
Kyle sees golf in a way that no one else does—and we're all fortunate to get to share in that view through Normal Sport!
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
The way Kyle has been able to mold a silly Twitter joke (normal sport) into a must-read newsletter on the weekly happenings in our silly game gives a great look into why he's one of the smartest people in golf.
It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
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