Greetings!
An exciting announcement today as we welcome Cobra to our collection of brand partners for the 2026 year.
As you can tell from Jason’s reimagined Brewers’ sausage race but with Cobra club heads to commemorate baseball’s opening day, we have loved working to incorporate such a cool brand into the weird and fun Normal Sport world that all of us play around in.
Garmin also re-signed for 2026, which means our official partner list for this year includes the following.
OGIO
Cobra
Garmin
Turtlebox
Seed Golf
Ship Sticks
Sap’s Original
Charlie Golf Co.
Holderness and Bourne
We have 2-3 others still in the queue, but this group will primarily be who you see on this newsletter and in our podcasts and social feeds for the rest of 2026.
Name drops today: Andy Weir, Mark Pope, Phil Mickelson, Joaquin Niemann, Steph Curry and Rickie Fowler.
This newsletter is brought to you by Cobra, whose new 3DP irons are … 3D printed using 2,600 layers of 316 stainless steel powder that are fused together using powerful lasers.
Everybody together now …
A natural follow up question: Uh, so what is the benefit of 3D printing irons?
There are many, but here’s one reason that stood out to me.
3D printing gives engineers complete design freedom to create the best combination of shaping the ball, feeling the shot and forgiveness that can't be achieved in cast or forged irons.
I admit, I’m probably not smart enough to understand why this is the case, but it does seem to be the case that this tech is a pretty cool next step in iron evolution.
I can also confidently say that we are going to have an absolute blast illustrating Cobra’s technology all year and cannot wait to get our hands on the 3DP clubs that Max is “obsessed with.”
OK, now onto the news.
1. This flew under the radar a bit, but Brian Rolapp talked recently about how the U.S. sports media market is $30 billion and how the NFL is aggressively pushing for more than its current 40 percent slice of that.
Couple of thoughts here.
1. For the last several years, I have been promoting the idea/theory that there is a lot of slack in the Tour’s media deal (currently $700M annually) because Tiger kept pushing those numbers up, and now he’s no longer involved. What that means for the future is surely one of the central questions all sides are asking.
2. Related: At some point, these numbers can’t keep going up, right? Tour players — the owners of the league — are probably going to have to either choose quality and scarcity (which could bring the total overall money down) or abundance for marginally more dollars for themselves, perhaps to the detriment of the long-term health of the league. Stay tuned!
3. Rolapp knows better than me, but I would say the $30 billion market number maybe undervalue the Netflixes and Apples of the world entering and stirring things up. Can’t that $30B number grow based on competition — Netflix, Apple and Amazon slinging money for rights — rather than growing simply based on increased inventory?
4. As Rolapp realized at the NFL, the best way for the league to make more money is to divide up its product into 100 pieces and sell them off individually to all these media giants (Peacock, Amazon, Netflix, ESPN).
That sounds like … one of golf’s primary problems over the last few years.
2. The WBC is baseball’s Ryder Cup, right?
Twitter tweet
It’s interesting to me that this doesn’t really work in golf for the President’s Cup. My working theory — outside of the lack of competitive matches — is that there hasn’t been a Rory- or Rahm-like personality that’s big enough to carry the International side recently against the U.S and make this event into a thing.
Adam Scott? Nah. Hideki? No. Joaquin Niemann? Please.
I think it would take another Greg Norman type — a larger-than-life superstar — and an upset or two to inject some juice into that event.
It will never be the Ryder Cup (obviously), but with the right personalities on the International side and the right venues (2019 at Melbourne was outrageously good!), I think the P Cup can still be a top eight (?) event of the year.
Or maybe the P Cup should be a team event between the top eight or 12 countries in the world (which is what the Olympics should be).
3. This is fascinating, and I think would be even more controversial than rolling the ball back or shrinking the driver head.
Do we think golf should be more like baseball where the equipment is varied (you can choose your own bat and glove) but heavily regulated and quite different from the amateur game (wood vs. metal).
OR do we think golf should be more like F1, where a lot of the way a league shakes out is purposefully rooted in which companies can make the best equipment.
Feel free to weigh in.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes thoughts on …
The Martian (sure).
How Jon Rahm is better than Scottie.
The business of delivering #takes
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