SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Greetings!
I have a few final thoughts from the grounds just ahead of the 126th U.S. Open, but first a big congrats to Luke M. for winning our Holderness and Bourne giveaway from earlier in the week.
That won’t be the last giveaway we do this week either so be on the lookout on Twitter and here on the newsletter for some other fun stuff from our partners.
For now, though, we have syringes and lettuce to get to.
Name drops: Mike Whan, Ron J. Ham, Bryson, John Bodenhamer and Elon Musk.
Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at OGIO. I am fully OGIO’d out this week with my Alpha Venture backpack and Renegade Vault carry on. Both have become must-haves for me when I travel.
After walking the greens at Shinnecock for a bit on Wednesday, I was disappointed that they felt less like the rock-hard shell of the Renegade Vault and more like the soft material that makes up the Alpha Venture, but you can’t win ‘em all.
What you can do, though, is go check out either (or both!) of these bags if you’re looking for some new travel gear this summer.
Thank you to OGIO for being a supporter of our work and now let’s get to the news.
Shoutout to Normal Club member John C. for this brilliant idea.
First, here’s my fantasy team for our members-only pool (link after the jump below). They will be a collective 76 over after the first round.
1. I walked for a few hours with the Jon Rahm group on Wednesday as I tried to get a feel for the golf course ahead of Thursday. I imagine it was as good of an experience as you can have following a practice round ahead of a major championship.
Rahm is a tremendous narrator of the game, the day and the course. Talks a ton of ball. Talks a ton of trash. Just the kind of person you want to be around when you’re playing or watching golf. He was playing with David Puig and Mexican Spieth, Carlos Ortiz.
A hole after I picked them up, I got a gift from the content gods. Bryson walked onto the tee box at No. 15 and said, “Is it OK if I play in with you guys?”
Rahm: “Actually … no.” [laughs] “I’m just kidding.”
But was he?
2. One of my favorite moments of following this group was the Spanish-speaking trio hitting all kinds of shots out of the greenside rough on No. 14 before Bryson joined up with them. Thinnies, chunk flops, high spinners, everything. The other two seemed to really enjoy watching the same thing I was there for, which was to see Jon Rahm do his thing.
He was as jovial and relaxed as is possible the day before a major championship. And it’s fun to close your eyes and listen to the shots. Everyone hit iron off the 15th tee box, and the sound at impact is just different for him. More compressed, more compact. Even than Bryson. Everybody thumps it at this level, but Rahm’s combo of deft hands and the hissing sound the ball makes off his club is marvelous.
A joy to see (and hear) up close.
3. It wouldn’t be a U.S. Open unless we got a distance update from the USGA. Many words were said. Many, many words. But here are the explicit (and implicit) takeaways I had from Kevin Hammer (USGA president), Mike Whan (USGA CEO) and John Bodenhamer (Chief Championships Officer).
Aside: Imagine your title on LinkedIn reading “Chief Championships Officer.” I might demand that my fam start calling me the Chief Championships Officer of my home. I am sure they will be happy to abide.
Anyway, the takeaways.
1. There will be no rollback in 2028. There will be no rollback earlier than 2030.
2. There may not even be rollback in 2030.
3. Other organizations (namely the PGA Tour) seem more onboard with rollback than they used to be (this was surprising).
4. Whan hinted at something bigger taking place than the measly 5-15 yards of rollback they were going to get with the golf ball.
There are of course two ways of looking at this … and we’ll talk about both of them below.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,056 of them) and includes some rollback assessment, your requisite lettuce and syringes content, more notes from that Rahm-Bryson round as well as some Rory quotes from Tuesday’s presser and lastly, a pick.
By becoming a member, you will receive the following …
• Access to 100 percent of our content this week.
• An invite to our Slack channel where we watch and talk golf together.
• A free digital copy of our Rory book.
• 15% off to our pro shop.
Normal Sport is exploratory, sometimes emotional, always entertaining. It also has one of my favorite writers in the biz at its foundation.
Few make the sport feel as fun and as thought provoking.
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 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.
It's a treasure trove of the important, the seemingly important, and — importantly! — the unimportant stuff. It's an asset in my inbox.
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!
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 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 is the best columnist in sports. That he has channeled those talents through strokes gained and Spieth memes is a blessing to golf.
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.
Kyle approaches coverage of the game with both conviction and curiosity
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