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Issue No. 127 | October 31, 2024
Today’s is a short one (“short one”) as we have spent much of this week working on our forthcoming membership and on partnerships for 2025.
One of the things that has been surprising about all of this since I jumped in full time is how many quality inbound requests we’ve had from folks wanting to get their product or service or business in front of 15,000 golf sickos.
Places that are dreaming similar dreams and want to partner with our newsletter as we both try to grow and find some kind of success in the golf world.
We have loved talking to those people.
If that’s you, by the way, if you want to get your product, service or business in front of 15,000 sickos, you can fill out this short form here and we will get back with you.
We are already working through a lot of inventory for 2025 (!!), which is crazy so jump in there and let us know.
Onto the (truncated) news.
1. Today marks one month since I went full time with Normal Sport. I know everyone probably gets tired of hearing about all my Thoughts and Feelings about the journey, but two things real quick and then we’ll move on to golf stuff.
• It has been so much more fun than I imagined it would be. I thought there would be a lot of stress and angst, and while there are certainly moments of “how in the world is this going to work?” my general feeling is, “even if it doesn’t, at least we’re taking a real swing at it.”
• Most fears we have as humans are illusive. I have always struggled with the fear of bothering people. Whether that’s selling ad packages for this newsletter or bugging players for interviews, it’s something that has been persistent for me.
And while that still exists at times, it has mostly dissipated because … I don’t really have another choice. There is probably also a lesson about incentives in there. We will gravitate toward doing what we are most incentivized to do.
What has become clear for me is that I don’t ever want to do anything but write about golf in the way I write about golf, and so I am heavily incentivized to extend our financial runway as a business another month and then another three months and so on.
2. OK fine I have one more thing about the first month. I am grateful for the graciousness people have shown me, mostly via their time. Whether it’s obvious — like Shane Ryan giving what was probably 2 hours of his time to write this wonderful Q&A — or not — like Neil from NLU talking with me on the phone for an hour about business stuff — I have been blown away by how generous friends and colleagues have been. Those are two examples, but they’re far from the only ones who have helped.
3. OK really this is the last one. I have been stressed about our business plan for, like, a year now, always thinking, “This is the week I’ll finish it and it will be the most perfect business plan that has ever been written!”
The reality, I have come to realize, is that you just pick off a thought here and an idea there and it’s a bit of a living document. That has removed the stress and helped me let it evolve as we experiment in different directions.
Lately, I have been heavily influenced by the folks over at Doomberg. I don’t really follow their world — energy commodities (sure) — but they are brilliant at thinking through how to build a business.
I’ve been obsessed with this podcast they did recently.
Things that have become clear for us from a business standpoint over the first month.
• The only two things I should be working on are locking in 2025 partners and a paid membership plan (both noted above). There are 1,000 other things to work on, but those are the only two that matter. Besides the actual content of course.
• Trust from readers — not money in our account or partnerships or my writing or Jason’s illustrating — is our most important asset. Not sure it’s even close.
• This is what we want to do with our careers. This is all we want to do with our careers.
Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting.
4. This on the PIF tightening its pursestrings is not huge news, but it is something that has been reinforced often over the last few months. It has made me wonder whether the Tour is trying to wait them out. Whether the Tour is daring the PIF to give Phil another $200M to shoot 76s and sell capes.
There are other ways the PIF can get its tentacles into golf that are concerning, but most don’t involve the PIF co-opting the Tour as a business. I wonder if the Tour is trying to manifest that.
Playing chicken with MBS did not go well the first time around, but the longer the framework agreement negotiations — which, again, are being handled like the Treaty of Versailles! — go on, the more it seems like leverage is tipping toward the Tour.
5. Apropos of almost nothing — which is how most Spieth sentences start — this PGA Tour Twitter header made me laugh.
6. Speaking of Spieth! I went on the Smylie Show earlier this week, which I will link below. It was lovely and a ton of fun to chop it up with two fellow sickos in Smylie and Charlie Hulme.
One question they asked that I was (shockingly) unprepared to answer was what is my gold-silver-bronze for normal moments from the last 10 years. I need to make the list. In the moment, this is literally all I could think of.
Here are the links.
7. Here’s a question for you, dear reader.
8. I stumbled into this quote this week and thought it was great. I talk to my kids a lot about being the new guy. This is a great way to approach that.
There are two kinds of people. Those who enter a new room and scream, “Here I am,” and others whose eyes say, “There you are.”
Never Too Late
9. Extremely normal sport point here by Kev. And then Robert responds with, I think, the reason a lot of us have been yelling about rollback for a long time now.
Another way to frame what Robert is saying in his follow up (and a point that I have used before) is this simple question: Do you want to go to St. Andrews or not?
Regardless, it is wild that publicly traded companies trying to create shareholder value affects, like, what happens at The U.S. Open every year.
10. Me reading Gabby’s article here on how the presidential election could shape (and will shape!) what happens to men’s professional golf ….
It’s also true.
11. The person (or people) who run(s) the TUGR account and I do not agree on everything, but I thought these recent observations were interesting.
How can the PGA Tour innovate to better connect with non-baby boomer generations? A few ideas …
Need a Peyton and Eli-type simulcast with majors. We need more dynamic personalities in the booth (maybe someone younger than 60!)
Bring on guests and maybe say something other than, "that was a great shot" or "you don't know how easy he made that look".
Show more golf. We don't need to watch two minutes of aimpoint. There was a scene at the Presidents Cup where two players and a caddie were all doing aimpoint within a few feet of each other. What are we doing!!!!
Better digital leaderboards. We need to be able to digest better what's going on in real-time. We need more than a player's score and hole location. A few ideas: Bring in win probabilities and indicate with a little green dot, yellow dot, or red dot by their name if they are likely to get a birdie, par, or bogey on a hole based on their approach shot. That way if the camera is on one player, we know what's going on with another player at the same time.
…
Most non-boomers can't watch four hours of golf on the weekend. Many are lucky to grab the last 30-60 minutes of a tournament. Step up the fan viewership experience and you'll capture the new generation.
TUGR
I guess my broad take on stuff like this with all sports that aren’t football is that you also need to probably accept that the trajectory from 20 years ago has changed for all media properties. All of them. Books, movies, shows, sports, everything.
The long tail created by the internet is extraordinary — it is literally what allows me to type these words — but it also has unintended consequences, such as the fact that everything is so much more fractured than before.
If we cannot accept that then we are not operating in reality.
As for the points above, the Peyton and Eli-type broadcast is a good idea but tough to pull off. NLU have done it as well as it can be done over the last few years with the PGA.
Why is it difficult to pull off? Well, Peyton and Eli have to do it for 3.5 hours every two weeks. It’s a lot (a LOT) more difficult when you have to do it for 3.5 hours for four consecutive days. But I understand (and agree with) the sentiment.
Yes on the show more golf. World Feed 4 Life.
Better digital leaderboards is a big yes as well. That the Tour has not bought Data Golf is nuts to me. This starts with cut lines. If I see another “projected cut line” that is actually just an “actual cut line” I may go full Bryson at Carnoustie.
That there isn’t a Baseball Reference for golf also remains crazy. It’s something I tried to start but did not have enough bandwidth or resources to pull off.
It’s out there, though. There is so much opportunity to build interesting businesses around enjoyment of the men’s or women’s professional game.
However, to ask the big companies to experiment may not be the right way to look at this. I think in most cases, the big companies will not be incentivized nor do they have the risk tolerance to do most of this. Maybe they dabble, but as is the case in any industry, it is the smaller, tiny, niche places where the best work will so often happen. Not always and not only, but I think looking for it at the top is probably the wrong place to start.
Thanks for reading until the end.
You’re a sicko, and I’m grateful for it.
