Issue No. 160 | February 23, 2025

The creative skillset I am perhaps most impressed by is world building. Whether it’s Brandon Sanderson talking to Tim Ferriss about the 23,000 (approx.) books he’s written, winding down Harry Potter with my kids or something new I discover online, I love entering into new worlds.

And maybe even more than that, I appreciate the people who build them. World building is extremely difficult and takes a lot of artistry, consistency and vulnerability.

Jeff Marsh is a world builder.

His world is different than the one we’re trying to build at Normal Sport, but I love exploring it. He sent me his Golf is Art. books recently, and I found myself lost in them. He makes world building look a lot easier than it actually is.

And while we have known of each other for a while, we haven’t really known each other. So I reached out and asked if I could talk with him about how he ended up becoming one of the best photographers in golf (and a founder of one of the cooler clubs I’ve come across) as well as how that Spieth photo happened.

We had a blast talking, and I hope that comes through in the Q&A below.

Enjoy!

But first!

Thank you to Meridian for presenting today’s newsletter.

One thing I love about Meridian is that all they make is putters.

When I think about Normal Sport building out a YouTube channel and six pods and being on TikTok and all these other things, it can feel intoxicating.

But I know that the right decision, the disciplined choice is to just make the best golf newsletter we can possibly make right now.

Meridian has made the same choice. It could find its way into club making and other things, but instead it is investing all that time, effort and energy into constructing the best putters it can possibly make.

That’s going to be good for them in the long term, and as someone who is also running a small business (mine is more of a micro business), I find it extremely aspirational.

You should check them out.

OK, onto the Q&A.

KP: Jeff Marsh, what did you want to be when you were 14 years old?

Jeff: Oh, man. That was an interesting season in my life. My parents split up when I was 14, and I really just turned to sports as my outlet. Golf was in no way even on my radar whatsoever. I played baseball and football. I grew up with Ryan Moore. He was really my only connection point to golf.

When I was six or seven, we had season tickets to the Seahawks in the Kingdome. We were terrible, but Steve Largent, he was my favorite athlete in all of sports. I remember at that age, taking an eye to the guys with the big cameras on the sidelines.

It was a few years later, probably before I was 14, but my parents gave me this Steve Largent book — that I still have — that has his whole career documented. A lot of it's by this guy named Corky Trewin, who is still the Seahawks photographer all these years later. So in the back of my mind, way back in my mind, I wanted to be a sports photographer. But honestly never really took any steps to go down that road.

KP: Was that the Griffey, A-Rod Mariners?

Jeff: Oh, yeah. That team was awesome. That was special. Yeah, '95 Seahawks were horrible. It was pretty abysmal being a Seattle fan. But [the Mariners] had Randy Johnson, A-Rod, Griffey, Jay Buhner. Went all the way to the ALCS and then lost to the Indians.

In 2013, I had been a photographer by four years. I ended up getting asked to shoot a Seahawks game. And then they ended up keeping me for six seasons. And I got to work alongside Corky on all those games. So that was a pretty cool.

KP: How did golf make its way into your adult life and into your professional career?

Jeff: Ryan [Moore] and I played baseball together, and then he ended up quitting baseball just to focus on golf in high school. When he went off to college, he went to UNLV, we stayed in touch and they had regionals up in Oregon. I was going to school in Portland so I would drive over and watch him play in the NCAAs.

Then for some reason, he decided to ask me to caddie for him in the 2003 U.S. Publinx. And my extent of golf knowledge was just watching him play. So I really just didn't know the rules of golf at all. But he actually played really well. He won that event in 2002 and 2004. We lost in the round of 32 to Brandt Snedeker, who went on to win it.

Then at the end of the summer of 2006, Ryan called me and asked if I wanted a caddie for him at the Deutsche Bank Championship. We were in the second to the last group on Sunday, I think we were in fourth going into Sunday. The final group was Tiger and Vijay. Vijay was up going into that round, but Tiger just steamrolled him. We were the group ahead of him. That was my very first experience in the professional golf space.

Jeff: In 2009, after trying a whole bunch of different stuff for my career, I decided to give photography a go and mostly focus on weddings and family portraits and stuff. I didn't shoot anything golf related until 2013.

Ryan and his brother bought TRUE linkswear. I went out to Arizona and shot a few campaigns for them. [They] ended up hiring me on like half time to run their brand and shoot all of their photo, video, content stuff. And that was pretty much my real entry into the golf photo world.

I’d been full-time freelance for 10 years, but almost none of that was golf. And I just like, I fell in love with it. When COVID happened, I ended up getting laid off, which ended up being a really good thing because I just reached out to everybody that I had connected with in that, the half a year that I was with them.

Jeff: The first real big gig I landed when they flip flopped the schedule of the the U.S. Am and the U.S. Open. The USGA didn't want to send their whole staff across the country two weeks prior to risk people getting sick so they asked Bandon if they knew anyone and I had been there twice that year with TRUE.

So the USGA hired me, and I was the only video guy on property to cover the U.S. Am. and that ended up leading to them having me come out to Winged Foot for the Open, which was pretty wild.

I did a good job for them, and now they've consistently been my biggest golf client since then. LPGA was my top client last year because I'm doing a lot with them now. But yeah, that connection between Bandon and the USGA was really what catapulted me being able to survive as a full-time golf only freelance, a photo and video.

Jeff: It's definitely tough, but it's obviously been worth it. When I was 14, definitely didn't think I would be doing the stuff that I am doing.

I just turned 42, and I would say when I was 35, I didn't think I would ever be doing anything remotely close to what I'm doing.

The story is so complex and the amount of connection points that just wasn't like an A to B I mean, I guess most people's stories are not like that, but it was like the connect the dots looks like a starry night. For sure. So many different things it took to get to where I'm at, which is just every time I look back, I'm like, “Man, it's pretty cool to see the journey that God's brought me on.”

KP: Why do you find golf to be beautiful?

Jeff: I think there's so many different aspects in the game of golf between... I'm not a huge architecture nerd. That wasn't really part of my entry into the game. But I've learned to appreciate it, especially as a history major. It just boggles my mind that anybody can go out to a fully wooded site or the Bandon coast where it's all just gorse and come up with world-class golf.

It's so fascinating to me. And one of my favorite things that I shoot quite a bit of now is shooting properties as they develop. Being from Washington, my whole life was in the wilderness, climbing, climbing Rainier and backpacking. And I've missed a lot of that, honestly, being in golf because I'm usually just at a golf course. And so it's been fun to go back to that, back to those roots as I explore these properties before they've even been touched and just to revel in the beauty of God's creation.

I just think it's cool to see how people approach the game differently just because we're all wired so differently. As I shoot pro golf, there's players like Ryan who didn't carry a yardage book most of his career because he was just a feel player. And so it was cool to see just how he would be creative, almost like an artist in the way he would approach the game.

My job when I show up to a golf resort is to capture the beauty of the course. And so I really get to just be at these properties at the peak, when they're in peak condition and prime weather.

And it just never gets old. Every place you go to, it's just like, “Man.” Even when you go to a muni, I've been to a lot of grungy, low budget munis. But if you're out there in an evening and you have the place to yourself, it's still a beautiful experience.

KP: Golf has really captured me as an adult because the playing field is the earth. It's not a manmade structure. It's not a dome or a stadium or anything like that. It's just It's just the earth that God made that is there. I think that's an underrated aspect that maybe people don't think about a lot when they think about why they appreciate golf so much.

Jeff: I agree. Coore-Crenshaw, they're my favorite designers. I think a lot of that is because they just use the land. There's obviously a lot the well-known courses that were very heavily manipulated, not necessarily a bad thing, but to see how they try to use the terrain as it is and really not move things around.

KP: This can be golf related, but it doesn't have to be. What's one underrated daily habit that most people rarely participate in?

Jeff: The one thing I do, whether I'm playing or shooting, every single day that I'm on a golf course, I will lay down somewhere on the grass. If I'm playing, it might only be for two minutes before I have to get up and hit a shot. But even before or after the round, a lot of times I'll take my shoes off and I'll literally just lay down. I've got ADD so I'm a squirrel in a way.

I don't usually warm up for a golf round because I'm running around with a camera or saying hi to people or whatever. And so that's one thing that I've really been intentional on putting into practice. I just look up at the sky, watch the clouds or whatever and just try to slow my world down because it's just our world is still freaking fast now.

KP: What's the one thing that you want your kids to learn about life through golf?

Jeff: My son, he's nine. He's actually shot four or five USGA Championships with me. I think the very first pro event he shot was the '22 Hilton LPGA event at Lake Nona. So a six year old running around inside the ropes with a huge camera. The first person that really took a notice to him was Jessica Korda. And so then she came up and said hi to him after one of the rounds and then introduced him to Nelly.

And that was the first personal experience I had with the Korda sisters who have now become really good friends. And a lot of the video work that I've done with Nelly over the last few years has played a big role in my where my career is now. So I have my son to thank, but I've gotten to show him the various ways to experience golf as a photographer, as a golfer, as a fan.

I think I really just try to show him the saying the world is your oyster. Golf can be whatever you want it to be, like you can play it and never keep score your entire life or you can compete, you can be a photographer, you can be a painter.

Jeff: He played U.S. Kids Golf for a little bit. I just have such a distaste for like youth sports right now. I think it's very different in the south than it was up in Washington, but it's like everything is so competitive. My buddy, he's built out this massive indoor simulator. They're members of a club. His kid is maybe six months younger than my son, and he's breaking par almost every time he plays. But like, he's so freaking hard on his son. And I just don't want that for my kid. If he wants to compete, great.

We'll compete and we'll do our best. But I just see that happening so much with kids.

I saw Ryan at the PGA show. He was helping out at the TRUE booth. We don't talk a whole lot, but you can really tell he has no love or desire for the game of golf. It's just been his job for the last 20 something years. That's sad to me because he'll never for the rest of his life, unless his kids really get into it and it changes for him, golf will just never be a romantic thing for him. It's hard to fathom.

KP: When you are shooting an event or whatever, do you immediately know whether you've gotten a really iconic shot, or does it take a while to process that?

Jeff: Sometimes I'll know right away, and sometimes it won't even cross my mind.

I only post the really good stuff, obviously. So my hard drives are full of moments that we'll never see the light of day because they were just missed moments or I didn't tell a story or whatever.

But I would say an example of when I knew I captured something and instantly knew that it was big was when Bryson made his winning putt at Pinehurst.

I was put on the roof, which if you were to give me a list of 10 assignments, it would probably been the last one I chose. There was one photo guy and then I was doing video up there. And it ended up being an incredible vantage to be able to see that entire setting. And that sequence that I shot, I was shooting all the super slowmo for that.

And I knew that it was either myself or maybe one other guy that was on the ground got a really good vantage of his celebration. How he moved around and stuff. I ran off the roof knowing I had something that was really good.

Jeff: The Spieth photo is funny because it really was a miracle that I got that shot, at least in focus. It was one of those things, where I mean, Spieth is Spieth, and you never know what's going to happen.

I ran the caddie program at Chambers when it opened, and Greller was one of the guys that came through that I helped train. We've had a long history together. I ended up shooting his wedding and we're still close friends. And so whenever he sees me around, he doesn't care how close I get or whatever. So when I got that shot, I think I posted it on my Instagram stories.

Went back to the scene of the Spieth photo today.  Making-of video coming soon.  I am standing where Spieth was crouched - photo was taken from the grass where the circle is.

— Jeff Marsh (@jeffkmarsh)
2:21 AM • Jul 8, 2024

Gabby [Herzig] sent me a DM. And she said, you should really put that on Twitter so I can reshare it. And between you and her, I mean, I think it hit a million [views] within 24 hours. And I've maybe had two posts ever that have gone over a million.

KP: It was so perfect. It was so funny.

Jeff: That was one of those where it was like, I honestly didn't even know if I got it in focus. I just shot it real quick, and then he was running around. Then he had to take a drop. I didn't have a second to dwell on it.

So it wasn't until later that I was just going through the photos of the day.

KP: What is the best thing you've read, watched, or listened to over the last whatever year?

Jeff: I don't listen to a lot of podcasts anymore because I don't commute. I'm not in the car much, and that was when I would listen to podcasts. But I happened to listen to a four hour 50 minute podcast episode. It's Sawn Ryan, he was a Navy SEAL. He interviews another Navy SEAL, Eddie Penney.

The episode is actually, it's like two and a half years old or something, but it just blew my mind. Eddie was like a hardcore Navy SEAL. He ended up getting saved, became a believer, and now he's in a motivational speaking.

And when Shawn Ryan interviewed him, he was not a believer. And now And so, Eddie ended up helping lead him to follow Christ. So it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's really intense.

It's pretty powerful. Otherwise, as I've laid here trying to recover from my back, I've watched a lot of Ice Age with the kids.

Thank you for reading until the end.

You’re a sicko for reading a golf newsletter that’s 3,125 words long.

I’m grateful for it.

And thank you to Jeff for letting us in on his story. Go follow him on Instagram and check out Golf is Art.