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Hey,
This week, the best or second-best golfer on earth is playing for a team whose name is unironically rooted in French comic book history on a 6,700-yard course in Hong Kong with the Masters five weeks away.
Normal sport.
Here are a few thoughts on golf (and a bunch of other stuff) this week.
1. This is ostensibly a meandering Friday column on the world of golf so of course let’s start this week’s edition with a story on … Michigan State basketball.
Brendan Quinn wrote about Tom Izzo’s son, Steven, and his adoption story. As the dad of an adopted child,1 it was pretty tough to get through at times but also beautiful and encouraging.
It’s a difficult and vulnerable thing to let anyone into that world and to do it with the grace and openness their family did (and BQ wrote about) is just astounding.
One of the best things I’ve read this year.
2.2
3. I have two broad PGA Tour thoughts based on the year so far, and they are almost certainly related. The first is that the Tour needs to formally separate the two leagues that so obviously exist. The non-signature events are so far away from the signature events that they should not even be considered the same league.
Split the leagues! Make it official!
The second is that even the signature events have lacked any kind of electricity so far this year. I said this on the First Cut pod last night, and Joseph LaMagna, who was on site at Bay Hill yesterday, confirmed it in the Fried Egg newsletter this morning.
The PGA Tour seems to lack some serious juice right now. Big events don’t have the palpable intensity they’ve had historically. The vibes are off. I’m hesitant to attribute too much to a subjective, feel-based narrative, but I think the lack of intensity may be contributing to why stars aren’t showing out so far this season. Big moments produce an athlete’s best performances. NBA players bring their best efforts to primetime games.
JLM
People are always hollering about how few fans are at these LIV events, but Tour events haven’t exactly looked like Woodstock thus far.
It’s almost as if … when the prevailing multi-year narrative is how much money multimillionaires are making, people are going to not care as much about the things that actually give events their juice.
People aren’t stupid. They can sense when they don’t matter.
A more extreme example of what seems to be playing out right now is the difference between the old WGCs (money!) and the old L.A. Open (at least the facade of prestige and competition mattering). The new signature events with their small fields feel more like the former than the latter.
It’s easy to blame LIV for all of this, of course, and LIV should be blamed, but the Tour and its players have done a mediocre job (at best!) of wresting that monetary narrative back into something more substantial.
4. I’m not sure there’s enough of what Viktor Hovland said recently on Claude Harmon’s3 podcast.
“Obviously the LIV is bringing in a lot of money to the sport and there’s a lot of competition, which I think is good. But it seems to have been a response from the PGA Tour’s side, that OK, we’re going to — it’s just more talk about the money and I think that’s a little bit sad.
“Now, money is important and everyone needs to get paid accordingly, in a fair way, but I don’t think that needs to be like the driving force behind this, or the story every single week.”
Viktor Hovland
A little bit sad is kind of the perfect way to sum it up.
5. Eamon Lynch’s column on Thursday from Bay Hill was similar. I thought he described something I’ve been feeling which is that there’s just such an emptiness to everything right now for reasons that I sort of understand but not completely. Here’s what he said.
The PGA Tour has never been in a more precarious position. It’s hardly on the brink of ruin, but there are major systemic issues that aren’t being addressed quickly enough. Some of those are concerns for the board, some for management, but there’s a palpable sense that no one is really happy.
The field at Bay Hill has been almost halved to just 69 competitors, and so few were working on Wednesday afternoon that the occupants of the practice putting green barely outnumbered LIV’s spectators in Jeddah last weekend. “Arnold Palmer would be so f****** pissed to see what has gone on here,” one tournament veteran said. “It feels like a member-guest.”
That from a Tour loyalist.
I mean, yeah, that’s kinda what it feels like. Again, this is LIV’s fault because they are acting in an unsustainable way that incentivizes players to act accordingly. So congrats on being right, Phil. It has been incredibly destructive to regular season professional golf in the process.
6. One thing I have been thinking about is how so much of the success of different sports leagues has been built slowly over time.
Part of the reason there’s so much money in the NFL is because of the connection over generations between fan and team. I think that’s mostly true with pro golf as well.
The value of businesses that lean on history compounds over time, and you can’t just magically create that value in two or even five years. But LIV being subsidized by oil money has given players the illusion that this value can be recreated quickly because it makes players think they’re more valuable than the events or even the sport itself, which throws the entire thing off-kilter.
Me thinking about pro golf every day right now …
7. Related: I read the Hoka story this week. I’ve been into their shoes recently, both for running and around the house.
The entire article is great, and this quote stood out.
The success of Hoka was also made possible by the brand’s counterintuitive business strategy.
It turns out Hoka grew fast by moving slowly.
“Could we grow faster? Yes,” said Hoka’s interim president.
“Is that good for the long-term health of the brand? No.”
8. I used to think this idea from Antifaldo about Scottie carrying two putters was stupid. Now I think maybe he should carry three.
9. Rory’s Spotify recent listens is so on brand for a 35-year-old dad who is in love with the game, it almost feels made up. I’ve written this before and probably will again, but the preservation of love for this game and all its stupid and ridiculous tentacles is his superpower (along with, you know, being like the best driver in the history of the sport).
Also: The Moana soundtrack rules.
10. I’ve only seen two episodes of Full Swing so far, but the difference between Season 1 is obvious.
Season 1: We presume you have never heard of this sport.
Season 2: We presume you have at least heard of this sport and are informed at an ESPN headlines level.
One of those makes for much better TV than the other.
11. Shane Lowry shot 66 at Bay Hill in Round 1. Afterwards, he spoke about how he got in the field.
“Well, I'm very fortunate, I built up a great relationship with Mastercard over the years. I'm an ambassador, so, yeah, very fortunate to get an invite that way. I'm, obviously, happy to get the invite, and hopefully I can take advantage of it now.”
Shane Lowry
Fundamentally, this is not great!
It’s different than LIV players having contracts for entire seasons, but it’s not that different. If there’s one thing LIV has made me think differently about, it’s sponsor exemptions.
I went over this in Tuesday’s newsletter, but there is so much general confusion about what the product is and what everyone wants it to be. Everywhere. Every league. Every stakeholder.
There is so little unity about what is desired that it would be comical if it was an industry whose health my profession was not dependent on.
12. Here is a stat about Tiger and Phil and the Masters.
Collectively, they have played in 55 of them (Phil has played in 30 and Tiger in 25), and collectively they have 24 top five finishes. That’s … insane.
13. Chad Mumm — you know him as executive producer of Full Swing — recently started a golf media company and got $20M in funding.
I like Mumm, and we have a good relationship. I hope his venture works because golf ventures working is always good for the world I’m in.
However, I wonder about this specific quote.
I think the middle5 of the media business is an extremely difficult place to exist. You don’t quite have economies of scale but you also aren’t exactly lean enough to move quickly and change course easily.
Existing here can be done, I suppose, but it’s tricky.
This is a take that comes with all the caveats and the actual situation is far more nuanced than I’m giving it credit for here, but if I was starting a company (which I am), I would not try to raise money quite at that level, and I would probably aim for smaller over middle-r.
14. I have been thinking a lot about this quote recently. It’s extremely true.
“You have to entertain to educate because the other way around doesn't work”
Walt Disney
15. KVV wrote clearly and well6 when it comes to the OWGR.
His fourth point in particular fascinated me.
4. People who think The Masters will “lose credibility” if they won’t invite certain players don’t grasp how little the general public cares if the 30th best player in the world is there or not. The draw is The Masters and its tradition and history.
KVV
This is half- quarter-baked, but I think you could talk me into Shane Ryan’s point that there are no stars in golf. That there are no needle movers. And to add to it, if this is true, and if we have leaned into stars over events (and we have), then maybe that’s why all these tournaments feel so meh right now.
16. Speaking of Shane, this is another absolutely SICK take.
17. I finished this book on being a creator this week. It’s entitled Principles for Newsletters, but the concepts can be applied to anything — podcasts, YouTube videos, TikTokers, whatever.
It is excellent — 6 stars, all the recommendations.
18. Of everything I encountered this week, this conversation between Hank Green and Verge editor in chief, Nilay Patel, made me think the most.
Patel has a sort of tongue-in-cheek saying that he’s going to save the internet with blog posts, which is hilarious and kinda eye opening. He talks about the difference between traffic and audience and has a wild theory7 that people trust brands more than they trust people.
They want to say, “People don’t trust brands, they trust people” and that the brands stand for nothing. And that’s because when you shove a brand into the same incentive structure as a group of individuals, an infinite supply of teenagers who will work for free, the brands debase themselves, and now the brands are worth nothing.
But you know what? All the celebrities still want to be on the cover of magazines. They want the validation that the big brand, the institution, can provide. And there’s a reason for that because the brand stands for more than just an individual opinion — or at least at its best it does.
Nilay Patel
I also enjoyed him talking about The Verge mission statement because I think you could change a few words, and it could be the Normal Sport mission statement: Our mission statement is that The Verge is a website about how technology makes people feel.
Maybe the NS mission statement is that Normal Sport is a website about how golf makes people feel.
Thanks for reading until the end.
You’re a sicko, and I’m grateful for it.
We bought the URL normalsport.com this week for a not insignificant amount of money. The luggage isn’t Louis, but we’re coming.
1 I wrote about our adoption story at one point, but the platform I wrote on no longer exists. I will re-publish an updated version of that story at some point and post it in this newsletter.
2 If you’ve read any of my books, you know I am going to abuse the newly-introduced footnotes feature from Beehiiv.
3 Claude Harmon, by the way, not my favorite character on Full Swing S2!
4 Maybe in the end, the product does get better because it’s not like it was incredible before LIV, but that outcome feels very far away right now.
5 Depending on how you define the middle, of course.
6 Per usual.
7 That I think I’m actually into!
