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Hey,
This newsletter passed 7K readers this week. It’s wild to me that there are 7,000 of you that not only willingly signed up for a newsletter about driving range pool noodles and throwing balls at clowns, but that seemingly continue to enjoy reading about such things!
If you’re one of those people and are also on Twitter, I would appreciate your commentary on this post. Crooked Elon throttles any posts with links in them but boosts posts with comments. So any commentary on tweets indirectly spreads the Normal Sport word, and I also just enjoy knowing what it is you like about this ridiculous newsletter.
Onto the news.
1. On Tuesday, with a framed poster of Yoda hanging behind his desk, Jon Rahm logged onto a Zoom call to talk about defending his Masters victory from a year ago. He was as chilled out as I’ve ever seen or heard him — he was still adjusting his coat and tie as the call started — and apologized for his sloppy tie-knotting skills (relatable).
When he was asked about what the transition from the Tour to LIV has been like, he was open and honest. He had clearly watched and proceeded to break down Scottie’s win at the Players and said the feeling of missing big events is “constant.” Here’s the longer quote that got aggregated.
“I'm not going to lie; for everybody who said this would be easy, some things have been, but not being able to defend some titles that mean a lot to me hasn't. I love Palm Springs. I've been able to win twice there. Riviera is about as charismatic of a golf course as we have. It's definitely a week that it's fantastic for a lot of us, and it's a fan and player favorite. Not being there was difficult.
“I still watched the broadcast. I still watch golf because I love watching it. But it's hard. It was hard not to be at the Phoenix Open at the end of February, and it was hard not to be at Hawaii because it's another tournament that my family enjoys and I've done fantastic on.”
Rahm got dunked on for these quotes with this meme as the constant thread.
I saw it differently, though. Maybe it’s just because I like Rahm a lot and am … I don’t know if I’m sympathetic to what he did ... but I at least understand why he did it a bit better than the guys who jumped initially. I still don’t agree with it, but I think it’s at least more palatable and more easily reconciled.
Anyway, I thought what he said actually took tremendous humility. Basically, Yeah, I took the money, but I’m not so stubborn or haughty that I’m going to pretend like I’m not paying attention to the Tour. I don’t know if that’s praiseworthy, but it’s definitely different than so many other players who left for LIV and then pretended like nothing else existed.
I have always found Rahm to be honest and authentic, and I think he’s had to trade some of that honesty for the shame of (temporarily?) leaving the Tour and missing the Players and being the new face of a league he doesn’t really believe in (I mean truly listen to his quotes about LIV an the team stuff).
It would be extremely easy to fully give in to that shame and all the negative feedback he’s received and put a stake in the ground and become obstinate (this is basically what everyone else involved with LIV has done?).
He hasn’t done that, though, which I actually find refreshing and maybe even a little bit surprising.
2. Rahm as the ultimate alpha checks out, too. I liked the thoughts below from ANGC Burner.
Last week was also a reminder that $400M (or £300M or whatever it was) can purchase a lot of things, but it cannot purchase perhaps one of the most desirable and addicting things for a professional athlete, which is entry into the most competitive sporting events in the world.
The obvious response of course is that I’m sure Rahm is wiping his eyes with $100 bills, which ha ha, but also go ask Rahm how much money he would have to be paid to never play competitive golf again. There’s not a number. If that’s true (and it is), then Players week must have been painful. That is not something that can be said of everyone on LIV (or on the Tour), but it is absolutely true of Rahm. He views pro golf the way most of us think all pro golfers view pro golf.
It’s very strange that we live in a golf period of time where the most competitive dude on the planet cannot engage in many of the most competitive competitions. Is there even a comp for this?
Like, maybe a Premier League player who used to be in La Liga and thinks he could be a difference-maker there? That doesn’t totally check out, but it’s maybe as close as we can get.
3. Related: Rahm missing the Ryder Cup would be insane. Here’s James Corrigan on why that could be the case.
Both have declared their intent to retain their DP World Tour memberships, but unless they play a minimum of four Tour events in 2024 they will lose their cards. And that would make Rahm and Hatton ineligible for the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, where Luke Donald’s team will try to win on U.S. soil for the first time in 13 years.
Of all the damning issues in golf over the last few years, the most damning for any single organization would be for the Ryder Cup to be held while Jon Rahm is sitting at home. You can pin that on whoever you want to pin it on, but it would be a complete and total disaster.
4. LeBron and JJ Redick are launching a new pod that tests my theory that you can be as nerdy and dive as deep as you want on a topic, and if I am even remotely interested in that topic, I will 1. Be entertained 2. Learn a ton and 3. Figure out how to make it all make sense.
They don’t want or need 1 million people to listen (and 1 million people definitely will not listen to them talk about stuff like picking the picker) because they ones they congregate are going to be absolute sickos, full stop.
Something like this would absolutely crush in golf, though I’m not sure Tiger would let his guard down to the point of drinking expensive wine on camera and talking about how to hit a held-off 4-iron when the wind is coming out of the northeast on the second nine at St. Andrews.
I don’t know if Phil is still too radioactive, but gosh, I would listen to it all. Imagine Spieth and Phil talking about different chipping motions and why you use one when you’re short left on the 3rd at ANGC and a completely different motion when you’re long right on the 8th.
Hold me.
My answer(s): Young Tom and possibly Young Cam.
6. It’s almost Ludvig SZN. Papa Aberg’s pickled herring got me pretty good. Pickled herring!
7. Speaking of ridiculous Normal Sport-y things, how about endangered salamanders!
8. This is a sick, sick, sick leftover Players take from Will.
Almost as sick as Tron’s take that the water surrounding the 17th should be accessible from the Atlantic Ocean by boat.
9. I have been thinking a lot about trust recently. How important it is. How it’s going to become even more important as we start to slide into the AI Era.
I linked to this in Tuesday’s newsletter, but Joseph LaMagna’s short piece on Boeing-NBC was really good, and it was mostly about trust even though he didn’t write about trust at all. Can we trust you, the broadcaster, to care a lot about the product? Can the broadcaster trust us, the viewer, to build relationship with the broadcast team and the product over time? Can the league trust the broadcaster to be fair? Can the broadcaster trust the players to be genuine? It’s all trust, every which way.
So much of business (and probably life) takes place at the intersection of short-term gain at the expense of long-term trust. I get that, truly, but I think it’s such a bad trade off. The companies I love rarely (never?) trade my trust for their own gain. People can sniff out transactional relationships, and they know when their trust is being traded on.
I realize this is all the hoity toity language of an artist who is subsidized by other endeavors, but it’s also something we have talked a lot about at Normal Sport. I read somewhere one time that business is “just an idea that makes somebody else’s life better.” I believe that’s attributed to Sir Richard Branson. It’s a good barometer for what decisions an organization should or should not make, too.
10. Here’s a good quote from Tampa Bay Rays manager, Kevin Cash on MLB taking 2 seconds off the pitch clock with runners on base this year.
“Basically, we’ve just got to deal with it. It’s for the fans, right? We’re listening to our fans. Do we want fans to watch and come to the ballpark? Then do it. We’re in the entertainment business. If we poll them and they’re saying, ‘Hey, we want more of this or more of that,’ then we owe it to them to do it.”
Print it out and hang on the bridge across the moat! Almost word for word what Rory said at TPC Sawgrass!
“Yeah, so to me, like this is the problem with a member organization. Things are created for the members. Then once those things are created, you’ve got to go sell those things to fans, sponsors, media. To me, that seems a little backwards.
“I think what needs to happen is you need to create things for the fans, for the sponsors, for the media, and then you have to go sell that to the players, tell them to get on board with that, because if they get on board and we’re all part of the business now, if the business does better, we do better. That seems pretty simple to me.”
11. Here’s where it gets a little complicated. You know what rocked about the Players last week (among other things)? A real cut. You know what most fans probably don’t care about? A real cut. My buddies and their kids going on a Saturday just want to see Spieth for two holes, they don’t care what the sickos like us want. That’s where it gets a little complicated as a business. But at least the question is, Which type of fan should we be catering to? instead of, What do Patrick and Xander want this week?
12. I didn’t link this in the earlier newsletter this week, but Smylie on the fastest players on the Tour is extraordinary insight. I don’t care about the Tour gossip. I care a lot about who is considered the fastest walker from shot to shot.
13. The Saudi-pro tennis situation sounds so much like the Saudi-pro golf situation, it’s kind of astonishing. In short: The PIF offered the ATP and WTA (tennis’ version of the PGA Tour and LPGA) 10 figures to either own or partially own both the men’s and women’s regular season (the non-grand slams).
Where tennis differs from golf is that the grand slams (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open) have tried to combine their interests and turn the regular season tours into what they’re calling a “premium tour” (think signature events in golf but for tennis).
They want to take control of the regular season, which makes a lot of sense!
But they don’t really have a plan. They seem to be just flailing against Saudi money, which the Saidu money sounds like is definitely going to win out. Plus, the regular season men’s and women’s tours are hesitant to call some of their events “premium” while others are considered “developmental.”
I feel like I have heard this sentiment before!
The guy who runs Tennis Australia — Craig Tiley — and is heading all of this up on the grand slam side told the Telegraph: “All the stakeholders in tennis have been working on a solution for the game. And it’s a journey to get to that point. The slams are united in their resolve, but it’s a complex problem to solve. If it wasn’t complicated, it would have been solved already.”
Here’s another excerpt from that article.
For one thing, the cautionary tale of LIV Golf has eroded any sense of complacency, as tennis’s uncoordinated model looks ripe for a similar challenge. The newfound unity [of the grand slams] lies at the heart of the Premium Tour concept. But there is still a long way to go. These sorts of projects can lose momentum quickly. If nothing is agreed by the late summer, tennis could slip back into its familiar, chaotic status quo.
“I’ve always said that the pain of change is greater than the pain of losing,” Tiley explained. “That’s why most people choose to lose. As a sport, we need to be prepared to change. There’s no crisis. The sport is very healthy. But there’s also an opportunity here to have a mega impact in the world of global sport and entertainment by being more aligned.”
It’s golf but tennis!
I guess I had never really considered it before, but it would be absolutely SICK if the four majors in golf combined to form an entity, which then also ran the regular season (PGA Tour events). That’s the whole drum I’ve been pounding! Everything has to flow from the top, which tennis is trying (but will probably fail) to do.
The encouraging thing here (I guess) is that even though the Saudis have momentarily disrupted and possibly destroyed everything, there is a possibility that it can all be rebuilt in a way that makes more sense and is more enjoyable.
I’m just not sure if I trust any of the constituents involved. And the ones I do trust (most of the major organizations) also have the most to lose and are not incentivized to do this in any way other than out of the goodness of their hearts.
14. I thoroughly enjoyed two recent podcasts with Jason Fried of 37Signals (MFM | Lenny’s Pod). Both are worth a listen.
Fried — whose company started Basecamp and Hey — seems astonished by the idea that a business would pursue anything besides profit and healthy margins. Almost like how Tiger seems astonished by why anybody would pursue anything outside of playing in and trying to win major championships. Both dispositions amuse me because I understand why those specific people arrived at those specific conclusions but also why other people would not.
This quote on building a business ruled.
Most people end up in this plateau area because they get some initial growth, the word gets out whatever, and they end up with like 6,000 somethings.
And then you're kind of like stuck there. And then it's like, well, do you want to keep doing this? Were you just high on the growth or do you actually like the thing?
He thinks about business the way I want to think about business: Sensibly, reasonably and with almost no pretension.
I’ve read a couple of his books in the past, and they’re excellent as well. I don’t know that Saas business models translate to golf content business models, but inasmuch as they do, I’d love to implement his way of thinking. If you want the TL;DR for those two pods as well as his books, just roll through the points on the front of the 37Signals website.
15. Been meaning to link this short piece for a long time. On washing the dishes (of all things). It’s beautiful.
I love washing the dishes. Maybe this is why.
It’s not that I begrudge people their phones or their Prime accounts or their housecleaners. If anything, I empathize: The simpler the moment in front of me, the more anxious I become. I could be doing something, I should be doing something. But a life under constant threat of novelty isn’t a life; it’s exhaustion. Washing dishes by hand, I give myself the chance to remember that this is wrong — that most of life is ordinary; that ordinary isn’t the enemy but instead something nourishing and unavoidable, the bedrock upon which the rest of experience ebbs and flows.
16. I’ve been obsessed with the Shohei Ohtani gambling circus (which may make Phil’s previous indiscretions look juvenile by comparison!). I’ve read pretty much everything on it, and this from Nate Silver is the best thing I’ve read. Lays out all the options and gives some insight into the situation.
Thanks for reading until the end.
You’re a sicko, and I’m grateful for it.
If you go to anormalsport.com, you’ll see the URL changed by a letter.
