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Issue No. 161 | February 25, 2025
Hello all my Brian Campbell fanatics out there. Let’s jump right in.
I only think about a handful of books and blogs beyond the time it took to read them. This piece by Ben Thompson — coincidentally on books and blogs — is definitely one of them.
Stratechery has become in many respects a journal of my own attempts to understand technology ... And, it turns, out, the business model is even better: instead of taking on the risk of writing a book with the hope of one-time payment from customers at the end, Stratechery subscribers fund that intellectual exploration directly and on an ongoing basis; all they ask is that I send them my journals of said exploration every day in email form.
Ben Thompson | Stratechery
In so many ways, I view Normal Sport as a journal of my own attempts to understand golf and the way it affects all of our lives (and — obviously — also to try and understand the parasocial obsession with Jordan Spieth).
Though our business model differs from Ben’s in that — in addition to our paid membership — we have some brands that we partner with to bring you these journals, it doesn’t differ that much.
So I wanted to say thank you to both those brands as well as our paid members. I love writing this journal several times a week and sharing it with you. I love trying to make sense of the game and sometimes of the world.
Thank you for letting me send you these entries.
Speaking of partners that are helping us share these with the golf world, we’d like to welcome a new sponsor to the mix. Today’s newsletter is presented by Turtlebox.
We’re stoked to bring Turtlebox on board for two reasons — and they’re the same two reasons we’re excited about all of our carefully selected partners.
They make good products.
They have a great story.
We will focus plenty on No. 1, but it’s their story — that second one — that I’d like to focus on today.
Here it is in their own words.
The first Turtlebox was born out of necessity. After breaking every “loud” product on the market through routine outdoor use, the idea of the Turtlebox was born in our garage, not as a business but just for personal use.
Well that sounds a lot like how Normal Sport started. There was nothing else like it, and we wanted it to exist. Although backyard office, not garage.
Nothing else could get the job done. Most portable speakers aren’t actually meant for the outdoors and can’t withstand the elements, the ones that can aren’t loud enough to be heard.
When you’re at the beach or on an ATV, you need sound to carry in order to hear it over the wind, waves, and boat engines, you need a Turtlebox.
Tons more to come on the Turtlebox front, including some giveaways in the near future, but for now you can support the businesses who support us by checking out Turtlebox’s products here.
OK, now onto the news.
One of the strangest things about pro golf (among many!) is how many people lose every week. I suppose this is sometimes true in other individual sports, but the cadence of losing in golf is more regular and has become more normalized (example: Federer lost 18 percent of the time, Tiger won 22 percent of the time).
You lose so much.
Rory loses 90 percent of the time. Xander loses 96.1 percent of the time. Rickie loses 98.3 percent of the time. That’s so much losing.
So imagine how somebody like Brian Campbell feels. Here’s Brian Campbell’s OWGR record. He was 0 for 184 going into Mexico last week. Now he’s 1 for 185.
So much losing.
Which is why I loved what he said in his presser. At first glance, this is just athlete speak. Dudes saying stuff because they heard other dudes say it. But when you’ve gone 0 for 184, there’s probably a little extra weight.
It also just stood out to me as I was reading it. I read through a lot of transcripts and most of it just disappears out of ambivalence. Sometimes, though, something will pop. Even if it’s not interesting on its face, it will at least make me think. That’s what this did.
Campbell was asked what he would tell other players trying to reach the moment he reached, winning on the PGA Tour.
Trust yourself.
You know what you're capable of, you've put in years of hard work. … It's hard to do that out here when if you don't win, you're a loser. It's kind of an interesting concept, even second place.
So we have to deal with that every week. You've really just got to trust yourself, believe in yourself and go take care of business.
Brian Campbell
This is so relatable. Every time I log in to beehiiv, I have to trust myself. There are definitely days of, “Do I …. still know how to do this?” Maybe you’ve had them, too. A big prezi, next week’s pitch, some analysis you need to absolutely nail.
It can be difficult to trust yourself.
Jason and I talk about this a lot.
A lot of “We’re good tastemakers, right? We make good stuff … don’t we?”
[pause]
[80 percent confident voice] “That’s right, yes, we do man!”
We all take Ls every day. They aren’t as obvious as the MC that shows up next to Brian Campbell’s name most weeks, but we lose confidence, we lose trust in ourselves.
Trust yourself is such a good reminder, that, as long as you’ve put the work in, the only thing we’re called to is bring the very best we have.
[Jason here] From the art side of things, most of the creative process feels like losing. Or at least delayed winning. The best way I can describe it is I go to the studio and I hope that something good comes out of the work. It doesn’t always happen, and certainly not in the first steps into a work (case in point: Apogetical Phil from NS 54).
And that’s where the trust comes in. That on step 500, the work will finally look better.
Like many creatives, David Lynch has played a huge role in how I see art and life.
Forget being the best of anything. That's the fruit of the action, and you do the work — they say — for the doing, not the fruit.
You can never really know how it's gonna turn out in the world, but you can know if you enjoy doing it. And ideas start flowing and you start getting, you know, excited about stuff. Then you're having a great time in the doing and that's what it's all about. If you don't enjoy the doing, then do something else.
David Lynch in “Lynch One” (2007)
Ok, back to Brian Campbell.
1. Last week, Maverick McNealy got a bad hop off a fan at Torrey. This week, Brian Campbell got a good hop off a tree in Mexico. And toasted the tree (!) after his first win.
This led to one of the better tweets in recent memory.
2. This screenshot is — improbably and somewhat unbelievably — very relevant to the future of professional golf.
3. This got me. An interview by an Australian swing coach on a pontoon boat at a resort course in Mexico with a 20-year-old South African who touches 189 ball speed without a tee.
Think about how many things had to happen to lead these two guys to this very moment.
4. This is sick, sick infirmary-adjacent stuff.
By the way, following last week’s update to the update to the update, I’ll believe everyone is getting back together when Jon Rahm tees it up at the Players.
Until then … fool me once etc.
On Thursday, I polled folks about what the funniest outcome of all this reunification talk could be. I think these are my favorite answers in order (the numbers include the link to the actual tweets).
1. I present to you, commissioner Phil Mickelson.
2. President Trump as Ryder Cup captain.
3. Tiger breaks Snead’s record as a Range Goat.
4. The Fireballs win the Masters.
5. A third faction breaks off and forms an oil company.
6. Brandel captains the US team (including Phil) to a Ryder Cup win in King Abdullah Economic City.
Commish Phil and Ryder Cup captain Trump would both be so outrageous and hilarious. I would honestly sign up for either.
Bringing this section back because it was so much fun. If you missed it previously, we ask everyone who signs up for the newsletter to tell us the weirdest thing they have ever seen on a golf course. As you can imagine, we get some stories.
This one is short, but it made me laugh.
Picture a large, ex-military, boisterous friend of ours who takes a mighty, over-the-top, flat-footed lash at every shot (and yet is a single digit handicap).
About a decade ago, while going for a reachable par 5 in two, he cold tops his fairway metal so much so that the ball pops straight up, he reaches his hand out, catches it out of the air, turns to the rest of the group and shouts, "That doesn't count!"
He proceeds to throw it down, swing again with reckless abandon and knocks the damn ball on the green — all in a handful of seconds!
Nate G.
I think it’s the “reckless abandon” that does it for me.
This from Matt was very kind and very much something we are aspiring to.
I think you could argue that this has been happening to content, but it is true that it is happening even more frequently to content than it used to be.
During my 12 years at CBS Sports, there was definitely an increasing emphasis on SEO optimization throughout (think “Tee times: How to watch the Masters on April 9” type of articles).
This will be easily replaced by robots if it hasn’t already, and the ubiquity of the middle will make the good stuff increasingly rare, which means it will feel like an indulgence to read/listen to/watch it.
This is a good way to think about it. Right now, the information glut below is created partly by humans and partly by artificial intelligence. In the future, it will be mostly created by artificial intelligence, but there will be much more of it.
This coming (already present) reality will likely lead to 1. The eradication of content mediocrity by humans and 2. It will make the very best stuff feel even better because there will be, as a percentage, so much less of it.
So when you see 1,000 words on cape sales, hopefully you’ll understand (and feel) what we’re going for.
Thank you for reading until the end.
You’re a sicko for reading a golf newsletter that is 1,939 words long.
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