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Issue No. 167 | March 11, 2025
A reminder: As noted recently, there are always easter eggs everywhere ……. as long as you know where to look. 🙂
Onto the news.
Today’s newsletter is presented by Meridian, which is one of our favorites in the stable of both small and big businesses we have on board to support our work in 2025.
One of the things that drew us to Meridian is something we aspire to have in common with them: a painstaking level of attention to detail, if only to delight yourself.
Some of what I do and some of what Jason does is just because we amuse ourselves by making things that make us laugh or make us proud (see header illustration). I can’t help but think of that quality when I watch Meridian fill logos on its putters with a paint brush that looks like it belongs in a dentist’s office.
It would be easy for them to jump into other types of club manufacturing and really blow up their business. And maybe they will eventually. But from talking to the folks over there, they really seem to enjoy making products that make them proud and that bring them joy.
Why?
Because often if we spend our time doing hard creative work that delights us in the end, it is natural (and perhaps even obvious) that it is going to delight that product’s future owner as well.
[Jason here] And on top of that attention to detail, we love how they bring you the highest quality for the most affordable prices. While $457 will get you one night in Ponte Vedra’s cheapest seaside rental this week, $249 will get you Meridian’s Seaside putter for life.
Onto the news!
I don’t want to just blow past Bay Hill right into THE PLAYERS so here are a few lingering thoughts and notes from the weekend.
• Russell Henley is a gamer. How else do you describe it when someone whose statistical profile looks like this (!!) absolutely shreds Rory, Scottie and Xander at a course that demands length?
• Should he be at Bethpage? I don’t know. Will he be? It would be pretty surprising now if he wasn’t. More on that below.
• There’s nobody better at historical narrative arcs than SMartin, and his mini retrospective on Henley right here is excellent. I’m not sure I had totally internalized how good Henley was as an amateur. It also makes me feel extremely old that Henley won the second tournament I ever covered (2013 Sony). He was 23, I was 27. A lot of kids. A lot of struggle. A lot of life since then. For both of us.
• Not sure if you caught it, but NBC’s happy hour session on (I think) Friday with J.T., Kisner and Smylie chopping it up at a desk on the course was awesome. They weren’t required to be funny, didn’t have anybody asking them to do a song and dance. They were just talking wind direction, green firmness and how to hit different pitch shots. Just dudes talking golf. Is it for everyone? No, and that’s the point. Because it’s for the core audience — the infirmary members — it makes me want to come back for more.
• Related: I will always maintain that places like the PGA Tour get themselves in trouble when they try to rope in people on the fringes. That’s so difficult to do! Just take your core audience deeper and charge them more for it. They’ll pay. That’s a difficult thing to trust (raises hand), but it’s almost always the right path forward.
• [Tries so hard not to go down this path … cannot help self …] Just one quick thing on this: I think the Tour’s idea of a total addressable market for golf fans and the actual reality of a total addressable market for golf fans are, uhh, very different. Sometimes we think, Oh there are like 25 million people who touch a golf club everywhere and forget to think … but 24 million of them just wanted an excuse to drink a beer and aren’t getting steep on Russell Henley’s Data Golf page!
• Morikawa has been a better golfer the last three years of his career than he was the first three years. And yet, he has one win (compared to six pro wins and two amateur wins from 2019-2021).
This speaks to many things, and I could take up the rest of the newsletter talking about them. But I think primarily it speaks to the fact that he’s probably going to win soon and possibly a lot.
• Rick Gehman had a terrific thread on this where he broke Morikawa’s career into thirds, showing how backwards the winning has been. But the more interesting part was my guy Joe Peta jumping in on variance.
The Phil-Furyk stat is wild (and true!). And with that, we are in the weeds.
• Also, among the 13 best players in the world since January 1, 2024, it’s not difficult to spot the outlier …
• Raise your hand if, this time last year, you would have said in 12 months that Michael Kim would be ranked No. 24 in Data Golf and Max Homa would be ranked No. 144.
Things that get an unusual amount of interaction on Twitter: Anything Donald Trump says, anything Elon Musk does, anything related to Jordan Spieth (but especially complaining about not getting sponsor exemptions) … and … Ryder Cup team predictions.
It’s March 11, so obviously a perfect time to be talking about what the teams are going to look like in September.
Here are the U.S. rankings after Bay Hill.
I think Scottie, Cantlay, Xander, JT, Morikawa, Bryson and Henley are locks. Or as locked as you can be on March 11.
If you want to argue against JT, fine, but he’s the ninth-ranked player in the world (Data Golf), and they have proven that they will take him even if he looks like he’s playing wrong-handed. He won’t be watching from home.
Likewise, if Bryson is left off, we riot.
The other four — Scottie, Collin, Xander and Pat in the Hat — are more or less the modern foundation of U.S. team golf (not arguing they should be!).
And then there’s Henley.
Things will change a lot in the next five months, but does this look like someone who is not going to be on the U.S. team in September?
Here’s what’s interesting … before the last Ryder Cup in 2023 three different Americans won either elevated-signature-designated-playoff events that year and were still left off the team: Kurt Kitayama (Bay Hill), Lucas Glover (Memphis) and … Keegan Bradley (Travelers).
However, the only one of those who rose into the top 25 of the Data Golf rankings was Bradley, who got to 18th. Glover and Kitayama were always outside the top 40 and never really a threat to make the team.
None of them got close to the level of golf Henley is playing right now.
Unless he falls off the planet (certainly possible!), it’s difficult to see Russ not playing the Ryder Cup at Bethpage in September. They may have to hide him on all the par 3s or pair him with Bryson (would actually be into this), but he’s almost certainly going to be there.
Also, my “in 60 seconds with almost no thought” Russ rankings…
1. Henley
2. Bill
3. Crowe
4. Brand
701. Westbrook
1,700. Mr. Unlimited
[Jason here] I don’t know what to make of my last note before falling asleep after the API. I know I took an L in spelling Russ’ name, and think I took another one seeing a joke in his subdued reactions. When I woke up I realized that most professionals show some subdued version of themselves at work. And in golf it’s probably a key to winning.
I was curious about how Russell is off the course and was pleasantly surprised by this intimate portrait of Henley’s family put out by… Synovus?! It felt different than a lot of the “Golfing with hometown buddies, he’s the same dude” off course videos we all know. Should sponsors be responsible for filming more player profiles?
By the way, my first note of the day read Jason Day x Dewalt shelf installation video.
1. What an amazing headline here.
And somehow the article is even better!
“This is one of the world’s great links and it has always been our wish to get our course back,” Stewart says. “We want to play to greens that don’t have electric fences, and without special rules like what do you do if your ball winds up in cow shit. They don’t do that at the Masters or the Open Championship.”
Golf.com
That headline/article combo does a better job of explaining our logo than perhaps anything I have ever written or we have ever done. This is a real sentence: We want to play to greens that don’t have electric fences, and without special rules like what do you do if your ball winds up in cow shit.
What an insane sport!
2. It is so on the nose that the biggest talking point for the PGA Tour as it heads into its flagship event is how one of its partners — NBC Sports — took too long in a commercial break with one of the Tour’s most important sponsors and missed half of the game-winning shot last weekend at Bay Hill.
Imagine ESPN coming back from a Coca-Cola commercial during its wild card Saturday game—oh … and you just saw the second part of that go-ahead touchdown from Josh Allen to Keon Coleman. What a throw, Troy!
Of course this happens, and whoever it happened to no doubt feels terrible, but it’s another example that the powers that be in golf just cannot get out of their own way. James Colgan’s notes on what happened (and how it happened) are terrific.
3. I think the only thing weirder than taking off your clothes to get in a lake to hit a golf ball is … leaving them on.
I got an incredible reader email this week that I had to share with you guys. For the last few months, we have been asking folks who sign up for our newsletter about the weirdest thing they’ve seen on the golf course.
As you can imagine, the answers are extraordinary, and this one was an all timer.
I play at City Park in Denver. Hole 11 is next to the gorilla and orangutan enclosures at the zoo across the street.
I watched a playing partner duck hook one across the street and into the zoo. The next day I went to the zoo with my family. I'm pretty sure I saw the guy’s Titleist in the hands of an orangutan when we went to go see the monkeys.Tim M.
Everybody together now …
👉️ There is nobody better than Jamie at writing funny, detailed analysis about different players and facets of the game. This on one of the great drives in modern golf history was excellent. We may view it differently than an article because it’s a Twitter thread, but fundamentally it is just information presented in an interesting and thoughtful way, which is really all anyone is looking for. Jamie is great at it.
👉️ I went on NewClub’s Bag Drop podcast this week with Matt Considine. He asked really thoughtful questions, and we had a blast chopping it up about how we both think about golf and our two businesses.
👉️ This special edition pod by KVV on Rickie is so incredibly good and engenders a tremendous amount of professional jealousy from me. Proud of the work KVV is doing there and so impressed with the end product.
👉️ This one has been making the rounds. It’s a guy who plays guitar hero on 200% speed and doesn’t miss a single note. One of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen. Also led to one of the great replies of our time.
There should be a TGL team called the Gold Boys.
Lean all the way in.
• Underrated tweet right here. Certainly deserved more than six likes.
• This made me laugh.
• This also made me laugh. Insane stuff to type “Soly Solomon” and not think hmmm, maybe Soly is his nickname!!
• This got me so good.
Tim Ferriss published this from Seth Godin the other day.
It is really good creative advice.
I’m sure there is a scientific or psychological reason, but I find that when I take up a position — any position — on something, it leads me toward thoughtfulness and consideration about future takes either on the same topic or other topics.
That’s a good thing and is why I’ve started trying to implement Godin’s advice on a daily basis. It’s also why I’m picking Scottie Scheffler to miss the cut on Friday.
Thank you for reading until the end. You are a sick for reading a golf newsletter that’s 2,313 words long.
We’re so fired up about PLAYERS week. Would we be more excited if Rahm, Bryson and Cam Smith were involved and Phil was there trying to squeeze shots through tiny windows? Yes, 100 percent. And hopefully they will be at some point! But it’s a great event on a great course and usually produces a great champion.
Jump into our paid membership if you can. We’d love to have you join our coverage of the event throughout the rest of the week. And if you can’t … a very generous reader donated 10 one-year paid memberships.
You can claim one of them right here if you’re not already a member.
