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Issue No. 181 | April 9, 2025
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Official last call for our Masters fantasy contest. If you are not a Normal Club member, you should join and jump into our free-to-enter contest where you pick an eight-player team and compete for $4,000 with other psychos like myself who actually care a lot about all of this stuff.
If you are a member and have not received the link to the contest, I dropped it in lower in this email and I will also send it out one more time at 7 p.m. ET today.
Also, here’s my final final squad.
All teams have to be finalized by the first tee shot on Thursday.
Best of luck to all!
Before we get steep on what I’ve been seeing and hearing at ANGC, a big thank you to today’s presenter of this newsletter (and one of the pillars of our weeklong giveaway): Turtlebox.
One of the themes this week is a commit to excellence, and Turtlebox embodies this as well as any business I have seen. Everything they do — from the technology behind their speakers to the stories they tell to even the packaging they use — is as high quality as it gets, and we could not be more thrilled to partner with them in 2025.
The number of times I have thought “I am so glad Turtlebox is on board with this ridiculous venture” over the last three months is higher even than the total number of times I have thought, “It would be very cool if Spieth or Rory won the 2025 Masters.”
And yes, you can skip and dip a Turtlebox.
Check them out — we appreciate it when you support the folks that support this unhinged newsletter. OK, now (almost!) onto the news!
Congratulations to our first four winners this week.
Remember, we’ll be giving away $7,000 worth of golf gear throughout the week. You don’t have to do anything but be subscribed to this newsletter to enter the giveaway.
Turtlebox speaker: Max E.
Meridian putter: Ally Barber
Precision Pro range finder: Sam Worchesky
OGIO bag: A. Walker
Here is a nice thing that one of them said about the newsletter.
I love that NS has introduced a perfect two word description for the varied insanity that is professional golf these days. No more or less has to be said in any situation.
Ally Barber
On Twitter yesterday, I also gave away $500 in merch from any pro tournament this year. Matthew E. won it. We’re doing something similar on Twitter on Wednesday. You can follow along and participate right here.
I love doing these giveaways because 1. I love giving our readers stuff. It’s fun. What’s better than winning an amazing putter from a free newsletter you’re already reading? And 2. They are the most effective way we have found to grow our newsletter list. Attention is difficult, but this seems to delight people.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Please enjoy today’s newsletter.
0. A mea culpa: The newsletter on Tuesday was entitled, “Si Woo in a Pizza Hut Visor,” which I maintain would be as sick as it gets. However, I am getting word from some #sources that Si Woo is actually not in the field this year. As an apology (even though he could feasibly be here as a patron wearing a Pizza Hut visor), I would like to offer up this the Masters moment that made me laugh harder than any Masters moment ever. A Si Woo-Charl handshake for the ages. I howl every single time I see it.
1. Wait … Rory is reading a book called The Reckoning during Masters week, and the synopsis of the book is that everyone in it needlessly suffers because of one man’s ill-advised and emotional choices at a place he seems to truly love?
😬😬😬
2. I walked a mostly empty ANGC on Tuesday evening, and stumbled into a terrific moment with the high king of content. Bryson, playing the back by himself at around 6 p.m., walked to the tee on 16 to patrons hollering, “break 50 this week, Bryson!”
He responded to every person who yelled at him and dapped up most of the folks gathered around 16 tee. They begged him to skip one, and he did to theatrical applause.
It’s the kind of environment where Bryson has thrived in recent years.
The HKOC has become the Greatest Showman, and his one-act play on Tuesday evening was one of a thousand tiny moments that makes the Masters great.
3. Can we have a conversation about Jack Nicklaus’ record at the Masters in the 1970s? He lost to 25 golfers that decade. Like, across all 10 Masters.
1970: Casper, Littler, Player, Yancey, Aaron, Hill, Stockton
1971: Coody
1972: Nobody
1973: Aaron, Snead (J.C., not Sam)
1974: Player, Stockton, Weiskopf
1975: Nobody
1976: Floyd, Crenshaw
1977: Watson
1978: Player, Funseth, Green, Watson, Armstrong, Kratzert
1979: Sneed, Watson, Zoeller
So that’s 20 unique humans. Player and Watson did it 3x and Tommy Aaron and Dave (not John) Stockton did it twice. Also, two different guys named Snead/Sneed did it as well. Simply one of the great 10-year runs in Masters (or any major’s) history, although somehow not even Nicklaus’ best 10-year run … in the 1970s.
4. In response to last night’s Champions Dinner photo (which I’ll have a full breakdown of below) is this one of the great tweets of all time? I think it might be.
This post will continue for Normal Club members below, and includes …
An annual Champions Dinner photo review.
Thoughts on Rory getting his heart broken (again).
A hilarious Spieth moment before the Champions Dinner.
Some tidbits and nuggies from the grounds on Tuesday.
My pick.
If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.
If you are, keep reading!
Welcome to the members-only portion of today’s newsletter. I hope you both enjoy it and find it to be valuable to your golf and/or personal life.
For those of you who are looking for it: Here’s the link to join our Masters fantasy contest. We have a lot of the Normal Club participating already. Hoping to get it to 500 by first tee shots on Thursday.
5. Our little row in the press building is (consecutively) me, Neil Schuster, KVV, Soly, Porath and Andy. Combined tweets: 45,393,221. My wife told me to take a photo. I told her that photo had already been taken and this is what it looked like.
6. OK, I guess we need to talk about it. I’ve mostly avoided engaging with it up to now, but after the quote he gave on Tuesday, I know my efforts to dodge the discussion are futile.
So … let’s discuss.
Rory was asked the following: You made a comment when you left the Players that you have to be willing to get your heart broken, and you had a spell where you just didn't want to do that. Why do you think that was, and what have you figured out about that?
Here’s what he said.
I think it's a self-preservation mechanism. It's just more of a thing where you're trying to not put 100 percent of yourself out there because of that.
It happens in all walks of life. At a certain point in someone's life, someone doesn't want to fall in love because they don't want to get their heart broken.
People, I think, instinctually as human beings we hold back sometimes because of the fear of getting hurt, whether that's a conscious decision or subconscious decision, and I think I was doing that on the golf course a little bit for a few years.
Rory McIlroy | 2025 Masters
Sometimes people ask why I enjoy covering Rory or why he’s easy to root for. I mean … [gestures at above quote].
I actually wrote about this after he lost the 2022 Open.
The greatest risk of romance is tremendous heartbreak, and rarely has that ever been more apparent in golf than it was Sunday evening on the Old Course at St. Andrews as the 150th Open Championship came to a close.
CBS Sports
I guess the follow up I would have for Rory — I wasn’t in the presser on Tuesday because I was jamming with friends I haven’t seen in nearly a year — would be, “How exactly does a golfer ‘put himself out there?’”
That sounds like a non-golf and even non-sports thing to say.
I will ask it if he does a presser later this week, but here’s a version of the answer I imagine he would give. It’s how I described the vulnerability of golf after he won the Players and gave the quote above.
We have all been in uncomfortable situations, stand up comedy or not, and we can feel our bodies fighting against those situations. Now put a 7 iron in your hands and see what happens. Tournament golfers, maybe unknowingly, often fight against the discomfort of being the lead horse.
This is what Rory means by being OK with getting your heart broken. It’s an internal choice (almost an acceptance) to go for it, to put yourself out there, to hit the shots and try to do the thing.
There are no statistics for this, and I realize all of it may sound a bit insane. But if you’ve watched pro golf at all, you can — because golf is such a mental and emotional game — almost see it playing out.
Normal Sport Newsletter | Issue 171
Rory gave a good synopsis on Thursday of how he has begun to view all of this over the last few years.
But I think once you go through that, once you go through those heartbreaks … you get to a place where you remember how it feels and you wake up the next day and you're like, yeah, ‘Life goes on, it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be.’
… it's going through those times, especially in recent memory, where the last few years I've had chances to win some of the biggest golf tournaments in the world and it hasn't quite happened. But life moves on. You dust yourself off and you go again.
I think that's why I've become a little more comfortable in laying everything out there and being somewhat vulnerable at times.
Rory McIlroy | 2025 Masters
Rory basically did this at the podium on Tuesday.
But that’s the whole point, right?!
My friend, Brad, who has been helping us on the marketing side, sent me this C.S. Lewis quote after Rory’s presser on Thursday.
C.S. Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, puts it this way: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal.
“Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
Sure, you can live your life guarded and reserved in self-preservation mode — but what does that do to the human condition or soul?
Lewis would say your heart becomes “resistant to all good and joy.”
So many golfers — even (and maybe especially) the greats — seem like robots. They don’t engage the emotional side of the game, and if they do then it’s only to discuss the highs they get from roaring.
But that’s not how we internalize fandom, is it? We enjoy the highs, sure, but we also commiserate the lows. And sometimes the latter can be more galvanizing for fans.
Rory, for whatever you want to say about his ability to talk himself into a pretzel or to play his way out of major championships, is a fan of the game. This is unusual! His experience of golf is closer to our experience of golf than almost any other pro. And he also happens to be the best golfer of the last 15 years.
I wrote on Monday about how humanity reigns at this place, and no all-time great has ever felt more human more often than Rory McIlroy.
7. Let’s talk about that Champions Dinner photo. I have some takes.
1. I’m always amused at how much attention this singular photo gets every year. People are obsessed with it … says the guy who is about to write 300 words on tie knots.
2. Speaking of! Scottie's tie knot is a tough scene. Maybe not the actual knot but how loose it is against his shirt. Not becoming of a champion golfer!
If Scottie’s handiwork matched his footwork.
3. Craig Stadler's color combo is appalling! As my guy Mike Gundy once stated, where are we at in society?!
4. I am shocked (shocked!) to learn that Spieth has a lot going on with his outfit.
5. Fred Ridley … perfect hair. Immaculate shirt-tie combo. Incredible look.
6. Faldo remains an absolute unit. Somebody told me to look at Woosie (far left) and then look back at Faldo. Faldo looks like two Woosies!
7. Both Watsons look like they dressed for Easter dinner. We cannot have a yellow shirt-pink tie-green jacket combo. Expectations are not high for someone without enough sense to play Spieth and Reed at a Ryder Cup where they shot a best ball 55, but still.
8. Phil. Incredible stuff. Also, incredible placement, as Soly pointed out.
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8. I went and looked at the best strokes gained numbers at the Masters over the last 10 years. Here’s how to interpret the following numbers: Last year, Scottie had the most strokes gained (obviously, since he won). Over the last two years, Scottie Scheffler has the best SG/round numbers of everyone who has played each of the last two Masters. He also has the best SG/round numbers of anyone who has played five Masters over the last five years.
Here are your across the board leaders.
1 year – Scottie
2 years – Scottie
3 years – Scottie
4 years – Scottie
5 years – Scottie
6 years – Rahm (Scottie has only played five Masters)
7 years – Rahm
8 years – Rahm
9 years – Rory
10 years – Spieth
This is perhaps intuitive, but it still intrigued me. Rahm has had an underrated Masters career. His finishes: T27-4-T9-T7-T5-T27-Win-T45. No missed cuts, gained stroked every year and five top 10s in eight starts.
(Jason here) Mea culpa, I accidentally put this in yesterday’s issue under a Tiger 2019 stat. To be fair, Kyle throws a lot of stats around here, it’s hard to keep track.
9. On Tuesday, after getting the Bryson Experience on the back nine, I walked up to the big tree up by the clubhouse as the Champions Dinner started to unfold. I was unaware that there are festivities for the spouses of the players involved, and was surprised to see Rahm’s wife taking photos with the 2023 champ and then Scottie’s wife walking around and Mark O’Meara and his wife talking to Annie Spieth.
As I looked around, all the players looked dapper in their jackets, ready for one of the more exclusive, special evenings in all of sports. Some normal sport vibes — men in jackets eating french fry burgers to celebrate perhaps the toughest achievement in their profession! — but all in all, a very cool scene.
I kept looking around, kept observing. Augusta National is such a vast and sweeping place but it’s also so familiar and intimate. Both things are true, which provides evenings like this one with the right amount of pomp and circumstance.
And then my eyes found him. There, among these legends in green jackets who were telling tales of yesteryear, reminiscing about their past and projecting the future upon these still-20- and 30-somethings, was Jordan Spieth.
Except he wasn’t wearing a green jacket. He wasn’t wearing a jacket at all. He looked disheveled, in full workout gear, tennis shoes and shorts. There, right there in the middle of all these fabulous champions and their beautiful wives, was this crazy looking dad of two looking like he was more likely going to Sprouts after a Crossfit workout than heading to a dinner club where Hogan, Palmer and Nelson once sat.
Our king. I wouldn’t have expected anything different.
10. On Tuesday’s Shotgun Start episode, Andy said something that really resonated with me.
The beauty of Augusta is that it plays on these guys’ egos for 18 holes. That ability to have a game plan, stick with it, understand that when you’re in position that you’re able to shift those targets a little bit over because you have some helping contours or not that bad of a miss in one spot versus the dance of ‘I’m in the fairway, I’m in a perfect lie, I could shade this over but knowing this isn’t the spot to get … aggressive.’
Andy Johnson | SGS
Golf is a game of humility, Augusta is a test of humility and humility, as it turns out, is Scottie’s superpower.
As Andy noted, there is a lot of “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should” happening at this golf course. And of all the greats over the last 25 years, I think only Tiger has showed as much restraint with his lines and his decisions as Scottie.
I asked Scottie on Tuesday about how he thinks about attacking ANGC.
I think a lot of it's pretty fluid around the way you play the course because, depending on the firmness of the greens, there's certain pins you can try to attack and there's certain pins you've got to steer clear of.
There's certain spots that are really good when it's soft, and there are certain spots that are a little bit harder when it's soft. There's certain spots when it's firm where you know you have to be, and then the reverse, as well.
Scottie Scheffler | 2025 Masters
Scottie is at the middle of this Venn diagram.
Has all the shots.
Thinks through options in tremendous detail.
Applies restraint in how he plays (which LKD broke down in detail here).
All pro golfers have one of the three. If you have two of them, you’re probably a terrific champion. And all three? Well, that’s for the all timers.
Golf tournaments like this are often won not with an attacking mindset but a restrained one. They are won as much with the shots you do not try as they are with the ones you pull off. Scottie is great at restraint and remains so disciplined.
It is the most underrated part of his game.
11. Speaking of the humility! Here he is on what he’s learned from Rory (and others) while out on Tour.
I think when you look at a lot of the players out here on Tour, I think there's a lot we can learn from each other. Like Rory, I feel like has always been someone who's played really freely. All the times I've played with him, he swings it really hard off the tee, and I feel like he does a really good job of playing free and playing loose at times.
I think there's a lot that I can learn from a lot of the guys out here. That was one of the things that impressed me the most and inspired me a bit when I first came out is I felt like there was so much I could learn by watching people do things.
Even though somebody may be ranked the best and doing this sort of certain thing, let's say I'm the best iron player and Rory is the best driver, in golf I feel like there's always somebody that's a little bit better at doing something than you are that you can learn from.
Scottie Scheffler | 2025 Masters
“There’s a lot that I can learn from a lot of the guys out here.”
Says this person.
Humility is a superpower.
12. I was doing some research and stumbled into this board from 1995. I think it’s so crazy that Phil Mickelson appeared here and finished T2 at the same tournament two years ago. I think a lot of golf fans generally underrate him and his career. I have him borderline top 10 ever, and if he wins another big event like this or perhaps even LIV Bolingbrook, I’ll have to consider moving him into single digits.
13. As I’m sure everyone knows by now, Max and his caddie, Joe Greiner, split recently. There is some backstory there that is not salacious but is also not mine to tell, but the front-facing story is actually the more interesting one to me anyway.
Here’s what Max said on Tuesday.
I mean, it was not my choice so it sucked, but we always had a deal that we're friends first and friendship mattered more than the work thing, and he was wise enough to do what he did.
But I was happy that he did it, because I would rather -- you know, at the end of my days we continue to be great friends than one of us resent the other for how hard this game can be on a relationship.
So it sucks because I just pictured always walking fairways with Joe. But again, that's not -- that was not the deal. I would rather walk life with Joe forever than this dumb game. So it's been hard to process, but also good in a way, because friendship does matter more than any of this stuff.
Max Homa | 2025 Masters
If I am interpreting that quote correctly, it seems like Joe ended things with Max because he cared more about their friendship than their professional relationship, and the latter was taking a toll on the former.
That takes a little wisdom and a lot of long-term love to leave the bag of someone who has made you a lot of money (and may make you a lot more). I find the preservation of friendship over career achievement to be admirable.
14. Who had a more unhinged presser on Tuesday between Viktor and Bryson?
Here’s the tale of the tape.
In one corner …
In the other …
Bryson talking about testing different heads to see how it feels in his hands is a wild way to talk about swinging a golf club.
Also microns and “the ends of parameters” as in “I think I'm looking at it in a much different lens than I have in the past where I'm tinkering, tinkering, tinkering, trying to find the ends of the parameters and go one extreme to the next extreme.”
Need them duking it out in a pre-Ryder Cup presser together.
Spotted in players parking.
15. I actually really loved this quote from Bryson and find it to be excellent golf parent advice.
I think for anybody, and this is kind of a pivot point from this question, but for any parent out there that wants to get their kids into golf, first off, you've got to make sure that they have fun doing it, but go put them in tournament competitions and see if they love it. Because I certainly fell in love with the competitive side of it. I love practicing, I love hitting golf balls, but I love competing as well, seeing how low I could go.
Bryson DeChambeau | 2025 Masters
I think “Do they love it?” is a tremendous starting point when it comes to being a youth sports parent. A close second — even the expense of helping them get better — is “… how can I help them love it more?”
16. OK, the pick.
Give me the multiple-time major champion …
Who has some real scars at this place …
But has been playing unbelievable golf this year …
Even though his numbers suggest he hasn’t won as much as he should.
Rory?
No.
Though I’ll take it on Sunday.
Collin?
Yes. Dog booties and all.
Thank you for reading until the end.
You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a golf newsletter that is 4,219 words (!!) long, and your support of our business is appreciated.
Don’t forget to register for our Masters contest.
Issue No. 181 | April 9, 2025
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Official last call for our Masters fantasy contest. If you are not a Normal Club member, you should join and jump into our free-to-enter contest where you pick an eight-player team and compete for $4,000 with other psychos like myself who actually care a lot about all of this stuff.
If you are a member and have not received the link to the contest, I dropped it in lower in this email and I will also send it out one more time at 7 p.m. ET today.
Also, here’s my final final squad.
All teams have to be finalized by the first tee shot on Thursday.
Best of luck to all!
Before we get steep on what I’ve been seeing and hearing at ANGC, a big thank you to today’s presenter of this newsletter (and one of the pillars of our weeklong giveaway): Turtlebox.
One of the themes this week is a commit to excellence, and Turtlebox embodies this as well as any business I have seen. Everything they do — from the technology behind their speakers to the stories they tell to even the packaging they use — is as high quality as it gets, and we could not be more thrilled to partner with them in 2025.
The number of times I have thought “I am so glad Turtlebox is on board with this ridiculous venture” over the last three months is higher even than the total number of times I have thought, “It would be very cool if Spieth or Rory won the 2025 Masters.”
And yes, you can skip and dip a Turtlebox.
Check them out — we appreciate it when you support the folks that support this unhinged newsletter. OK, now (almost!) onto the news!
Congratulations to our first four winners this week.
Remember, we’ll be giving away $7,000 worth of golf gear throughout the week. You don’t have to do anything but be subscribed to this newsletter to enter the giveaway.
Turtlebox speaker: Max E.
Meridian putter: Ally Barber
Precision Pro range finder: Sam Worchesky
OGIO bag: A. Walker
Here is a nice thing that one of them said about the newsletter.
I love that NS has introduced a perfect two word description for the varied insanity that is professional golf these days. No more or less has to be said in any situation.
Ally Barber
On Twitter yesterday, I also gave away $500 in merch from any pro tournament this year. Matthew E. won it. We’re doing something similar on Twitter on Wednesday. You can follow along and participate right here.
I love doing these giveaways because 1. I love giving our readers stuff. It’s fun. What’s better than winning an amazing putter from a free newsletter you’re already reading? And 2. They are the most effective way we have found to grow our newsletter list. Attention is difficult, but this seems to delight people.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Please enjoy today’s newsletter.
0. A mea culpa: The newsletter on Tuesday was entitled, “Si Woo in a Pizza Hut Visor,” which I maintain would be as sick as it gets. However, I am getting word from some #sources that Si Woo is actually not in the field this year. As an apology (even though he could feasibly be here as a patron wearing a Pizza Hut visor), I would like to offer up this the Masters moment that made me laugh harder than any Masters moment ever. A Si Woo-Charl handshake for the ages. I howl every single time I see it.
1. Wait … Rory is reading a book called The Reckoning during Masters week, and the synopsis of the book is that everyone in it needlessly suffers because of one man’s ill-advised and emotional choices at a place he seems to truly love?
😬😬😬
2. I walked a mostly empty ANGC on Tuesday evening, and stumbled into a terrific moment with the high king of content. Bryson, playing the back by himself at around 6 p.m., walked to the tee on 16 to patrons hollering, “break 50 this week, Bryson!”
He responded to every person who yelled at him and dapped up most of the folks gathered around 16 tee. They begged him to skip one, and he did to theatrical applause.
It’s the kind of environment where Bryson has thrived in recent years.
The HKOC has become the Greatest Showman, and his one-act play on Tuesday evening was one of a thousand tiny moments that makes the Masters great.
3. Can we have a conversation about Jack Nicklaus’ record at the Masters in the 1970s? He lost to 25 golfers that decade. Like, across all 10 Masters.
1970: Casper, Littler, Player, Yancey, Aaron, Hill, Stockton
1971: Coody
1972: Nobody
1973: Aaron, Snead (J.C., not Sam)
1974: Player, Stockton, Weiskopf
1975: Nobody
1976: Floyd, Crenshaw
1977: Watson
1978: Player, Funseth, Green, Watson, Armstrong, Kratzert
1979: Sneed, Watson, Zoeller
So that’s 20 unique humans. Player and Watson did it 3x and Tommy Aaron and Dave (not John) Stockton did it twice. Also, two different guys named Snead/Sneed did it as well. Simply one of the great 10-year runs in Masters (or any major’s) history, although somehow not even Nicklaus’ best 10-year run … in the 1970s.
4. In response to last night’s Champions Dinner photo (which I’ll have a full breakdown of below) is this one of the great tweets of all time? I think it might be.
This post will continue for Normal Club members below, and includes …
An annual Champions Dinner photo review.
Thoughts on Rory getting his heart broken (again).
A hilarious Spieth moment before the Champions Dinner.
Some tidbits and nuggies from the grounds on Tuesday.
My pick.
If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.
If you are, keep reading!
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