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Issue No. 186 | April 15, 2025
AUGUSTA, Ga. — If we’re being real here, I’ve been on tilt since 13 on Sunday. Never really got off it. Just rode it all the way through, cried my eyes out while writing about my boy who watched The Boy do the thing we never thought he’d do.
It hit me deep into Sunday night.
I was firing off all the hyperbole that my rationale (or what was left of it) would allow me to fire off, and I called it the greatest Masters of my lifetime. I have no idea if this is true. It felt true on Sunday. Still does today.
It’s definitely the most unique Masters of my lifetime.
But then I saw that Webb Simpson retweeted it. I have no idea why that’s what got me. I respect Webb a lot, find him to be reasonable and rational and all the things I am not. I truly think this maybe was the best Masters of our lifetime.
When else are we going to see someone slay an 11-year dragon? The first Masters in 90 years for the slam. And the guy who won it had to go through his own personal hell about 20 different times … on every hole.
That will never happen again.
Not for us anyway.
Not for those of us who grew up on Tiger from a distance but for whom Rory became our guy from up close. Every media era has a guy.
Rory is ours.
That takes all the twists and turns you would imagine. It has all the ebbs and flows professional relationships take on. But he never really stopped being our guy, which is why you saw and heard what you saw and heard on Sunday night.
Were we rooting? Of course! Inwardly, always. But even outwardly at times on Sunday. As my friend Joe Musso said, Yeah no rules yesterday. We were all on one team.
I thought Bacon said it well.
It's funny to be happy for a stranger, someone you don't know. Sports are weird like that. But I've followed Rory as my life has evolved and changed and people of consequence become a part of your life.
You watch their highs and lows and eventually feel them as they do. I'm just so happy for the guy. I'm happy he did it. I'm happy he put all that to bed.
And I'm excited for what is to come.
Rory, man. Rory Freakin' McIlroy.
Shane Bacon
I have so many more thoughts on what unfolded over the weekend. So many that you should probably reload on coffee before we get to them all.
I can’t believe there’s another PGA Tour golf tournament this week. I need a month just to unwind whatever it was that happened on the back nine.
We will get to all of those thoughts and much more in a moment, but first a thank you to Seed Golf, which is presenting today’s newsletter. Because of our sponsors like Seed, I am able to attend the Masters and write what I wrote on Sunday night.
I am so grateful to them for that and hope that you are, too.
And hey, maybe if you look around Nick Dunlap’s airbnb in Augusta, you’ll find a couple of Seeds. Dunlap said his trainer bought a bunch of balls after he shot 90, and he just pummeled them into the dark to try and find a feel.
“Ball testing,” he called it.
An environment where Seed has thrived over the years.
Also, congratulations to the following on winning our giveaways from Sunday.
Turtlebox: Brooke R.
OGIO: Teddy A.
Precision Pro: Scott H.
Holderness: AJ W.
Seed Golf: Kevin D.
Meridian: Noah H.
Here’s a nice thing one of them said about our newsletter.
I love Normal Sport because it captures the metaphor that golf is for life. We'll never miss a 4-footer to win the U.S. Open and then slip on a green jacket a few months later, but we all know those highs and lows.
Kyle captures the beautiful insanity of golf and life so well.
Noah H.
Lastly, congratulations to our fantasy contest winners.
Goodmain7195, you just 30xed your investment in the Normal Club. Incredible stuff, and something we will continue to do at future major championships, including the PGA.
All Normal Club members are invited to participate in the next three major contests.
1. Normally, starting is so easy for me. You just open up a page and begin with the champ. In this instance, though, there are so many places to go, so much ground to cover. I don’t really know where to begin.
KVV always tells me to start small, though, so let’s do that here.
What were you thinking when he pulled a club on 15 and started looking around with crazy in his eyes?
From just up the left, I couldn’t see his view so it looked a little like he had about a 90-yard slinger to even see the green. It was obviously less than that, though not a lot less, and the shot is just outrageous.
What I notice about it: When it lands, it does that side sauce thing that all slingers do, and the pin is right in its line of sight. It’s just tumbling end over end like that weird dance all the youths are into, gunning for the cup.
Nantz nailed it: “The shot of a lifetime!”
Except Rory was on his 17th lifetime of the round.
Manifesting a Masters x Normal Sport collab, one fake (but plausible) hat at a time.
The walk, too. Both of his walks on 15.
We’ll replay those for as long as YouTube is a company. They were so much like the Tiger walk from 2011. Shoulders quiet, stride controlled but the club holsters say it all.
2. It must have been the greatest 73 in the history of golf. Imagine trying to play the toughest major championship golf course in the world with the most prestigious prize in sports on the line. Now put on a 225-pound weighted vest and step up to the 10th.
Knot in your stomach. Haven't really had much of an appetite all day. Tried to force food down. Your legs feel a little jelly-like ….
It's such a battle in your head of trying to stay in the present moment and hit this next shot good and hit the next shot good. You know, that was the battle today.
…
I'd like to say that I did a better job of it than I did.
It was a struggle but I got it over the line.
Rory McIlroy | 2025 Masters
Tommy Fleetwood called it, “possibly the greatest mentally resilient achievement ever in our sport.”
That’s the part that will almost certainly be lost to history when we look back on this major. In 30 years, nobody will remember what a war it was. Not with Rose or with Bryson or Lowry. Only with himself.
The last 11 years jammed into the last nine holes. All the ups and downs. All the heartbreak and jubilation. All the poor choices saved by pure talent. All the shots. All the mistakes. All the gifts. All the throwing them away. All the dragging them back out.
That back nine was the full Rory, as a player and a person, condensed into two hours of the greatest theater we have ever seen. He’s better than everyone he’s ever looked at, but like the rest of us in golf, he so often eschews the book to simply follow his heart.
Rory may actually be who everyone thinks Spieth’s supposed to be.
3. You know what a normal golfer does? One whose mind isn’t racing with historic implications. Lays up on 11. Hits it over the green on 13. Punches out on 15. Hits the middle of the green on 18. Wins by five.
He literally said it!
So, yeah, anytime I hit it in the trees this week, I had a gap. Even the second shot on 7 today, which I probably shouldn't have taken on. Harry was telling me not to.
I was like, "No, no, I can do this."
Rory McIlroy | 2025 Masters
The easiest way to experience his humanity is by watching him weep his face off on the 18th green. But if you’re paying attention, if you’re watching closely, you can see it in every decision, every desire. He does what he shouldn’t and doesn’t do what he should.
Even his golf is human (although many of the shots are not).
My youngest son once came to me and my wife and asked for a LEGO set he couldn’t live without. We told him, “Buddy, you know that won’t fulfill you. You just got one for Christmas and you’re already tired of it.”
He looked at us, “I know, dad,” he said. “But I want it anyway.”
That’s exactly how it feels like Rory plays.
Have you too been caught staring off into the distance since Sunday? we’ve got a card for you.
4. There are so many tiny moments at every major but especially the Masters. All of them mean so much.
Two that stood out, and both reminded me of Birkdale in 2017 when Spieth hugged Kuchar’s wife after he stomped on her husband’s soul.
At the end of the line on Sunday, Justin Rose’s wife, Kate, went up to Rory and hugged him for a long time. It’s hard to hear the audio, but it sounds like she says, “I’m really, really happy for you” and then maybe (?) “I’m f’n happy for you.”
She did the same with Erica just beyond the 18th green after Rory made three in the playoff to put her husband in the worst club: Only golfer in history to play in at least two Masters playoffs and never win a jacket.
How painful that must be.
Between this and Rose’s caddie, Fooch, kissing Rory on 18, I am shocked (SHOCKED) that Europe is good at Ryder Cups. Stunned.
I cannot believe that the team that loves each other this much is so good at a team event! They must just make more putts!
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
A smorgasbord of other Masters content. I’ve been at an Augusta Starbucks for six straight hours just mainlining thoughts into my computer.
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.
5. I have imagined what this would be like more than once. I’m not ashamed to admit that. I have covered Rory majors, but I was a year or two into the job, didn’t know what I was doing, was never really in the mix. Never experienced one in person. At that time, I may as well have been a fan with a keyboard (I guess in that sense, not a lot changed).
But even when I envisioned what it would be like, I did not think he would be that emotional, that raw. I have watched this gif no less than 20 times.
The hardest thing in sports is carrying around the thing that everyone says you will — not could or should or might but will — do.
Here’s what he told Marty Smith afterward (you should watch it).
Now that I’ve been able to do it, I maybe didn’t realize the burden I’d been carrying all this time. I would show up here every year, and I would put my positive hat on and I would go in with the right attitude, and it never quite happened for me.
And I’d come back next year and I’d do the same thing. I think time after time and year after year of doing that, that burden builds up.
When I finally was able to do it an get over the line and win, I think that emotion that you saw was 14 years of coming here and not getting the job done and feeling that burden each and every year.
It all just came out there on that last green.
Rory McIlroy | 2025 Masters
What a quote. What a win. What a moment.
He convinced himself over and over and over and over and over that he wanted to and could. I do wonder if down in the deep and darkest places, he truly thought he would.
Then he did.
There is something special about fulfilling a dream. There is something special about overcoming a nightmare. Now imagine those two are the very same thing. It must feel like he lost 100 pounds. Send the jet to Jupiter, he’ll just fly on back home.
6. There is a lot of chatter about how he tried to choke the thing away, about how the 73 was a crowning, that he didn’t show his guts. But I’m not sure people truly understand the yoke. Nobody in golf over the last 25 years has ever been more expected to do a single thing than Rory was expected to win this particular tournament.
This is what expectations look like.
Being Rory is fun and great and wonderful. It’s also exhausting and tiring and taxing. He didn’t ask for the expectations of the world, but he received them anyway. And he still did it. Truly one of the great achievements in golf sports history.
7. And a reminder that all of this happened on a week in which …
Everyone said he would.
Including Player, Nicklaus and Watson.
He shot 72 to finish T27 in the opening round.
He made four (!) doubles, including two on Sunday.
He played with the guy who murdered him at Pinehurst.
He almost kicked it away 15 different times.
The forever war is over.
It was only ever with himself.
Rory conquered not ANGC nor the Masters nor Bryson nor Rosey nor the slam on Sunday. All of those things, yes, but Rory vs. Rory was the only one that mattered.
“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
He went on to say that he’s gotten better at being willing to do this than he was in the middle part of his career.
The battle in his brain. The desires in his heart. Only getting a certain number of chances. Those were the wars.
The golf is the easy part, it’s everything else that you must tame. Because again, winning the Masters is barely (barely!) about playing great golf. These top guys? They can play great golf in their sleep.
Especially for Rory, it was about whether he could conquer himself. Whether he could answer the question his buddy, Shane Lowry, asked on Sunday before winning the 2019 Open at Portrush: Do I have what it takes? Can I meet the moment?
You and I will never hit that shot on 15, sure, but nothing in the world could be more compelling or aspirational than that.
8. This Masters win resonated for a million reasons, but one of them is this: It somehow felt as if we were watching a first-time major champion on Sunday. Someone who had tried and failed and failed and failed. It felt like Rory became the first person to ever complete the grand slam with his first major win. How a slam winner turned into the lovable underdog is beyond me, but that’s what it felt like.
That is weird, I know. But because it had been 11 years and because his heart had been shredded innumerable times — most of them self-inflicted — it felt inspiring to watch.
Very much like Phil in 2004. Except that Rory had already banked four majors, including the other three. Phil won five after his first.
Is Rory … going to get to 10?
This seemed unfathomable even two weeks ago. Now? It seems difficult, unlikely, but also not unreasonable. I have been hollering, yelping, about how Rory is having the inverse of Phil’s career. But what if he’s just having … Phil’s career … with several in the bank at a much (much) younger age. That 22-year-old Rory feels like a different player and person. What if Rory 1.0 wins four and Rory 2.0 wins four more?
We will yell about his place in the pantheon, but it’s no longer as a top 25 player. He’s hunting the top 10 now. No matter how you dice it up, Phil is a good marker for that 10 spot. If you have him just outside, I’m fine with that. Just inside? Good there too.
And now Rory has five at an age when Phil had just three. Here is the cumulative Data Golf points comparison. Same traj, even if Phil got started a bit later than Rory. Again … Phil is probably one of the 10 best players of all time, and Rory is well ahead of pace.
9. Let’s talk about the scores.
Rose and Rory shot a best ball 29 and a worst ball 41 on the back. A 12-shot swing on the back alone. Three combined pars on that side.
Overall, it was a best ball 59 and a worst ball 80.
If there is some representation of what the day felt like, this is it.
From the first hole on, has a tournament ever felt like it shifted more legacies and history … not on every hole but on every shot?
We crave consequential golf shots, and we got so many of them on Sunday. Because of the time elapsed between his majors and the chase for that slam, I just don’t know that there will ever be anything else quite like it.
10. I mean really, how good is this illustration from Jason Page on Sunday night? A slinging tracer around the trees right into the heart of that washing machine full of dreams?
Come on.
11. Bryson’s evolution, while not as complete yet as Rory’s, is no less admirable. Here are his Masters finishes.
T21-T38-T29-T34-T46-MC-MC-T6-T5
He has now finished in the top six in four of the last five majors, and even on a week in which he didn’t have his iron play — he finished 51st in approach! — he found his way into the mix on Sunday afternoon.
But Bryson won’t be leaving ANGC empty handed.
Bryson catches a lot of flak (most of it deserved), but he’s a champion and a more complete golfer than he ever gets credit for.
I want him to win more majors. I just didn’t want him to win this major. A terrific week, though, and the golf universe is better with him in it.
Also a funny thing that was said on Sunday: Do you think Bryson has hit more range balls or Harry Diamond has said more words this week? That range tracker record may be Bryson’s white whale. He may show up on Monday at 6 a.m. next year and try to push it to five digits for the week.
12. I’m not afraid to say it. I have grown to love Justin Rose. He’s a lion and a champion, but the part that hit me best was him grabbing the back of Rory’s head just as he’s done with so many Ryder Cup teammates and telling him the following.
Yeah, Rory is a friend for sure. … When it's all said and done, I said to him, “Listen, I was glad I was here on this green to witness you win the career grand slam.” That's such a cool, momentous moment in the game of golf. Yeah, that was it.
He was obviously pretty overcome with emotion and probably not going to be able to take in much at the time. It was a big day in golf.
Justin Rose | 2025 Masters
Immelman’s quote was perfect: “Justin is a good man.”
There’s nothing like the Masters.
13. This truly never happens. Not like this anyway.
These wishes never really come true. Oh, maybe when you’re 19 or 22 or whatever. But you can’t appreciate then how things hit you now.
Remember on Sunday when I said the very best thing about him is that he hasn’t gotten jaded? If he wins that 2011 Masters, I’m not sure that’s the case.
This thing in his life that he couldn’t accomplish, in strange and subtle ways, maintained for him a connection to the boy who hoped.
I think in a lot of ways, not winning the Masters helped Rory preserve himself. He had to remain the kid who hit putts on a green in Holywood with his buddy. The one who grew up pretending to win this event.
What’s the singular image you’ll remember?
I’ll share a lot of those later this week, but this is one of mine.
I’m not sure if it’s the one, but it’s up there.
They were once two boys who wished, and somehow all of it came true for them both. That Rory would break down about sharing it with his friend of 30 years is a very Rory thing to do.
Thought this was really good.
— Kyle Porter (@KylePorterNS)
8:29 PM • Apr 14, 2025
All of it feels kind of unreal even two days later.
Truly, truly the stuff of dreams.
Thank you for reading until the end.
You’re a complete and total sicko for reading a newsletter about a single round of golf that is 3,765 words (!!) long, and your support of our business is appreciated more than Bryson appreciates the range tracker.
Issue No. 186 | April 15, 2025
AUGUSTA, Ga. — If we’re being real here, I’ve been on tilt since 13 on Sunday. Never really got off it. Just rode it all the way through, cried my eyes out while writing about my boy who watched The Boy do the thing we never thought he’d do.
It hit me deep into Sunday night.
I was firing off all the hyperbole that my rationale (or what was left of it) would allow me to fire off, and I called it the greatest Masters of my lifetime. I have no idea if this is true. It felt true on Sunday. Still does today.
It’s definitely the most unique Masters of my lifetime.
But then I saw that Webb Simpson retweeted it. I have no idea why that’s what got me. I respect Webb a lot, find him to be reasonable and rational and all the things I am not. I truly think this maybe was the best Masters of our lifetime.
When else are we going to see someone slay an 11-year dragon? The first Masters in 90 years for the slam. And the guy who won it had to go through his own personal hell about 20 different times … on every hole.
That will never happen again.
Not for us anyway.
Not for those of us who grew up on Tiger from a distance but for whom Rory became our guy from up close. Every media era has a guy.
Rory is ours.
That takes all the twists and turns you would imagine. It has all the ebbs and flows professional relationships take on. But he never really stopped being our guy, which is why you saw and heard what you saw and heard on Sunday night.
Were we rooting? Of course! Inwardly, always. But even outwardly at times on Sunday. As my friend Joe Musso said, Yeah no rules yesterday. We were all on one team.
I thought Bacon said it well.
It's funny to be happy for a stranger, someone you don't know. Sports are weird like that. But I've followed Rory as my life has evolved and changed and people of consequence become a part of your life.
You watch their highs and lows and eventually feel them as they do. I'm just so happy for the guy. I'm happy he did it. I'm happy he put all that to bed.
And I'm excited for what is to come.
Rory, man. Rory Freakin' McIlroy.
Shane Bacon
I have so many more thoughts on what unfolded over the weekend. So many that you should probably reload on coffee before we get to them all.
I can’t believe there’s another PGA Tour golf tournament this week. I need a month just to unwind whatever it was that happened on the back nine.
We will get to all of those thoughts and much more in a moment, but first a thank you to Seed Golf, which is presenting today’s newsletter. Because of our sponsors like Seed, I am able to attend the Masters and write what I wrote on Sunday night.
I am so grateful to them for that and hope that you are, too.
And hey, maybe if you look around Nick Dunlap’s airbnb in Augusta, you’ll find a couple of Seeds. Dunlap said his trainer bought a bunch of balls after he shot 90, and he just pummeled them into the dark to try and find a feel.
“Ball testing,” he called it.
An environment where Seed has thrived over the years.
Also, congratulations to the following on winning our giveaways from Sunday.
Turtlebox: Brooke R.
OGIO: Teddy A.
Precision Pro: Scott H.
Holderness: AJ W.
Seed Golf: Kevin D.
Meridian: Noah H.
Here’s a nice thing one of them said about our newsletter.
I love Normal Sport because it captures the metaphor that golf is for life. We'll never miss a 4-footer to win the U.S. Open and then slip on a green jacket a few months later, but we all know those highs and lows.
Kyle captures the beautiful insanity of golf and life so well.
Noah H.
Lastly, congratulations to our fantasy contest winners.
Goodmain7195, you just 30xed your investment in the Normal Club. Incredible stuff, and something we will continue to do at future major championships, including the PGA.
All Normal Club members are invited to participate in the next three major contests.
1. Normally, starting is so easy for me. You just open up a page and begin with the champ. In this instance, though, there are so many places to go, so much ground to cover. I don’t really know where to begin.
KVV always tells me to start small, though, so let’s do that here.
What were you thinking when he pulled a club on 15 and started looking around with crazy in his eyes?
From just up the left, I couldn’t see his view so it looked a little like he had about a 90-yard slinger to even see the green. It was obviously less than that, though not a lot less, and the shot is just outrageous.
What I notice about it: When it lands, it does that side sauce thing that all slingers do, and the pin is right in its line of sight. It’s just tumbling end over end like that weird dance all the youths are into, gunning for the cup.
Nantz nailed it: “The shot of a lifetime!”
Except Rory was on his 17th lifetime of the round.
Manifesting a Masters x Normal Sport collab, one fake (but plausible) hat at a time.
The walk, too. Both of his walks on 15.
We’ll replay those for as long as YouTube is a company. They were so much like the Tiger walk from 2011. Shoulders quiet, stride controlled but the club holsters say it all.
2. It must have been the greatest 73 in the history of golf. Imagine trying to play the toughest major championship golf course in the world with the most prestigious prize in sports on the line. Now put on a 225-pound weighted vest and step up to the 10th.
Knot in your stomach. Haven't really had much of an appetite all day. Tried to force food down. Your legs feel a little jelly-like ….
It's such a battle in your head of trying to stay in the present moment and hit this next shot good and hit the next shot good. You know, that was the battle today.
…
I'd like to say that I did a better job of it than I did.
It was a struggle but I got it over the line.
Rory McIlroy | 2025 Masters
Tommy Fleetwood called it, “possibly the greatest mentally resilient achievement ever in our sport.”
That’s the part that will almost certainly be lost to history when we look back on this major. In 30 years, nobody will remember what a war it was. Not with Rose or with Bryson or Lowry. Only with himself.
The last 11 years jammed into the last nine holes. All the ups and downs. All the heartbreak and jubilation. All the poor choices saved by pure talent. All the shots. All the mistakes. All the gifts. All the throwing them away. All the dragging them back out.
That back nine was the full Rory, as a player and a person, condensed into two hours of the greatest theater we have ever seen. He’s better than everyone he’s ever looked at, but like the rest of us in golf, he so often eschews the book to simply follow his heart.
Rory may actually be who everyone thinks Spieth’s supposed to be.
3. You know what a normal golfer does? One whose mind isn’t racing with historic implications. Lays up on 11. Hits it over the green on 13. Punches out on 15. Hits the middle of the green on 18. Wins by five.
He literally said it!
So, yeah, anytime I hit it in the trees this week, I had a gap. Even the second shot on 7 today, which I probably shouldn't have taken on. Harry was telling me not to.
I was like, "No, no, I can do this."
Rory McIlroy | 2025 Masters
The easiest way to experience his humanity is by watching him weep his face off on the 18th green. But if you’re paying attention, if you’re watching closely, you can see it in every decision, every desire. He does what he shouldn’t and doesn’t do what he should.
Even his golf is human (although many of the shots are not).
My youngest son once came to me and my wife and asked for a LEGO set he couldn’t live without. We told him, “Buddy, you know that won’t fulfill you. You just got one for Christmas and you’re already tired of it.”
He looked at us, “I know, dad,” he said. “But I want it anyway.”
That’s exactly how it feels like Rory plays.
Have you too been caught staring off into the distance since Sunday? we’ve got a card for you.
4. There are so many tiny moments at every major but especially the Masters. All of them mean so much.
Two that stood out, and both reminded me of Birkdale in 2017 when Spieth hugged Kuchar’s wife after he stomped on her husband’s soul.
At the end of the line on Sunday, Justin Rose’s wife, Kate, went up to Rory and hugged him for a long time. It’s hard to hear the audio, but it sounds like she says, “I’m really, really happy for you” and then maybe (?) “I’m f’n happy for you.”
She did the same with Erica just beyond the 18th green after Rory made three in the playoff to put her husband in the worst club: Only golfer in history to play in at least two Masters playoffs and never win a jacket.
How painful that must be.
Between this and Rose’s caddie, Fooch, kissing Rory on 18, I am shocked (SHOCKED) that Europe is good at Ryder Cups. Stunned.
I cannot believe that the team that loves each other this much is so good at a team event! They must just make more putts!
This post will continue below for Normal Club members and includes …
A smorgasbord of other Masters content. I’ve been at an Augusta Starbucks for six straight hours just mainlining thoughts into my computer.
If you aren’t yet a Normal Club member, you can sign up right here.
If you are, keep reading!
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