LEARNING MODULE 💡

We Can Do Hard Things ⛳️

Golf is hard. You stand 4 football fields away from a 4-inch cup and are told to put a ball into it within 4 shots. Do that 18 times and you have yourself a golf round.

The US Open, one of the four major tournaments, is officially underway and it’s notorious for making the game even harder. 😓 Compared to the other majors, it’s statistically more difficult.

Let’s take a look - and don’t forget a lower score is better in golf. ⬇️

The average finishing scores vs par at major tournaments over the last 5 years are:

🟡 The Masters: +0.44
🟡 PGA Championship: +1.88
🟢 Open Championship: -0.94
🔴 US Open: +5.01

The tournament organizers, the USGA, prioritize difficulty when deciding the courses, priding themselves on frustrated golfer quotes 😡 and bad scores throughout the weekend.

This year, the US Open is taking place at Pinehurst No.2 in North Carolina, one of the most punishing courses in the country. What does it mean to be “punishing”?

Grass Length(?) 🌱

The grass is supposed to be long at US Opens right? The LA Country Club which hosted in 2023 boasted over 5 inches of “rough”, long enough that even the pros lose balls.

Pinehurst takes a different approach. Scruffy grass isn’t its weapon of choice for dismantling golfers; it’s sand. 🏝️ In fact, there allegedly isn’t a blade of grass longer than 0.315 inches on the course.

Pinehurst No.2 also underwent a significant remodel in 2011 that mostly replaced the “rough cut” of grass with “waste area” - sand filled with shrubs, pebbles, and squirrels. This significantly limited the target zones and forced golfers to be more precise.

Timelapses show just how narrow the course has become. ⬇️

Green Speed 💨

The second characteristic of Pinehurst No.2 is its lightning-fast putting greens. Ultradwarf bermudagrass is the flora of choice at the legendary course and it’s cut to less than 1/8 of an inch, 📏 leading to glassy surfaces that sift away every non-perfect approach shot.

Stimpmeters are measuring tools used by golf courses to read how fast their greens are. To use it, you give the same force to a golf ball and see how far it rolls; the resulting distance is the stimp.

A stimpmeter on your living room carpet will likely give you a reading of around 6.0. The average golf course in America sits around 6.5.

Pinehurst No.2 greens are measured at 13.5 this weekend. 😳

That means if you give a little golf ball a little tap at the US Open course, it rolls more than double the distance of your local course. Thats quick!

No matter how you slice it, golfers have their work cut out for them this weekend. As Tom Watson says, “It takes courage to win the US Open, more courage than it takes for any other tournament.”

THIS PAST WEEK ⏮️

Side-Gig 🏏

Cricket had a moment this week. In the Men’s T20 World Cup, the USA defeated Pakistan during the group stages, a huge upset for the red, white, and blue.

For Team USA’s captain, Saurabh Netravalkar, the victory was more of a passion project. Playing cricket is a side gig for him while he works 9-5 job as a Staff Engineer at Oracle. ⚙️

Since the victory, Saurabh’s LinkedIn following has grown to 32k, all without a single post. We call that organic social media growth in the biz.

YoY Growth 📈

One month into the WNBA season, let’s check in on the health of the league. Before it started, we heard so much about the Caitlin Clark effect and how it was saving the WNBA. But has it come to fruition?

Yep. ✅

This season has already seen an increase in metrics across the board vs 2023 stats.

🏟️ Attendance across the league is up 43%.
👚 Merch sales are up 756%
🎫 WNBA League Pass subscriptions are up 355%
📺 Games average 1.32M viewers, up from 462K

But it’s not all rainbows and butterflies in the finance department. While we are seeing some 📈📈📈, Front Office Sports wrote an interesting article on the work needed to get the league to a healthier business spot.

THIS NEXT WEEK ⏩

NBA Playoffs 🏀

The Celtics have taken a stranglehold on the NBA Finals and are only one game away from winning it all. They’re up 3-0 in the series and could close out the Mavericks with a victory tonight. The game starts at 5:50PM PST.

NHL Playoffs 🏒

Same situation over in the land of puck where the Florida Panthers can sniff the Stanley Cup. They’ve also built up a 3-0 lead with the next game tomorrow at 5 PM PST. If both the Celtics and the Panthers win their next game, it would be the first NBA/NHL sweep since 1995.

EXTRAS 📊

Eurovision ⚽️

If your summer wasn’t busy enough, add “watch the UEFA Euro 2024” to your list of to-dos. Behind the World Cup, the Euro is the largest international tournament in the world as 24 countries face off to be the best in Europe and put themselves firmly in the driver's seat for World Cup expectations in 2026.

The team over at the Athletic did some impressive dataviz work, creating bespoke charts for 50 players going into the tournament and analyzing their game. Check them out here ⬆️

Tased and Confused 🔫

Watching someone get tased has never been so stunning. 😉 During a Cincinnati Reds game this week a fan ran out on the field leading to a security chase and a beautiful series of photos.

They say a picture is worth 1000 volts. 📸