The 2nd Cut Newsletter: Edition #36
Jake Knapp's Swing, Don't Care More, Par 3 Courses, Shoulder Tilt, Poll Question of the Week
“Announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh." - Al Swearengen
📰 Edition #36 📰
Welcome back to The 2nd Cut Newsletter!
ICYMI, check out last week’s Deep Dive: The 80/20 Rule
📫 In today’s Newsletter: Jake Knapp's Swing, Don't Care More, Par 3 Courses, Shoulder Tilt, Poll Question of the Week
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Jake Knapp
Twenty-nine-year-old PGA Tour rookie Jake Knapp won the Mexico Open on Sunday, shooting 19-under. Knapp has had an interesting road to the PGA Tour.
Per The Athletic:
“Three years ago he [Knapp] did not have status on any tour and was working as a security guard at a nightclub. But he used conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour to finish 13th in the season-long standings in 2023, and claim his PGA Tour card for this season.”
But what has everyone buzzing is his ridiculously smooth yet powerful swing.
Check it out below:
Knapp’s swing is legitimately a thing of beauty, raising comparisons to Freddy Couples. It might surprise some that Knapp’s swing speed averages over 125 mph, resulting in 308.6 yards in driving distance, ranking 11th on the PGA Tour.
Talk about effortless power. Another video below shows the similarities between Knapp’s swing and Freddy Couples’.
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There’s no real lesson here except maybe to reinforce to amateur golfers that Smoother doesn’t mean Slower (as Knapp’s swing shows). Don’t try to get smoother by going slower; you’ll most likely just end up losing distance.
The good news is Knapp won a cool $1.4 million, has a PGA Tour Exemption through 2026 and will be playing in The Masters. Keep an eye on him.
🐦 Tweets of the Week 🐦
Great tweet from Ross. To some, “not caring” might sound like weird advice, but it works. Focus on the process and worry less about the outcome. This can help free your mind up to focus and let your body move naturally.
Also, knowing the odds and having realistic expectations helps. As I’ve said many times here, a PGA Tour pro makes an 8-foot putt 50% of the time.
How can we be mad when we don’t make a 20-footer? Know the odds, do your best with your setup, stroke, and speed, and let the chips fall where they may.
On to the next shot.
This! I had a Par 3 course near my work years ago. It was cheap, fun and fast. Also, it was a great way to practice my wedge game. I think there should be more of these around. And throw up some lights while you're at it so we can play night golf.
📺 💻 T2C Media 📺 💻
The video above from Chris Ryan helped me a ton. I tend to make this mistake and have really tried to work on moving more forward and down instead of falling back. It’s helped my strike quality, whereas before, I would hit fat shots.
📊 Poll Question of the Week 📊
Random TV Recommendation
The quote at the top of this post comes from the HBO show Deadwood, which I just rewatched for probably the 5th time. It came out 20 years ago and is one of the greatest shows ever. It’s also one of the most underrated! If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Warning: not for the faint of heart
Quick description from Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz:
“A Dakota gold-mining camp that went from a chaotic hellhole in an unincorporated territory to an incorporated town within an incorporated US state in the space of a few post–Civil War years. The show was, in no particular order, a Western, a gangster picture, a political drama, a lewd farce, and a comedy of manners; an operatic potboiler chock-full of sex, violence, and profanity; a sustained long-form narrative that interweaves parallel plots tighter than a hangman’s rope; a satire on American hypocrisy and greed; a portrait of needy, ambitious people who see through other people’s illusions but cleave tight to their own; a revisionist look at frontier life; a case study of a civilization struggling to create itself; and a weekly showcase for characters and dialogue so rich in complexity and contradiction that they deserve to be called Shakespearean.”
Thank you everyone for reading and subscribing.
Til next time.
