The First Person to Predict Brian Harman's Future Greatness? Norm MacDonald.
As with any Major championship victory, there are many layers to the way Brian Harman circumnavigated the field at Royal Liverpool over the weekend. Meaning, his Open win meant more than just the fact he ruined what would've been a wild, free-for-all finish, with the four runners up and two third place finishers (who were one stroke back) tearing each other apart in a battle for the ages.
Harman's supremacy might have cost us that. But it gave us something much more valuable. Another chance to pay tribute to one of the greatest comics and sharpest minds of our generation, Norm Mac Donald.
One of the least talked about aspects to Norm was his healthy obsession with the PGA Tour. It was almost surreal the way he'd live Tweet tournaments. Just for the fact it was the least Norm-like thing he ever did. While he'd take a comedic flamethrower to say, an award show, there was no attempt at humor in his golf Tweets. He'd literally just give shot-by-shot accounts. Sometimes with some commentary. But most of the time nothing more than club and distance. i.e. "Mickelson with a 7-iron to 6 feet," or "Sergio drains a 10-footer. His putter is starting to work for him." And nothing else. No jokes. No punchlines. No irony or meta-commentary. Just acting as almost a chryon at the bottom of the screen on the coverage. Which he'd do tirelessly for hours.
Like I think a lot of people, it took me a while to get used to it. At first, it felt like he was building up to something and there'd be some payoff later on. Like some surrealist stunt by Andy Kaufman or Norm's own "A Moth Goes Into a Podiatrist's Office" joke. But there was nothing else to it. Just a golf fan talking about golf on the socials.
And, as it turns out, a guy who truly knew what the fuck he was talking about:
More than five years ago. Norm was sitting at home unironically Tweeting about golf. And saw enough in a 5-foot-7, 31-year-old lefty with two Tour wins to predict what happened this weekend in the UK. He might have been off about which Major, but that's splitting hairs. A tiny minority of us could've identified the 26th-ranked golfer in a police lineup before he jumped out to a huge lead Thursday. But Norm MacDonald already had a perfectly clear vision of what was to come back in 2018. Unbelievable.
I realize now this is the longest I've ever written or even thought about Norm without anything remotely funny being said. So allow me to course-correct with this clip, which just so happened to come up on my feed two days ago. That is not a coincidence, since I watch so many of these the YouTube algorithm is constantly pushing his material to the top of the page. For which I'm grateful:
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Nice call on Harman. RIP, ya dirty dog.