When Happy Gilmore was first released, even the people who produce golf equipment for Callaway admit it was a stuffier, stodgier time for their sport.
Nearly 30 years later, as Netflix prepares to debut Happy Gilmore 2 on July 25 and Callaway brings a reinvented version of the original film’s hockey-stick putter to the masses, golf has found its happy place.
Adam Sandler’s golf comedy originally made its way to theaters in February 1996, six months before Tiger Woods began his professional career and more than a year before he’d win his first tournament. There were only 24.4 million golfers, and they were commonly defined by the rounds they played on traditional courses, nearly a third of which were private.
It was an environment that could plausibly create villainous golfers who’d buy a hockey player’s grandmother’s house out from under her and eat terrible things for breakfast just to maintain the status quo.
“If you go back to the original Happy Gilmore in the mid ’90s, the stereotypes that were in there were country club members that he was almost kind of poking fun at. Golf at that stage was an older man’s game, and Shooter McGavin is the classic golfer who doesn’t want these people coming in messing up our golf course,” said Nick McInally, vice president of global marketing at Callaway Golf. ”If you now fast forward to the middle of the 2020s, you’ve got a situation where—whether it’s driving range, whether it’s Five Iron Golf—where people are just going into the city and hitting some balls in a simulator or playing a golf course in their basement, then you have Topgolf bringing new people of different ages into the game.”
Amid the release of Happy Gilmore 2 and a surge in casual golf interest, Callaway has released collections of limited-edition Chrome Tour golf balls emblazoned with images of Gilmore’s hockey jersey, stick, and quotes from the film like “just tap it in” and “it’s all in the hips.” Callaway has also reworked Gilmore’s Hockey Stick Putter into a $499 keepsake with a stainless steel head, urethane “pistol grip” insert, and tube sock headcover that quite visibly doesn’t conform to professional golf specifications, “so no one is going to be winning the Open with it this year,” according to McInally.
