Welcome to the Monday Leaderboard, where we run down the weekend’s top stories in the wonderful world of golf. Grab an Arnold Palmer, pull up a chair and tune in to the flick that’s got the golf world talking …
“Happy Gilmore 2” premiered on Netflix this past weekend with a marketing assault to rival a blockbuster superhero movie. (You can get Happy Gilmore 2 cups at Subway, and if you have a spare $500, a Happy Gilmore 2 hockey stick putter from Odyssey.) Much like a meal at Subway, you know exactly what you’ll get from this movie: jokes recycled from the first movie, Adam Sandler’s incandescent rage played for laughs, and cameos. So, so many cameos, including many of the biggest names in the golf world.
We’ll leave the film review to Rotten Tomatoes; here, we’ll just tell you which golfers acquitted themselves best in the film. (Potential spoilers for the movie below, FYI.) The top of the list probably won’t surprise you:
(Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Best Golfer Cameo in Happy Gilmore 2, John Daly division
1. John Daly. He’s in the movie so much that it doesn’t really qualify as a cameo, and he plays the hand-sanitizer-swilling, wing-eating role of “John Daly” to perfection. He’s been training his whole life for this! Could he get a Best Supporting Actor nomination?
Best Golfer Cameo in Happy Gilmore 2, non-John Daly division
1. Scottie Scheffler: Makes fun of his infamous Louisville arrest, and delivers some strong dry-heat one-liners.
2. Xander Schauffele: Dude has real comedic timing and a perfect facial expression for his (too-brief) appearance. Would’ve been an easy No. 1 if he had Scheffler’s screen time.
3. Will Zalatoris: A real-world joke off the first movie (Happy’s young blond curly-haired caddy grew up to be Will Zalatoris!) gets canonized here, with Zalatoris trashing Happy throughout their round. (Zalatoris was not actually that caddy.)
4. Collin Morikawa: His disbelief that Happy would try to play without a caddy hits a little different now. Speaking of getting hit, he answers the question pretty definitively of what would happen if a football player collided with a golfer.
5. Jack Nicklaus: Effortless. So smooth in his delivery he makes you think Happy Gilmore did actually play in the 1990s. Gets off a decent old-school Arnold Palmer joke with Travis Kelce, which is a weird sentence to type.
6. Bryson DeChambeau: Some solid physical comedy when he takes a shot right to the ol’ Titleists. Also a strange scene with Rory McIlroy that reads very differently depending on whether it was filmed before or after Pinehurst.
7. Nelly Korda: Triggers Shooter McGavin with a devilish line of questioning. Solid cameo.
8. Jordan Spieth: Perhaps a little too believable as a snide country club golfer berating the help.
9. Charley Hull: Can’t beat a cameo as a weirdo muni golf attendant.
10. Fred Couples, Lee Trevino, Nick Faldo: You get the sense that the filmmakers just turned the camera on these guys and didn’t even tell them they were making a movie, just let them banter. Which is not at all an insult.
11. Tony Finau, Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson, Nancy Lopez: Brief speaking parts, nobody embarrassed themselves. JT covertly filming Happy on his cell and Bubba trashing the new golf league that’s the central plot point of the movie were intriguing.
12. Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler: If these guys were as stiff on their swings as they are in front of a camera, they’d never have combined for 10 majors (and a Players). Loosen up, dudes!
Also this weekend in golf:
Lottie Woad starts her career the right way
Twenty-one-year-old Lottie Woad left about $600,000 in potential winnings on the table this summer because of her amateur status. She turned pro this month, and immediately set about torching the entire field. She won the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open, her very first tournament as a pro, firing a three-under 68 to win by three strokes. Woad, the winner of the 2024 Augusta National Women’s Amateur, is just the third LPGA player to win her professional debut.
Eagles for 59 are the sweetest eagles of all
Brett White finished out his tournament at the Commissionaires Ottawa Open in the finest of ways: a 63-foot monster of a putt that gave him a 59 on the day:
Even though White ended the day 11 strokes off the winning score, that surely made for a nice ride home. Strangely enough, it wasn’t the only 59 of the tournament; Philip Barbaree, who made headlines for his gutsy on-the-cut-line performance at the U.S. Open, also had a 59 on Saturday. Friendly golf courses up there in Ottawa.
