Why everyone's into golf all of a sudden

0:14Hey gang, it's Andrea and Emily here with the Culture Journalist, a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Spring is here and the outside world is beckoning. So today we're taking a break from talking about things like screens, capitalism, evil billionaires, and other black mirror-y stuff to bring you a special interstitial episode all about... Wait for it? Golf. Hey, sports is culture too, after all. And specifically, how golf can save your life. That's actually the title of a new book by Boyfriend of the Pod and objectively one of the best culture writers and editors out there, Drew Millard.

0:59If you don't know Drew, you probably know his work, which has appeared everywhere from Vice to the New York Times Magazine to the Atlantic. His work has tended to focus on music and razor-sharp cultural commentary, writing about everything from major rappers to Larry Flint. But in 2016, grappling with depression and burnout, he left Los Angeles and digital media behind and moved back home to North Carolina. The change of scenery, along with medication and therapy, definitely helped. But it was recommitting himself to golf, Drew says, that saved his life. And it can save yours too. Golf, as it turns out, is much more than businessmen in plaid pants carting around a putting green.

1:44It has a rich and fascinating history that upends a lot of those stereotypes and a therapeutic value greater than the sum of its parts. Or, as Drew likes to say, golf is for everyone. How golf can save your life is funny, honest, whip smart, refreshingly accessible. And it talks about a lot of other things besides the sport itself. Like why one of the best ways to resist the course of modern society is to get off the internet, spend more time outside and practice being a better friend, not just to other people, but also yourself. Naturally, we had to talk to Drew about it. Drew and I just got back from a book release party that we organized last week in Brooklyn.

2:26And Andrea and I thought we'd bring Drew on the show to talk about why it seems like golf is suddenly everywhere in contemporary culture. We think that's because it's cool. Is it cool? It is. And if you don't believe us, just ask DJ Khaled. I love golf and I love it because golf is like life. It's not easy, but it's beautiful. We also talk about the sport's working class origins, golf inspired fashion, and how the book is actually about the state of digital and algorithmic media. All of that and much more after the break.

3:12The Culture Journalist is an independent project that relies on word of mouth and is funded entirely by listeners like you. If this podcast adds something meaningful to your life, please consider supporting our work by becoming a paid subscriber over at our sub stack, which, by the way, has a bunch of other cool stuff beyond podcast episodes. Paid subscribers receive full access to bonus episodes, along with essays, culture recommendations, playlists and more. You can join us in the fight against Internet monoculture for the price of a cup of coffee in today's economy. Hey guys, we are here with none other than Drew Millard.

3:52Drew, congrats on your book. We're so stoked to talk to you about it. Thank you. This is the 23rd interview I've done since Tuesday. Oh my God. Are you tired of talking about golf or does it just keep giving? no man it was like sports shows and general interest things and the general interest things it was so weird because they would just talk to you in like a normal voice as you're getting prepped to go on and then suddenly they're like speaking to you with the cadence of an extremely cheerful self-help book. And I was just like, what the fuck, dog? Like, talk normal. Like, turned on their radio voice.

4:37Yeah, yeah. And I also talked to an NPR person. And again, you are an NPR person. But NPR voice is different from ad-supported radio voice. It's very different. Wait, what was the NPR show? I don't mean to get off topic, but I'm curious now. It was something in the Twin Cities. And the host really hit me with, like, some gotcha questions i was really on my back feet because the host was like so you say golf can save your life are you saying that medication and therapy are bad and i had to be like no no no no nobody reads the book but like you you read the book but if it's like you know these people have like multiple 10 minute interviews each hour and most of them were pretty openly like Like, so I'm looking at your bio here and blah, blah, blah.

5:28And then there were people who actually had read the book. Like there's a dude in Alabama who he had a sports show, but he was mainly interested in being like, well, radder to radder. I'm really interested in how you approach the sentence construction and the creative process here. And I was like, hell yeah. Hell yeah. That's awesome. I want to hear that one. Okay. So the book's out. You've been doing this crazy jam of interviews. and you also hosted an event. Was it a book release event, a book signing in Brooklyn this weekend? Tell us more about that. How'd it go? It was all of the above and it was really, really fun.

6:10I initially, since it's a golf book, there's a place in Brooklyn called Brooklyn Greens, which is like a sort of hipster golf simulator bar. It's like a way of playing golf indoors. It's especially good in cities, blah, blah, blah. But I was looking into having an event there and I was like, oh my God, this is going to be so expensive. I'm not actually going to do this. And I remembered from when I was living in New York like a decade ago, there was a bar called Bushwick Country Club that was a dive bar with mini golf in the back. and so we had it there and we used the mini golf course which is slightly elevated towards the very rear of the backyard we use that as like a stage and I had like six or something other people doing readings and I didn't really know what I was doing so I was like we should all just stand here and then like when it's our turn to come up we'll just walk forward and so you had a bunch of people who couldn't talk to each other couldn't look at their phones and so multiple people were just like chain smoking on stage while other people were reading it was like super cool andrea did you ever go to the bushwick country club back in the day i don't think so i didn't always like know the names of the bars i was going to i kind of just like follow people into places this place was like talking about culture coming full circle and like how late thoughts new york culture is like in now or whatever i don't know exactly when it opened but its heyday was probably in the late it's the self-proclaimed inventor of like the pickleback shot and it's very like ironic early vice style hipster culture okay that sounds about right yeah the guy as like a thank you for having me do the event here gave me one of their t-shirts and it was like the black flag logo but the bars were like golf clubs and it said Bushwick Country Club on it so I think that's actually yeah yeah and the shirt he gave me was very like late 2000s cut it's like a skin tight t-shirt that you have to wear with like painted on jeans was it like a super deep v-neck sadly no Oh, and he told us that we told him that we worked at Vice.

8:41Uh-huh. And he's like, hold on a second, I have something to show you. And then he goes and comes out with a can of old blue last. Oh, wow. He like saved from back in the day. That's nice. So all of this is to say, did this event confirm or contradict your hypothesis through that golf is in fact cool now? It extremely confirmed that golf was cool. Sounds like it. Everyone who read also did sports-themed readings. We had Trey Smith, Jeremy Gordon, a guy from Club Leftist Tennis who read an anti-pickle wall manifesto. we had a friend of your pod kevin munger who did what we build as a dfw cover he like kind of already looks a little bit like david foster wallace and so we put on a bandana and read from a dfw essay oh that's so funny and at one point uh pulled out a bottle of tequila and took a giant swig of it and said this is water and then we had darcy wilder who read a rant about uh how the yankees kick ass and the mets are bad okay and zach lapez did a reading about the huey lewis and the news album sports oh nice yeah and then i did my reading and like One thing that I didn't really realize is it seems like in New York now that literary readings and book launches are like the cool thing to go to.

10:22And I think also people are like really into being outside and doing activities. And in L.A., this is actually like manifested, it seems, in people getting really into golf. And it seems like in New York, people are a bit more into tennis. But what do you think that's about? I got to open this tangent. LA is a car town, so you can keep your golf clubs in your car. And New York has a lot of public tennis courts and parks everywhere. And you can also take your racket with you on the subway. That would be my sort of like practical utilitarian analysis. Good tracks, yeah. But I do think that like, not even like with a degree of irony, but like getting into maybe traditionally country clubby sports, such as golf and tennis.

11:15I think it speaks to a renewed post-pandemic focus on leisure because, you know, the economy is really shitty. And I think that people just want to have more fun. You know, more and more people are realizing like, you know, I'm not going to get like the tight as hell job that I thought I wanted or I'm not going to keep the tight as hell job that I had I need to pour renewed energy into activities that are enjoyable and like most of the people we know now are all like north of 30 and so everybody's like ah shit I gotta like get in shape now and so I feel like people are doing sports more in general yeah I think there's like renewed appreciation for just outside where I live in LA right by Griffith Park I mean it's this giant park so hiking there's tennis courts that are like always popping off now and the golf course is like when it's not flooded from the rain which has also been a thing the golf course are really really popping so besides that sort of factor that renewed appreciation for leisure like why do you think so many people are into golf right now like why golf specifically and what made you think that people were ready for a book like this now?

12:38First off, people were ready for a book like this because I was ready to write it. You know, ever since the pandemic, millions and millions of people have started playing golf. And that's really like more of a ground up phenomenon. Like the last time there was such a dramatic influx of people into golf was in the late 90s, early 2000s because of Tiger Woods. And that was like a thing where people were like, oh, I'm seeing this cool thing on TV and I want to emulate it. But you know, when the pandemic happened, everything was shut down and golf courses were one of the few things that remained open.

13:16And there were a lot of people who were just like, well, fuck it. I don't have shit to do. I'm just going to go to the public golf course with some clubs that I have just bought from a thrift store or played against sports or whatever and start hitting it around. We were living in Durham when the pandemic happened. And I met so many people at the local public golf course, which was called Hillendale, who were just like usually either hipsters or med students. Who are interesting. Yeah, who were just like a lot of food service people actually got into golf, which I guess makes sense because especially early, they were getting like, you know, the really good unemployment.

14:02it. Restaurants weren't open. And so they had this money and a bunch of time. And it was just sort of a thing where suddenly like you have this whole new, much more diverse, much more open minded, both politically and just sort of open minded to what golf was perspective coming into the game. And it was like, really lucky for me, because that's sort of how I've always approached golf. and I like definitely felt like you know all of these things that were happening around me were seeding the soil from which this book could grow and find an audience it's funny to me because I feel like golf has this general like sort of ambience of being like something for like rich people which I don't know maybe it is but it's pretty like affordable too right I mean I know like the course near me it's like very basic and like very general public you know yeah and like that's all you really need especially initially and even if you're like a super advanced player a lot of the times the reasons that people play golf are not like being like I'm gonna go out there I'm gonna break par I'm gonna kick ass it's more just like I want to be outside I want to be in nature.

15:26I want to be alone with my thoughts. There is the perception that I would never deny that golf is like a really, you know, fancy schmancy, fuddy duddy sport. But it's also like a thing where there are so many like, affordable public golf courses, many of them just like, municipally owned in America. And like, the culture around those courses of the people who hang out there is completely different from you know the country club vibe it's almost like you know I don't ski I haven't been to a ski thing in a bajillion years but like you have like the rich people who are like wearing the apres ski stuff and you know spending a bajillion dollars on a cabin.

16:17And then you have like the ski bums who are just like, you know, younger people who don't have a ton of money and just really like skiing. And that's like the thing they do in their free time. And yeah, the set of golf clubs that I have that I play with, I think cost like 300 bucks to put together. And I bought like everything used, you can often find like super cheap clubs and like thrift stores and stuff yeah i see them all the time when i'm thrifting yo if you see something shiny take a take a pick and send it to me i might want you to pick it up for me okay there's also like a really big golf club resale market now and this actually ties into kind of the golf being cool thing is like there are now people who will treat golf clubs the same way that like they treat like vintage clothing where the point is not necessarily to have the most expensive thing the point is to have like the coolest looking and maybe rarest thing and as a result there's actually like an app called mully where people trade like rare cool looking golf clubs and they go like you know at markups the same as like you know something on like grailed wood that's really fascinating that's crazy i definitely want to get more into the aesthetics instead of anything we have a question lined up about that for a little later in the convo but getting back to kind of the pandemic and like mindfulness aspect of of i mean really it sounds like a practice i don't know if that's like too highfalutin for me to use that word but no whatever we're here to be pretentious this is the culture journalist oh but so the book you know the book is called how golf can save your life how did golf save your life i mean i'll give my spiel which is that you know you worked with me in la and i was towards the end of my time when we worked together i was like super super burnt out you know working digital media is really hard even when the interest rates are high you know what i mean we have no idea what you're talking about you know that is not the focus of like a lot of this podcast i realize um yeah it's like there's a lot of pressure there's not a ton of reward or compensation or appreciation of the labor you give it's more just like oh great you busted your ass making this thing that like might have been impossible happen great do it again five more times by the end of the week yeah and so I just basically was so burnt out that I kind of shut down and moved back to where I grew up in western North Carolina and just like laid in bed for like a month or two.

19:25And I was like, all right, I'm like very obviously super depressed here. I need to do something about this. So I go to the doctor. The doctor's like, all right, we're gonna get you on some medication. We're going to get you to a therapist. And we are going to get you doing some exercise. And like Western North Carolina just has like a bunch of great golf courses. And I had grown up playing on a lot of them. and so I was like well I guess I will start playing golf again and walking the course DJ Khaled he's a big golfer now he keeps claiming that walking the course is an eight mile thing which is not true but it's like maybe four to six miles it is really good exercise if you walk and so I just started doing that and I just got super into it I became like really addicted and I also started viewing it as like this way to work out the other things that I was dealing with what about it allowed you to do that to work out the other things you were dealing with because I was like pretty bad at it to start out with and you know it's super frustrating but it's also it's something that's ultimately trivial like whether or not you hit a good golf shot or not And so through being able to like get myself into a mess, you know, like slicing it off in the wrong direction or whatever, and then like getting it back onto the right hole and, you know, further advancing towards the green, I was able to be like, okay, I'm almost like, as you said earlier, like developing a practice where I overcome very small problems.

21:15on the golf course and maybe i can translate that to the rest of my shit i got going on and within like six months i was in a lot better of a place and i was able to like move to durham north carolina and start like writing a bunch and eventually get a job and like it really did help me i don't know everybody listening stop laughing it's not it's not funny you're not funny it's like there is also a bit of um an aspect of reclaiming agency where i think you talk about this in the book but if you you know write an article and put it out into the world you have kind of like no control over what happens or like you feel like a lot is out of your control in modern life especially when it comes to the internet and like working for companies that are driven by hidden machinations of private equity and things like that right um but with golf and he wrote this and you had a piece for uh the new york times magazine on high visibility golf balls you can kind of like see the ball and then hit the ball and then make an adjustment and you always see the impact of your actions each time yeah just so like antithetical to so much of how we especially as people in creative industries like experience the world now absolutely and you know when I am golfing I am golfing only for me like you know to the extent that I'm getting feedback from playing golf it's like feedback from the ball where it's like flying in a certain direction and that's like an indication to me that I can like change something or I'm doing something right and it's like very logical and fair like you swing a golf club a certain way and the ball will fly in a corresponding way but in like you know digital media land or like on twitter or whatever you have no control over that it's like such a cliche but people always talk about like oh I spent a year on an investigation and like 2 ,000 people read it, but then I wrote a blog post in 15 minutes that went viral.

23:36There's just no logic to anything and no coherence. Golfing is also a great way to intentionally place yourself in a context where there is logic and coherence. It's like the American dream. like the american dream is false because it's not true that you know if you work hard enough you'll achieve what you want to achieve or advance the society but in gulf it almost like is that where you can see the direct effects of what you put into it or whatever yeah you're attached to the product of your labor you're connected to it exactly yeah yeah i was also thinking how earlier you said like i'm not good at it you know referring to golf or i wasn't good at it when you picked it back up again and so much of what we do as creative people and this is like very different from other industries like it requires us being good at something i mean i guess everybody in any job has to be like good at it obviously but not if you're in management ain't that the truth but you know what i'm saying like it's really about like being good at something on like a real like skill level the same way being to extent like being good at a sport or so it's a craft they're all crafts right yeah and I've discovered this too during doing my own stuff during the pandemic but like that wasn't writing or wasn't journalism but there's like real therapeutic value in like dedicating yourself to doing something that you're not good at when that's so much of what your identity and livelihood are otherwise tied up in yeah because like learning is fun and when you're an adult I feel like it's actually easier to learn a new skill because like your brain is super developed and you actually know what's going on and so it's easier to pick things up and yes I agree.

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26:08so i've obviously been living with you since you first got the idea of writing this book and i know that originally it's gone through many phases like the core idea originally the kind of title or catchphrase or elevator pitch you had in mind for it was golf is for everyone which is you know an interesting thought because obviously people associate golf with quite the opposite culturally like it's for the elites what different side of the sport did you want people to see and what are some misconceptions about golf that you wanted to debunk yeah so like I think first off I really want people to understand that golf in a very real way is like a folk sport like it was invented by scottish peasants who were going to this like area of publicly owned land called the links um and it was called the links because it like linked the beach slash sea to the farmable land and so the links were instead just this sort of like area that you couldn't really exploit economically other than like grazing animals on it and so originally these people a lot of them were like shepherds when they were coming to these lynx lands recreationally they were saying okay where have people been grazing their horses where have people been grazing their sheep i don't know if people raised rabbits back then but rabbits were grazing on the lynx and the parts where the rabbits were grazing that was like the shortest grass in the lynx land the parts with the sheep grazing second shortest like medium length and then where the horses were grazing that was very long grass because you know necks etc and so they were like just like looking at this land that had been sculpted by forces outside of themselves and were just like okay the short rabbit part that's the green the medium sheep part that's the fairway and then the longer horse parts and everything else is the rough actually like the reason that golf courses have sand traps or like bunkers or whatever is because there were these little pockets in the links where the wind would blow sand into them and so like the sand trap is like a naturally occurring phenomenon that people incorporated into golf and i think that sort of understanding of what golf is i really wanted to reframe that for people because even now there are movements in golf that are very like natural based like you have designers who don't really want to touch the land they're building a course on all that much they want to like take what is already being presented them in terms of the natural environment and just like bring out what already exists rather than like fuck up the land screw up like the flow of rain water right and yeah because that's like what especially in the 80s people who were building golf courses did and it was bad for everything it's so funny just because it's like yeah there's this association of golf courses being you know like super manicured and like using a lot of water and almost this polished thing like thrust upon the land when its origins are actually like very beautiful and poetic and like of the land of power is greater than ourselves oh yeah totally and like that first mentality of like yeah we are going to bend the world to our will and put a golf course on it that mentality ended up biting the golf industry in the ass in the mid 2000s where they were specifically like not doing the flow of rainwater on the land correctly.

30:36And so when it would rain, it would screw the course up and it became very, very expensive to maintain. And a lot of courses that were built that way, sort of playing experience, vastly privileged over environmental concerns, a lot of those closed during the pandemic because they just like couldn't keep up with the costs of remaining in good shape so golf is for everyone like okay so for example emily have you played or like drew why might emily or i like golf i don't really golf but i do sometimes walk with him on the course which i do enjoy because it's like exercise and being in nature. I'm going to reverse your question for you and ask, why would you not want to go outside while serving looks in golf clothing and occasionally swing a golf club in the general direction of a golf ball while listening to music on a Bluetooth speaker and optionally drinking and smoking pot unoptionally with your friends.

31:52All right. Well, when you put it like that. But I guess, okay, so let's talk about some of, I think, what, like, the broader misconceptions about golf are, or, like, impediments that, like, make people think maybe it's only something for, like, older white men or, like, rich people. Like, okay, so cliches go, like, it's slow. Like, it is very slow. Slow is good. So as we as we all know, those slow is actually really good. It seems, I don't know, like a little boring, honestly. Boring is also good. Boring is also good. Yes. And I am not making a reference to Matt Iglesias, whose substack as I was realizing that I was saying slow and boring are good.

32:36I was realizing the Matt Iglesias podcast is called slow boring. I am not endorsing Matt Iglesias. But no, we need slow, boring shit, man. Whenever I am like working really hard all day on something and like going a million miles a minute, me personally, after I am done with my day, all I want to do is like sit down on the couch and like read something or watch something on TV. it's that same drive for respite that I would say actually makes golf good. Well, actually, like, you know, when I said like slow and boring, I was kind of saying that stuff with air quotes, but like that is sort of a convention.

33:23But also can be swapped out with the notion of like it sounds like it's an extremely present thing to do. Yeah, I think I've jokingly called it like bro mindfulness. this. Brainfulness. Because you really do need to be present if you want to play golf well, like you have to like look at the course and you're like, all right, what is this course throwing at me in terms of like the shape of these holes, the way the fairway is sloped, the placement of the pin, and you have to like really say, okay, I'm going to plan this hole out in advance and do so in a way that also accounts for like contingencies such as like a not that great shot like you want to miss in a place where it's easier to recover from and you also just have to be like more than that like really really in tune with your body and reach this state where you're like i am concentrating and setting an intention for this shot and I'm going to like have my entire body work in concert in order to achieve this golf shot but also I'm not going to think about anything as I swing right it's a nice place to be in brain wise well I think that through the pandemic a lot of us got into this like terrible mind warp where we felt like nothing existed unless it was happening on the internet yeah yeah there's like a lot of talk about how we all long for going outside but will we really once it's safe to do so like has the internet just taken over everything like i don't even remember where i read this but it was like someone saying that if something doesn't happen online does it even happen at all right and we'll never be able to break away and then i guess maybe the reason why it sounds boring is that it's like completely running against those dynamics and it's just completely it's not impervious to capitalist capture because you can I guess photograph it and turn it into content but it kind of is it's definitely capitalist resistant though yeah it's doing something that is completely outside of the stream yeah unless you capture it and also like i just remembered like during the pandemic like the simulacrum of nature thing was so fucking huge like people were always just taking like landscape photos in elden ring and it's like come on like you can actually take a real landscape photo yeah totally another aspect of it that i wanted to ask about and where i was kind of coming from before with the gulf is for everyone idea was just about you know the associations with businessmen who are going to a place that is like nature but kind of also just carving up nature and like mastering it in a way that makes them feel good and then using the space to like have insider business conversations where they make the decisions and deals that are going to affect everybody else and like the masses or whatever like that's like mysterious right but you know you had someone from club leftist tennis read at the event which is like really an interesting they were reading about pickleball his name was michael uh yes the other person i believe is named charlie but charlie could not make it word yeah and michael was like talking about tennis but using i don't know if it was spoofing a specific text i mean the intro was definitely spoofing the like introductory sentence to the communist manifesto that's what i thought like it it was like spoofing marks and like specific kinds of language you would have in that kind of manifesto but talking about pickleball and you know I think there's like a reason why that concept that meme of club leftist tennis stuff and I'm wondering like is there a case to be made for golf being reclaimed as this like socialist pastime or there's something about it that makes it like a sport for the people in a way you were trying to uncover in this book?

38:00Okay. I would say that, you know, to mirror some of the points that Club Leftist Tennis, aka Michael, was making, golf is a leisure activity that takes a long time. Like, even though business deals do get done on the golf course, especially if you go by yourself, you're just like cut off. Like a lot of courses, especially out in the country, don't even have cell phone reception. But I think also, you know, so there's this guy that I write about in the book called Robert Hunter, who actually grew up down the street from Eugene Debs and later on became very good friends with Debs in his life. And Hunter was both one of the top amateur golfers in America during like the 1900s, 1910s, and was one of like the main people in the U.S.

39:00Socialist Party. He convinced Eugene Debs to run for president from prison. And he also wrote this book called The Links, which was the first book of its kind that basically took advice from every golf course designer that he knew and assembled a manual for how to design and build a golf course because he stopped being like a Marxist by the time he wrote this book. he wrote in the 20s. He was more of like a Keynesian. And he kind of had that Keynesian impulse of like, aha, well, in the future, we will only all work four hours a week and we will have much more leisure time. And he was like, well, me and all my rich friends, we love playing golf.

39:45And so when everyone else has much more leisure time, they will also want to play golf. So there's going to be this huge demand for public golf courses. And so he wrote a book that was basically a how to build a golf course book if you were like a landscape designer or like a city planner working with the parks department or whatever. And it is still referred to by golf course designers to this day. Yeah, it's funny to hear that he had that impulse. I almost expect you to say that he said that we really like playing golf, so we need to figure out a way to keep this from the pores. Oh, no, no, no.

40:30This guy... This guy knew what was up, though. He saw it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he saw it for all its beauty and potential. Yeah, and he was going to the Communist International and shit. He was a cool guy. He wrote this book called Poverty, But it was like sort of the first sociological study of poverty in America. And it really opened people's eyes to the conditions that the working poor in America were facing. He was like well known in sort of like the society pages. The New York Times once profiled him and his wife at their home in Greenwich Village. And they have this like beautiful brownstone thing.

41:12but then he's also like you know putting out these sociological studies trying to advance initially the progressive cause and then he like gets into Marx and W.E.B. Du Bois and is suddenly you know pushing the socialist line but then at the same time he actually had a very similar experience to me where he also had a breakdown and got super into golf as part of his recovery and he ended up winning this championship at Pinehurst called the North South Amateur which is like you know like professional golf wasn't really a thing back in the day like there was professional golf but it was people who were like golf hustlers like people who professionally gambled on the golf that they were playing themselves and like all of the action and competition really was happening on the amateur scene and it was sort of unseemly to be a pro golfer so it was actually like better to not make money golfing and so he was just like yeah he was just like one of the top golfers in america he was buddies with like jack london he was like pen pals with tolstoy he was homies with mark twain and he like at one point beefed with teddy roosevelt because Roosevelt didn't appreciate that Hunter was criticizing his policies towards, I think, child labor or something.

42:40Oh, also Robert Hunter played an instrumental role in the eradication of child labor in the state of New York. So he was like a mover and shaker. In addition to being a golfer. Exactly, yeah. He was the proverbial Danny DeVito in a Democracy Now! hat. I mean, it also makes sense. Like I'm researching this other historical project that deals a little bit with that era and people's relationship to like the history of public parks. Right. Or like kind of addressing overcrowding in cities, people living in these really like unhealthy conditions, especially factory workers, etc. and people of that era trying to find ways that workers could reconnect with nature um so there was like movements of going back to the land or creating like community gardens within cities and then also public parks like it makes sense that he would envision wolf because like you know central park you know there's some less savory elements of its history like it displaced this village of like free black landowners when it was started but the idea behind it conceptually was like oh we need places in cities that are curbing the expansionist real estate impulse to capitalize on every area free space and like it is integral for workers and to have access to green space right which is like a crazy thing to think about is that being like a broader like societal mission kind of or value i mean yeah i mean it's necessary and to kind of bring it all full circle actually the first publicly built golf courses in america were in new york city i forget the name of the place but it was in the bronx and at the time like golf courses were also seen as job creation opportunities along with like you know a ton of other public works projects this is like kind of problematic now but you know it was also seen as a way to like funnel youths who might have otherwise been like you know doing petty crimes like uh into having like productive jobs right as like caddies um and it's problematic because like these kids were like 12 or whatever but like you know they were they were trying the intention was there yeah

45:46we've talked a little bit about how this book while nominally about golf is actually in some ways a book about the state of digital media and you know living in a world of algorithmic media and trying to escape that. But there's this other side of the coin which I'm curious about, which is to what extent has this kind of environment, this obsession with metrics and optimization and capture infiltrated into golf and sports more generally? I mean, so with golf, there's sort of like two things going on. like first and this isn't necessarily a criticism but since you know a lot of the people who have gotten into golf have been sort of embodying this like from the ground up philosophy it has caused like the aesthetics on golf instagram to sort of like become somewhat homogenized in a way where like you can like look at either someone's bag or the way that they're dressed and you're like oh you're in a golf instagram like you are wearing like kind of a baggy polo shirt uh or like a nike windbreaker from the 90s and you're wearing like the certain style of shoes and your clubs are of a certain style and that's just sort of like what golf instagram has streamlined towards it's almost like the aesthetic has been optimized to fit in with like you know the greater aesthetics that exist specifically on instagram and that's like fine that's whatever i i'm not super mad at that like people got to put on clothes you know um well i just had a quick question about that though I guess for folks who are like not super familiar with what golf aesthetic is I think like a lot of people think of it as just like polo shirts and like slacks like maybe plaid pants or whatever but what can you talk a little bit more about like what that aesthetic actually is and like why this is comparatively kind of homogenized um yeah I mean like um I would say that it is an aesthetic that is probably fairly influenced by that book, Take Ivy.

48:23It's from Japan and it's like a photography book of students at Ivy League colleges specifically focused on their style. Which Emily recently wrote about in an edition of Offline Racks. Yes, that is. Yes. And like in that book, you really see these like interesting examples of how these kids in like the early 60s, I think, were figuring out ways to take like these traditional elements of like, you know, refined style and dress them down. Whether that was like wearing like, you know, a button up sport shirt with like a pair of cut off jean shorts and loafers or whatever, like mixing images of refinement with like slovenliness in a way that was very compelling.

49:17And so I would say that like, you know, the modern golf aesthetic does something very similar with golf clothes where, you know, you have like a pretty strict dress code to a lot of golf courses. And so it's more like taking those elements of like the polo shirt and then like khaki pants or shorts and golf shoes and like maybe, you know, playing with cuts or texture or imagery on them. Or, you know, like a lot of people are really into bucket hats, which I'm going to say that without judgment. um and then in terms of like the clubs themselves which are like a huge part of that aesthetic uh people really like things from like the mid to late 2000s usually from the brands Titleist Mizuno or maybe a TaylorMade or Callaway depending on the model but like anything like Titleist or Mizuno from the mid 2000s is like oh Adams that's another brand people are really into that's like a brand that doesn't exist anymore um and just like stuff that is like really pristine but old and cool looking um like Mizuno all of their clubs are it's a Japanese brand and all of their clubs are like beautiful and minimalist and they're like hard as shit to hit but when you do it feels like it's like it's like a butter knife man their logo their motto their motto is literally nothing feels like a mizuno um wow you want to like pick one up honestly yeah they're tight interesting And just speaking to the fashion piece, what is your relationship to the aesthetics of golf and sort of the problematic prep culture that surrounds it?

51:20Like, is it more about dissociating golf from the prep culture aesthetics or reclaiming something different? You know, I think that you have all of these images associated with golf, as well as prep culture. And like, as the book Take Ivy proves, like those images are sort of iconic and durable. and they're also things that can be picked up by anyone and interpreted in any way they would like to do that you can just say like okay no this is what dressing preppy or whatever means now or you can do so in a way that is commenting on all of these other meanings associated with them. One thing that I'm actually going to be doing soon, in the next month or two, is I'm going to be putting out a compilation of music where I ask various musicians to imagine that a genre called golf core exists oh my god and to make a song in a golf core style and as a way to like mentally prepare for the golf core comp dropping and the book dropping i've sort of started dressing in a way that i consider to be golf core right now i'm wearing a polo shirt and shorts but the shorts are like really short and wide and the shirt is like very baggy and i'm like okay so you know when you tuck that in if you tuck it in a certain way it's golf And it becomes like punk.

53:18But there also are like so many elements of golf. And I almost want to separate it from prep culture because it's like sort of a different thing where it's like sort of frat or bro culture. Where like a lot of the people who are really into golf, they just fucking suck. Like they are sexist. They're racist. They are misogynistic. And you could say that of people who are into actually like any sport. Yeah. Any sport, anything like Ariel Pink is still a popular musician. Yeah. These attitudes invade every scene, every aesthetic, every social group. but there are certain ones where they're maybe more pervasive so it's like it's like a complicated thing also the interesting thing about prep um as this style sort of associated with the dominant culture and like bro culture is maybe a form of mainstream prep in a way but there's such a long and rich history of people reappropriating prep in countercultural or subversive ways and that's kind of why it's such a rich style that i think keeps on reinventing itself like civil rights movement black activists would often dress in this kind of ivy style and there's like actually a book that came out which has a similar title called black ivy like a photo book images of like james baldwin wearing these sorts of clothes and you see it also in hip-hop like the history of hip-hop and now it's like also kind of hip again for rappers to be really into golf yeah i mean prep has always been a part of hip-hop like you have like the lowlifes in new york you obviously They have like Kanye and bring it back to golf in Diddy's video for bad boy for life where he and the bad boy crew.

55:34They like move to the suburbs and wreak havoc. And part of the way he wreaks havoc is that he's on the roof of his house or like his garage or something and like hitting golf balls. and like Fonsworth Bentley is his caddy. So sick. And then you also have like, you know, among Gen Z sort of micro fashion movements that we talked about with Biz Sherber on another podcast, you have like old money style, dark academia style, coastal grandmother style, but this sort of idea of like democratizing the trappings of power and wealth for the masses. I think all of this is to say like I think golf is actually kind of punk Golf is sick That's the culture washing You're doing Joe Yes I am I am openly carrying water for big golf So that's like on the Gram and then In terms of like Golf itself you have another Sort of focus on optimization Like people who are really into golf competitively or who play professionally are like super obsessive over having their clubs fit for them and they're like always thinking about things like spin rates and the dispersion they get from a specific club or shaft don't ask me what any of those terms mean because i don't know but like that's just like dork shit man just get some golf clubs they can be cheap and just like use them for a really long time yeah didn't we talk about recently though drew how this is kind of what's happening in golf is happening in other sports as well like baseball and basketball yeah i mean i am definitely not the first person to have figured this out um i hate to say it but i think I think I first saw this in a post from the Lindy man account and he had the post featured graphs of the placement of shots in like high level Premier League soccer and the NBA from like 2004 to 2020.

57:58In 2004, the shots had been all over the place. and as time goes on you see the placement of shots like isolate to these clusters that are sort of considered optimal from like a percent of shots made standpoint and that's been happening ever since like billy bean became the gm of the a's and really kicked it into overdrive by like looking at weird alternative stats for building his roster. That's like the Moneyball, that book and also movie. It really kicked into overdrive in basketball. I want to say with this guy, Daryl Morey, who used to be the general manager of the Houston Rockets and he sort of perfected it while being their GM.

58:49And now he's like the Sixers general manager. Right. Okay, so we watched this interview with James Willard, where he was talking about this sort of culture of optimization and designing teams in a stats-oriented way, or thinking of careers in a stats-oriented way. and it was crazy because he was just lamenting the loss of culture of basketball in a very similar way that like we would lament those same processes in media making you know content bad or like making content like the loss of like the record store kind of you know like the local record shop and like you know when the team is no longer about building community and having this sort of you join this team and you're there for years and you grow up there and you learn the codes from the people who are there for you and who are older whereas now it's just like oh let's get this huge star who has the best stats and they don't have to listen to the elders anymore because they're outperforming them he was lamenting that like you lose something about like what made this fun in the first place.