I asked this on a mailbag to KVV awhile back, but one of my favorite we’re-paired-with-people-we-don’t-know-and-on-hour-2.5-of-4+ questions is “Say you could be paired with any pro for an 18 hole alt-shot pro-am against like skilled competition, but the stakes as follows: if you lose, neither you nor said pro can play for the next 4 years. You can take any pro from history, but if you don’t win outright, we all lose the next 4 years of his career.”
My choice is almost always peak Rickie. Would we win? maybe. maybe not. His skill level is more than high enough that we could win. Maybe more importantly, he certainly wouldn’t make me wish i could crawl into a hole and die after hitting a crap shot like 2004 Tiger. But also, if we didn’t win, no-one is going to lose out on a peak memory moment for Rick and I not playing for the next few years.
@KVV I’m not sure if it’s an isolated issue for me, but the version published to Apple Podcasts has a strong crackly/static audio sound that renders it borderline unlistenable. Can you check to see if others are experiencing this and, if so, republish?
I agree with (or at least sympathize with) a fair amount of what Randy says about Rick. Big’s politics are probably the only politics on NLU that even come close to my crazy lefty shit, so I understand the impulse to see everything through the Late Capitalism Symbolist glasses. But I have always loved Rick despite all that stuff, for all the reasons you mentioned.
And I’ve always found it very curious how someone who loves Phil so much could use the pitch man critique as their primary weapon against Rick. Phil is the ultimate PHONY pitch man, explicitly hamming it up (with extra cheese) for dollars. Phil is always performing in order to sell.
I see Rick as someone who is almost never pretending to be someone he’s not. I see his commercial success as simply accepting money to smile on camera, as he was going to smile anyways.
I couldn’t find a way to shoehorn this into the essay, but they did this to raise money for clean drinking water in Africa. I’m hearing a lot about how empathy is a disease these days, but maybe back then it was not seen that way.
I agree, which is why I picked it. That song rules. People can grumble and say it’s unfair to the Killers but it’s not saying Rick was a one hit wonder or that they were. It’s that for one moment, they did something that transcends generations. They each may have come close to replicating it, but neither did. That doesn’t make the highest of highs any less great.
@KVV really enjoyed this podcast. One of my favorite golf tournaments and holds a special place in my heart. I watched it at an airport hotel near Logan airport the night before I shipped off to Parris Island as a stupid directionless 18 year old. I didn’t even like golf at the time, there was just nothing else TV - yet here I am now.
I love pieces like this. Really enjoyed listening to it yesterday.
I hadn’t “found” golf yet in 2015, but I absolutely knew who Rickie Fowler was at the time.
Listening to you describe the entire event from your perspective and the joy/warmth it brings to you really brought me joy too, KVV.
It also made me feel less crazy for enjoying watching highlights from certain rounds on a regular basis for the enjoyment and the nostalgic feeling, heck even the “hype” it can give.
Growing up skateboarding until the later part of my 20’s I spent countless hours watching skate videos before going out to skate, or at the end of the day before I would sleep. It was so inspiring to watch certain skaters/pros and the style in which they did a certain trick.
I definitely have found myself doing similar things with golf now that it is “my thing” certain rounds and films bring me so much joy and inspiration.
