Golf's Best 2025 Moment Is A Film That Endlessly Mocks The Game

The culmination of the 2025 PGA Tour and its rival, the LIV Tour, is upon us. The PGA Tour is in its FedEx playoffs and LIV is… who knows? Out of sight. The year in golf can be summed up as the inevitability of Scotty Scheffler. No wonder Ian Baker Finch thought this a good time to retire from CBS’ golf coverage.

In fact the biggest story for golf fans (and pro golfers, too, it appears) in 2025 was the release of Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore II on Netflix. A raucous, vulgar, silly, sweet, sloppy, creative shambles of a film, it’s one of those rare feats in Hollywood. A sequel better than the original. Some might say that it wasn’t a high bar to get over Happy Gilmore punching it up with Bob Barker. True.

But in its chaos HGII is one thing that the golf world itself has enjoyed this year. (Okay, there are holdouts. ) Judging from the endless string of cameos by pro golf legends, current players, Sandler friends and family and sports media the industry. There’s probably a great documentary on Sandler recruiting so many of the legends of the sport. They willingly embraced the nonsense. 

No, enthusiastically embraced it as an antidote to the lifeless slog this season on the Tours with the insouciant Scheffler winning two majors and ten other  Top 10s finishes. (He finished T3 this past weekend in Memphis.) And true to 2025 Scheffler steals the movie, too, punking his infamous 2024 arrest before the PGA Tournament in Louisville. He allows himself to be arrested and handcuffed on the tee box and taken to a chicken shack jail cell at an event like the U.S, Open. From then on he’s a sight gag, watching the unfolding tournament with some lowlifes in a jail cell. 

(Knowing a good thing when they see it Netflix had a promotional tent set up at the FedEx St. Jude Championship called “Scottie's Chicken Shack." The food tent offers three varieties of chicken fingers, and if you’ve seen the film, then you get the joke.  

In his omnipresent Boston Bruins jersey Sandler knows that if you go low, he can go lower. He and John Daly compete as alcoholics slopping booze from every possible contraption. The character of Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald) flips from heel to face in a graveyard. The guest stars, ranging from Jack Nicklaus to Rory McIlroy to Bad Bunny to Ben Stiller to Post Malone willingly spoof their images. With so many plot lines it would be pointless to list them all. But a few suffice. To reprise the gag of throttling the boy caddy from Gilmore I Sandler has employed current Tour player Will Zalatoris to play the kid grown up, now Happy’s playing partner. 

Diminutive Sixth Sense alumnus Haley Joel Osment becomes Happy’s demonic foe in the golfing showdown. Sandler’s daughters, wife and mother all get face time in various roles as do SNL buddies Stiller, Dennis Dugan, Kevin Nealon and Rob Schneider. Sports broadcasters Dan Patrick, Verne Lundquist and Jim Gray are drive-by media spoofers. And what golf movie is complete without Eminem?

He’s also playing the oldies. From Chubbs’ (the late Carl Weathers) wooden hand and the infamous jeering fan’s (the deceased Joe Flaherty) “jackass” taunt to weird old “Mister Mister” lady who got crushed by an air conditioner, Sandler recycles the bits. He also rips a few new targets with a plot line about an evil genius (Benny Safdie) trying to modernize golf with rotating greens and fireworks. Hello, TGL (Tomorrow’s Golf League). 

Perhaps the best way to consume all this silliness is with a cast list on hand so you can keep up with the army of cameos that fly by. Character development is supplanted by a red-carpet of celebrity schlock. Nothing is serious. But celebrity in pyjamas for celebrity’s sake has a place in 2025, too.

Happy Gilmore II is not the only golf product diverting fans from the dreary progress toward what they hope will be a classic Ryder Cup in September at Bethpage Black in NYC. The Canadian-backed Apple+ series Stick has also made an appearance. A 10-part vehicle for Owen Wilson it’s a more conventional Ted Lasso-style production as Wilson (hello Happy Gilmore) plays a burnt-out golf legend hoping to rise to the top again with a young prodigy.  

Viewers will immediately recognize the comparison to Ron Shelton’s iconic Tin Cup that walks the same plot fairways of despond to redemption. But Wilson and the cast (Marc Maron, Mariana Trevino, Lilli Kay, Timothy Oliphant) make the most of the predictable format.  If some of the scenes look familiar to Canadians the series was taped in and around Vancouver.

It’s a more gentle product than Happy Gilmore but Wilson’s likability (he’s got the most famous cinematic busted nose since DeNiro in Raging Bull) and his semblance of a golf swing carry off his relationship with prodigy Peter Dager.

The pair of golf films (thankfully apolitical) are a reminder of what the conventional golf war between America (PGA Tour) and Saudi Arabia (LIV Tour) are missing. A little self-deprecation, a little innovation, a little entertainment from the links. And something for fans. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.