Duplex Deli Sandwich Club 005
Who Gets to Play Golf? 🧐
One of the things that Duplex Deli loves about sports is that it’s a big, wide world that pretty much everyone gets to be a part of. If you can’t go pro, you can still play. If you can’t play, you can still cheer. And if you can’t stop cheering, you can start a hybrid agency/production company focused on sports storytelling and try to hack out a living around your unhinged passions.
Yet there is no doubt that some sports feel bigger, wider, and more inclusive than others. This can result from several factors: learning curve, space needed, equipment required, etc. But it can also be a function of the same social dynamics that pull us together and tear us apart in our everyday lives.
On a long-ago trip to South Africa, Duplex Deli proprietor Jon once heard an older gentleman describe the sporting culture in his country (paraphrased) thusly:
“Football is for the poor, cricket is for the rich, and rugby is where they meet.”
Damn.
Well today, in the US of A, with the possible exception of F1 you’d be hard-pressed to find a sport that feels like it has more momentum in terms of growth and inclusivity than golf.
Covid’s favorite CDC-approved outdoor activity welcomed droves of new participants during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, and it appears that growth has sustained as the world has opened back up. Furthermore, anecdotally and in our IG stories, it feels like every single coastal coolguy we know has picked up sticks in the last couple of years and is now utterly obsessed. We’ve been covering the extremely hardcore level of devotion golf inspires amongst folks from different walks of life since our VICE days, and we’re into it.
Yet all the growth and good vibes live in tension with the fact that historically golf has been one of if not the most exclusive sports on the planet. Women, African-Americans, Jews, and basically every other marginalized group have been forcefully excluded from participating in the game at one point or another. So when we talk about growth and inclusivity, the next question naturally becomes: how will the culture of golf adapt to an influx of new folks hitting the links? Not just now when the newcomers are figuring out the old etiquette, but once they start to establish their own. That will ultimately answer the bigger question: who gets to play golf?
One of the most thoughtful people Duplex Deli knows in the sport is Connor Laubenstein aka “The Bag Bandit,” co-host of podcast Group Golf Therapy, talking head on Netflix’s upcoming season of Full Swing, and a guy who shaved three strokes off his handicap in 2023. We were lucky enough to work with Connor and the good folks at Skratch and WHOOP on a project you can find below in THE MEAT, but first a conversation about what inclusivity in golf really means and how he feels the sport needs to grow and adapt to keep its new audience in the future.
THE BREAD
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
DD: Tell us about the explosion of golf over the past few years.
CL: During the pandemic golf courses were pretty much the only open outdoor spaces where people could go outside, socialize at a distance, and participate in an activity that was healthy and fun. We're at a really interesting point with golf right now because while it boomed during the pandemic, the industry of golf now has the challenge of retaining all of those new customers and I think a lot of that has to happen culturally, through everything from price point to dress code to culture at the amateur level where people are going in and paying $30-40 for a tee time. How are we going to keep those new people who came in during the pandemic because there was nowhere else to go?
DD: It seems like in the past three years that culture has already changed a lot. Is that true? And if so, how?
CL: Look. I'm a dirty little capitalist. But I'm always a little skeptical of when an industry and all the businesses in that industry, notice a culture change happening and try to capitalize on it. They're using very inclusive language and I think that’s a step in the right direction. But I want us to be realistic about how wearing a different t-shirt isn't necessarily making golf more accessible to people who can't afford golf clubs. So if we're talking about sustainability, that's a different conversation.
DD: Clearly the marketing and the branding of golf has started to change, but the infrastructure perhaps has not changed very much at all. Is that fair to say?
CL: Yeah, exactly.
DD: Tell me about the podcast and where it sits in this changing culture.
CL: Group Golf Therapy is hosted by myself and two other people who come from very different backgrounds. We look different, we sound different, yet we still we have this shared story of playing golf at a reasonably high level and feeling disconnected from the culture of it. We're at the nexus of golf and mental health. I'm a very anxious person, and golf has given me a space where I can slow down, put my phone away, and focus on my senses. One question we ask on the podcast a lot is, “what are some of your favorite golf smells?” It's funny to hear what Rory McIlroy says his favorite smell is but it's a very intentional question because as somebody who is often overstimulated, when I connect with my senses on the golf course, it calms me down in a tangible way. We try to get to know our guests really well.
DD: Is there a story about the mental health aspect of the game that one of your guests relayed that stands out?
CL: One that I always come back to is from somebody you've never heard of. He's just a guy. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia and his name is Milos Bogetic. He came to the US when he was 18 years old from Montenegro to play college basketball at Penn State. On the verge of going pro, he was diagnosed with terminal lymphatic cancer. So among other things, as a lifelong athlete, he was really bummed that he couldn't do anything physical. But his doctor told him he could pick up a golf club and try hitting putts. He had never played golf before, but tried it and immediately got hooked, and decided to dedicate a good chunk of the free time he had left to the sport. That one stands out for a number of reasons… we all cried but we also laughed a lot. He's an incredible storyteller and is an example of someone who took to the sport and committed to it in a really beautiful, healthy way when things were most bleak.
[NOTE: since this interview was conducted, Milos sadly passed away at the age of 38. RIP Milos.]
DD: That's an amazing story of how access to golf can impact a life, and brings us full circle back to the Covid conversation in terms of picking up the sport during a bleak time. We’d like to end by touching briefly on the remarkable-slash-insane journey you embarked on over the past year for the Breaking Par series. You really pushed the limits of what it means to be an “amateur golfer.”
CL: Yeah, it was it was pretty full tilt. I mean, I had the WHOOP giving me data every second of every day. And just by nature of that, I was thinking about this challenge every second of every day. It influenced all of my decisions – when to exercise and how to exercise, when to sleep, when to practice. And from a production standpoint, it’s also weird to film yourself eating pasta at two in the morning.
DD: Indeed. Thanks for the time Connor!
THE SAUCE
Your Duplex Deli proprietors spend a ton of time on golf courses now, but neither of us stepped onto one until quite late in life. As a couple of roses who grew from the concretes of New York City and Troy, New York, without parents who played, it wasn’t something that was really ever presented to us as an option. In fact, I would guess our first meaningful exposure to the sport likely came through one of Earth’s finest creations: the music video for “Mo Money Mo Problems.” Safe to say that Puff’s command of the post-game interview had two precocious fourth graders very intrigued:
THE MEAT
To us, the most beautiful aspect of golf is its emotional range. Even amateur players tend to experience profound highs and lows over the course of a round. An idiosyncrasy we’ve noticed tucked within this dynamic is that while all amateur players want to play better, many are almost repelled by the idea of really working on their game to get better. They want to play all the time, yes, but they don’t want to take it too seriously. That would ruin the fun. And yet, by virtue of the aforementioned emotional range and inherent profundity, they take it very seriously. But milestones can be motivating, and for one amateur golfer, also a thinking man (spoiler: it’s Connor), the milestone of shaving two strokes off his game and Breaking Par for the first time ever has pushed him over the hump and motivated him to take the game seriously for perhaps the first time in his life.
As a thinking man, he asked for help and was granted a WHOOP band as well as access to an advisory council to help him crunch his data and figure out how to optimize his lifestyle for better golf and overall health. As a masochist, he pitched the idea to Skratch and asked Duplex Deli to come along and film the journey as he spends one year exploring how trying earnestly to be a better golfer changes your relationship with the game and yourself. Episode 1 is below, and you can check out the rest of the series here.
#IRLSANDWICH
Duplex Deli is proud to kick off 2024’s #IRLSANDWICH slate with our first user submission, and it comes from across the pond! Our boy Matt Gralen over in Londontown brings us a very tasty dispatch, best relayed in his own words:
“That Spicy D: 1oz chiacciata piccante, 1oz salame napoli, 1oz sharp provolone, 2.5oz ham on caponata with rocket, long hots, burnt chili mayo and pangrattato. From the hilariously named Dom’s Subs on Hackney Road. In true Duplex Deli fashion it was consumed at Haggerston Park while taking in some football.”
That is true Duplex Deli fashion indeed, Matt. Hats off on the recent promotion, and the fantastic submission. That’s two European sandwiches in a row for the Club! Where will we go next?
As always, thanks for reading, please don’t hesitate to share the newsletter and/or a sandwich. And whichever side of the pond you’re on, if you find yourself in need of creative or production services from a team that exists to harness the profound range of emotions sports storytelling singularly provides, you know who to call.
(Duplex Deli.)
I grew up around Golf courses in south Florida, yet never found the desire to pick up a club until I was in my 30s. I never understood the hype until I hit a Top Golf. Now I’m drinking the Kool-Aid. I think the more the Golf community embrace “the culture”, the more mainstream it’ll become. Good piece.