…is that John Daly?
Like, John Daly was the drunk redneck shitkicker of otherwise upper class-marked professional golf, but he could really wail a ball, really the significant thing about Tiger Woods in the late '90s was he could hit a ball as far as John Daly but with the control of everyone else
Was Happy Gilmore based on him or something? Because I read that description and damn.
Well, I can say it would have been fuckin’ weird to make a 1996 professional golf culture-clash movie while remaining unaware of that '91 rookie.
Daly had an Upper South blue-collar background that fits in with that demographic’s early-90s incorporation into the national mainstream (what, you thought evangelical Christianity, post-Billy Ray Cyrus country music and the NASCAR boom just… happened?), and that same inclusionary moment for the Long Island Jewish kid who’s a troublemaker but loves his bubbe was kind of what Sandler was about, the transposition makes sense