The past twelve months have had a little bit of everything: a Grand Slam career, Ryder Cup chaos and much more. With 2026 on the horizon, our writers look back at the most memorable moments from 2025 and explain why they mattered.
Tales of 2025 #14: A Blockbuster Sequel
The budget was dazzling, the star power dazzling and the entertainment value. . . debatable.
But enough about Capital One’s The Match.
The real golf-themed pop culture extravaganza of the year – a spectacle that actually attracted a substantial audience – was a cinematic sequel that leaned proudly into its own silliness while simultaneously pulling all the levers of the modern era’s multi-platform marketing machine.
Admit it. You’ve seen “Happy Gilmore 2.”
Even if you didn’t, you certainly caught wind of the film, a belated follow-up to the 1996 original starring Adam Sandler as an unlikely golf phenom with a gutter mouth, a heart of gold, a hot temper, and a slap-shot swing. Nearly thirty years later, the plaid-clad man-child returned, burdened with additional emotional baggage and surrounded by a huge supporting cast, including Bad Bunny in place of Bob Barker, and almost every Tour pro you could name – all backed by a reported production budget of $152 million.
For those keeping score at home, Netflix spent more on “Happy Gilmore 2” than LIV Golf did to sign Bryson DeChambeau.
To ensure a return on its investment, the streamer turned studio turned the hype into hyperdrive. This wasn’t so much a movie release, but rather a multi-faceted attack on consumer culture. Subway has launched a special Happy Gilmore meal deal. Callaway has re-released its hockey stick Odyssey putter. Topgolf hosted screenings at locations across the country. In Times Square, the New Year’s Eve ball was replaced by an oversized golf ball. That was in July, just before the film’s premiere. If you hadn’t seen “Happy Gilmore 2” yet, you probably felt like you had.
Which put you in good company. During its opening weekend, the film reportedly generated 2.9 billion viewing minutes, a Netflix record.
And what exactly did those viewers see? Since it’s hard to spoil anything at this point, what counts as a plot is set in motion by tragedy. No sooner have we pressed play on our streaming service than Happy kills his wife with an errant golf shot. Flash forward a few decades and our traumatized hero has fallen on hard times. Moneyless, in shape and alcoholic, he takes up golf again to finance his daughter’s ballet school dreams. Wacky adventures ensue, along with more cameos than you could count in a thousand AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Ams, ranging from Paige Spiranac as a Dick’s Sports Goods saleswoman to Post Malone as a Gonzo TV commentator. And almost everyone with a heart rate and a Q rating in between.
Then there’s this: Even as he struggles to save his swing, Happy is called upon to save golf itself, now under existential threat from a new rival circuit called Maxi Golf, funded by a villain named Frank Manatee. Golf enthusiasts will immediately recognize Maxi Golf as a thinly veiled replacement for LIV, while erudite film scholars may be able to spot a subtler layer of allegory involving sea creatures: a manatee here, a shark there. Do you get it? Good. This isn’t Godard.
The Second Coming of Happy Gilmore was not intended as a source of inspiration for high-minded dissertations. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be read as a metaphor. With its celebrity saturation, and jokes and pacing calibrated for TikTok’s attention span, it plays like a mirror of contemporary life. And of course, contemporary golf – a game that is increasingly trying to break away from traditional roles and is eager to expand its demographic reach. In the meantime, the outside world is responding to the interest, in the form of regular docuseries such as ‘Full Swing’ and major adoptions of all stripes. Lebron James is now a golfer. Is there a country music star who isn’t playing the game? Never has the line between golf culture and pop culture been so porous. “Happy Gilmore 2” happily embraces that truth.
As a sequel to an old film, it has built-in nostalgia, enhanced by cameos from octogenarians like Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino. But its essence is less rooted in the past than in the present, which could be a clue to things to come. Like golf and all other forms of entertainment, movie franchises are always looking for new audiences. Today, Bad Bunny. And tomorrow?
Mark your calendars for the 2055 release of “Happy Gilmore 3,” in which the title star returns as a robot in a simulated world to help Team USA finally reclaim the Ryder Cup, on a virtual course in a domed stadium.
It doesn’t seem all that far-fetched.
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