Happy 25th, Happy Gilmore!

Complete coverage of Happy Gilmore’s 20th anniversary. Editor’s note: This story was originally published on February 16th, 2016. We can all agree that Adam Sandler's movie “Happy Gilmore” - which celebrates its 25th anniversary this week — took several liberties with the Rules of Golf, flouted conventional wisdom and mocked some of the sport's time-honored traditions and decorum. That was part of the fun, right? Well, you should have read the first draft of the script ... or the second ... or third ... or fourth. Mark Lye did, as the one-time PGA TOUR pro-turned-broadcaster was hired as the official script consultant. As Lye worked his way through those early readings, he kept crossing out parts, wondering if there would be anything left to film. At one point, he told Sandler and his co-writer Tim Herlihy, "You gotta be crazy. You cannot do a movie like that." His concerns? "They had the green jacket. They were desecrating the USGA. Making fun of Augusta National," Lye recalls. "I just said, ‘No, no, no. I don't think you better go there at all. We can get the same effect by doing our own fictitious event.' " They listened, which is why Happy Gilmore (25-year-old spoiler alert!) wins the coveted Gold Jacket at the Tour Championship, not the Green Jacket at the Masters. Meanwhile, Lye was also worried about the movie crossing too far over the line of believability. Early scripts had Happy hitting 400-yard drives on every hole and acing par 4s on a regular basis. It was like the writing team had never been to a golf tournament - and that's when the lightbulb came on. Lye arranged to have key members of the movie crew attend the PGA TOUR event at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth. He provided clubhouse badges, allowing them to get a feel for the atmosphere, to see the marshals, officials and volunteers and observe the demeanor of the pros. He thinks that visit paid dividends in dialing down some - the key word here being "some" — of the over-the-top situations. "They saw what the limits were," he says. Even so, this was a Sandler comedy, not a glorification of pro golf, and thus boundaries of believability would be pushed. Hockey blades as putters? Punching out members of the gallery - as well as playing partners? Washing underwear in the ball washers? Runaway Volkswagens driven down the middle of a fairway? Lye just had to grit his teeth. Finally after the fifth script, he gave his seal of golf approval. "I'm not sure about marking the ball with a cookie and eating it," Lye recalls telling the producers, "but as far as value and not offending anybody, I think you're fine." Of course, Happy's achievements aren't the point of the movie. It's the humor - sophomoric to be sure, but funny nonetheless - that has given it a cult following both in and out of golf circles since its release on Feb. 16, 1996. "There's just so much goofy, fun, stupid stuff in that movie," says five-time TOUR winner Jimmy Walker. "It just made you laugh. I don't even think you have to be a golfer to enjoy it. It could appeal to everybody just because it was funny." Certainly funny enough to turn a tidy profit - Happy Gilmore made more than $41 million on a $12 million budget. We can all agree that Caddyshack is the quintessential golf comedy, right? Well ... Released in 1980, Caddyshack mocked the stuffy environment of country clubs and its members, allowing Saturday Night Live alums Chevy Chase and Bill Murray free rein at the height of their comedic powers. Golfers routinely recite lines from the movie, and Murray's assistant greenskeeper Carl Spackler has carved out a special place in golf lore. But for young golfers today, their first exposure to a wacky golf movie was not Caddyshack but “Happy Gilmore,” which came out 16 years later and was made by another SNL alum in Sandler. Instead of making fun of country clubs, it mocked professional golf - which certainly hit home to those who hoped to make their living on the PGA TOUR. And instead of Spackler's Cinderella story, it gave us Happy's much-imitated running-start tee shot. Asked which movie he prefers, 31-year-old Jonas Blixt responds, "Happy Gilmore, but I like Caddyshack too. The older guys probably will go more with Caddyshack." Adds 32-year-old Marc Leishman: "I didn't actually see Caddyshack until about five years ago, so I prefer Happy Gilmore. I love it." Patrick Rodgers, 23, says Happy Gilmore and Tin Cup are his two favorite golf movies. No mention of Caddyshack. Longtime golf announcer Verne Lundquist, who plays himself in the movie, told The Sherman Report that the movie has "helped keep me relevant to a generation, maybe even two. I get more questions about Happy Gilmore than I do about the game." Lundquist recalled the time he and Billy Packer were scheduled to call a basketball game at the University of North Carolina in 2009. Lundquist was asked to visit the locker room and address the home team; he replied that they surely wanted Packer. No, it was Lundquist they wanted - and Tyler Hansbrough, then a star for the Tar Heels, told him why: "We need you to say, ‘Who the hell is Happy Gilmore?" It was a line from the movie. Lundquist obliged - and the players went crazy. "I said, ‘If you guys win the national championship, I expect to get credit for giving you a motivational speech,'" Lundquist told The Sherman Report. "They won, but I never got any credit." While Happy Gilmore may speak more to millennials, older golfers still seem to prefer the classic. Zach Johnson, 16 years older than Rodgers, puts Happy Gilmore in his top five among golf movies but not at the top. "We all know what No. 1 is," he said. "Caddyshack." Eight-time TOUR winner Geoff Ogilvy, 38, used to be able to quote Caddyshack from start to finish. He's never been able to do that with Happy Gilmore. "I was truly a Caddyshack junkie," Ogilvy says, "but not really a Happy Gilmore junkie." It's safe to suggest that Murray and Chase (along with Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight) have a broader, more approachable appeal than Sandler, who can be an acquired taste for some. Lye was one of those who didn't always get Sandler's kind of humor; in fact, he gravitated more to the subtle humor of Sandler's nemesis, Shooter McGavin (played by Christopher McDonald). But as he worked on the movie - he was close friends with the father of producer Robert Simonds - Lye began to appreciate what Sandler brought to the table. Lye remembers the first day he showed up on set in Vancouver, British Columbia (due to the conversion rate, it was cheaper to film movies in Canada than in the United States). It was early in the morning, about 5:30 a.m., and Lye was escorted to his trailer. The trailer next door had loud acid rock music blaring. He asked what was going on. "That's Adam Sandler's trailer," he was told. "That's how he gets fired up in the morning." Today, when asked about Sandler, Lye says "He was a meek guy, but as soon as the cameras came on, he became a beast. It was like Gremlins — just feed him after midnight. A cute little guy off the set but hilarious on it." We can all agree that the Happy Gilmore sidestep-and-swing tee shot is the most imitated in golf, right? C'mon, you know you've tried it. Instead of standing perpendicular to the ball at address, you stand behind it, take a couple of side steps and let it rip, Happy-style. Essentially, it's Happy's way of converting his hockey shot into a golf swing - and the results are extremely accurate 400-yard drives that became his calling card. Goodness knows how many TOUR pros have tried their hand at it - Jordan Spieth, Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy among them. All in good fun, of course. "I'm not very good at it," says five-time winner Nick Watney. "I don't have the timing down. I've got some work to do on my Happy Gilmore shot, that's for sure." FedExCup winner Bill Haas isn't very good at it, either. "It's tough to do," he says. "I can hit it every now and then, but it doesn't help me hit it any further. I probably can make contact, but it's not going to be good contact." Others, however, became quite adept at it. "I was pretty good at it when I was younger," Blixt adds. So was Carl Pettersson when he tried it on the range. "Never done it in a tournament," he says, adding, "Maybe I should." Technically, it's not illegal to attempt the shot during competition, so there is no penalty stroke. But a rules spokesman for the R&A told CNN in 2012 that the "major concern we do have is regarding whether it fits with the etiquette of the game as defined in the rules. Players must have respect for the course itself and perhaps this shot lends itself to increased likelihood of damage to the course." Of course, if players thought it would give them a significant advantage, they might be prone to at least experiment with it. But not even the most recognizable Happy Gilmore imitator on TOUR is willing to go that far. Three-time major winner Padraig Harrington has become pro golf's poster boy for the swing. His peers are amazed as his consistency in using the run-up tee shot. "He hits it like 15 yards by his normal swing," says Ben Crane. "And he hits it pure." "He does it as a training aid to separate his body," adds Pettersson. "Arms going one way and body going forward. It's actually the correct way to hit a driver." Harrington was featured on a Sport Science video that asked the question of whether a successful Happy Gilmore swing could provide more distance off the tee than the standard golf swing. Using motion capture cameras, Harrington's Happy Gilmore swing was found to generate an addition 4 mph in clubhead speed, as well as increase his shoulder turn for more torque. Meanwhile, the swing plane was nearly identical. His drives averaged 30 more yards than his traditional set-up. But with more distance comes potentially less accuracy if the ball isn't properly struck - and that's why Harrington never plans to use his Happy Gilmore swing in competition. "I don't believe I'd be as accurate," he says during the Sport Science shoot. "Would the gain of 20-30 yards be worth it? I'd like to do it on the golf course but I'm too cautious for that." But he does have advice for anybody who wants to try it? "Don't think too much about it," he says. "Just give it a good hit." We can all agree that Bob Barker punching out Happy Gilmore is the most absurd scene in a movie that has many such moments, right? It starts at the Pepsi Pro-Am, with Barker - playing himself, the legendary host of the game show, The Price Is Right - meeting Happy for the first time as playing partners. " You know, Faldo and I won this thing last year," Barker says to Happy. "I'd like to win this year." As a professional golfer who has played hundreds of pro-am rounds, Lye says that line most sticks with him. "How many times have I heard that on the freakin' first tee," he notes. "Heard it about 100 times." But it's the fight scene that's best remembered, especially since Barker was 72 years old and Sandler just 29 when the movie was released. At one point, Barker threw 11 consecutive punches — mostly left jabs — at Gilmore, who eventually got the upper hand and landed (what he thought) was the ending blow, resulting in the signature line from the movie (which we'll post here with a little family-oriented editing): The price is wrong, b—-! Of course, Barker rises up, grabs Happy by the throat, and gets the last laugh as he punches out Happy and leaves him writhing on the course. "The Bob Barker scene is pretty fantastic," says Brandt Snedeker. "Hell, yes, I've wanted to do that, and I'm sure some guys have wanted to do that to me. "It sets up the pro-am scene pretty well on some weeks." When Lye left the movie set after filming his lone scene - a cocktail party in which he plays himself as a Gold Jacket winner - he asked one of the executives how the movie was going. "It's going to be a classic," was the reply. "How would you know?" asked Lye. "Wait until you see the Bob Barker scene." So when Lye attended the premier in Hollywood 25 years ago, the first person he saw was Bob Barker. He couldn't help but laugh. "It looked like he had died 10 years earlier," Lye said. "He was just a wisp of a man. Wore a spatula full of makeup." Then he saw the fight scene and thought, "Damn, that was pretty good." Barker has said on many occasions that following the release of Happy Gilmore, he never taped an episode of The Price Is Right without being asked about the movie by someone in the audience. He said young men, in particular, ask him: "Did you really whip Adam Sandler?" Barker's stock reply: "Adam Sandler, he couldn't whip Regis Philbin." Perhaps that's what makes Sandler's Happy Gilmore so endearing. He beats up gallery members and fellow competitors, but he wasn't above taking one or two - or 11 - punches on the chin himself from the person you least expect. Of course, what Happy Gilmore does best is whack you over the head with absurd humor. "I was just blown away at the golf inaccuracies that were in there, but also how funny it was and how it brought the attention of Hollywood to the golf world," says three-time TOUR winner Johnson Wagner. "It was cool, but I just remember thinking how horribly inaccurate it was for professional golf." Good thing he didn't see the first few drafts of the script.

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