Post-Father’s Day is a slow season for golf books. We’ve got one, but we’ve gone beyond books this time around to consider a unique CD (with a short booklet) from singer-songwriter Chip Taylor, and a fictional limited TV series about the game starring Owen Wilson.
Joseph Bronson’s PARdon Me (Silicon Valley Press, $21.99) is our one book, a third self-published volume from Bronson, who has had an enviable life as the sole golfing executive in his Silicon Valley tech company, so he was the guy sent to represent the firm when all the juicy pro-am invitations rolled in.
Now in his late 70’s, Bronson has played a bit. He’s clearly a passionate golf nut, willing and able to go all over the world to play top courses, with a decent game to boot. It would be easy to hate him, but his writing suggests a genial sort, not overly boastful, along with his donating all book sale proceeds to The First Tee and university golf programs.
So one is willing enough to browse his musings from, his subtitle suggests, “50 Years of Golf, One Hole at a Time.” If that latter phrase were really in effect the result would be stultifying. As is, the book’s rather random nature is easily consumed in small bites. There are tales of playing at Pebble Beach with Arnold Palmer; a pro-am round with an utterly silent David Duval; three senior pro-ams in the same year with pro Dale Douglass, prompting the pro to ask Bronson if he really worked for a living.
There are sections on particular holes—26 par-3 holes Bronson considers the best he’s ever played, and 20 holes he considers the most challenging he’s tackled. California courses are strongly presented here as that’s Bronson’s home base but, as mentioned, he gets around, so there are holes from the midwest, the east, England, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, all with comments on the holes, some memorable pro tournaments moments at them, and maybe a little too much about how the author fared on each.
I read the book in galley form, so maybe the few errors I ran across were corrected in the final version; Robert Trent Jones Jr, Bruce Charlton and Jay Blasi designed Chambers Bay in Washington state, not Pete Dye, for one example.
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Bronson has some amusing observations on two of golf’s regularly scheduled horror shows, the yips and the shank. And on Chip Taylor’s “Son of a Golf Pro” CD (from trainwreckrecords.com, $25), both get their own songs, “The Yips” and “Shank City.” And there are eight other cuts, all related to golf, including some instant treasures like “Double Bogey Time Again,” “The Final Round,” “Smack That Ball” or “In the Rough Again.”
This isn’t just a novelty album. Taylor is, after all, in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, having penned such classics as “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning” back in the day—he’s been around, too. And his four duet albums early in the century with Carrie Rodriguez (“Red Dog Tracks” being one) are classics in what is best described as Americana music, or maybe Alt Country.
Anyway, it’s a delightfully winning formula here, because Taylor also has golf cred. The package includes two CDs—one of just the songs, the other of the songs with some golf stories commentary by Taylor. There’s also a 63-page booklet that includes all the lyrics, but even more so the story of Taylor’s father, Elmer, who for 50 years was the head pro at the Sunningdale Golf Club in Scarsdale, New York.
That’s Elmer Voight, father to Barry Voight, a geologist and volcanologist; Jon Voight, the actor, and James Wesley Voight, who took the stage name Chip Taylor because he had a good short game.
All three boys played golf, but John and Chip were especially talented, thanks to Elmer; Chip briefly turned pro himself before Willie Nelson recorded one of his songs and propelled him down the music business path.
Elmer played in a couple of U.S. Opens before injuring his back in an accident (another car accident would kill him in 1973 at age 63). He’s mentioned fondly in an excerpt in the booklet from Bill Kilpatrick’s Brassies, Mashies, & Bootleg Scotch, a book we reviewed here way back in 2011.
There are certainly echos of Willie Nelson on hand, Taylor even sounds like him on “Hello Ball,” mostly likely based on Willie’s “Hello Walls.” “Cry Baby”—about whiners—is likely a reference to Janis Joplin’s tune of the same name. Taylor is familiar with the oeuvre—he wrote Joplin’s “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder).”
It’s all a fun, genial package. If you can manage a chorus of “Double Bogey Time Again” after your next six it just might take away the sting.
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By the time this appears all ten episodes of “Stick” will be bingeable on Apple TV+. (Don’t have it? Go for one of those free trial weeks and you can plow through the entire series in no time. Well, about five hours.)
It’s worth it, though it’s also possible to say that “Stick” breaks no new ground and is fairly predictable in some of its plot devices, like any number of feel-good sports shows. That said, it will make you feel good, if not quite “Ted Lasso” good. If the story seems familiar, the actors are all in, and the comic writing, genuine sentiment and a bunch of unbelievable golf shots make for a satisfying round of shows.
Without giving too much away, Owen Wilson plays Pryce Cahill, a former Tour pro known as Stick, until he has a wild meltdown at a tournament due to a family tragedy. As the show opens he’s facing a divorce, spinning his wheels as a teacher, and hustling mild stings in bars with the connivance of his former caddie, Mitts, played with a great curmudgeonliness by Marc Maron.
While giving a lesson Cahill hears someone clobbering golf shots and he finds Santi Wheeler (Peter Dager), a teen with incredible talent. Cahill concocts a plan to take Santi on the road with an eye toward the U.S. Amateur. But Santi, and even more so his mother, Elena (Mariana Treviño), are resistant, mindful of how Santi had given up the game in the wake of his father abandoning the family.
But on the road they go, and the adventures begin, as golf matches unfold, antagonisms arise, romances bloom, and cameos ensue from Tour pros like Keegan Bradley, Max Homa, Wyndham Clark, Colin Morikawa and even Jim Nantz and Trevor Immelman.
An Oklahoma course makes a cameo at one tournament, too, except it’s not in Oklahoma—the entire series was filmed in Vancouver.
As my wife proved, you don’t even really need to be a golf fan to enjoy “Stick” since the play is almost incidental to the developing relationships. And when series ends with every possibility for a season two, you’ll hope it winds up with a better chance than Stephen Colbert.
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Tom Bedell plays the piano but he wouldn’t dare trying to cover “Shank City.” Might be catching.
This piece first appeared in the Aug-Sept 2025 issue of Golf Oklahoma in slightly different form.
