Mad Men
Greetings Golfers,
Hope you’re enjoying the New Year. I’m not … though we made it to SC safe & sound … I thought I was still young and lifted a million pound box … yeah … I’m on the couch and can’t move. Or even think … so … I’m using a column that I wrote in the May, 2015 edition of Tee Times Magazine. It’s about the TV show Mad Men … hope you enjoy it.
Mad Men
This month is the end of the TV series “Madmen”. I love this new style of TV series, started many years ago by the “Sopranos”. Most television shows portray life as la-la land – all of the characters are good-looking, live in beautiful homes, and never seem to work. The reasoning is that people have enough “reality” in their own lives and want to watch fantasy. Fair enough. But some of us like pulling back the veil and seeing how things really work.
Would I like to watch a real show about golf? Yes! Not a “reality” show… we already have that with the “Big Break”. I mean a fictional series about golf – either the Tour or a Golf Club – that accurately portrays the people and the factors behind the scene. Hopefully someone can do it and do it right.
“Madmen” is about the admen on Madison Avenue from 1960 to 1970. The main character – Don Draper – is a classic 1950s NYC guy dressed in dark suits and doing business over 3 martini lunches. Over 8 seasons, Draper builds an ad agency, gets married and divorced twice, and tries to influence the buying habits of Americans.
The series does a great job of showing how America changed from the Frank Sinatra generation to the Beatles generation. Don’s second wife moved to California – so did the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. During those years, so did the TV show “My Three Sons” and the Johnny Carson Tonight Show.
But Don Draper couldn’t make the transition and stayed in New York. And not just physically – Don didn’t change his style and didn’t change his worldview. While the Woodstock generation was rejecting the values of post WWII America, Draper was holding on.
What was happening to golf during those years? Well, I have a photo from the 1964 Masters of Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer wearing alpaca cardigan sweaters and smoking cigarettes. The men in the gallery are wearing coats, ties, and hats. Six years later, Palmer and Nicklaus are wearing pastel shirts, white shoes and belts, and have long hair.
Every generation wants to make its own mark and thus rebels against the previous generation. But Palmer and Nicklaus weren’t really members of the Woodstock generation – so what happened? Because the Baby Boomers were such a huge generation, their sheer size dominated a market economy and a democracy. Companies had to appeal to the youngsters… and so did politicians. Madison Avenue admen like Don Draper couldn’t make the adjustment. But the PGA Tour did. So did pro football – the AFL came along as the renegade league and challenged the old-school NFL. Then, when Joe Namath’s New York Jets beat the NFL’s Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl, the two leagues merged. The white-shoed Oakland A’s baseball team won the World Series, and their owner (Charlie Finley) brought the designated hitter to the American League. As Bob Dylan sang – “The times they were a’changing”.
Those were crazy times. I’m surprised at how little has been done in movies and television about those years. Maybe we need more time to understand it and put it in perspective.
Arnold Palmer really brought golf to the masses. But Arnie was much more of a Frank Sinatra guy than a Beatles guy. Arnie was sort of a Don Draper. Golf didn’t have a Woodstock type of guy – Jack Nicklaus with long hair wasn’t the ticket. Tennis filled the vacuum with guys like Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, and Bjorn Bjorg.
Then Baby Boomers got too old for tennis – at least they thought so … and took up golf. That’s why tennis fell off the map – seriously. So the Boomers took up golf but didn’t fill up the country clubs – that was their parent’s scene.
So how would those Madison Avenue admen sell golf nowadays?What would Don Draper do? How to sell golf to the Woodstock generation and their kids? Pretty tricky stuff. Is it foot golf? Or those surfboard looking things to use instead of a golf cart?
I think golf transcends all generations and styles. The game of golf is timeless – not a fad. Obviously, golf courses have to cater to changing styles and fashions. But I believe that the best remedy is to keep improving the golf experience. Instruction needs to improve. The concept of the golf swing has become too complicated. Golf course
design has to improve. Many golf courses that were built over the last 40 years are ridiculous. The rules of golf need to be simplified. Pace of play needs to improve – a round of golf shouldn’t be a race, but it shouldn’t be a death-march… a 4-hour round should be typical.
Golf is a great game. Don Draper’s life was a mess. He needed to play golf.
Cheers!
Tom Abts
GM/Head PGA Professional
tabts@deerrungolf.com