“Tin Cup” is the best golf movie ever made, and I will brook no argument

The eve of the 2026 United States Open, is, I think, a good time to talk about a movie that I consider to be the best golf movie ever made: the 1996 film Tin Cup. Directed by Ron Shelton, starring Kevin Costner and Rene Russo, co-starring Cheech Marin and Don Johnson, with a host of delightful supporting actors, and featuring cameo appearances by pro golfers as well as broadcasters and journalists of the era.

Having been somewhat absent from the game for a while now – I haven’t played or written about it since late March – I wanted to get into the mood for golf as I prepare to immerse myself in the coverage of my favorite golf championship, the U.S. Open. With that goal in mind, I went to the “Golf” section of my movie collection and pulled out my blu-ray copy of Tin Cup.

Tin Cup is an obvious choice for this exercise, of course, because its hero’s journey storyline involves the title character’s pursuit of a spot in the field at the U.S. Open, coming to a climax during the final round of a fictional U.S. Open – but it earns the #1 spot in my list all-time favorite golf movies for a variety of reasons:

1) Writing – Tin Cup has snappy dialog, and an underdog storyline that hits all the right notes without descending into cliché: Former college golf star Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy (Kevin Costner) languishes at a run-down driving range on the outskirts of the small West Texas town of Salome, while his rival from college golf days, David Simms (Don Johnson) lives the high life playing the PGA tour. When Simms’s girlfriend, psychologist Dr. Molly Griswold (Rene Russo), signs up for lessons at the driving range, McAvoy is smitten with her.

The undercurrent of envy at his former rival’s success, both in life and in love, is softened by Roy’s determination to become a better man, a successful man, in order to be worthy of the woman he has fallen in love with, and his road to redemption is the pursuit of the highest goal in American golf – the U.S. Open Championship.

2) Cast – Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, Cheech Marin, and Don Johnson are the big names in this production, but the supporting cast features actors whom most people will recognize, if perhaps not be able to put names to. Rex Linn, Dennis Burkley, Lou Myers, Linda Hart, Richard Lineback and Mickey Jones – among other – are veteran character actors who flesh out the roster in this film as more than just background faces, and their talents are invaluable contributions to the film’s success.

3) Performances – Kevin Costner shines in the role of Roy McAvoy, a man who has lingered for years in the shadow of his more successful rival, David Simms. McAvoy’s skill on the golf course is underlaid by a deep-seated lack of self-confidence, which he hides behind a bravado public front. He has a high standard when it comes to doing a difficult thing well, which is a key point in the storyline, in contrast to his rival David Simms’s shallow success that has been achieved by doing well enough, but never taking the bold stroke that would raise him to higher heights(1).

Don Johnson is suitable smarmy as David Simms, the flashy, successful, high-living counterpoint to Roy McAvoy’s down-at-heels driving-range pro. Johnson does a great job portraying Simms’s ruthless guile, in contrast to the naiveté that sometimes peeks through with McAvoy (see the scene featuring the 7-iron bet after the U.S. Open Sectional Qualifying tournament), as well as his safely cautious approach to golf, which though successful in terms of fame and fortune, displays a certain lack of guts.

Rene Russo, as Dr. Molly Griswold, is delightful as Roy McAvoy’s (at first unattainable) love interest, and muse. Taken on by McAvoy as a guide and counselor to help him overcome the “inner demons” that have prevented him from realizing his potential as a golfer, Russo guides the character through her own journey as she comes to see David Simms for the shallow and unlikable man that he is, and cleaves to the imperfect but striving and growing Roy McAvoy.

Cheech Marin is Romeo Posar, a character who is something of a Sancho Panza to McAvoy’s underachieving Don Quixote. The comedian and veteran actor is a mainstay in the film as the long-suffering business partner, supporter, and caddy of the capricious “Tin Cup” McAvoy. The qualities that Marin brings to the role are as important to the story as any performance in the film.

In the supporting cast, Linda Hart plays Roy’s ex-girlfriend Doreen, a former stripper who owns a strip club in town. She is an earthy (and down-to-earth) counterpoint to Rene Russo’s somewhat flighty Dr. Molly Griswold. The scenes during the U.S. Open when these two very different women bond over their connection with Roy McAvoy are pure gold.

Roy’s backup crew of malingering golf bums are well played by veteran character actors Rex Linn, Dennis Burkley, Lou Myers, Richard Lineback, and Mickey Jones, among others. They are a motley crew, characters of the sort that any longtime muni golfer will recognize from weekends and summer evenings at the course.

4) Setting – A large part of the appeal of this movie for me is the setting. Though I have visited Texas only briefly, I have a family connection to the state, and more to the point, the beginning of my involvement with the game of golf was spurred by reading the classic Dan Jenkins golf novel Dead Solid Perfect. The storyline of Tin Cup is reminiscent of Jenkins’s golf novels, and the motley bunch that hang out at Roy McAvoy’s driving range in the movie would be right at home in Dan’s story The Glory Game, in the collection The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate.

With the many champions and famous names in the world of golf that have hailed from Texas; names such as Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Harvey Penick, Ben Crenshaw, and Tom Kite; the state seems like a natural setting for a story that explores the highs and lows, and deep and shallow aspects of the game.

5) Extras – By “extras” I don’t mean just the nameless folks who inhabit the background in various scenes in a movie. A large part of the fun of this film, at least for golfers of a certain age (the movie is 30 years old, after all) is spotting the bevy of pro golfers, golf journalists and broadcasters, and even TV production folks who show up onscreen.

• Craig “The Walrus” Stadler is David Simms’s playing partner in the charity tournament early in the film, and a very young Phil Mickelson is also in the foursome. Peter Jacobsen, Corey Pavin, Lee Janzen, Steve Elkington, Johnny Miller, and Fred Couples – among others – appear in the scenes depicting the U.S. Open.

• Jim Nantz and Ken Venturi play themselves as the 18th-tower announcers calling the U.S. Open; Ben Wright and Brian Hammond appear as color commentators at the U.S. Open and Simms’s charity event, respectively.

• Peter Kostis is the on-course commentator at the charity tournament, and Gary McCord is doing the same in the U.S. Open segment.

• Well-known sports commentator Jimmy Roberts shows up as a reporter querying Roy McAvoy in the press center after the first round of the U.S. Open, and real-life (then-)CBS producer Frank Chirkinian and director Lance Barrow appear in the production trailer as disbelieving witnesses to McAvoy’s 18th-hole meltdown.

The Lowdown

I have heard golfers complain about various golf movies for years, usually nitpicking the swings of the actors portraying the golfers, or sometimes the equipment being used by the actors (2). I am no swing analyst myself; to my eye Costner and Johnson did alright in their portrayals of pro golfers – and an exactingly correct golf swing can only carry a movie so far. The 2015 movie The Squeeze was lauded by some notable names at the time for the purity and correctness of the golf swing of the lead actor, Jeremy Sumpter – who was indeed a talented low-handicap golfer.

The fact that those names, which included Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, and Phil Mickelson, were all financial backers of the film, did not escape me at the time; the fact that the movie suffered from a hackneyed storyline and terrible performances did escape them. I haven’t found any information on budget and takings for this schlock-fest, but I do know that it failed miserably at the box office.

Look, I love Caddyshack, and I have enjoyed many other very well-made golf movies such as The Greatest Game Ever Played, Tommy’s Honour, and The Legend of Bagger Vance. Caddyshack is a class-comedy that is played out in a golf setting; The Legend of Bagger Vance is a metaphorical fantasy centered on golf as a restorative for a soul injured by the horrors of war. In contrast, The Greatest Game Ever Played and Tommy’s Honour are historical dramas about important people and events in golf’s past – as such they are more about golf than the previous two (especially Caddyshack).

But Tin Cup, is a more human, more relatable story about the love of the game, the fun and frustrations of the game, and the striving for, if not perfection, at least the improvement that we seek in playing the game of golf. The movies mentioned above, and others, all have something to offer (3), but none of them can touch Tin Cup for story, humor, setting, nuance (real PGA Tour golfers!) – and especially appropriateness as we await the opening shots of the 126th U.S. Open.

1 –  (This aspect of the story has echoes in the real world of professional golf, where more than one player on the PGA Tour has become a multi-millionaire without a win on Tour to their credit. Case in point: Bud Cauley, whose recent win at the RBC Canadian Open bumped him off of the list of players who have won $10 million or more without ever having won a tournament.)

2 –  (Years ago I saw a post on social media by a person who said that The Greatest Game Ever Played was ruined for him because the clubs that they were shown using were of a style that was a decade too new for the time (1913) in which the events occurred. That is what I call picking the flyshit out of the pepper.)

3 –  (Except for The Squeeze – it’s awful..)

Book review: “The Prodigy”, by John Feinstein ⭐⭐⭐-1/2

I have been aware of John Feinstein’s writing, especially his golf writing, for many years; in fact, his 1996 chronicle of a season on the PGA Tour, A Good Walk Spoiled, was my introduction to non-fiction reading about professional golf. Though I have concentrated on his golf writing, Feinstein has written several well-regarded books on basketball, baseball, and football—and I have only recently learned that he has also authored a series of sports-related YA (young adult) novels, including the recent release, The Prodigy, the first of his books for younger readers on the subject of golf.

The Prodigy is the new YA sports novel from John Feinstein—his first that is set in the world of golf.

The Prodigy is the somewhat fanciful tale of a 17-year-old golf phenom named Frank Baker, a nice kid from a small town in Connecticut who has amazing golf skills. The book is set in the recent past—2017 and early 2018, to be exact—and we pick up the story when Frank is preparing to play in the 2017 U.S. Amateur at Riviera Country Club, in the upscale Los Angeles-area city of Pacific Palisades.

Frank is being raised by his father, Tom, a divorced single parent who is a freelance stock trader—and a full-time golf dad. Frank is looking forward to playing college golf, and given his record, which includes making it to the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur the previous year at the age of 16, he is assured of a multitude of offers, from the best programs in the country. His father, on the other hand, has his eyes on a different prize.

Frank’s prowess on the golf course has attracted attention from more than just college coaches; agents and equipment company reps have shown interest, and the book’s story arc is built around the conflict that arises when Frank’s dad gets too cozy with an agent from a big sports-representation firm. Frank is under pressure from his dad and the agent to forgo a college career and turn pro. The pressure gets more intense when the youngster earns a spot in the field at the 2018 Masters, heating up even more when Frank shows that he can keep up with the big boys on one of the biggest stages in the game of golf.

There are two people in Frank’s corner in all of the drama surrounding his college / pro dilemma: his swing coach, Slugger Johnson—the head pro at Frank’s home course; and Slugger’s longtime friend and college golf teammate, Keith Forman, a former low-level pro golfer turned golf writer. Forman’s involvement raises journalistic dilemmas for him as he finds himself becoming part of Frank’s story—even coming into conflict with Frank’s father and the ever-present agent—and not just a dispassionate observer who is reporting the story.

Feinstein creates an air of conflict that the Keith Forman character has to work through, describing a number of rather hostile encounters between Forman and tournament volunteers and security personnel, even citing a USGA training session for marshals in which media-badge holders are singled out as untrustworthy (based on a real experience of Feinstein’s—I guess I had better watch my P’s and Q’s the next time I’m at a USGA event on a media credential!)

The conflict between Frank (with Slugger and Keith in his corner), and his dad and the agent, along with his extraordinary play at one of the most high-profile golf tournaments in the world, are the main factors that combine to bring the action to a dramatic conclusion at the 2018 Masters.

One thing you can be sure of in a John Feinstein book is the insider’s touch. Feinstein knows everybody in the game, from players to agents, equipment reps, media folks, and officials and functionaries from the USGA and the PGA Tour. This knowledge is on full display in The Prodigy, to the extent that it starts to feel like rather gratuitous name-dropping. Players, including big names like Phil Mickelson, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and Justin Thomas, not only have cameos, they play significant roles in the story, interacting with Frank and the other characters.

And it’s not just players, though they are the most recognizable names. Some of the other real-life names that are dropped include golf media personalities from TV, print journalists, and behind-the-scenes folks from the USGA and the technical side of broadcasting. As for the agents and equipment reps, they get the same short shrift that Florida real-estate developers get in a Carl Hiaasen novel—and I wonder how many of them are still going to be speaking to Feinstein after reading this book.

For the golf-knowledgeable teen audience at which this book is aimed, the big-name golfers who are mentioned will be well-known figures, and those readers might get a kick out of reading a story in which these stars of the PGA Tour interact with a teenaged golfer, even if the conversations and situations feel awkward and contrived—which they do.

The inclusion of real people from golf broadcasting, such as Joe Buck, Paul Azinger, Brandel Chamblee, and Holly Sonders, will pique the interest of young readers who watch golf on TV, but the use of the real names of people from the behind-the-scenes operations, and from the print-media world, will go right over the heads of the young reading audience (and many older readers, too…). On the other hand, readers and reviewers who actually know these people (and I know, or at least have met, a few of them) will find it odd to see in print a fictionalized version of a known person. This aspect of the book rings false with me, and seems rather pointless, all things considered.

Other aspects of the story are also rather uneven. While the overall “voice” of the book has a decided YA tenor, it wanders back and forth between over-explaining simple aspects of the game, as if catering to non-golfers, and using shorthand references that only a reader who is well-versed in the game will understand.

There are curious (and admittedly, mostly minor) lapses that will bother the knowledgeable golfer (or maybe just golf writers who are also editors…). For instance, when setting the scene for the section of the book in which Frank is playing in the 2017 U.S. Amateur, at Riviera Country Club, Feinstein describes the club’s location as being “…a few miles east of the Pacific Ocean…”, but Riviera’s westernmost border lies a scant mile or so from the beach. (Yeah, it’s a nit, but it caught my eye because I specifically checked it for a column I did a few years ago about Ben Hogan’s history at Riviera.) 

Another little faux pas that caught my attention was a misquote of the tagline from the USGA’s pace-of-play campaign of a couple of years back (a line borrowed from a scene in Caddyshack), which is cited as “While we’re still young”, rather than the correct line, which is just “While we’re young.” There are a few other instances like that scattered throughout the book—small things, but noticeable to the knowledgeable, and attentive, reader.

One thread that runs through the latter part of the story, and one which I relished, is a series of subtle, and not-so-subtle, digs at Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters—and their fussy rules and regulations, which are capriciously enacted and vigorously enforced, such as their insistence on referring to spectators on the grounds of the club as “patrons”, a ban on cellphones on the grounds (which Frank is gently but firmly admonished for joking about in an interview), and the use of the terms “first nine” and “second nine” instead of “front nine” and “back nine”. The Keith Forman character is characterized as “…(knowing) he was privileged to cover the Masters and (that) he was in a place any golf fan would kill to be, but the atmosphere of the place—the entitlement of it all—made him feel a bit squeamish.” I’m with Keith on that one.

All in all, while The Prodigy is an engaging read, especially for young golf fans, the overall scenario—which I cannot fully describe without introducing spoilers—is a little over-the-top, and the scenes which involve real-life people from the golf world feel forced and unrealistic. These things might not matter to, or be noticed by, the intended teenage audience, but adult readers, especially those with a bit of familiarity with the personalities involved, will squirm a little over some of those passages.

Jacobsen, Nantz, to be honored with Langley Award

Peter Jacobsen, 38-year PGA Tour pro, Champions Tour player, and CBS-TV on-air golf commentator, and Jim Nantz, lead commentator for CBS-TV golf coverage, will be honored Monday, August 20th, at the Langley Awards ceremony at  Pebble Beach Golf links.

The Langley Award is named after the late Jim Langley, the former head golf  professional at the Cypress Point Club. Born in Denver, Colorado, in 1937, Langley moved with his family to Salinas in 1942. After graduating from Salinas High School in 1955, Langley attended Cal-Berkeley on a basketball scholarship, and was a member of Cal’s 1959 NCAA Champion basketball team. Langley joined the United States Marine Corp after graduation, competing Marine Corp Reserve service in the Bay Area. A five-year stint as a PGA Tour player was followed, in 1971, by his appointment as head golf professional at Cypress Point Club, a post which he held for 34 years.

The Langley Award is presented by the Northern California PGA to men and women who are recognized as legends of the game of golf. Former recipients of the award include Langley himself, Arnold Palmer, Ken Venturi, Johnny Miller, Nancy Lopez, and Roger Maltbie. The two-day charitable event comprises a dinner and awards presentation on Monday night, followed by a charity pro-am golf tournament on Tuesday, August 21st at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

The event benefits PGA HOPE (Helping Our Patriots Everywhere), a program which provides free golf lessons to disabled and able-bodied military veterans as a therapeutic tool in support of their mental, social, physical and emotional well-being. Lessons are taught by PGA Professionals who receive special training in adaptive golf teaching methods. Created in 2017, PGA HOPE is a flagship program of the NCPGA Foundation, and part of a national outreach by the PGA of America. The program has served nearly 750 veterans since 2015; it is offered at ten program sites in Northern California

Peter Jacobsen has always been known as an easygoing, fun-loving personality, both on the golf course and in the broadcast booth, but the PGA Hope program strikes a serious chord with him. Jacobsen’s father was a naval aviator who served aboard the USS Intrepid and USS Enterprise in World War II, and was awarded the Navy Cross – a fact which Jacobsen and his siblings did not discover until after their father’s death. Jacobsen is a strong supporter of programs for military personnel.

Pebble Beach Golf Links and its associated tournaments have always been favorites of Jacobsen’s, who first got to know the Monterey Peninsula region and Pebble Beach on family golf vacations as a teenager.

Jim Nantz is known to millions of television sports aficionados for broadcasting NFL football games, NCAA basketball, and PGA Tour golf, most notably the annual Masters tournament from Augusta National Golf Club. Besides his annual stint in the broadcast booth for the AT&T National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach, Nantz’s ties to the Pebble Beach run deep. He and his second wife, Courtney Richards, were married in a ceremony held on the 7th hole at Pebble Beach, and he owns a home in the area – complete with a half-scale replica of the famed par-3 in the backyard.