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Heads up, everyone. Skip Bayless is upset by something and he wants everyone to know about it. This week, it’s Happy Gilmore 2 that has got Skip’s jimmies all rustled.
Apparently, Mr. Bayless didn’t get the memo that Happy Gilmore 2, as well as it predecessor film, are comedies. He also apparently doesn’t understand that he has no reason to be upset by the film when (deep breath) golfers like Keegan Bradley, Fred Couples, Nick Faldo, Tony Finau, Rickie Fowler, Jim Furyk, Sergio Garcia, Charley Hull, Hunter Mahan, Collin Morikawa, Jack Nicklaus, Corey Pavin, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Lee Trevino, Bubba Watson, Nelly Korda, Nancy Lopez, and Paige Spiranac all appear in it, thus giving the movie their blessing.
“I just do not get the appeal of this character that Adam created, but plays,” Skip Bayless said on his YouTube show. “This character is anything but Happy. And I don’t get this sort of scathing attack on a game I so deeply love and honor and respect. I mean, Caddyshack, my favorite golf movie, is 18 times funnier than Happy Gilmore 1 and 2 combined. But Caddyshack laughs with golf. Happy Gilmore laughs at golf. And at the rotten core of 1 and 2 is Adam Sandler’s character, this sour, foul, sociopath, who is always a hair-trigger away from committing felony assault on anyone who crosses his path; crosses him. That’s funny? Not to me.
“Happy Gilmore has four psycho hooligans for sons, all highly capable of stabbing each other in the eye with a fork at the dinner table. And that’s funny? I’m sorry, not to me. And living in their garage is John Daly, pretty much playing himself as a broken-down alcoholic. That’s just not funny to me. I’m sorry. Not funny. I guess this is the only way to get the Dumb and Dumber crowd to watch a ‘golf’ movie.”
“Happy Gilmore makes a mockery of golf,” Skip Bayless continued. “Now, you can argue that’s what LIV and the TGL are doing right here, right now, but the PGA Tour still takes golf seriously. The major championships take golf seriously. The PGA Tour plays golf the right way, respects the game in which competitors actually call penalties on themselves and do so regularly.
“Then we have Happy Gilmore getting that running start to hit his tee shots. Nobody does that, not in pro golf. And, by the way, we never see Happy hit any irons. I don’t know if he hits them with a running start or not, but I guess he doesn’t need his irons because he drives the green on every par four, and, I guess, par five, although in this, in Unhappy 2, they’re only playing seven holes at a time.
“And as you know, Happy, Unhappy, plays in this oversized Bruins hockey jersey, the baggie pants, the work boots. He putts with a hockey stick. I guess that was amusing for about five minutes, the original Happy Gilmore hockey stick putting.”
By the way, it turns out that Skip Bayless, who added that he was “was offended by the original, too,” did notice all of the pro golfers in the film. Not that it excuses anything, at least to him.
“But here’s what really turned my stomach,” Bayless continued. “True legends of the game of golf, Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino, actually sold out and stooped to participate in this blasphemous ridiculing of golf. They participated by delivering these lame jokes they were given that just fell flat to me. I don’t know. I don’t get it.”
Okay, boomer.
Surprisingly, this take by Skip Bayless isn’t too far from the way NASCAR drivers Kyle Larson and William Byron feel about Talladega Nights. That right there is actually be the most surprising part of this whole thing.