{"id":191369,"date":"2025-09-30T03:23:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T03:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/191369\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T03:23:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T03:23:06","slug":"bill-murray-is-the-latest-star-tapped-for-tvs-golf-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/191369\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Murray is the latest star tapped for TV’s “golf boom”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sports shows are having a moment in general, but golf in particular seems to be popping off. This year saw the release of Adam Sandler\u2019s Happy Gilmore 2<\/a> on Netflix and Stick<\/a> starring Owen Wilson on Apple TV+. There are more golf projects in the works from comic actors Kevin James<\/a> and Will Ferrell<\/a> (Ferrell\u2019s Netflix series will also feature Owen\u2019s brother Luke Wilson, just to add another layer to this situation). Now another funny guy has teed up a golf show: Per <\/a>Deadline<\/a>, Bill Murray will star in Off Course for Paramount+ and the BBC.<\/p>\n

In Off Course (working title), Murray will travel around Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland with his \u201clong-time golfing companion\u201d Tom Coyne, the writer of A Gentleman\u2019s Game (who also happened to pen the book A Course Called Ireland). The six-part series sees the Saturday Night Live alum \u201ccoming together with friends as they take in some of the island\u2019s most breathtaking fairways.\u201d Murray, of course, is one of the stars of the quintessential golf comedy Caddyshack (which was co-written by his brother, Brian Doyle-Murray). \u201cI started out caddying, and golf was the best education I ever received,\u201d he said in a statement (via Deadline). \u201cIreland feels like the right place to put all that to work. They\u2019ve got this wonderful word there, \u2018craic,\u2019 which means fun, but it means a lot of other things. A lot of good things. And this show will be about us finding it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rise of golf on television isn\u2019t an isolated event; it mirrors a reported explosion of interest in the sport. The upward trajectory<\/a> began in 2020 as a safe social distancing sport and has continued over the past five years; Business Insider<\/a> reports<\/a> that \u201cNearly 1.5 million more people than the prepandemic average\u20143.4 million total\u2014played golf for the first time in 2023, with the highest level of participation among adults 18 to 34.\u201d According to the National Golf Foundation<\/a>, \u201cMore than one-third of the U.S. population over the age of 5 played golf (on-course or off-course), followed golf on television or online, read about the game, or listened to a golf-related podcast in 2024,\u201d an increase of 45 percent since record-keeping began in 2016. Amid this golf boom, courses around<\/a> the world are experiencing record numbers of players and membership renewals<\/a>. To top it all off, men of a certain age and social class have always loved golf. So although the spike in golf media is pronounced, it\u2019s never a surprise to see Hollywood capitalizing on a trend\u2014nor for actors to combine work and pleasure by turning their favorite hobby into a paid opportunity.<\/p>\n

Aziz Ansari still hopes to finish his movie with Bill Murray after misconduct allegations<\/a>Bill Murray thinks misconduct that shut down Being Mortal is “still funny”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sports shows are having a moment in general, but golf in particular seems to be popping off. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-191369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}