My 15 minutes, 5 years ago
My brief moment of internet golf "fame."
On April 9, 2019 No Laying Up released the first of three episodes of “Strapped: Louisiana.” The episode was called “A New Icarito”. I watched it on my phone in the back of a rented RV on the way home from my first and only trip to Augusta National for the Monday practice round. I went with my brothers, using passes that my mom had finally requested of a friend after years of waiting for the right moment.
When I started listening to podcasts, there were no golf podcasts. The landscape seemed barren, a few equipment nerds and some journalists here and there. But within a few months, I stumbled into what at the time seemed like a group of old college friends on long distance phone calls asking each other whether or not maybe Jordan Spieth “stinks” or is the best player of all time, or both… along with other tongue-in-cheek observations like “tour sauce1” and the number of commercials on golf broadcasts. It was these calls that made me and so many other listeners feel like we were in their club too.
My theory is that while discussions about the loneliness epidemic among American men began to show up everywhere from medical journals to the New York times, discussions around things like whether or not white belts were still (or ever) “ok” on the golf course (or anywhere) began creating a community that felt like what so many guys were longing for.
The “No Laying Up guys” drew people in and connected them to one another. It was a true expression of what C.S. Lewis describes as the beginning of friendship.2 It is that moment when you are able to say, “What? you too? I thought I was the only one.” In the case of No Laying Up it was things like, I thought I was the only one who wanted to try to play blades for a year to see if it actually makes me worse or better.
That is a long introduction to why I would end up listening to the yearly “Goals” podcast episode that they post towards the end of each year in anticipation of the next year’s “resolutions”. It was while listening to one of those episodes that I resolved to get my watercolors back out to make a little time each week to sketch just one thing that captured my imagination. Through a series of events that ensued (which I might detail elsewhere some day), I found myself playing golf with Big Randy, Neil, and DJ at the Historic City Park Golf Course in Baton Rouge.
I ended up featuring much more prominently in the footage than I had expected and through a series a hilarious coincidences and miscommunications, I became a footnote in community phenomenon that has continued to pop-up more times than I can count.
Because of literal millimeters of space between a hand-stamped “T” and “R” …
I have shown up in the B footage of a Charles Schwab commercial.
I was contacted and subsequently interviewed by two podcasters with an audience that included an entire dorm floor of a small Christian university in Ohio (along with their parents).3
I was mentioned by name in a Golf Digest Article.
I have friends who still send me pictures of themselves wearing St. Rappeo shirts.
I was stopped by a caddie as our paths crossed on The Old Course (the 7th and 11th which share a green). He showed me that he had a St. Rappeo ball marker. He had heard from a message board friend that I was out there that day. Getting recognized by someone on The Old Course who just wants to show you that he is a fan of something you were a part of… that is surreal.
I have received a few screenshots of St. Rappeo shirts seen on youtube videos (one of them was a shirt for sale off the rack in a golf shop in Australia).
I have received requests for Strapped (St. Rappeo) ball markers from people all over the place. One guy even asked me for a matching set for him and his fiancé who both loved that episode.
I have made countless friends, one of whom I travelled to Scotland with last summer where we played golf with others who we knew through this same community.
One of my favorites might be the guy who showed up in our Sunday morning worship service. He introduced himself afterward.
“We are from Illinois, but we were in Lafayette for music festival. I always said that if I was ever close enough, I would come to St. Rappeo’s church.”
Lafayette is over an hour from St. Francisville. Bob and I have remained friends ever since. We keep up about things ranging from train travel to Big 10 football (two things that I know very little about, which is why I like to have friends like Bob). Bob also encouraged me to keep writing. He does it for a living @ALionEye on X.
I thought that those days were over, that my “star” had burned out, when last year out of the blue, in the pro-shop of the municipal course where I play most of my golf now, I caught the eye of a man in his late 60s who I would describe as a salty old muni-course fixture. He eyed me up and down and said, “You play golf on TV don’t you?”
Me: “no sir, not that I know of”
Him: “You a minister?”
Me: “Yessir”
Him: “Yeah, I saw you play at City Park on a show or something”
Me: “Well, yeah, I guess that was me, ha!”
He didn’t say anything else, just nodded and walked away, just like you would expect him too.
On the 5 year anniversary of its release, I am still grateful for and benefitting from my 15 seconds of internet golf fame.
Tour Sauce is their term for things that average amateur weekend golfers do simply because they have seen it on TV, whether we realize it or not. The way that people talk, or dress, or mark their ball, tamp down a divot, or acknowledge a good shot with a subtle nod.
“Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."
... It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision - it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.” (CS Lewis in The Four Loves).
I did just receive an invitation to the wedding of one of these two guys. Both of them also drove all night to attend my 40th Birthday gathering at Sweetens Cove.
Love the second footnote