I drove some Stuber Eats today (shoutout to the guy who max-tipped on the Taco Bell order at the end of the night, you are the realest), and I realized that golfers have terrible hair these days. Tennis players have great hair. Lot of volume, some things resembling feathering, plenty of pop. Golfers all look like those alpha dads from the Reels that show up in my Instagram feed once a quarter. They look like they are wearing patterned white buttondowns under puffy vests even when they’re not. They all look the exact same.
Tennis players, meanwhile, look different from each other. A lot of this is Europe. Europe produces more tennis players I know are European than Europe produces golfers that I know are European, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that means that Europe’s just a bigger deal in tennis than it is in golf. It would make sense. Europe and Texas Europe host three of the four majors in tennis. They host one of the four in golf, and do they really host that one? Because last I heard, Brexit went through in the end.
With hair being an expression of personality, tennis players also then come across as having more personality. I don’t know what their personalities are, but if I turn on Wimbledon in the morning because I like the sounds of balls hitting grass and racket and net, I get the impression—from the hair—that these guys have personality. If I turn on golf? They are all the same person. Carbon copies of one another. It’s the NASCAR problem.
Of course, the exact person all the golfers are is a useful exact person. It’s the coveted 18–34 affluent male demographic you hear so much about when people start fighting about TV ratings. So, credit to golf for that. You are a sport entirely built of the people marketers love. Your audience identifies with your product. This is excellent for you. NASCAR’s exact person is also 18–34 and affluent and male and for some reason isn’t part of that demographic, and I don’t exactly get it but I think it has something to do with dirt tracks, and this is a long way of saying what golf’s doing seems to be working for golf. But come on, guys. Would someone please frost their tips? You’re all going to the barbershop (who am I kidding, you’re all going to the salon) and when you walk in, you’re laying up. Define a moment for once, you cowards.
(This will not be such a big deal when part of the LIV merger terms is that the guys have to wear a burqa when they hit anything but a driver from the tee box.)
