‘Saturday Night Live’ Did a Golf Sketch and It Was Surprisingly Funny

The comedy show spoofed golf in its latest episode, and the result was ... good?

Jeff Ritter | Oct 7, 2024

Things quickly go wrong for the golfer in SNL's latest golf sketch. / YouTube

Golf has had a big news year, and Saturday Night Live has noticed.

The revered comedy show did a golf sketch on Saturday night, but rather than delve into any of pro golf’s real-life off-course dramas, the writers came up with a clever new way to address some of the follies that golfers could face these days: accidentally killing animals.

Comedian Nate Bargatze, who hosted the episode, stars in the sketch as fictitious golfer Brady Knoll, who is competing in the “Oakmont Classic” and despite honest attempts to try his best, continues to maim and kill a series of animals, including a bird, turtle and nest of bald eagles.

“Obviously I did not do that on purpose,” Bargatze’s Knoll says after one fatal wayward shot. “I don’t think I could do that on purpose.”

As the sketch plays out, the gallery turns on Knoll and a Nike representative appears out of nowhere to cover the company’s swoosh logo on Knoll’s hat and polo.

It’s not easy to do comedy and golf—if it was, there’d probably a be a decent comedy since Caddyshack—but this sketch cracked us up, and so we share it here for your amusement. And please be kind to the animals out there.

Published Oct 7, 2024

JEFF RITTER

Jeff Ritter is the managing director of SI Golf. He has more than 20 years of sports media experience, and previously was the general manager at the Morning Read, where he led that business's growth and joined SI as part of an acquisition in 2022. Earlier in his career he spent more than a decade at SI and Golf Magazine, and his journalism awards include a MIN Magazine Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and a master's from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.