In Off Course (working title), Murray will travel around Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland with his “long-time golfing companion” Tom Coyne, the writer of A Gentleman’s Game (who also happened to pen the book A Course Called Ireland). The six-part series sees the Saturday Night Live alum “coming together with friends as they take in some of the island’s most breathtaking fairways.” Murray, of course, is one of the stars of the quintessential golf comedy Caddyshack (which was co-written by his brother, Brian Doyle-Murray). “I started out caddying, and golf was the best education I ever received,” he said in a statement (via Deadline). “Ireland feels like the right place to put all that to work. They’ve got this wonderful word there, ‘craic,’ 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.”
The rise of golf on television isn’t an isolated event; it mirrors a reported explosion of interest in the sport. The upward trajectory began in 2020 as a safe social distancing sport and has continued over the past five years; Business Insider reports that “Nearly 1.5 million more people than the prepandemic average—3.4 million total—played golf for the first time in 2023, with the highest level of participation among adults 18 to 34.” According to the National Golf Foundation, “More 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,” an increase of 45 percent since record-keeping began in 2016. Amid this golf boom, courses around the world are experiencing record numbers of players and membership renewals. 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’s never a surprise to see Hollywood capitalizing on a trend—nor for actors to combine work and pleasure by turning their favorite hobby into a paid opportunity.
