The lines are legendary. The premise is ridiculous. You’ve probably even attempted the swing when nobody was looking.
The lines are legendary. The premise is ridiculous. You’ve probably even attempted the swing when nobody was looking on the driving range.
Feb. 16, 1996, marked the theatrical release of “Happy Gilmore,” the Adam Sandler movie about a failed hockey player who takes his talents to the golf course in order to save his grandmother’s house.
The comedy has undeniably become a part of golf’s culture. With that in mind, here are four interesting things you might not have known about the movie, which was directed by Dennis Dugan and filmed primarily in British Columbia.
Soon-to-be-empty nesters with two teenagers in high school, Lye and his wife are making a switch to condo life.
NAPLES, Fla. — Eager to move on, former golf pro and Golf Channel analyst Mark Lye has put his home up for auction at Mediterra in North Naples.
He’s hired an agency, Elite Auctions, in hopes of speeding up a sale.
It’s worked for him before — twice.
He’s sold two other homes in gated golf communities in the Naples area this way, one in 2018 in Talis Park and another in 2020 at The Isles of Collier Preserve.
Well, kind of, as the auctions never actually happened. He canceled both after they spurred strong offers ahead of the scheduled events from serious buyers who feared losing out in a bidding war.
“Did I get top dollar? No, but I sure got offers the first two times to execute,” Lye said.
Once again, Lye isn’t going far.
Soon-to-be-empty nesters with two teenagers in high school, he and his wife are making a switch to condo life.
“We’re just scaling down,” said Lye, who is 69.
With a closing looming on their new high-rise residence at Kalea Bay’s third tower, the Lyes are in a time crunch to sell their current home.
Mark Lye speaks at the PGA Merchandise Show on January 22, 2020 in Orlando. (Photo by Gerardo Mora/Getty Images for SiriusXM)
“Our new place will be done in November,” he said.
Their abode at Mediterra has been on the market since April, reflecting a cooling of a white-hot real estate market.
“My broker said: ‘Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine.’ Finally, it started to be July, then August. I said to the broker ‘if it doesn’t sell by Sept. 1, I’m going to Elite,'” Lye said.
And, so he did, with no offers on the table.
“It puts a sense of urgency on things,” Lye said of the auction.
He admits the carrying costs in a gated golf community, such as Mediterra, are high, often with big, unexpected assessments for maintenance and upgrades, so there’s reason for urgency, besides wanting to move on to the new chapter of his life.
“I don’t think the gated communities are for us anymore,” Lye said. “We don’t like too many rules.”
The family still plays golf, but elsewhere.
While he owns and has interests in other residential property in Southwest Florida, Lye said he plans to lease those, with his heart set on his nearly-ready condo in Kalea Bay.
“The amenities at Kalea Bay are off the charts,” he said. “The view is drop-dead gorgeous. It’s really first-class.”
Built in 2013, the Lyes’ sprawling home in Mediterra is currently listed at $4.25 million. Stretching 4,117 square feet, it has four bedrooms and four bathrooms, overlooking a freshwater lake.
Among its stand-out features? A guest cabana with a full-size bathroom, kitchenette, private entry and attached three-car garage, an upgraded pool and spa overlooking the water, and impact-resistant sliding glass doors that open the entire back end of the residence to an expansive screened lanai.
The Lyes made many improvements to the home.
The residence doesn’t include golf membership on the two Tom Fazio-designed courses in the neighborhood.
Zillow.com shows the Lyes raised their asking price on Sept. 1 by $250,000.
Property records show the couple purchased the home for $1.7 million in May 2020.
Elite does one auction per market at a time, so clients aren’t competing with one another for the same buyers. Lye likes that approach, as well as the way the company markets and presents luxury real estate to the marketplace.
While based in Naples, Elite has a national reach, he said, with a much larger database of potential buyers than a local broker.
“They basically go at it full force,” Lye said.
At Elite’s auctions, properties are sold without a reserve, meaning they go to the highest bidder, no matter the price. This is also known as an absolute auction.
The auction for the Lyes’ residence is slated for Oct. 1 at 11 a.m. ET, with registration beginning at 9 a.m. It’s to be held on-site.
Asked whether he thought his home would make it to auction this time around, Lye said he didn’t think so, despite an obvious shift in the local marketplace that had been “freaking on fire,” with far more buyers than sellers and crazy prices.
While home sales have slowed nationally for several reasons, including higher interest rates and recession fears, he said, Florida — and Southwest Florida — remain attractive markets, for those still looking to flee high-crime, high-tax areas, with even higher living costs.
“It was crazy. And it had to subside. But, I still feel like this is a unique area,” Lye said.
An obvious fan of Naples, the native Californian added: “I think there is always an extra zing going on down here.”
He expects the advertised auction to bring in dozens of potential buyers in for private tours — and to generate several offers before the event.
Elaborating on the Lyes’ auction in a phone interview, he said the process will multiply traffic and interest, “demonstrating the power” of the program, designed for non-distressed properties — or properties not on the brink of foreclosure or already bank-owned.
Elite handles the sale of real estate just as Christie’s does for fine paintings, or Barrett-Jackson does for collectible cars, Haddaway said.
Interested buyers must provide a $75,000 cashier’s check to an attorney to bid on the Lyes’ home at auction. The check is returned if they’re not successful, or applied to a 10 percent nonrefundable deposit if they win.
At auctions like this one, buyers must agree to pay cash and close within 30 days. Beforehand, those rules don’t apply, with “all terms negotiable,” Haddaway said.
“Prior to auction it will simply be a gross offer,” he said. “The seller will have the right to accept, reject or counter pre-auction offers only.”
Notable properties Elite has sold throughout the country include the massive penthouse in Baltimore where thriller author Tom Clancy lived and the former mansion of retired Major League Baseball player Mark Teixeira (nicknamed “Tex”) in Dallas.
“Now as I look back on it, it was a hurtful thing,” said Lye.
Mark Lye does not use Twitter very much, but he believes a movement on the social media platform led to the firing from his PGA Tour Radio show Sunday by SiriusXM.
“It’s really cancel culture,” Lye said on Tuesday.
During a weekend episode of The Scorecard, Lye, 69, said: “You know, the LPGA Tour to me is a completely different tour than it was 10 years ago … You couldn’t pay me to watch. You really couldn’t. Because I just, I couldn’t relate at all. It’s kind of like, you know, if you’re a basketball player — and I’m not trashing anybody; please, don’t take it the wrong way — but I saw some highlights of ladies’ basketball. Man, is there a gun in the house? I’ll shoot myself than watch that.
“You know, I love watching the men’s basketball. I love watching the men’s golf. I never used to like watching ladies’ golf. But I will tell you this. I’ve been up close watching these ladies play because I used to have a big function every year called the Lucas Cup and I’d have LPGA players and PGA Tour players.”
Lye said Tuesday that when the five-minute segment went to break he wanted to apologize and talked to people involved with the show.
“‘Guys, I’m not feeling good about this,’ he said to those involved with the show after it went to break, ‘I need to make an apology to all WNBA fans,’ which I did.
Mark Lye responds on Twitter
Lye also posted this explanation to Twitter: “The fact that I can’t relate to WNBA does not make me sexist in any way. All you haters should listen to the whole segment, where I completely glorified womens golf, which I love to cover. Thanks for listening.”
“I thought it was case closed,” Lyle said.
The fact that I can’t relate to WNBA does not make me sexist in any way. All you haters should listen to the whole segment, where I completely glorified womens golf, which I love to cover. Thanks for listening.
But Twitter user @jalawsons had picked up the clip with the controversial comment and shared it, and it started gaining traction.
The online comments on the social media platform created a firestorm, with many saying Lye was against women’s sports or was a sexist, and needed to be fired.
One of the quote tweets from someone who shared the clip:
“Just because no one knows who you are, Mark Lye, doesn’t mean you can go around spewing your mouth like this (on national radio) and think we won’t ruin your life. I am not one to encourage cancel culture but… Hugs and kisses to the grave, Mark!”
Some below that comment defended or agreed with Lye’s comment, and some did not.
Eventually, the original tweet of the clip was taken down by Twitter (“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules” it now says where the original tweet is located).
“In a way to glorify women’s golf I made a comparison by comparing it to another sport that maybe isn’t so successful,” Lye said Tuesday. “Now as I look back on it, it was a hurtful thing.”
“In a way to glorify women’s golf I made a comparison by comparing it to another sport that maybe isn’t so successful,” Lye said Tuesday. “Now as I look back on it, it was a hurtful thing.”
Lye said 10 minutes before the Saturday night show he was told he couldn’t go on because of what people on Twitter were saying regarding the clip. Sunday morning, he was fired.
“The reason (the comments on Twitter were) blowing up is they took the most unflattering part of that sound bite and they cut it off in a spot that buttressed their point of view, which is that men hate women’s sports or Mark hates women’s sports,” he said.
Lye said the segment of the show talked about comparing other sports, or within sports. For example, how baseball players would feel differently who were from the New York Yankees, who have one of the highest payrolls and are among the most popular franchise, versus those in Kansas City, which has one of the lowest payrolls and don’t have the attendance or popularity that the Yankees do.
“We were cross-referencing sports,” he said. “We talked about baseball. We talked about football. We talked about some of the tough things facing those sports, the challenges, and the challenges that the PGA Tour has against (Saudi Arabia’s Super) Golf League.
“That’s what made it germane. That’s why I talked about the WNBA. It just didn’t come out of nowhere. I happened to watch WNBA highlights on ESPN. I saw nobody in the stands. I said, ‘Wow, that’s a problem.’ I was trying to make the point that the LPGA is a living, thriving, credit to women’s sports in general, and that the WNBA was at the other side of the spectrum.
“I love watching ladies tennis, ladies golf, ladies volleyball. I can’t stand men’s volleyball. There are certain ladies sports that I really like watching. I like fast pitch (softball).”
Lye played on the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions, then was an analyst for the Golf Channel. He joined SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio in 2015, and originally did a show called “Time To Let It Fly” on Wednesdays in addition to weekend pregame and postgame shows.
“They want us to be somewhat interesting,” Lye said of the weekend radio shows. “We’re on the air for a two-hour show. They pay me to be who I am and that’s why they hired me. I’m not the most politically correct guy in the world, but I try to make things interesting for the common golf fan.”
Lye made the choice himself to end the “Let It Fly” show at the end of last year but still do the weekend shows.
“I can’t let it fly anymore,” he said Tuesday about explaining to his boss why he wanted to stop the Wednesday show. “I don’t want to get fired. Let’s cancel the show. This is not politically sound in this environment. … You can’t say just anything anymore.”
Lye coaches the girls golf team at First Baptist Academy, and his daughter, Eva, is one of the top players in the area. Mark Lye is a Type 1 diabetic, and his son Lucas is also, and he started the Lucas Cup he referenced in the clip to support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in 2013. He also previously had a role in the Immokalee Foundation’s charity pro-am, bringing in PGA and LPGA players for that.
Coincidentally, Lye said when he was doing the show Saturday, his daughter was following LPGA Tour star Nelly Korda in the LPGA Drive On Championship at Crown Colony Golf & Country Club in Fort Myers, and he also referenced that on the show.
“My kids are going to get exposed to this today (at school) and it breaks my heart that this is happening,” he said Tuesday. “My wife is in tears. I feel awful for my family.”
Lye said he didn’t look at what people were saying on Twitter until after he’d been fired. Some defended him, but many didn’t.
“I have death threats … ‘Hope your family is protected, I tweeted out your address.’ ‘You are the scum of the earth,'” Lye said, recounting some of the comments that were made either publicly or directly messaged to his Twitter account including one that told him to kill himself.
“I’ve made maybe 10 tweets in my whole life before (Sunday), but it started getting to me. I’m not going to sit here and take this. I’m going to defend myself. I found out that people have already made up their mind.”
“I was terminated about comments made about the WNBA, which I apologized for starting the next segment.”
Mark Lye’s Twitter handle is @letitflye, and the former SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio host is doing just that on the social media site as he defends disparaging comments he made about the WNBA that led to his firing.
During a recent episode of The Scorecard, Lye said the following: “You know, the LPGA Tour to me is a completely different tour than it was 10 years ago … You couldn’t pay me to watch. You really couldn’t. Because I just, I couldn’t relate at all. It’s kind of like, you know, if you’re a basketball player — and I’m not trashing anybody; please, don’t take it the wrong way — but I saw some highlights of ladies’ basketball. Man, is there a gun in the house? I’ll shoot myself than watch that.”
“You know, I love watching the men’s basketball. I love watching the men’s golf. I never used to like watching ladies’ golf. But I will tell you this. I’ve been up close watching these ladies play because I used to have a big function every year called the Lucas Cup and I’d have LPGA players and PGA Tour players.”
The fact that I can’t relate to WNBA does not make me sexist in any way. All you haters should listen to the whole segment, where I completely glorified womens golf, which I love to cover. Thanks for listening.
The winner of the PGA Tour’s 1983 Bank of Boston Classic told GOLF.com on Sunday, “I was terminated about comments made about the WNBA, which I apologized for starting the next segment.”
That’s because I’m a nobody….can’t figure out why everybody’s on my case…it was just a joke. Check out Happy Gilmore…I was the one in the gold jacket. Get a sense of humor
February 16 marks the 25th anniversary of the release of “Happy Gilmore,” a movie that’s undeniably become a part of golf’s culture.
The lines are legendary. The premise is ridiculous. You’ve probably even attempted the swing when nobody was looking on the driving range.
Tuesday, February 16, 2021, marks the 25th anniversary of the theatrical release of “Happy Gilmore,” the Adam Sandler movie about a failed hockey player who takes his talents to the golf course in order to save his grandmother’s house.
The comedy has undeniably become a part of golf’s culture. With that in mind, here are four interesting things you might not have known about the movie, which was directed by Dennis Dugan and filmed primarily in British Columbia.
Bob Barker wanted to fight
Although Bob Barker’s scene with Sandler has become legendary, he originally wasn’t in the producers’ plans. Instead, Sandler and others tried to woo Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s sidekick, for the role, but he never responded to inquiries.
When Bob Barker was later asked to come on board with the project, he agreed to do so with two stipulations — that writers would re-work the scene to allow Barker to beat Gilmore in a fight … and that the “Price is Right” star could shoot his own fight scenes rather than have a body double.
Barker had been training with his neighbor, Chuck Norris, and wanted to show off his skills.
“We trained every night,” Barker told Sandler while filming. “He helps me with my punches and my kicks, but I have to win this fight.”
Christopher McDonald played the role of Shooter McGavin.
Shooter’s time
Although Christopher McDonald has become synonymous with Shooter McGavin, he was not the first choice for the role. Producers were hoping that Kevin Costner would play the part but he was interested in making “Tin Cup.”
McDonald almost turned down the role of McGavin as well because he was trying to break of the stereotype of playing villains. After meeting Adam Sandler and realizing how funny the film would be, he agreed to the role. McDonald has since said it was one of the very best moves of his career.
Happy is a real person … sort of
According to multiple reports, Happy Gilmore was loosely based on a childhood friend of Sandler’s named Kyle McDonough. The two grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire, and would occasionally play golf, but McDonough’s driver was always the more impressive of the two. Sandler always attributed this to McDonough’s hockey knowledge.
McDonough never cracked the National Hockey League, but he did go on to play in the East Coast Hockey League, the British Hockey League, and a league in Norway. He remains friends with Sandler to this day.
Not only was Mark Lye the only PGA Tour player to have a line in the movie (Lee Trevino is shown shaking his head a few times), but he also served as the official script consultant on the film and helped make others better players.
In fact, McDonald for one, said he vastly improved under Lye’s tutelage.
“I mean I wasn’t a great golfer at the time,” McDonald told Forbes. “I got to be quite good during it because I had Mark Lye on my shoulder helping me with my swing and my all-around-game, course management as it were. But, my game got better [and] at the same time I had a lot of fun doing it and we’re all up in Canada shooting it up by Whistler and all kinds of great places.
“So it was a treat. And it’s generational now. So you got to love in an actor’s career to have a movie that basically people know you instantly from because it’s on a loop on television, which is great. People seem to like it from all ages. So I say more power to them.”
