We’re ingesting Bloody Marys on the prepare because it rattles between frost-coated fields on the way in which to Rye Golf Membership. It’s the morning after the evening earlier than: Cookie Jar Golf (opens in new tab)’s annual Christmas Social gathering at City Golf in London. Golfers had gathered from all throughout the UK, a group of the like-minded created by a trio of members at Blackwell Golf Membership in Worcestershire. Beer was imbibed, new friendships had been solid and laughter grew to become the soundtrack for a one-club knockout event on City Golf’s simulators that lasted effectively into the night.
Sam Williams, one of many trio of pals behind Cookie Jar Golf, was in his component, speaking to everybody, stoking the ambiance and totally having fun with being in his pure habitat. Bruce Fitzpatrick, a winner and finalist within the prestigious President’s Putter in consecutive years, was his regular mix of appeal, sly humour and steely competitor (on this event, bemoaning his incapability to make it previous the quarter-finals). Tom Mills was both filming, photographing or providing droll commentary on the motion.
Now, as we gaze out of the prepare window on the frozen panorama, all three are gathered round a desk to debate their journey, one which started three years in the past in lockdown and has seen the Cookie Jar Golf podcast set up itself as among the many most reliably entertaining, steadily shocking and constantly wonderful pods in a golf market that’s immediately awash with them.
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The podcast is only one a part of the Cookie Jar operation. Since launching the pod, they’ve added stunning movies, memorable occasions, a energetic social media presence, advertising and marketing consultancy for distinguished golf golf equipment, and occasional articles on the sport’s most urgent issues, such because the worrying decline of Kummel. They’ve even helped to save lots of a golf membership.
And but Cookie Jar Golf succeeds in being better than the sum of its components. It has turn into a muster level for all method of {golfing} pilgrims, purists and connoisseurs of the small however essential quirks and particulars that make {the golfing} panorama we inhabit as wealthy as it’s.
The put up pinned to the highest of their Twitter account maybe sums it up finest. Accompanying a black and white picture of Ben Hogan sitting on a tee field whereas pulling on a cigarette is his well-known quote: ‘I don’t just like the glamour. I similar to the sport.’ It’s becoming that right this moment’s vacation spot is Rye. What the low-slung clubhouse lacks in glamour, it greater than makes up for in its historical past, customs and bonhomie. In different phrases, pure Cookie Jar.
‘’I don’t just like the glamour, I similar to the sport’’, Ben Hogan pic.twitter.com/bs2VFndVEOApril 17, 2021
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All three founders of Cookie Jar Golf enthusiastically embrace the numerous and storied establishments inside the British sport. They’re advocates for enjoying rapidly, matchplay foursomes and, in Sam and Bruce’s case, lengthy socks worn with shorts. However additionally they have a good time newer and extra progressive facets of the game. They’re opinionated – which is what you need from podcasters – on what they like and what they don’t, however they skilfully keep away from being elitist or slim.
Like so many good concepts, theirs grew out of conversations within the spike bar. To start with, there have been 4 of them. Mates who all cherished the sport, performed collectively and consumed golf by way of each doable outlet. ‘We listened to No Laying Up and all the opposite podcasts. We learn Golfer’s Journal,’ says Sam. ‘The bit that was lacking was a British voice.’
Over post-round pints and facet helpings of Blackwell’s signature ‘BBC’ (Bacon, Brie and Cranberry) toasties, discuss turned to placing that proper. What all of them shared was an unshakable conviction that the UK has the very best golf on the planet and the deepest, most attention-grabbing golf tradition.
Sam, 36, is the pure spokesman of the group. He performs off three, jokes that he is a ‘generational ball-striker’ and fortunately describes himself as ‘very concerned with his personal golf and golf programs’’. Bruce, 10 years youthful, is an completed scratch golfer, an Oxford Blue and a ‘recovering swing obsessive’.
Tom, 37, is former semi-professional rugby participant who solely took up the sport in his late twenties however now performs off 9. He’s the person who makes issues occur. Cal Wing, the ‘tools junkie’ with an encyclopaedic data of the skilled sport, determined to step again because of work commitments however stays a terrific pal and supporter.
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They wanted a reputation and located one throughout a typical matchplay joust across the ingenious Herbert Fowler and Tom Simpson format they name dwelling. ‘I keep in mind doing a extremely overblown membership twirl celebration with the hand down on the finish,’ smiles Bruce. ‘Sam requested what on earth I used to be doing. I mentioned, “It’s Tiger Woods on the President’s Cup. His hand is within the cookie jar, he’s strolling after it.”’
The title captured the essence of what they wished to place out: a really British tackle each the skilled and newbie video games, seasoned with a realizing however inclusive sense of humour. Tom invested in some recording tools and within the first days of 2020 recorded a pilot podcast with Sam. Extra episodes adopted and similar to that, Cookie Jar Golf was up and operating. ‘The aim was to get to eight episodes,’ says Bruce. ‘So many podcasts fail at seven.’
Episode eight coincided with the beginning of the primary lockdown and featured a dialogue on what it would imply for golf. One comfortable by-product of the pandemic was the spike in golf participation; one other was Cookie Jar Golf hitting its stride. The suspension of regular life gave them time, impetus and entry to lots of the individuals they wished to speak to – individuals who, like them, had been caught at dwelling doing little or no. ‘Arguably, if it wasn’t for the pandemic, we wouldn’t be the place we’re,’ says Tom.
Creator Tom Coyne, Sky Sports activities presenter Iona Stephen and photographer David Cannon had been amongst their early visitors. ‘The primary time we spoke to Mike Clayton, he was occurring about Bandon Dunes and Mike Kaiser and I had no concept what he was speaking about,’ confesses Tom. ‘It was like an schooling for us,’ says Sam. They discovered as they went, and their viewers steadily grew.
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‘We wished to deal with among the tales in golf that fly underneath the radar,’ explains Bruce, which does not adequately clarify how they get so many nice visitors.
‘We’re so not controversial,’ gives Sam.
‘However Bruce does need to go to conflict with individuals who don’t agree with him on the golf swing,’ counters Tom.
‘I’m merely within the pursuit of reality,’ Bruce causes.
Together with his profitable wedding ceremony videography enterprise in limbo due to the pandemic, Tom put his filmmaking abilities to good use. The consequence was the primary episode in Cookie Jar’s ‘Story of a Golf Membership’ sequence. The movie on Silloth on Solway Golf Membership created a template for subsequent insightful shorts on attention-grabbing golf equipment with notable programs. ‘We would like them to really feel like taking part in with a member,’ explains Sam, ‘as a result of they offer you all the additional context and color you need while you go to a brand new membership.’
Not all the pieces has labored and the method of determining what the viewers needs has been ‘like a conflict of attrition at occasions’, admits Sam. They cite an early movie on Walter Hagen’s historic win on the 1922 Open at Royal St George’s as a undertaking which concerned a lot effort and time for little return. ‘Then, once we talked in regards to the 4th gap at Woking,’ says Sam, ‘it appeared to ring a bell and we immediately obtained a number of suggestions on golf course structure.’
Their instincts, nevertheless, had been sound, evidenced by Sam and Tom’s Eleventh-hour determination to make a detour on route to creating a movie about The Berkshire. They’d heard that Cleeve Hill, the council-owned golf course with magnificent views throughout the Cotswolds – Tom Morris’ rugged hyperlinks within the sky, was set to shut. Sam had performed there as a child and wished to publicise the upcoming menace to what had all the time been a group golf course.
Cookie Jar Golf’s stunning film on Cleeve Hill (opens in new tab) instantly sparked curiosity within the membership’s plight. This accessible, enjoyable and historic piece of land was, as Tom eloquently put it in his voiceover, ‘the epitome of what makes golf in the UK particular’.
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Sam contacted Golf Month-to-month’s editor, Michael Harris, who promptly wrote a chunk and posted the hyperlink on the GM discussion board. The movie went stay on a Thursday night. The subsequent day, Sam was having lunch along with his spouse when his telephone began vibrating and bleeping. ‘It simply blew up,’ he says. ‘There was a lot exercise on Twitter. It launched half a dozen new bidding events.’
Inside weeks, the council had performed a u-turn and declared they had been now open to bids. The next April, Sam, Tom and Bruce obtained the unique on Cleeve’s Hill’s new house owners, revealing on the podcast that Mashie Golf had taken over the membership. They then held a ‘Not Closing Down Social gathering’ at Cleeve Hill the place Sam and Tom are each now members. ‘If I died tomorrow,’ says Tom, ‘I could be happy that {the golfing} panorama is barely completely different due to one thing we did.’
Now, as they shut in on 200 podcast episodes and with 50-plus quick movies underneath their belts, Cookie Jar Golf is getting ready for the subsequent stage in its improvement. They’ve loved the pinch-me moments, similar to interviewing former R&A secretary Peter Dawson in a resort suite overlooking the Street Gap; taking their locations alongside the frontline media for the one hundred and fiftieth Open Championship at St Andrews; discovering their signature Cookie Jar tees at programs throughout Britain. Now although, it is about taking the subsequent step
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Their newest sequence of movies and pods, which covers their recent Netherlands Tour (opens in new tab), marks a shift in gear for the crew. The journey noticed them drive to Holland to expertise lots of the hidden gems the nation has to supply. Seven movies, launched each week from mid-January, quite a few podcasts and subsidiary content material got here out of the tour, which once more demonstrated their nostril for the tales much less instructed.
However the reality stays, all three nonetheless have busy day jobs, and within the case of Sam and Tom, younger households. ‘We’re at an inflection level,’ states Tom. They’ve not too long ago taken on their first part-time worker to assist with all of the work – and there is loads of it – required to maintain Cookie Jar’s output as contemporary as ever. All three agree that the subsequent stage is to develop with out shedding contact with what’s obtained them this far. ‘Authenticity is essential to us,’ says Sam. ‘There’s a purity to Cookie Jar and we have to keep that.’
This purity is encapsulated completely of their occasions. The Cookie Jar’s first meet-up, ‘The Mixer’, befell at Blackwell on a sweltering summer season’s day in 2021. For Sam, Tom and Bruce there was clear satisfaction in with the ability to share their fantastic membership and its immaculately introduced course with the individuals they’d introduced collectively. For these lucky sufficient to be in attendance, it was a magical day that led to eight-ball foursomes matches because the solar went down.
Cookie Jar Golf’s 2022 Spring Assembly was one other working example: invites despatched out by put up, attention-grabbing individuals travelling from far and extensive, nice venues – Princes and Royal St George’s – and considerate touches all through. The golf is all the time essential, however so too is the social, one thing that is mirrored within the content material they produce. ‘We would like the occasions to really feel like Willy Wonka tickets,’ explains Sam. ‘They’re probably the most particular side of what we do,” agrees Bruce.
Tom insists they’ll turn into extra commercially minded this yr. “We are able to’t be fiercely unbiased for the sake of being fiercely unbiased,’ he argues. ‘We are able to’t be the elite newbie of the podcast world.’ No Laying Up’s DJ Piehowski, The Fried Egg’s Andy Johnson and Erik Anders Lang of the Random Golf Membership are all followers of the Cookie Jar and all earlier visitors on the pod. It’s not misplaced on Sam, Tom and Bruce that each one three are shining examples of how nice golf content material can turn into a terrific enterprise.
Sam pauses and wonders aloud if they really must get any larger. ‘If the music stopped tomorrow, I’d nonetheless be very pleased with what we’ve performed thus far,’ he says. ‘Deep down, I simply actually bloody love golf. It’s not like work. I’ve little home windows of time and I shove as a lot Cookie Jar stuff via these home windows as I can.’
By the home windows of Rye’s clubhouse, the frost has magically evaporated and, as all the time, the Cookie Jar boys are able to play.
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