Why Happy Gilmore was an unlikely stroke of comedy genius

When Adam Sandler was a kid growing up in New Hampshire, his father was an avid golfer. He'd often take his son along to hit balls at the driving range. But Sandler was uninterested in the sport, and usually got antsy.

"Why don't you bring a friend?" his dad told him. So Sandler took his buddy, Kyle McDonough, a star hockey player who would later turn professional.

"He never played before but he was cracking the ball so far," Sandler recalls. "So when I started becoming a comedian and me and [Tim] Herlihy were writing stuff and stand-up and talking about movies, I started thinking about a guy who could hit it really big and had a hockey player mentality."

Happy Gilmore, released in 1996, was Sander and Herlihy's second movie, following Billy Madison. Sandler was just exiting Saturday Night Live. Herlihy was Sandler's roommate at New York University and became a lawyer before Sandler got him to stick to writing comedy. (You might remember the Herlihy Boy sketch.)

"We had just done our first movie, Billy Madison, and we put every idea we ever had for a movie in that movie," says Herlihy. "So when they said we could do another movie, it was like, 'What are we going to do this movie about?'"

Happy Gilmore, released in February 1996, became one of the most beloved comedies of the '90s and codified the hockey-style swing as a mainstay on golf courses. "A hop, skip and a hit," as Sandler says. The movie also made comic heroes of Bob Barker, Christopher McDonald and Carl Weathers, and made lines like "Are you too good for your home?" plausible things to ask golf balls.

Like most cult comedies, Happy Gilmore didn't start out an obvious instant classic, though. "A one-joke Caddyshack for the blitzed and jaded," wrote Entertainment Weekly. "To describe Happy's antics as boorish is putting it mildly," wrote The New York Times. "Happy Gilmore tells the story of a violent sociopath," wrote Roger Ebert. He called it "the latest in the dumber and dumbest sweepstakes".

Happy Gilmore was a box-office success, grossing $39 million in the United States and Canada. And through worn-out DVDs and regular TV reruns, it became a favorite to generations of golfers and a staple of goofy '90s comedy.

"I can't even tell you how many times I've seen that movie," says the actor-filmmaker Benny Safdie, who co-directed Sandler in Uncut Gems. "It was on an endless loop. I had the DVD and I just kept watching it. I can close my eyes and see the movie end to end. It's one of my favorite movies."

Now, nearly three decades later, and after years of batting away pleas for a sequel, Sandler has finally put Happy's Bruins jersey back on. Happy Gilmore 2, airing on Netflix, is arguably the most anticipated streaming release of the US summer.

Sandler was well aware of the chequered history of comedy sequels. Movies like Zoolander 2 and Anchorman 2 have struggled to recapture the freewheeling spirit of the originals. The movie Sandler counts as his favorite, Caddyshack - so much so that he was initially hesitant to make a golf comedy - spawned 1988's woebegone Caddyshack II.

"If someone brought it up to us, we were like, 'Yeah, no, we're not going to do that'," Sandler said in a recent interview alongside Herlihy. "There was no moment we went 'Aha'. It just kind of happened. The last couple years, we were talking about Happy and how it might be funny if he was down and out."

In Happy Gilmore 2, co-written by Sandler and Herlihy, Happy is a decorated retired golfer with four sons and a daughter (played by Sandler's daughter, Sunny Sandler). But after a tragic incident and falling on hard times, he's lured back into golf. This time, though, Happy is an insider, motivated to protect the sport. Safdie co-stars as the founder of Maxi Golf, a new circus-like tour with long hitters.

"We thought it could be fun to write something like that" says Sandler. "It kind of connected to our lives and this age, and wanting to make a full-on comedy. There's nothing better than dropping a comedy and trying to make people laugh, to us. It feels like why we originally got into this business."

Big, broad comedies have grown almost extinct in the decades since Happy Gilmore. Returning to that style of comedy was, for Sandler and Herlihy, the best reason to make the sequel. For the 58-year-old friends and regular collaborators, it was a chance to riff like they used to.

"We were outlining the story together and then we were like, 'We should watch the first one again, man'," Sandler says. "We're going off of our memory of so many things, hanging out with Carl Weathers and Bob Barker and all that stuff. Then we watched it and we were like, 'Oh, yeah.' It was a tone."

"It made a little more sense than Billy Madison'," says Herlihy, "but we weren't afraid to swing, swing, swing."

Cameos, of course, were a major part of Happy Gilmore. (The Bob Barker scene was originally written for Ed McMahon.) In the years since, many of the faces of the original have died, including Barker, Weathers, Frances Bay, the hulking Richard Kiel and Joe Flaherty, who played the heckler. Even the golf ball-stealing alligator, Morris, has passed on. Happy Gilmore 2, unusually elegiac for a proudly silly comedy, nods to all of them.

For the sequel, many others, like Travis Kelce, Bad Bunny and Margaret Qualley, were lining up to be a part of it. So were pro golfers. Just about all the big names in golf, including several legends, appear. The day after winning Sunday's British Open, Scottie Scheffler flew to New York for the premiere.

Over the years, Herlihy and Sandler have seen a lot of them try "the Happy Gilmore".

"I feel like when these golfers try to do it, these pros, they're 5 per cent thinking, 'Maybe this will work'," says Herlihy, laughing.

"I played with Bryson [DeChambeau] like a week ago and when he did it, it was ridiculous," adds Sandler. "He literally blasted it 360 and just kept walking. I was like, 'Did he just smash the Happy Gilmore and not even think about it?'"

It's possible that "the Happy Gilmore" will even outlive the movies. There's a good chance that, even as you read this, somewhere some kid is trying it, hoping to get a laugh and maybe get it on the fairway, too.

"When we were putting it together, I called my dad and asked him if it was legal. He was like, 'I don't see why not'," Sandler remembers. "Then there are some people who look at it and go: 'It does help you swing hard ... Maybe it's a good thing'."