The History of Golf w/ Tony Parker
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Throughout the latter part of the 20th century, Golf developed a reputation as a sport for wealthy white men who gathered at their exclusive country clubs to make business deals over 18 holes of golf, all the while smoking expensive cigars and drinking martinis (you know, like in CaddyShack?). But then, seemingly from out of nowhere, Tiger Woods burst onto the scene, changing the look and style of the sport forever.
It turns out that most Americans' perception of the sport is does not quite fit the reality. The truth behind golf's history is much more complicated and a bit more noble. And today, Golf raises more money for charity than all other major sports combined. For example, since 1970 the FedEx St Jude Classic Golf tournament has raised over $79 million dollars for the hospital (That number was $33 million when this episode originally aired in 2017). In this episode of the Road to Now we get the story straight in our conversation on the history of golf with Dr. Tony Parker of the World Golf Hall of Fame and Museum.
This episode originally aired as RTN #51 on April 3, 2017. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is The Road to Now. |
| 0:08.3 | Speaking of Rhodes, we're taking it way back. History of Golf. Episode number 51 of the |
| 0:14.7 | Road to Now from back in 2017, our guest was Dr. Tony Parker, golf historian at the time worked at the World Golf Hall of Fame, and we just walked through the history of the sport from the early days. |
| 0:28.3 | And to me, the more fascinating stuff is about the way it evolves and its relationship to technology and society. |
| 0:35.2 | It's just always great to be reminded that these things we love that |
| 0:38.9 | sometimes we think is outside of anything significant actually is very much tied into the world |
| 0:44.7 | in which it takes place. So we hope you enjoy this episode. A couple of things. First of all, |
| 0:49.8 | was this inspired by the fact that I recently acquired some golf clubs? Maybe so. |
| 0:55.0 | And maybe I'm not going to get into the World Golf Hall of Fame anytime soon. |
| 0:58.9 | But let a man dream. |
| 1:00.8 | Secondly, this is a return to the early days when our producer Ian Skoda, formerly of the |
| 1:05.9 | road to now, was here. |
| 1:06.8 | So that third voice in this episode is Ian. |
| 1:09.7 | And he lined this up. |
| 1:11.3 | So shout out to Ian Skoda for doing that. |
| 1:13.6 | As always, thank you to all the patrons for making this happen. |
| 1:17.3 | You guys support the show. |
| 1:19.2 | And if you got a minute, anybody listening. |
| 1:21.7 | If you give us a review and write up on your favorite podcast app, that will be great. |
| 1:27.2 | Big thanks to, we just got like three new five-star ratings, I think, on Apple Podcasts. |
| 1:33.1 | So thank you, if you're listening and you did that. |
| 1:36.6 | Really helps us spread the word, moves us up in the rankings, makes it easier to see us. |
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