Apple TV+ is aiming for a hole-in-one with its latest sports series.
This week, the streaming service premiered Stick, a new sports comedy starring Owen Wilson and Peter Dager. The show follows Wilson as Pryce Cahill, a retired golf superstar whose career was derailed by a tournament meltdown, as he returns to the course to mentor a teenage phenom played by Dager.
According to showrunner Jason Keller, the inspiration for Wilson’s character came from his own father, who had a short career as a professional athlete in a different sport: baseball.
“That was the origin point of this character,” Keller told ADWEEK. “I wondered what it was like to be great at something, do it, and what’s that like 25 years after the fact.”
This isn’t the first time Apple TV+ has gone for a hit with a feel-good comedy series centered on a specific sport. After the soccer comedy series Ted Lasso starring Jason Sudeikis premiered in 2020, some experts believe it boosted the sport’s popularity in the United States.
This time around, the show’s premiere coincides with a period when golf has experienced a boom itself, and Keller said he has noticed the growth in the sport, especially after the Covid-19 lockdowns.
“Golf is having a moment right now,” Keller said. “It’s a more diverse sport. Now, we’re seeing more women playing golf. Younger people are playing golf. That old idea of golf is starting to move to something more exciting and young.”
According to the National Golf Foundation, the sport has an estimated reach of 138 million, with more than one-third of the U.S. population over the age of 5 having played it (on-course or off-course), followed golf on TV or online, read about the sport, or even listened to a golf-related podcast in the last year, up 45% since 2016.