How Hollywood star Owen Wilson’s method acting got him hooked on the game
Owen Wilson and his younger brother Luke have never had much of a rivalry in terms of acting. The two Hollywood stars have reveled in—and even shared—each other’s successes on screen through the years. On the golf course as of late, however, it’s a different story.
“My brothers and I would be swimming, and we’d see my dad make the turn, and it would be hot in the Texas summer,” Wilson, now 56, recalls about why he was reluctant to play golf growing up in Dallas. “It was kind of intimidating as a little kid; you’re seeing these guys, and they look kinda serious.”
Eventually, both of Wilson’s brothers—Luke is three years younger and Andrew, also an actor, is three years older—picked up the game, though Owen took longer to get into it. Aside from the odd putting match, Owen, best known for his hilarious parts in comedy classics like “Wedding Crashers,” “Zoolander” and “Meet the Parents,” seemed destined to never become a golfer until an unforeseen opportunity arose in his 50s.
That’s when Wilson was cast as Pryce Cahill, an over-the-hill former tour pro whose career was cut short, in the Apple TV+ comedy series “Stick.” Wilson’s character sees a chance to have another run at golf glory by taking a 17-year-old prodigy—played by Peter Dager—under his wing. “That’s a theme that people can relate to,” Wilson says of the show that premieres June 4, “trying to recapture something and seeing in this kid a vehicle for his dreams that were kind of derailed.”
To prepare for the role, Wilson got serious about golf. He began taking lessons in May 2023 at Urban Golf Performance in Los Angeles from Brenton Chan and O’Neill Cowan before seeking help from other teachers as well, including Makena Golf & Beach Club’s Zachary Fahmie. Wilson also pushed past that intimidation he felt as a kid and started playing a lot, mostly to get a better grasp of the game’s vernacular.
“Most of the time you just use your imagination, but not this,” the Oscar and Golden Globe nominee says of preparing for the role. “I really wanted to prepare because I was nervous. You’re not really going to see my swing. You’re going to see the kid, so it’s really about feeling comfortable on a golf course and also getting to know the dialogue.”
What may have begun as an exercise in method acting quickly grew into a new, real passion, which leads us back to this budding brotherly rivalry. A little over a year after getting into golf, Wilson prodded his little brother, unaware of all his preparation for “Stick,” into taking him out for a round at Bel-Air Country Club, where Owen stunned Luke.
“I could tell he didn’t want to take me to play at his course because he was thinking, This guy’s going to be stumbling around and doesn’t know how to play,” says Owen, who enjoyed getting pointers from PGA Tour stars like Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Max Homa and Keegan Bradley on set. “But I was just dialed in that day, better than I ever had [been] and just played great. He was like, ‘I can’t believe this. This is unbelievable.’ So that was very satisfying.”
In March, Owen, already down to a 14-handicap, made two birdies during a nine-hole rematch at Bel-Air to beat Luke for the first time. “I won some money,” Owen says with a chuckle. “I don’t know why, but he brings out my best game.”
As Wilson has learned, however, the road to golf improvement is filled with setbacks. About a month after that triumph, Wilson was shocked by how much he struggled during a round at New South Wales in Sydney.
“For actors, the example they always give of really preparing for a role is Robert De Niro in ‘Raging Bull,’ when he went to Italy to eat his way around there to put on weight. The only problem is that after all this time, it would’ve been like if De Niro came back, and he was skinner,” Wilson says about his setback.
Wilson has had plenty of playing partners during his two-year golf crash course, including one in Hawaii who dropped a “Did-you-hear-about-the-Costco?” joke on him after outdriving him. “They’re putting in a Costco between your drive and mine,” Wilson recalls the partner saying, revealing the punch line before asking if I’d heard that one. Wilson seems disappointed that I have and that it’s usually a Walmart, but I assure him it’s still a good one.
These are the kinds of things Wilson constantly wrote down in a notebook when he was on the course or in a golf simulator preparing for “Stick.” He also read a stack of golf books, including classics like Golf in the Kingdom and Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book. Wilson also watched documentaries on Golf Channel and attended some PGA Tour events to try to soak in even more golf.
Ben Jared
Ben Jared
Ben Jared
Not all of Wilson’s golf knowledge was picked up recently, however. He has kept an eye on the majors since he was a kid and gave a vivid recollection of Tom Watson’s close call at the 2009 Open Championship, which Wilson described as the most “crushed” he’s ever been watching a sporting event. He’s long appreciated golf’s drama, even if he only began appreciating playing the game recently.
Wilson often tees it up in Maui, where he frequently plays with basketball Hall of Famer Don Nelson, a friend of Wilson’s late father, Robert, who ran the PBS station in Dallas when Wilson was a kid. Wilson has witnessed Nelson make a hole-in-one, and the actor knocked in a 7-iron himself from 165 yards on Makena’s fourth hole. Wilson described that as a “real high,” but he’s quick to say it doesn’t count since it was his third attempt. Nelson has provided Wilson with plenty of golf lines to try out—mostly of the needling variety—but it was something else that the former NBA coach said recently that really stuck with his new golf pal.
“Nelly said, ‘Your dad would be really happy to see you getting into this game because he loved it,’ ” Wilson says. “It’s funny because I think about my dad playing. My dad’s gone, but this game that he was always telling me, ‘Oh, you’ve got to learn this game,’ I finally have. That’s a nice feeling to be connected with him in that way.”
Wilson loves feeling connected to the Earth as well, and you can practically hear him uttering his classic “Wowww” as he describes the beauty of playing golf in Hawaii as the sun sets. “It’s the nicest feeling being out there, and you just can’t stop,” Wilson says. “I don’t stop until you have to, until it gets dark.”
