Tee 2 Green with Barry Sharpe - December 18, 2011

Have you seen any good golf movies lately?

Do you have a favorite?

The first golf flick that caught our attention was the 1951 feature 'Follow the Sun: The Ben Hogan Story' starring Genn Ford and Anne Baxter. It was in black and white, on a tiny TV screen, in the late 1950's and, if memory serves correctly, there was very little golf played. It dealt mostly with Hogan's head-on collision with a bus and his amazing recovery and return to play and win again.

Another fun film to watch, also biographical, was the 1975 story about Mildred Ella 'Babe' Didriksen, the greatest female athlete of all-time, who married wrestler George Zaharias. It was simply called 'Babe', starring actress Susan Clark with football great Alex Karras portraying her husband in the movie.

Although other golf movies may have been produced that we are not aware of, it wasn't until Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight collaborated in the 1980 blockbuster, Caddyshack, that golf was a big hit on the silver screen.

Since then we've seen about 14 films released featuring golf, like the Greatest Game Ever Played (2005), Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) and Tin Cup, the 1996 goof-off with Kevin Costner, Don Johnson and Cheech Marin.

The newest golfing epic to come from tinsel town has just been released this year. It's called Seven Days in Utopia, and is based on David L. Cook's best-selling book Golf's Scared Journey: Seven Days at the links of Utopia, the story of a talented young pro attempting to make it to the big show when instead he encounters disaster. Stranded in Utopia, Texas he happens to meet an eccentric rancher, Robert Duval, with profound ways of looking at life

Here's a preview.

With two Academy Award winners in the cast, Duval and Melissa Leo, Seven Days in Utopia provides a powerful new outlook on life, on building character and viewing golf movies.

Rated: G - - 1 hour 40 minutes

Golf's Top Rated Movies

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Can you do this?

BC Golf News does not advise attempting all shots seen here.

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Aside from being one of the most generous promoters of the game of golf during his lifetime, Bob Hope (1903-2003) was, without question, one of the world's most beloved entertainers.

For more than half of his life Hope provided encouragement and joy for American troops around the world at Christmas time. For the first time in years Canadian and U.S. soldiers are finally at home. It would seem appropriate this Christmas to look back at some of the peace and joy he shared with those who could not be at home. At the same look at how often he was seen on stage carrying his favorite prop, a golf club.

To Bob Hope, thanks for the memories.