As the Oscar's approach this evening, it's hard not to think of our favorite golf movies throughout the years. Unfortunately, none of them has ever won an Oscar, but that's not a golf-related issue; only three sports movies have ever won the Academy Award for Best Picture--Rocky (1976), Chariots of Fire (1981), and Million Dollar Baby (2004). And when you consider classics like Raging Bull, Field of Dreams, The Natural and Hoosiers came up empty, how do we expect such cinematic gold as Seven Days in Utopia to fare much better?
But that doesn't stop the golf enthusiast in all of us from discussing our favorite golf movies. 99.9% of all lists I've uncovered name Caddyshack as their top golf-related film of all time (apparently Bleacher Report felt the need to be different and ranked it as number three). Believe it or not, Sports In Movies, using an algorithm of user reviews and media sources, has Seven Days in third ahead of both Tin Cup and Happy Gilmore--both regular top-five's for most. An often overlooked classic regularly mentioned is the 1952 comedy Pat and Mike, which was filmed at the Riviera Country Club and featured Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy along with a host of professional female golfers, including Babe Zaharias. I Guess the most reliable source would be Amazon, which uses both user rankings and purchase numbers to determine it's list.
But no matter which way you cut it, Caddyshack is far and away the best golf movie of all time, at least in the eyes of nearly all of humanity (sorry Bleacher Report). How this did not receive an Oscar is beyond us.
-- Derek Evers
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