A washed-up golf pro regains his mojo by mentoring a talented young phenom in new sports comedy Stick
A 50-something year old man, who once was on top of the world, now finds himself at a loss in his life. Variations of this show have existed before — many of them starring Jon Hamm — but when A Good Day to Die Hard screenwriter Jason Keller set out to tell his version of a middle-aged man finding redemption and purpose in life, he knew exactly what he didn’t want. “I was not interested in writing a bleak story,” he says. “I want this show to be aspirational. I want this show to feel positive. That’s not to say that you can’t go to deeply wounded or vulnerable places, but you don’t have to stay there and you can move through those places, learn from those losses and start anew.”
In the heartfelt Ted Lasso-esque sports comedy Stick, Owen Wilson stars as Pryce Cahill, a competitive golfer whose professional and personal life took a sudden turn, and he never found his way back. But when Pryce encounters rebellious teenager Santiago Wheeler (Peter Dager) on the golf range, something in him changes. “He sees so much of himself in this young kid,” says Keller. “He certainly sees much of the talent that he had when he was a younger man, in this young man. Pryce’s intuition tells him that this kid is carrying a burden that he shouldn’t carry alone. There are all these mirrored things that I think Pryce is drawn to.”
Santiago, or Santi, the young sports prodigy who lives with his single mother Elena (Mariana Treviño), at first has zero interest in hitching his wagon to Pryce’s. While their relationship starts from a place of mistrust, the audience will be onboard from the beginning, much thanks to Wilson’s commitment to the character. “In some weird way, as untethered as he seems, he’s really the grounding force because he represents passion, adventure, willingness to take risks,” says comedian Marc Maron, who plays Pryce’s curmudgeonly best friend and longtime caddy, Mitts. “He’s surrounded by all these people that are locked into their ways, and he is the sublime leader into these other characters freeing themselves.”
Wilson’s castmate Treviño praises the funnyman’s emotional depth as the character at the centre of the show. “It was an absolute pleasure to watch him do this with such simplicity and authenticity of heart,” she says. “It’s a perfect character for him and we were all under his spell.” In relative newcomer Dager, Wilson found the perfect onscreen partner to elevate both his dramatic and comedic performance. “I think we’d seen 600 or 700 actors and hadn’t found the guy that we felt was the right fit,” says Keller. “From his self-tape, I knew Peter was the guy. He was so vulnerable. And when he read in person for the role, he just constantly showed me that he was willing to open himself up to this character and really challenged all of us. That was the beautiful thing about Peter.”
Keller chose golf as a metaphor for life because of its ability to feel both solitary and like a version of the world at large. “When you’re out on the golf course, you feel very alone and it really is all about how you’re emotionally feeling about yourself,” he says. “And I think we can often feel very alone and very cut off from the world and people around us. So there’s a synergy there, between what a golfer goes through on a golf course and what some of us go through in our lives.”
There are also other similarities to life, if you ask Maron. “For me, life is a frustrating, relentless series of obstacles that either you choose to get through or you just go back to the clubhouse,” says the comedian, who admits he is not a golfer. “It seems like a very aggravating undertaking to me, but I appreciate it,” says Maron. “You have to be at least kind of good to get any joy out of it, and I don’t know if I have the patience to overcome the frustration of getting good at golf.”
For Treviño, the world of golf also highlighted the importance of human will. “The game is about learning how to conquer yourself in a sense,” she says. “The ball is like a symbol of a concentrated human intention. How, in all this vastness that seems so indomitable, are you going to pierce through it and get to a very specific point? We do that with our soul, with our consciousness, constantly, when we throw out our intentions. And sometimes it travels farther than what we think.” Indeed, it is hope, ambition and a belief that we’re better together that Keller hopes viewers walk away with after watching Stick. “These are certainly dark times and maybe this is a personal reaction to that,” he says. “I certainly need something like this. I’m tired of what seems pretty grim, out there. So, I hope that people do tune into this show to maybe take a break from it.”
Stick, streaming Wednesday, June 25, on Apple TV+