This week’s episode of Subpar was graced by some country music royalty: Brad Tursi and Trevor Rosen, two members of Old Dominion — the country band behind nine No. 1 singles — who joined hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz to promote Old Dominion’s new album, Barbara, which dropped on Friday. The duo was game to talk some golf too.
Tursi and Rosen are avid players, and make golf a part of their routine when they’re on tour. How does that work? Tursi explained.
“In the beginning, I would search the venue on the, you know, Google Maps or whatever, and then I would zoom out and see where all the courses were around,” he said. “You’d see the tracks and just click on the nicest one and we would call up and be like, ‘Hey, we want to play.”
“I’m the cold caller,” Rosen interjected with a laugh.
“I have a harder time dropping our name than than Trevor,” Tursi said.
Rosen said he had a high rate of success getting a tee time over the phone. But when he encounters a harder time with private clubs, he also employs a winning strategy.
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“You can kinda tell how it’s gonna go depending on how you gauge the age of the person that picks up the phone,” Rosen said. “If it’s like, an old man or something, I’m like, OK, he’s not gonna know who we are. But a lot of times, I just say, hey, we’re with a band called Old Dominion, we’re in town, and we just like to try to get out on a nice course if there’s any way we can get out there.
“Probably 90 percent of the time they’re like, ‘oh yeah, sure, what time do you want to get out?’ And then sometimes I get, ‘well, this is a private course, are you a member?’ And I said no. And when I get shot down, it’s actually hilarious because multiple times I’ll say, well, can I just leave my name and number and then if anybody wants to come to the show tonight, we can come golf and give you tickets? And, ‘well, OK, I’ll do that. OK, what’s your name?’ And I say, Old Dominion. So he says ‘Old Dominion,’ he says it out loud in the clubhouse, and then he writes the number down and I hang up.
“And we’ll sit there on the bus and then it’ll be like two minutes later I’ll see [imitates a cell phone buzz]. ‘Hey, there’s some people down here that really like you guys, so yeah, sure, come on out.’”
Tursi and Rosen have played a number of bucket-list courses over the years, including Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, Cypress Point and Pronghorn. For more from Tursi and Rosen — including what tour life is like and some fun stories about Jim Nantz, John Daly and Tim McGraw, check out the full episode of Subpar below.
