Is Music City a Golf City? | Local Rules: Nashville | The Golfer’s Journal

Brunch hats, cowboy boots, and neon honky tonks on Broadway. If this is what comes to mind when you think of Nashville, TN, then you only know a fraction of Music City’s story. In the first installment of Local Rules, TGJ Films embeds alongside three locals to explore how hot chicken restaurants, literature classes, and guitar licks combine with thriving public golf and a handful of world-class routings to create a one-of-a-kind golf scene.

Featuring:

@DrewHolcombMusic – Singer/songwriter
Nick Bishop Jr. – Founder, Hattie B’s Hot Chicken
Robbie Matz – Professor, Belmont University

This film was made in partnership with @titleist

The Golfer’s Journal is made possible by reader support. If you enjoyed this film, please consider becoming a member here: https://glfrsj.nl/MembershipsYT

If you want to find a musician the day of a show there’s a 50% chance he’s playing golf that day if he’s a country musician it’s like an 80% Chance some people want a house on the top of the hill some people people want people pay all the bills some people want to move on some people want to go back in TI some people buy everything they want other [Applause] people I grew up in Memphis Tennessee

200 200 Mi west of Nashville on the Mississippi River my dad always loved music my mom loved music my mom played piano our sort of wakeup music in the morning for school was her playing hyms on the piano right before my senior gr of high school I lost a

Brother and music was really the thing that helped me kind of navigate that grief and that tragedy I went and studied abroad in Scotland and I took my guitar cuz it was like my right arm you know and I started trying my hand at writing songs when I got home from Scotland I

Started playing the songs for friends and asking like what do you guys think it wasn’t you’re great it was you’re not bad you should maybe give this a go and I traded my ex Tera for a bow station wagon cuz I knew I was about to put some serious miles on It As a memphian we are sort of raised to distrust Nashville Elvis left Memphis to move to Nashville to record and started making his records here same thing happened with Johnny Cash I think Memphis has a chip on its shoulder about losing its most talented people to this city

Because this city is the one that has the Commerce you know whereas Memphis would argue that it has the soul and so we were sort of raised that Nashville is a soulless corporate commercial Music Space where talented people go to sell themselves to the devil what I’ve found is that the people

In Nashville are amazing and the talent here is incredible I do think there still is a truth that people come to Nashville to see what the city can offer them not to see what they can offer the city and so I think that’s something that really

Drives a lot of the culture here is it’s a culture of ambition I always tell young artists that if you’re super talented but you don’t know how to work hard you have no chance of making it if you work really really hard but you have no Talent you

Also have no chance of making it if you’re really talented and you work really hard there’s a slight chance you might make it that’s sort of the the 30,000 foot view the micro view is that it’s a great city of neighbors that love each other and take care of each other

It’s a great place to build a band it’s a great place to build a crew it’s a great place to raise a family she was a good companion eyes like the grand can she was an American Beauty I started getting invited to play all these Great Courses on the road there’s this

Reciprocation thing that happens it’s like hey I’ll take you to play cow club or La Country Club if you’ll bring me backstage and I’m like sure that’s easy is it too braggy or is it just my life on the road one of the struggles of golf culture now in Nashville is that there’s

Way more demand than there is Supply golf is thriving in town but there’s just a supply problem that’s good for the game bad for the golfers in Nashville The Golf Club of Tennessee is sort of the the gold standard for a great Golf Course a great

Walking golf course it’s a gift to that I can give people you know like hey do you want to go play the golf club like yes absolutely the game has given me more than I could ever even imagine giving it back honestly wish I was in the bunker huh all

Right what do you got for putter so well the head cover is my favorite part of this this also matches my hat uhhuh so my brother and I he’s 5 years younger than me he also is a golf obsessive we uh we have another brother that was

Between us that passed away when we were kids he was a kid with special needs had spinabifida um passed away very unexpectedly his name was Jay Hatchet hul so this is the hatchet and every year we have a 20 v20 Ridder cup day at sweeten Cove to honor him and his

Memory uh and the winter takes home the golden Hatchet and we raise money for the first tea here in town and uh it was 2 weeks ago I took the golden Hatchet away from him brought it back to Nashville so I’m feeling pretty good about things right

Now I don’t have a sort of casual me and the boys drinking beer listening to music doging our wives relationship to the game just outside all right bogey it is I don’t I don’t play golf to escape the tribulations of uh of home or work or life I play golf

To digest and reflect upon those things with people that I trust now it’s not always that meta you know sometimes I really just want to make a freaking birdie you know my relationship with the game started with I found golf to be a respit from Life a respit from social

Media rest it from the physical wear and tear of touring yeah pen High just off the green on the left let’s go make a memory the pawn in Cincinnati When I wrote this song called fly I had this like Lick in my head Forever and I would just sit and play it all the time or like sound check so one time I’m sitting here and I had this like word map out some and I had the word fly I was kind of like fly I’m going to fly oh

Two things that I like put them together and all of a sudden like I’ve got this song you know the beginning of this song so that’s one of those like aha moments and then the next place you want to have those aha moments is when then you get

In the studio and you’re playing it and all of a sudden the the the the drummer comes up with his part and the other guitar player is like doing the Harmony Part on the guitar and all of a sudden you’re kind of like this is this is Magic this didn’t

Exist 10 minutes ago and now it does and then you then engineer pushes record and you have a record and now that record goes out into the world and people can hear that song from anywhere in the world and that’s magic and then you get on stage this is

The third Act of the play you start that riff and and the the people in the crowd that love that song go oo at the very beginning of the song then it gets quiet and you can hear them singing along quietly and hearing people sing hearing

People sing your music back to you is the last Act of magic that happens with music I am Fair well now I am strong I am goodbye I’m a long way from home I am an orchard at the start of spring I I am a mocking bird I love to

Sing and I’m on a fly I’m going to Fly I’m going to Fly it’s chicken on a plate but it’s it’s something bigger to us my family has always been in the restaurant business my grandfather started working for morison’s cafeteras back in like 1947 he moved his way to floor manager and then assistant manager and then ended up finishing as chairman of the

Board of the company in 1995 I grew up doing homework in the booth at restaurants and wiping tables down and I think that was probably the first time I realized what a fun way to like bring joy to somebody on like a very simple basic level you know we’ve all got to

Eat my dad opened up a meet and three in Franklin called Bishop’s meet and three you know we were thinking about ways to add to the menu and do different stuff and it was like we grew up eating hot chicken here growing up in Nashville and it was always a thing that like

Nashvillians knew about but it seemed like the rest of the world didn’t we put it on the menu at Bishop’s and it turned into like 30% of our protein sales the first month and then yeah in 2012 opened up our first haty bees in Midtown near

Vanderbilt and um it’s been a a wild decade since hot chicken has been around I believe since the 30s in Nashville all of our chicken comes in fresh every day we do a marinade that’s about 48 to 72 hours but it’s got this like dark Rich kind of crimson red to it

Especially the hotter it gets Cayenne paprika you can do onion powder garlic powder um any kind of savory in there we use a little brown sugar which gives it a little backend sweetness that like I said kind of keeps you coming back for more and then open the second one in West

Nashville 2 years later and I think really at that point was where we were like okay like this is popular here as we go out into the world especially as we leave Nashville just try to do the best job representing our hometown and hot chicken and being good stewards of

It you know like I’m so grateful that while we were growing this company I also fell in love with Golf It’s given me something to kind of run parallel to the growth of this thing is like me falling in love with something that um I find a ton of Beauty in but also a lot of Peace in it’s a great way to sort of clear my head or to go out

And talk about bigger picture sort of 30,000 ft issues or or where we want to take this company or how you know what we want it to be I end up playing with guys I work with so we use it as a way to like talk

Stuff out you know like you get in a cart with somebody for 4 hours and you guys have some big decisions to make like depending on how the golf goes I guess you know you can really get into it um so it’s it’s it’s a big it’s a big

Part of I would say work for for me and our group of of folks golf sort of forces you to make thoughtful choices and so or you don’t have to but if you want to score and so I think sort of with that mindset we can get out here and

Like get a nice walk in get some you know um it opens up the conversation really well there are the golf clubs and the venerable Legends club and some really incredible private clubs here but there’s also really great public courses I think there are a lot of people very generous of spirit around

Nashville that have the means to support these things and realize how important public golf is as an entrance into the game we’ve really used all the last couple years to to support stuff like first tea and the sned tour and ways to bring people into the game and to open

Up access to the game I think it’s super important and just the simple joy that it provides I’ve been around Nashville for 31 years and so this is home it’s been interesting to see sort of the city change and become this National Place that people come in droves to visit

There’s so much left to Nashville that doesn’t make it downtown I just encourage everybody to like try to make their way out of sort of the Broadway Corridor and and see the other things that make Nashville really Special your love is like a holiday we didn’t do it to introduce it to the rest of the world we did it just cuz we wanted to pay respects to Hot Chicken and what and me to Nashville chicken is sort of our vehicle it sounds kind of cheesy but like we’re

All about love and community and supporting each other and supporting the people around us we take a lot of pride in that and and I think there’s something very powerful about a level of service to others that like are people take really seriously and um I’m so

Grateful for that because at the end of the day people just want to be appreciated and and fed well and enjoy their Experience North to the lights and watch the snowfall East to the city we can see it all South to the oan west to the mountains it doesn’t matter where we go as long as we’re together what we don’t know won’t stop us now I’ll take you you anywhere but here

Bont University were just south of downtown Nashville pretty much connected to Music Row every student when they come to Belmont regardless of your major have to take bellore classes we look at how is knowledge constructed we read a common Anthology or text things ranging from PL allegory the cave to Walt Whitman poems

To Octavia Butler and you know science fiction and then on top of that each instructor is told to create the class however they want to add on to that General theme of ways of knowing and so what I’ve done for the last three years is titled the class golf life lessons

And Society we’ll read stories that deal with grief that deal with socioeconomic status that look at what does golf look like in Korea versus in Scotland I think students come in when they look at the class title and will’ll be like well I thought we were going to talk about the

PGA Tour or big equipment companies and all that and that’s the furthest from the truth we are going to read the four acts of Ben Garner which is uh one of his uh many pieces actually in the golfer journal they’re both awesome stories and that’s like why we read the

The golfer journal and incorporate it into the golf life lessons and Society theme we’ve switched from the Anthology which taught us a lot of stuff along the way but now we’re switching to kind of our everyday fellow golfer golf is a good time for reflection today so much going on screen

Time news everything like it’s fast it’s fast-paced golf can be a place where you tune that out and figure out what’s meaningful for you on the golf course it teaches you a lot about friendship camaraderie honesty um but I think golf has so many different unique elements that can touch

People’s lives in different ways this is the Vinnie link set so you need a club that can go about 150 155 so I’ll bring in eight iron and then most shots are going to be kind of in the 75 to 110 range so I’ll bring a sand

Wedge and then might get a couple that are like 120 125 so some sort of pitching wedge and then butter yeah that’s all you need I’m just happy to be outside and walking just to look at the scenery you know maybe hit a good shot or two but I

Think it’s just like a simple form of recreation at that point and to be able to slow down a little bit Vinnie links in particular is like a course where I can sit on a bench and I’m not going to piss off the people behind me I can let

Some people play through I can take my time out there have a conversation with the people that I’m with and not feel like someone’s going to hit up on me or anything and so I think that place is unique in that Sense The Tennessee Golf Association back in the day were cleaning out some old cabinets getting ready for the transition to where they’re located now someone stumbled upon some architectural sketches of a golf course to be built and I think someone finally realized like know these are Donald Ross drawings

Like this is kind of a historic Relic with that information essentially the best way to honor it was with Vinnie Lynx which is the last set of of original Donald Ross Greens one thing that I enjoy most is how interwoven the courses are into Nashville in general mcab over in silven park three nine holes a very great walking path that touches up against the golf course and so on any nice day there’s going to be people with strollers there’s going to be people

With dogs you know and you’re on the cart path on the bottom side of the course 15 ft to your left there’s dogs playing in the creek and then 15 ft to your right there’s people teeing off but those people that are teeing off aren’t

Going to tell you to be quiet right it’s a part of the community and the same goes for Vinnie links and the first signs dog park to the right Vinnie links to the left and I think that is so emblematic of what is awesome about some

Of these public courses just a part of what is going on right it’s not secluded it’s not only for a certain type of people and I don’t think there’s any more welcoming course when you drive up is like yeah I think I could be someone that plays Here when you look at the outside perception of Nashville what Clicks in most people’s heads is like Broadway and the woo girls on the tractors and The Honky Tonks but I think that is such a distorted view of what Nashville really is what I love about Nashville overall

Is how collaborative and supportive the general Community is if there is something that happens it seems like a city that rallies around each other and is supportive and very helpful golf has looked very different for me and how it’s brought me joy over the years I’m in this cool space now

Where you know still play golf recreationally I teach at class as a golf theme I do research on golf I watch golf like you know I probably need to diversify my interest in Hobbies but I just love it I’m happy that I have something that I’m so passionate about

Or that I can find joy in different forms of it that it doesn’t need to be a oh I really need to be playing like a top whatever course or I need to go to this place to have a good time like I can I can have a good time anywhere in

Golf you all are going to be anyway that people are more involved with golf then that’d be awesome for me you know if someone came back 10 years from now and it’s like hey you wouldn’t believe where I’m at in golf right now and it was because of your class I think

That’s a dream scenario who knows if that’s a possibility it’s just a game but the friendships that I have that I’m able to build context and camaraderie and story and laughter and all those things around golf is really unique and I know that there are other

Mediums for that doesn’t have to be golf but for me that’s what it is and that’s that’s my life I can only appreciate my own life I am fairly well now I am strong I am goodbye I’m a long way from home I am an orchard at the start of

Spring I am a mocking bird I love to sing and I’m going to Fly I’m going to Fly I am moving I am Flesh and Bones I am am a gunshot with a microphone I’m a boy at the window as the summer sunsets an old man in Winter nothing more nothing less and I’m going to fly I’m going to Fly I’m going to fly I’m going to fly I’m going to Fly I’m going to Fly I am an old road walking on my feet I am laughing e the weeping willow tree I’m a dog barking a honey beting I Ain’t No Angel but I’ve got my wings and I’m going to fly I’m going to fly I’m going to Fly