Friday Night Lights, Karaoke, and Gary Player

Hello friends! Welcome to The KVV Mailbag at The Fried Egg, the place where I will attempt to answer your smartest, your dumbest, your funniest, and your weirdest questions, whether they are golf-related or only tangentially related. If you have a question you’d like to have answered in a future mailbag, please send it to kvv@thefriedegg.com.

From A Friend of the Program: KVV, my friends and I are in our 30s. Some guys are starting to join clubs while others are content to stick with the public golf scene. Most of us are low single-digit players. I didn’t grow up in a place with a lot of private clubs so I’ve always wondered what the best etiquette is to keep up with golfing buddies or acquaintances if you don’t belong to the same club. Can the public player invite out guys who are members at clubs to play at public places without the members feeling pressure to just take them out to the club? Does the member want to play at the public place and pay green fees if they’re already paying a lot for a membership? And vice versa, for the member, what’s the best balance between inviting them out to the club but also going out to the public spot if you enjoy their company? I think this most pertains to acquaintances who aren’t best buds but have played a few times together in the past.

FOTP: I think I’m a good person to answer this one because I deal with it in my own life. I am a member of a private club, and I have friends ther, but I also have a regular group of friends who mostly play golf at municipal tracks. I don’t want to give up my relationship with them, but I also don’t want them to feel pressure to pay the guest fees at my place, which are much higher than the local munis. I think the best way to handle it, as is often the case with male friendships, is with humor. If you play at munis, it’s totally fine to shoot your acquaintances a note like this: “Hey, how long has it been since you went slumming and teed it up at Clifton Park? I’ve got a couple guys who are a lot of fun but they keep kicking my butt. I need you as a partner. Plus it’s time to see if your sorry ass can still handle imperfect lies.”

You don’t have to worry about getting a reciprocal invite. If you’re good company, you’ll get one. and when you do, just offer to pay the guest fee. Some people pride themselves on taking friends out to their club and picking up the guest fee. Some people aren’t that flush, but they still want their friends to join them at their club.

Are there people at private clubs who don’t want to spend extra money on golf when they’re already paying monthly dues? Certainly. They probably don’t want to fork over $100 every weekend to play a public course. But once every couple months? Most people won’t balk at that. If I invite someone to my club but they insist on paying the guest fee, lunch and beers are on me (as long as we’re friends and I’m not just taking you out as a favor to someone). It’s an imperfect relationship, but don’t let people bully you one way or another. Reasonable people won’t go to either extreme. And every member of a private club ought to play public tracks from time to time just to keep them from being a total snob.

From Golf Poems: Please compare pro golfers to Friday Night Lights characters.

GP: I feel like these kinds of questions have become a little to cute. Barely a week goes by that I don’t get someone asking me to break down which golfer is represented by a character on The Wire. However, I’m in the middle of re-watching FNL with my middle daughter, and I feel that show doesn’t get the kind of love## Mailbag: Karaoke, Carolina Golf, and the Enduring Legacy of Friday Night Lights

From Anonymous: What ever happened to Tim Riggins?

Tim riggins, the heartthrob of Dillon, Texas, ultimately found peace and a sense of purpose. After a tumultuous journey marked by football glory, personal struggles, and a complicated love life, he returned to Dillon, humbled and ultimately matured. Destined to walk arm and arm with Matt Saracen forever.

Grandma Saracen/Gary Player: Wiley veteran who is still getting it done. Some selective memory issues and hot takes, but still an enjoyable part of the storyline, even as they approach 90. Maybe don’t ask them about how they felt about segregation in the 1950s.

From Brad: What are the top five karaoke songs and who’s singing them?

I assume Don Rea inspired this question, and I am happy to tackle it. The No. 1 rule about karaoke, from my personal perspective, is that you should pick a song where you know the words by heart. There is nothing that kills the vibe of a karaoke performance quicker than someone nervously looking at the lyrics on the monitor because they can’t remember them. My No. 2 rule is don’t be a cliche. Don’t pick “My Way” by Frank Sinatra or “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey or “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks (although that one is a banger). Go deeper. As far as who is singing them, I suppose I could pick professional golfers here but I think that gets dangerously close to Andy and Brendan’s bit about walk-up songs, so I’m going to just pick songs I think are worldwide winners.

1. Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver: The key to a grate karaoke song is getting the bar to sing along with you during the chorus. This is one of the great sing-along songs in history. Even people in Europe know the words, despite having no concept of West Virginia. The idea of returning home is universal, so the destination doesn’t matter.
2. Nuthin But A G Thang, Dr.Dre and Snoop: This one is great for partner karaoke, especially if you and your partner are children of the 90s.We only had a snippet of Don Rea singing Loose Yourself so we can’t say this definitively, but the problem with a rap song like Lose Yourself is that it goes on forever and gets repetitive. G Thang is barely four minutes long, and the back-and-forth between Dre and Snoop on the final verse will crush with the right crowd.
3. Cocaine Blues by Johnny Cash: If you don’t need the room to do a sing-along, but you are fully committed to putting on an electric performance, this is the song for you. You can basically copy cash’s energy from the Live At Folsom Prison album, where he barked out “This one’s for your warden!” right before delving into a tale of murder, escape, capture, trial, conviction, and regret.
4. Stacy’s Mom by Fountains of Wayne: Has all the hallmarks of a great karaoke song and performance. humor. Lyrics are easy to remember. Crowd will sing along at the chorus.
5. Party In The U.S.A by Miley Cyrus: Again, a key to a good karaoke experience is making the crowd match your energy. If you can get a drunk crowd to nod and bob their heads along to the chorus, you will crush.

From Mashman: What is your favorite non-Pinehurst course located in that area?  And why?

I went to the Pinehurst area in September and played Mid Pines, Southern Pines, Pine Needles, and Tobacco Road with a group of good friends, and while I liked all the courses, I think Mid Pines is by far and away my favorite. it’s such a pleasant walk and the greens are a fun challenge, but they aren’t so severe that you feel furious when the ball trickles away. I made one of the best eagles in my life on the sixth hole on the final day (driver, 5 iron, 10 footer) that cemented its status as my favorite.

Can’t Decide: Rory’s Masters or the Ryder Cup?

I can’t decide where I stand on the correct answer. Looking back on 2025, arguably the two biggest stories in golf were Rory’s Masters win and Europe winning a Ryder Cup on the road, but it could’ve been so different. Rory led by five with eight holes to play and nearly coughed it up,while the U.S. nearly staged a record-breaking comeback at Bethpage. What I can’t decide is, say both events had gone the other way, which would’ve been the most incredible, or perhaps the more historically impactful? For Rory it would’ve carried so much personal torment, but the U.S. comeback may have scarred a continent for decades. Care to weigh in?

I think the 2025 Masters will probably go down as one of the most memorable Masters in the history of the tournament,and that would have still been true if Justin Rose had made his putt in the playoff and Rory had missed. That Masters will be up there with 1986 and 1997 and 2004 and 2019 in terms of all-timers. If Rory loses, I think I feel cozy saying that he never wins the tournament. The psychological baggage would simply be too great. and I think he might agree. He lived and died and was born again multiple times in one round. And selfishly,I believe that decades from now,people will still go back and listen to the podcast that Neil Schuster and I did documenting the tournament with a pair of handheld recording devices. If that one had gone the other way, I think it might have effectively ended Rory’s career in majors. It would have been looked at as the biggest What If in tournament history, bigger than Greg Norman in any of his losses, bigger than Tom Weiskopf, bigger than david Duval or Els.

The Ryder Cup, I concede, would have put a pin in Europe’s (deserved) recent smugness when it comes to the event, and redeemed my guy Keegan Bradley a bit. but home teams are supposed to win. I feel like it wouldn’t have carried quite as much sting, especially when you consider the united States (2012) and Europe (1999) have each blown big leads on Sunday. I also can’t help but wonder if a comeback would have been seen as a reward for all the terrible crowd behavior on Saturday. I’m glad, ultimately, both went the way they did, even while admitting I’d love to see the United States win in Ireland in 2027.

From Rajesh Sharma: If Luke Donald turns down the Ryder cup captaincy for Europe, is there a natural next captain out there? I’m assuming that Rose thinks it’s too soon and the LIV guys remain unselectable as captains?

It’s starting to seem like Francesco Molinari is the top candidate to get the job, especially in light of Rose signaling to James Corrigan of the Telegraph that he wants to try and make the team in Ireland instead of grabbing the reins. Europe has such a great system going that I’m not sure it matters who the lead bloke is as long as they use Eduardo Molinari to set up the course and decide the pairings. I also wouldn’t rule out Donald doing one more. It might