Jimmy Fallon and DJ Khaled will compete together in the Cardigan Classic on NBC.
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The spiritual home of New York is not a church, a mosque, a synagogue or a temple. It is not a place of worship – at least not the biblical kind.
It’s a bar, cosy, noisy and dated, with creaky wooden floors and scratched pool tables. A 29th Street side hole with friendly bartenders, well-worn wooden chairs and old-fashioned floor-to-shoulder urinals. A place where the music is usually a few decibels too loud, the bar tab is usually a few dollars too light, and the constant noise of the city melts into a dull hum. This is not any grass – it is Paddy Reilly’swhere the music is live and the cocktails are good and the Guinness is cold, seven nights a week.
Paddy Reilly’s is one of a dwindling number of Old New York establishments, so it probably became a regular hangout for much of the city’s famous class. Show up on a Thursday night and you can catch Hozier sneaking in a live set, the crowd of a few dozen quickly growing to a hundred or more, a line forming down 2nd Avenue. Stop by on a Tuesday afternoon and you can see Harry Kanethe British soccer star, surrounded by teammates and a steady stream of pints. But if you get really with luck, you might find that the famous visitors aren’t there alone. Instead, they’re joined by New York’s celebrity donation, the simultaneous embodiment of Manhattan’s fascination with the past and obsession with the future: Jimmy Fallon.
Paddy Reilly’s is 10 miles as the crow flies from the nearest golf course (and over an hour’s drive if the traffic is bad), and Fallon is clearly a “persistently bad” golfer, so how did these end up two characters the subjects of a story on the pages of GOLF.com?
Well, because even if Paddy Reilly’s doesn’t know it yet, the pub is going to throw a watch party.
On September 13, Fallon will join DJ Khaled for the celebrity golfer’s latest televised excursion, Cardigan Classic, a four-hole match that will be televised on NBC at Show Tonightit’s a regular slot.
“I think it’s opening up golf to a wider audience,” Fallon told GOLF.com on Thursday, hours before announcing the match to the world at Show Tonight. “This is faster, it’s funnier. You know, it’s me. It’s just two people you wouldn’t think to see playing each other.”
Fallon says the idea for the match came on a whim. He had seen the success of TBS match series, and was one of many that witnessed Khaled’s meteoric (and highly publicized) golf obsession. Through his production company, he reached out to Khaled to see if he might be interested in a smaller-stakes, entertainment-focused special. Khaled quickly agreed, and NBC agreed to lend its production crews on the condition that Fallon and Khaled play in the annual American Century Championship, where the network crews were already set for the weekend.
By the time Fallon and Khaled hit the course Sunday afternoon, 10,000 people were lining the 17th and 18th holes, which Fallon and Khaled will play twice as part of the NBC deal.
“You feel that pressure that a professional golfer feels when they’re about to tee off,” Fallon said, gleefully recounting the sheer terror of being a double-bogey golfer with a gallery. “Everybody goes quiet and you say, ‘Oh my god, what am I doing? I am one the comedian.‘”
Indeed, the logic was sounder than it seemed. The explosion of golf during the pandemic years has led to a subsequent flowering of the sport in popular culture, leading to the development of new television shows, a second Happy Gilmore movieand the explosion of made-for-TV specials that fall somewhere between golf as a competitive sport and golf as a recreational sport.
of Cardigan Classic — named for the red jersey awarded to the winner of the event “in lieu of a green jacket” — represents only the latest development in these directions, this one clearly looks more FUN that golf compared to anything we have seen before.
“Dude, this is old school. This is it The wide world of Sports“, said Fallon. “It’s funny, it’s fun. There are only four holes. It’s late.”
In other words, it’s the kind of telecast that calls for a special viewing experience, and what better place to go than Fallon’s favorite watering hole?
“I mean, Friday night. If I had a sports bar – if I did Paddy Reilly’s “That’s what I would do,” Fallon says. “I’m going to have a special Friday, September 13th. If you wear a jersey to the sports bar, you get a free glass or free beer or some drink special.”
Fallon laughs. Is that a hint, I wonder?
“Bring your friends,” he says. “I think they’re going to enjoy it.”
