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Alice Cooper will be part of Rocco Mediate on a brand new SiriusXM present known as “Rolling The Rock.”
Getty Photographs
Welcome again to a different prolonged version of the Hot Mic Newsletter, GOLF’s weekly ship protecting all issues golf media from me, James Colgan. This week, we’re discussing SiriusXM’s latest golf voice, rock legend Alice Cooper. As at all times, for those who’d wish to be the primary to obtain unique insights like these immediately from me, click on the link here to subscribe to our free publication ship.
Alice Cooper begins a narrative he’s instructed a thousand occasions. It’s the story of how the Godfather of Shock Rock fell in love with golf.
“All of my different addictions have been killing me,” he says dryly. “I come from the 27 membership. All these guys have been my buddies — Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, all these guys. All of them died at 27. So 41 years in the past” — the yr Cooper, now 76, turned 35 — “I made a decision to get sober.”
Cooper, whose actual title is Vincent Furnier, cleaned up his act and went on a yearlong sabbatical from music. He stopped recording new work and touring, and settled in again dwelling in Arizona for a yr of quietude — a literal “Faculty’s Out.” He’d been a baseball participant as a child, and a very good contact hitter. With its stationary ball and stationary targets, golf felt like a superb passion to strive. He picked up a membership and tried enjoying. Inside a couple of minutes, he was hooked.
“The factor is, in case you have an addictive character — and I nonetheless do — you by no means lose your dependancy,” he says. “You simply get hooked on new issues.”
Cooper performed 36 holes a day for the remainder of the yr, using the tutelage of two completely different PGA professionals — one throughout his morning rounds, the opposite for the evenings — to hammer within the finer factors of the swing. He’d by no means performed golf when his sabbatical began; by the top of the yr, he was a nine-handicap.
In the present day, the story of the rocker-turned-looper has one other flip. Beginning at 6 p.m. ET on July 2, Alice Cooper will probably be SiriusXM’s latest golf voice, co-hosting the brand new present “Rolling The Rock” alongside pal and longtime professional Rocco Mediate. As Cooper ready to launch the brand new present, which can air month-to-month on SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio, he caught up with the Sizzling Mic earlier than a tour date in Barcelona to debate all issues golf and rock.
THE BIG MOVE
Even with a schedule that also consists of Tour dates all around the world, Cooper says he performs golf six occasions per week, together with a nine-hole loop in Barcelona on the morning of our chat. He says consistency is the one approach to make sure you’re recurrently scoring within the 70s, as he nonetheless does. Nevertheless it additionally helps while you’ve acquired his degree of coaching.
“I met [company founder] Ely Callaway at a celebration,” Cooper stated. “He put me on employees and the primary 10 commercials we shot have been alongside Johnny Miller and David Leadbetter. It was about an hour of labor and about 9 hours of sitting round on a golf vary. Johnny took me underneath his wing and actually reshaped my swing.”
“I’m not a long-drive man,” he stated. “However I hit 245 straight down the center each time, and that’s due to Johnny Miller.“
TOUR GUIDE
A lifetime on the highway has its perks for those who’re a golf vacationer, as Cooper is. He travels together with his golf equipment all over the place, and his profession has introduced him, effectively, all over the place over the previous couple of a long time. The best of these locations as a golfer?
“Wow. Nicely, we did play some odd locations. We performed in Moscow. Oh, and who knew? There have been traditional, classic golf courses in Moscow,” he stated with fun. “Wow. I imply, we have been there in the course of the Chilly Struggle, and apparently no one was imagined to be enjoying golf as a result of all people was communist. And there have been some actually good golf programs in Moscow that no one ever talked about.”
ROCCO!
Cooper and Mediate met for the primary time when the latter invited the previous to be his associate on the annual Pebble Seashore Professional-Am. They performed collectively for a number of years, Cooper says, and developed a fast friendship over their shared love of music.
“I meet only a few skilled sports activities guys that aren’t pissed off rock musicians,” Cooper stated with the snort. “They click on collectively very effectively, you already know, the focus of understanding learn how to do a track and the focus of understanding learn how to make a par. If you happen to’ve been round like me for 60 years in rock and roll, I can discuss any period of music that he desires to speak about.”
“We sat all the way down to file the primary episode, they turned the microphone on and we simply talked for an hour and 45 minutes,” he stated. “I used to be telling rock-and-roll tales, he was telling golf tales — then out of the blue he’s telling rock tales and I’m telling golf tales. It was actually, actually nice.”
A VILLAIN IS BORN
As we discuss, I really feel compelled to remind the rocker that his on-stage persona appears at odds with golf as a gentleman’s sport. He laughs.
“After I play the character Alice Cooper on stage, that character is a complete villain, proper? He hates golf. Alice Cooper, the character hates golf. If you happen to have been to place golf golf equipment on his stage, he would assume that they have been weapons,” he stated. “So, you already know, so after I play golf within the morning, and I’m simply me, simply dad, granddad, you already know, I by no means take into consideration Alice Cooper after I’m on the course. The very first thing on my thoughts is golf.”
