Nate Bargatze's Swing Is Lethal in SNL's "Golf Tournament" Sketch
The standup comedian had bad luck on the links in this pretaped sketch.
Comedian Nate Bargatze is a real golfer who has played celebrity games alongside legends like Rory McIlroy, and joked about the hobby in his standup. But in Saturday Night Live's sketch from his Season 50 episode, Bargatze played a pro you'd never want to share the green with — especially if you've got fur or feathers.
When Bargatze hosted for the second time on October 5, 2024, he played a golfer named Brady Knoll in the pretaped "Golf Tournament" sketch. While a pair of announcers (Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner) offer commentary, Brady attempts to play in a tournament with an audience of military veterans ready to watch a normal game of golf. It all goes so wrong, so fast.
His first shot immediately hits a bird mid-air, killing it instantly. When Brady gets the chance to swing again, his ball hits a bald eagle's nest in a tree, knocking the nest and its eggs to the ground.
For his next shot, he accidentally swings at one of the eagle's eggs, and gets dive-bombed by the angry mama. His next shot is a dud, so he tosses his club into the pond in anger — hitting Fairway Fred, the beloved snapping turtle who'd been a fixture on the course since 1971.
Watch Nate Bargatze's SNL Monologue and Sketches from October 5
Suddenly, Nike's asked Brady to cover their logo on his hat and shirt, but his next shot almost makes up for everything as he miraculously hits the ball right into the hole. Just when he thinks he's home free ... well, like many of Bargatze's SNL sketches to date, it's a relatively simple premise that takes a dark turn (or four).
Watch "Golf Tournament" from Season 50, Episode 2 above, and stream every episode of SNL on Peacock.
SNL's "Golf Tournament" was written by Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell
The sports sketch was penned by longtime SNL collaborators and office mates Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell, a co-head writer on the show for Season 50. During the season, Day shared a bit about how he and Seidell work together.
"Since we still share an office, sometimes we'll sit down and think of ideas. Other times, we'll trade a draft of a script back and forth. Streeter is getting better at leaving and getting a little bit of sleep before Wednesday morning, but I'm still really bad at it," Day told NBC Insider.
"I have like, college term paper procrastination: Midnight is kind of when my brain is like, ‘okay, we need to start focusing here.’ I'd love to be able to get my work done at a reasonable hour — there's nothing that says you have to work all night," he continued. "But sometimes the ideas just come when you're walking through the hallway and you see someone, you start talking. That's kind of the beauty of the place on Tuesday night."
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Nate Bargatze went viral for his hosting debut in 2023
Bargatze has only hosted SNL twice now, but he already has his own recurring sketch. When he made his SNL debut in Season 49, he famously played founding father George Washington as a guy with a lot of big dreams for America, like a game called Football that is played with the hands, and the freedom to choose a system of weights and measures that has a word for 2,000 pounds, but not for 1,000 pounds.
That sketch has now been viewed on YouTube more than 23 million times. When Bargatze returned in October 2024 for Season 50, we got "Washington's Dream 2." In the midst of the Revolutionary War, Washington assured his men that one day, this great nation would have a word for the number 12, and no word for any other numbers. Hamburgers will be made of beef, and ham is also pork, and a hot dog is not made of dog, but no one knows what it's actually made of.
