FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — At 7:30 a.m. in the middle of a downpour at Bethpage Black, the field of golfers on Ryder Cup Thursday shrunk to one.
While the rest of them waited out the rain inside, a single man stood under a makeshift tent at the side of a practice green and mimed his golf swing. One slow, sweeping arc after another. Finally, after a little while, the golfer was interrupted by a voice. He snapped to attention, turning his energy toward the TV set resting on the other side of the makeshift tent. A few feet away, one of the few lingering passersby cut through the sound of rain with a realization.
“Hey! That’s Colin Jost!”
To those outside the tiny bubble of golf media, it was not immediately clear why Jost, the longtime SNL cast member and successor to the Weekend Update throne held by such show legends as Seth Meyers and Norm Macdonald, was standing in the rain at the Ryder Cup.
At a Ryder Cup where the most notable live performer was the lead singer of a prominent Long Island Billy Joel cover band (Mike DelGuidice of Big Shot), Jost’s decision to add a week of TV work seemed trivial. He is, by most common definitions, an A-Lister, married to the actress Scarlett Johansson and participating in the most coveted day job in modern comedy. In addition to SNL stardom, he claims nearly 900,000 Instagram followers, a bestselling book, and an occasional side-gig as the host of Pop Culture Jeopardy.
Why is Colin Jost at the Ryder Cup? The long answer is boring: His pals at Omaha Productions and T-Mobile reached out about hosting an “alternate pregame show” at Bethpage at the intersection of College Gameday and the Manningcast. The show, called Breakfast at Bethpage, would give golf fans a new way into the Ryder Cup led by a familiar celebrity face. The assignment would also give Jost the chance to showcase another quiver in a comedy skillset much broader than 30 Rock — giving Jost a second major sports hosting gig following the 2024 Olympic Surfing competition in Tahiti.
But why is Jost here, in the middle of the Thursday downpour, practicing a swing thought? The shorter answer is much more revealing.
“This is such a minor thing for me, but it’s making sure my club is the first thing moving back, not my hands,” he said. “I was working with this great PGA teacher, Ivan Foster, and I think he was quoting Bobby Jones. He said, ‘If you ever see someone whose hand moves before the club on the backswing, you should always bet against them.’”
Jost’s dissertation on the nuance of his swing tendencies continues like this for a few more seconds before he pauses and flashes a lightning fast smile.
“I think I’ve already lost the room,” he said.
Yes and no. The truth is that I’m closer to a rocket scientist than a swing instructor, but I did watch Jost and Eli Manning thoroughly dismantle their opponents in a match at the Celebrity Ryder Cup the previous afternoon. And I have seen his distinctive claw grip with a long putter, which is more or less a scarlet letter for the golfingly insane. And I know that golf holds mythical powers over people at his intersection of high-IQ and relentless work ethic. So, yes, he’s lost me in the details, but he’s hooked me on the substance.
Why is he here at Bethpage? Because he loves golf, and because, to someone who loves golf, the chance to hang out at the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black is an offer you don’t refuse. The paycheck, the TV show, and the chance to forge a name in sports media? That’s all helpful too. But the biggest deal is not that he is Colin Jost, the Weekend Update guy from SNL; it’s that he is Colin Jost, the 8.1 from Rockland Country Club.
There is something deeper than rock and stick that makes Jost love golf. Something that could perhaps be informed by his more than two decades as a writer and a cast member on the SNL staff, surviving the nearly ceaseless grind of a new show, a new host, and a brand-new set of ideas each week. Jost says he has sought wisdom from On Writing, Stephen King’s legendary tome on the craft. He learned from reading that good writing is actually not very complicated.
“There are no short-cuts. You can’t do it part-time. Or whenever you’re in the mood to do it,” he says. “You just have to do it.”
Jost also knows (perhaps a little too well) that good writing bears an inherent humility. Principally, it is about going from a lot to a little.
“Writing is just rewriting,” he said. “Getting things shorter is always making it better.”
Of course, it does not take a genius to recognize this worldview could also be applied rather directly to golf — a sport with lots of humility, few shortcuts, and a mostly perilous path to lower scores. Jost does not make this connection on a rainy Ryder Cup Thursday. Perhaps he hasn’t.
Or perhaps, to the TV star at the center of a practice green at Bethpage Black, it’s just obvious. Nobody winds up at the Ryder Cup by accident. It’s the sort of thing you drop everything to do … even in the pouring rain.