“Do you love drinking on the golf course? You can thank the Rat Pack for that”
OLIVIA WHITE for www.winepair.com
“Do you love drinking on the golf course? You can thank the Rat Pack for that”… Golf is easily one of the most popular pastimes in the United States. Once a sport relegated to the wealthy, golf has become much more accessible in recent years, with an estimated one in eight Americans playing a round each year. In 2023, more than 531 million rounds of golf were played in the U.S. according to the PGA Tour, the fourth consecutive year in which more than 500 million rounds were played. And as they navigate the 18 holes, players are sure to get thirsty. That’s where the beverage cart comes into play.
About the same size as a standard golf cart, on-course beverage carts are exactly what they sound like: a bar on wheels. Equipped with coolers, hot boxes, and a small bar, beverage carts are typically loaded with soft drinks, water, and light provisions, along with plenty of beer, spirits, and cocktail mixers.
This mobile marketing is extremely lucrative and the entire life of the cart is usually paid for within the first month of operation. After that, it’s all “pure profit,” according to Golf Course Industry. As the magazine describes, these carts can generate more than $1,000 in sales per day while in the field, and that figure jumps to more than $5,000 on special occasion days or during events. But how did they come about? It turns out that the reason so many golfers are allowed to drink on the course might have something to do with two members of the singing Rat Pack.
As revealed during a TNT broadcast of “The Match” in November 2021, the beverage cart was created in Las Vegas sometime in the 1960s at The Desert Inn Golf Club. Now known as Wynn Las Vegas, the club used to host the famous Rat Pack, most notably Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., for rounds of golf. But Martin and Sinatra refused to play more than nine holes unless they were provided with cocktails. To persuade the musicians to play the full 18, club staff outfitted a standard golf cart with a cooler, filled it with whatever drinks the two men wanted, and followed them around the course during the game.
It’s a fantastic story, but difficult to prove, and it’s likely that similar refreshment services existed in other clubs around the world. Take St. Andrews Golf Club in Scotland, for example. At the oldest golf course in the world, senior caddy David Anderson began offering golfers refreshments in an old wheelbarrow when he retired from caddying in 1856. Referring to his refreshment “cart” as the “19th hole,” the The barrow was stocked with ginger beer, milk and light snacks, although many believe Scotch whiskey was also on offer.
Whether the cart originated in Scotland in the 1850s or Las Vegas in the 1960s, we couldn’t be more grateful for its existence, especially when we need a transfusion mid-ride.
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