Say hi to your putter for me
Major winner breaks down budding friendship and bizarre golf outings with Mark Wahlberg
Cliff Hawkins
Back in 2018, Mark Wahlberg dropped the schedule of all schedules on his Instagram. We’d write up his entire typical regimen here, but it’s so unwieldy and irregular that you’re better off seeing it from the source. A 2:30 a.m. wake-up time is not for the faint of heart.
As you can see, that’s quite the timetable. And we here at Golf Digest have to point out the 7:30 a.m. golf, which ends promptly at 8 a.m. for a good old-fashioned snack. When we had the chance to find out more about Wahlberg’s peculiar habits, we needed to ask his new friend Wyndham Clark. The two have partnered up with Municipal—a clothing brand co-founded by Wahlberg—and now Marky Mark and Clarky Clark have gotten pretty close.
“He's an amazing person and so fun to be around,” Clark said on The Loop podcast. “We've got to play golf a few times. I feel like he FaceTimes me every couple months, especially when I play well or when I'm not playing well. He'll FaceTime me and do kind of a pep talk.
"Mark plays a ton, but also he didn't really grow up with the game. The swing probably could use some work, but I think having all those muscles kind of makes it tough for him to swing.”
We’d love to hear those pep talks and know if Wahlberg goes full Masshole. If we’re setting an over-under on “wicked,” it would have to be O/U 10.5 for a 15-minute call.
It's always great when famous people mingle, but more importantly, what about the golf? What’s it like teeing off with Wahlberg knowing he has a complete agenda planned down to the millisecond? Well, Clark had plenty to say about that as well.
“The funniest thing playing with Mark is the speed. Honestly, nothing else really matters. It's about just playing fast. And so you usually ride in separate cars. You hit and you basically get in the car and you go and you get to your ball and a guy might still be hitting or you'll be way ahead and you just go and then you get to the green and you almost sometimes don't even know what you shoot.
“You're just like, ‘All right well we played in an hour and 40 minutes let's go work out or something.’ But it's fun playing with him and he has so much passion for it. He does everything at a hundred percent.”
That’s kind of beautiful in an unorthodox way. It’s just about the golf for Wahlberg. No time for chit-chat or idle thoughts, just hit and run. One must wonder how many times the renowned actor has gotten stuck behind a slow group, shaking with anticipation to keep things moving. It would be a perfect situation to bust out his best line from “The Departed”: “I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy.”