An inside look at the growing coffee culture filtering through golf’s professional circuits
Across professional golf’s major tours, coffee is as integral to life on the road as having a comfortable hotel, eating nutritious meals and staying on top of strength and conditioning programs. Sound ridiculous? Then you haven’t seen a tour pro at a specialty coffee house early in the morning before their practice round or tournament day – tee-time permitting.
Coffee is a necessity, especially among the Australian players on LIV Golf, the PGA Tour, LPGA and DP World Tours. Espresso feels like a cure to jetlag, it gets the day going, or keeps the day going. It also acts as a social gathering; sessions where Aussie players, caddies and officials rendezvous and pay homage to their homeland with a good flat white. It even becomes a game – or a point of pride – to find a good coffee shop in the town of a tournament and recommend it to your mates. It earns respect.
Perhaps there’s no better example than 2022 Open champion and LIV Golf star, Cameron Smith. Coffee is integral to the wider Smith family. His uncle, Trevor, owns a café called Pure Shot in the Brisbane suburb of Brendale.
“[Uncle Trevor] has had the Pure Shot for about four or five years,” Smith says. “He used to work at a nice RSL that had a good coffee shop and he always liked it. Then he decided to do his own thing, and it’s going really well.”
Smith, almost inevitably, caught the coffee bug himself.
“I think most Australians love coffee,” he says. “For me, I think the culture is what I like; sitting around relaxing, talking and having a nice coffee.
“When I got on tour [in 2015], coffee was like a bit of a bonding session. For a while, it was like a tournament within itself who could find the best coffee shop in town. And then we’d start going here, there and everywhere to try to find a good coffee. One time, in San Antonio during a tournament, I drove about 50 minutes to go and try a coffee shop. I never did that again, because it ended up being rubbish [laughs].”
During his 12 months with the Open’s claret jug – the sterling silver trophy awarded to the Champion Golfer of The Year – Smith had a moment when he released his inner coffee geek. The champion’s jug is a replica of the original but still almost 100 years old (1928). The Queenslander drank a “pour over” from the jug; running boiling water through espresso grounds that were encased in a paper cone filter atop the jug.
“I was by myself, drinking a pour over out of the claret jug and looking out over the Intracoastal [waterway in Ponte Vedra, Florida],” Smith says. “I laughed and thought, This is a bit too dorky. I looked over my shoulder because I was worried that Jack [Wilkosz, Smith’s childhood friend and now personal assistant] or Shanel [Smith’s wife] would walk in and ask, ‘What the hell are you doing?’”
“That pour over out of the claret jug only happened once. I thought it was funny; a nice little moment between me and the jug.”
So, what is Smith’s go-to drop now that he is running his own golf team – Ripper GC – on the LIV tour?
“During the [LIV Golf] season, I’m a black coffee type of guy [to avoid excess milk],” says Smith, who has a personalised Ripper GC-themed coffee machine designed by La Marzocco. “I drink a lot of like Americanos [espresso with hot water at a 1:4 ratio] or pour overs. If I want a little treat, it’s pretty hard to go past a cappuccino or a flat white. I’m pretty disciplined at limiting cappuccinos during the season; I’m definitely better [than I used to be]. When I do have milk, there’s no oat milk for me. I need full fat.”
Australia is getting its shot
On the local tournament scene, the sounds and smells of beans being grounded now overpowers the freshly cut grass and roaring greenkeeper machinery nearby.
For the second year in a row, New Zealand-born specialty coffee roaster Allpress Espresso set up shop at the 2023 Australian Open in Sydney, held at The Lakes and The Australian golf clubs.
Fusing the worlds of coffee and golf like no other, Allpress Espresso worked with events specialists Buzz Batch to design its own mini-golf course – Shots and Shanks – to sit right next to its on-course container café. With the help of Playfair Golf, they ran a putt-putt competition while serving up countless cups of the good stuff.
“We weren’t just serving up quality coffees – we wanted to make sure our golf was on par for the weekend, too,” says Allpress Espresso’s marketing specialist Sam Katz. “With a full coffee menu on offer, we were stoked to bring our signature flavour to the Australian Open with espresso coffees, batchy for the filter lovers and our new range of specialty iced coffee cans. With caffeine-loving golf fans – and players – in need of a pick-me-up to keep up with the action on the course, we were busy serving up fresh brews all four days.”
Katz and his team also had a big presence at this year’s sold-out LIV Golf Adelaide tournament, where they poured all their usual winning blends, along with a special nod to golf’s undisputed king.
“Our ‘Arnold Palmers’ had customers intrigued and excitedly queuing up for a taste,” Katz says of Allpress’ signature cold brew cocktail made with single origin coffee and StrangeLove Lemon Squash.
“We were thrilled to share our love for specialty coffee in a new and unexpected setting,” Katz adds. “We can’t wait to turn up again and deliver more damn good shots – and potentially a few shanks, too.”
The Brew Sisters
Nothing brings people together like a cup of coffee. That motto defines the LPGA Tour’s unofficial Sisterhood of the Travelling Coffee Shops, with siblings Jessica and Nelly Korda, and Megan Khang, running a group text chat among a handful of LPGA players that aims to find the best coffee at every tournament – which, in turn, lets the players unwind from the tour grind and bond on a different level.
“It’s fun to have a group of friends who have a love for good coffee,” Nelly said. “The chat is always popping off with good coffee shops.”
The trips started in 2020. Khang, a coffee enthusiast since high school, often roomed with the Kordas on the road as well as playing practice rounds together. They began the day with breakfast, and naturally, coffee came to mind after a late morning at the course. Khang started researching coffee shops to visit.
Since then, the group chat has expanded to as many as five players a week. Those in town for a tournament enquire about who’s up for a cup of joe and where they should go. If they aren’t co-ordinating to go somewhere as a group at a set time, someone usually offers to dart off and pick up orders for everyone. Patty Tavatanakit and Alison Lee are consistently in the chat as well.
“It’s a nice little escape,” says Khang, who enjoys talking to the customers in line (to the chagrin of Nelly) and often sends videos of the coffee they’re getting to the others. “We can just joke around about things other than golf, talk about things that aren’t just golf. We go to these coffee shops, and we’ll sit down, and we’ll just shoot the s–t.”
Khang’s well-known reputation as a coffee-shop aficionado means players on tour are often checking with her ahead of time to see if she’s been to the spot they’re planning to visit. Yet her extensive knowledge is not exactly a well-kept secret, as Khang keeps track of her coffees with a comprehensive Instagram reel highlight.
So, what kind of coffee is their favourites? Khang loves iced drinks. For Nelly, a good cup of coffee involves flat whites. The drink was invented here in Australia in the 1980s, with an espresso with microfoam. “Once I know it’s Australian-owned, I know it’s going to be absolutely ‘fire’,” says Korda.
Hearing Khang and Korda walk through their coffee orders is like an in-depth explanation of their swing mechanics, from the strength of the coffee to how milky they prefer their drinks. Proving how well they know each other’s preferences, Khang and Korda nailed them when asked what the other person’s usual order is.
“We know the orders by heart,” Khang says.
A typical topic of conversation over coffee is what and where they’ll eat later. The group explores the best finds of Yelp for a quality hole-in-the-wall restaurant that the players can kick back and relax in. They’ll get a meal together a couple of times a week.
“Family-owned, like ones that you can look like where you can go in sweats and leggings and you don’t care how you look, but you just know that it’s like family-owned and it’s good,” Korda says.
They’ve formed their own family over some of the simplest things: coffee and dinner. It gives the group a chance to disconnect from the typical day-to-day of the tour and create memories the group will keep long after their careers are over.
“I’m so grateful for my group of friends,” Korda adds. “It definitely is kind of tough out here. You know, it does get lonely, but when you have people that you can connect with on a deeper level, over a cup of coffee [laughs].”
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LYNDON HAYES
