Dennis Dugan Teases “Crazy Funny” ‘Happy Gilmore 2,’ Returning to the Role of Doug Thompson, and the Origins of That $500 Odyssey Hockey Putter

Dennis Dugan opens up our Zoom call by showing me a “false cut,” a sleight of hand card trick that results in the same cards remaining on the bottom of each half of the deck — in this instance, two Aces.

Now, you may be wondering why this is relevant here. The frequent Adam Sandler collaborator recalls learning the trick after catching a cold during production on Happy Gilmore 2, which resulted in a week of being unable to head to set “in the middle of New Jersey,” as he tells me, where they shot for approximately three months. Dugan says he picked up the trick from Instagram.

Dugan, who directed the original Happy Gilmore, says the first rumblings of any kind of return for the beloved sports comedy came after making Grown Ups 2, the 11th movie he and Sandler worked on together.

“That was like 10 years ago, but I think that’s when it started to be like, ‘Hey, maybe this can happen,’” he shares, claiming talks of a sequel for any of their previous movies were pretty much non-existent prior to the 2013 Grown Ups sequel.

Dugan returns to Happy Gilmore‘s highly anticipated Netflix sequel — which began streaming today — as an executive producer, and also reprises his role as pro golf commissioner Doug Thompson. However, the new film is directed by Kyle Newacheck, who Dugan lauds as “the right guy to do it,” conceding that the Workaholics co-creator is “maybe a little more modern” than him and “knew tech stuff a lot better.”

“He’s a very, very cool guy,” he says. “So I just called him up right away when I found out he was directing and said, ‘Hey, any wisdom that I can give you, I’m happy to do it.’”

Dugan describes the experience, which he says of all Sandler movies, as “collegial,” explaining that he was more than able to offer his input where he saw fit.

“I just had to say, ‘Don’t put your director hat on,’” he teases of himself. “Just observe, and then if you see something, you say it.”

Newacheck was open to Dugan’s thoughts, as Dugan points out that he is “used to collaborative” set experiences coming from series work.

“So he’s a hundred percent like, ‘Yeah, sure, let me try that.’ Or, ‘Shut up.’ One of the two,” he jokes.

With respect to reprising his original Happy Gilmore role, Dugan teases that there’s “plenty of Doug Thompson” in the new movie.

“If my mom were alive, she’d think there should be more,” he quips. “But for the moviegoer, they’re going to walk out and say, ‘That was a really good movie. And it was just exactly enough Doug Thompson.”

But Happy Gilmore 2 not only sees the return of Dugan’s Doug Thompson and Sandler’s hockey player-turned-golfer, Happy Gilmore. Both Julie Bowen and Christopher McDonald are back as the golf tour’s public relations director (and Happy’s love interest) Virginia Venit, and Happy’s villainous rival Shooter McGavin, respectively. Dugan says he was “really happy” to reunite with McDonald on set, praising him as “just an absolutely great guy, and he’s great in the movie.”

“Getting back with all of the old players in [the movie] was really fun,” he gushes. “I hadn’t been in or directed a movie with Sandler for a long time, even though we stay in touch all the time, but it was fun. It was fun to be back there, and also to play Doug Thompson one more time.”

Although Dugan kept mum about which celebrity cameo he was most excited about — among those popping up in the new film are Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce and rapper Bad Bunny — he did say that one of the perks of returning as Doug Thompson was that his scenes were alongside the stellar lineup of golfers recruited for the film, which includes 2025 Masters Champion Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, and John Daly.

“We have just the coolest golfers in the world in the movie,” he says. “So that was really fun, just to hang out with them.”

As for whether he got to play a round with them, Dugan quips, “No, I asked, but they just didn’t want to play mini golf.”

Nearly 30 years following the theatrical release of Happy Gilmore, Happy Gilmore 2 is a straight-to-streaming release. Dugan says not much differed in the production process with respect to this.

“You’re just making the movie as best you can,” he notes. “People are going to see it, so you want it to be good.”

But the excitement that’s been building around the sequel was non-existent while making the original film.

“When we did the first one, we were just up in Vancouver, and we were making this movie that I don’t think they really thought was going to be much of anything,” he explains. “At that time, they sort of felt like if it did a little business — you know, Adam was becoming really popular at the time — and so they actually said to me, ‘Well, if we do some business, we’ll do big, big, big in the DVD world.’ So that was kind of their take on what our little movie was going to be.”

While Dugan was not directing the new film, he praised those from Netflix that he encountered as “really nice,” saying “they visited a lot” and that they “seemed very excited” about streaming the film.

The sequel has generated a ton of buzz since it was first confirmed in May 2024, not only among fans, but among brands. In light of Happy’s Subway sponsorship in the original Happy Gilmore, the sandwich chain launched a Happy Gilmore meal on July 10, which includes a limited-edition Happy Gilmore cup. Callaway also introduced a new $500 limited-edition Odyssey Hockey Stick Putter, inspired by the putter that Happy receives from his mentor Chubbs (portrayed by the late Carl Weathers). The putter is already sold out.

While Dugan says he normally doesn’t like to take credit for ideas, he took DECIDER further down a walk down memory lane — or, shall we say, the memory green —of how the Subway sponsorship and the peculiar putter came to fruition in the 1996 comedy.

“I said, ‘You know, he should, if he starts to get famous, he should definitely have a sponsor,’” he recalls. “And they all go, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea. Let’s do that.’ So Subway came on. But you know, nobody cared about our movie. Nobody thought it was going to be anything, so we were just lucky to get ’em.”

Fans can also thank Dugan for the idea of the hockey putter.

“I invented the hockey putter. I said, ‘Hey, he’s a hockey player. Let’s see if some golf company will make a hockey putter for us.’ And it was Odyssey. They did it, and I gave it to Sandler.”

Though iconic, the putter that Sandler used in the original film was metal, making it difficult for him to play with.

“This was metal, and so to hold onto it and guide it — that’s why he had to bend down and hold it with two hands. He kept saying, ‘Fuck you!’” he remembers with a chuckle. “He liked it, but it was so difficult to handle, and he had to learn how to handle it.”

When it comes to the possibility of other Sandler sequels, Dugan says “there’s always been talk about Grown Ups 3.”

“Even during Grown Ups 2, everybody’s going, ‘Yeah, we gotta do 3.’ And I think [You Don’t Mess with the] Zohan would be cool, because that movie was just in from outer space somewhere,” he says.

But Dugan guarantees that Happy Gilmore fans will appreciate the sequel.

“It’s definitely true to the original,” he says, “in spirit and in comedy. Because it is crazy funny. They don’t stop the funniness of it. It’s funny.”

Happy Gilmore is now streaming on Netflix.