What really happens when legal weed goes to the country club

OJ Simpson’s old golf hangout, La Riveria, sits across LA from my downtown crib. This Westside Country Club was the setting for the only golf tournament I can remember watching on purpose. The scene was already playing out in 1995, and The Juice was on hold – he was locked up about a mile from the crib awaiting trial.

This year La Riviera hosted the Pro Golfers Association Championship. If my husband Heavy D hadn’t discovered a ticket for me, I might never have been able to witness it. As impressed as I was by the power and skill of the Tour’s top players, it was the customs of golf that shook my world: alcohol culture in full bloom, steady drinking throughout the day that Jim Nance hadn’t raved about, and caddy culture It’s a game for men who have sons or at least assistants.

Golf was damn fascinating. And I didn’t particularly care. What could happen if you introduce weed? Could that be the deciding factor?

Looking for weed at Lemonhaze

At around 7:00 am on March 21, I took the Southbound 7th Street train to Long Beach. My oldest kid grabbed me and dropped me 25 miles down the 5 Freeway at the Irvine Spectrum Mall in Orange County. A Lyft driver picked me up at Spectrum and carried me 20 miles in a circuitous way along the southeastern edge of the Angeles National Forest—a rugged Californian beauty I’ve never seen before.

Beyond the obscure Highway 241 lies Coto de Caza, home of Season 1 of The Real Housewives of Orange County and, on this day, the Lemongaze Executive Golf Classic. Tragically, the first round of drinks was over when I arrived. The 122 cannabis executives invited to the classic were on carts. Deductions took place. I ordered a greyhound but weed was on my mind.

Tournament organizer Brian Yauger asked me to accompany him in his car, and we made our way from Coto de Caza Golf and Racquet Club to the course, which is lined with streamlined multi-million dollar homes. I’d never see the pool or the court, but Coto de Caza also offers swimming and tennis in its 44,000-square-foot craftsman-style clubhouse.

We delivered canned beer to every hole. About every third green had set up a sponsor tent next to his quartet.

Yauger, 49, is from Austin, Texas. In his white cascata hat, Yauger looked just like the college ball defensive front 7s coach he was not so long ago. He founded Lemonhaze in Seattle just before the COVID quarantine and moved operations to Las Vegas last year. An avid golfer himself, Yauger said he only uses cannabis at night.

There were 24 of these events. Yauger covers golfers’ dues and the money is made by charging sponsors for meeting spots next to the holes. The tournaments have a yin-yang relationship with the company’s Budtenders First Parties, a series of events designed to “recognize Budtenders as the de facto vendors behind every cannabis brand and celebrate their contribution to the growth of your favorite brands.”

The piece itself was a mixed bag. I saw some long, straight drives and some impressive putts. I also saw some shots that etiquette on the 19th hole dictated was barely acknowledged and never mentioned in my desperate search for small talk.

Feels like I saw a few packages of edibles too. And maybe I shared a pre-roll with a manager in some obscure corner of the course. But probably not because I read somewhere that this was a non-use event.

Playing slow is bad for business

“I had a blast,” said Shiitake Happens owner Matt Parker, another guest of the executive. “Some of the people I’ve golfed with are the best people ever. I don’t think you’ll find better people than cannabis people.”

He hit a lot of bad punches that day. The manager who brought Parker to Lemonhaze said to him, “Look, you’re really good at these events. But you have to get better at golf.” Playing slow is bad for business.

My reason for going to the OC for this bullshit involving trains, planes and cars? I had put an end to the vast collection of short-lived crap that some call a print journalism career. My new move would be cannabis public relations. Sure, I was rightfully curious about how cannabis culture and golf culture would interact, but I’d mostly gone behind the orange curtain to establish the contacts needed for indie PR to succeed.

And sometimes, theoretically, you just have to smoke a joint with a manager.

A white lady at the country club flinched when I unexpectedly stepped into her line of sight. That would never have happened at La Riviera, I thought. In general, non-black Angelenos are beyond this basic bullshit and proud to have been that way for a good 8-10 months.

Once I realized that Lemonhaze was more of an Orange County event than a cannabis event, the exclusivity of golf became my primary concern. Golf became a metaphor for clubs where business is done.

“We’re going to add golf lessons to our tournaments,” Yauger later explained. “So if you’re not golfing and want to come out, join the mix beforehand. And when everyone goes out, we have a golf pro there. They can actually take golf lessons and hopefully get into the sport next year.”

“I had to hit that point,” I began to say, “and…”

“And you should,” Yauger said, “because it’s something that, honestly, Donnell, it never occurred to me that that would be a problem, but it proved very quickly that it is.” . We’re working hard to resolve it as quickly as we can.”

Cannabis as always

This is the part where I tell you that I never fully took off my figurative publicist’s cap in the making of this article. Because I want to have relationships with the cannabis credits, this joint is maybe 85 percent pure.

Like the owner class of legal weed, the Lemonhaze Executive Golf Classic is bright white. I could only make out a few brown faces in the sea of ​​white. The only black people not on Lemonhaze’s payroll that I noticed were Hazey from Black Cannabis Magazine and soccer legend Ricky Williams. For some, this news will only increase the attractiveness of the tournament.

I can’t hate golf even though the game isn’t inherently for humans. My politics are socialist, but not to the extent that I believe everything should be open to everyone. Exclusivity in business deals makes sense to me. Lemonhaze thrives because people who run companies are fed up with being tricked at cannabis conferences by people with no actual bargaining power. The coziness of a foursome on the green is a business environment that cannot be duplicated.

When I think of inclusion and golf, that day at OJ’s Country Club comes to mind. Not because La Riviera might have been more varied in 1995 than Coto de Caza is today, but because I had been at legendary hip-hop club Unity hours before teeing off to celebrate Xzibit’s birthday. And I drove to San Francisco from the PGA Championship to commemorate Jerry Garcia, whose death shook the entire West Coast.

I would like to have all these parties in my cannabis culture. Orange County’s mix wasn’t fair that day in March, and maybe it never can be. Some say that exclusivity and equity are inherently incompatible. I’m not sure I believe that. Probably because I do PR.

Donnell Alexander is a die-hard storyteller and co-founder of The Z&D Agency.