Find Your Golf
Four dads engaging in unique second acts and what it means for modern masculinity and fatherhood
I’ve recently noticed a trend amongst men my dad’s age: in their 50s and 60s, they are quietly reinventing themselves through creative and communal hobbies. Instead of retreating into routine or spiraling into the cliché of the midlife crisis, they’re pursuing new interests, re-engaging with old passions, and adding niche activities to their day to day lives. In honor of Father’s Day, I talked with my dad and three others about their very different past times, some of which have the potential to double as full second acts. In many cases, these are not just hobbies; there’s a seriousness to the pursuit. I asked them how these interests have guided and shaped their new phase of fatherhood and adulthood. And I wondered, what does this phenomenon say about masculinity, aging, and fulfillment for men right now?
Beginning with my own dad, David Corwin, a motion picture exhibitor who has run his family’s small chain of movie theatres for the entirety of his professional career: my dad is a creature of habit. He thrives on routine. While he loves what he does, his true passion has always been sports—whether playing, watching, or coaching. He famously coached little league baseball before he even had kids. “When I was in law school, I was desperately looking for distractions and other things to do, so I started coaching Little League,” he told me. Once my siblings and I were born, he coached us in soccer, basketball, and baseball/softball. He said that from the time I started tee ball onwards, it was nonstop; he was often coaching a team in every season for the better part of ten years.
Six years have elapsed since he last coached a team of my brother’s. When I asked him what he loves about coaching and what he’s missed about it, he said, “There are so many different things I like about it. I like being outside, I like helping and teaching, I like the competitive aspects of it, the intellectual part of the strategy, helping the kids get better, and competing at different levels. I definitely missed all that. I would attend all of Emmett’s club baseball and high school games, but it’s not the same being a spectator.”
When one of Emmett’s friends who attends Windward School in LA told my dad that she had been playing middle school baseball with the boys’ team, they discussed the possibility of bringing softball back to the school because they hadn’t had a program since before the pandemic. “She didn’t know about my coaching background, but I somewhat jokingly said to her, ‘You bring the team back, and I’ll coach,’ having no idea about the logistics or if that was possible. She and Emmett’s other friend worked really hard to get girls to commit to playing—it was a couple years’ process—and they were able to persuade the school to bring softball back,” he said.
So, this spring, my dad was one of three coaches of the newly minted Windward varsity softball team. Certain aspects were familiar to him; my dad told me that “before you guys were born, I was coaching, so I’m used to coaching without having a kid on the team. I actually think it’s better because there’s a whole parent/player dynamic to work through, and then also the perception from different parents about how you’re treating your own kid versus the other kids, so in this case I could be more objective.” However, given that the program is brand new, there were growing pains to work through for the players and the coaching staff alike. He shared, “It’s so different coaching girls from boys. Girls, not to generalize, but for the most part are better listeners. They’re certainly equally competitive, but this was unique because there were a lot of girls who committed to playing who had never played softball and didn’t really understand the rules.” The coaching staff had to meet everyone at their various levels.
His favorite part? “The best part was watching the girls who were experienced be so supportive of the other girls. Any little accomplishment they had—like making contact with the ball, or catching a ball in practice, the other girls were so enthusiastic and supportive of them. I think they were just happy to have a team and be out there.”
He’s not sure what the future of Windward softball holds, but if there is a team again next year, he’d love to return to coach. It says a lot that someone as married to his daily routine and lifestyle as my dad is was willing to leave his office every day by 2:30 pm and continue working after coaching practice or a game. I could tell how much joy the experience brought him; I’ve loved watching him reconnect with this part of his identity. He rejoiced in the team’s wins and took their progress seriously. The girls clearly adored him, which of course was no surprise to me, as someone who was coached by my dad for over a decade. He does a great job of balancing playfulness with sincerity. He thrives in an environment like this one, where not everyone is the most serious athlete, but they are all eager to learn and committed to having fun in the process.
When asked if he would ever coach full time once he retires from his day job, he told me he’d definitely think about it. But for now, he’s content with it being an extra-curricular.
I’ve known Scott Rowe since I attended preschool with his daughter, Taylor Rowe. He was always the dad flexing an astounding amount of pop culture knowledge, seamlessly integrating lingo from his kids’ generation into conversation, and making everyone laugh. After a nearly 30-year career as a communications executive at Warner Bros, he now works for a nonprofit called Unlikely Collaborators, heading up communication and running one of their foundations. As of two years ago, he’s also doing stand-up comedy on the side.
Everyone has that friend who’s always being told they should try stand-up. Most people laugh it off, as Scott did at first, but his wife and friend did not. “Before I knew it, they’d picked a date, put my name in the ad, and apparently I was doing stand-up,” he shared. “While I was definitely the class clown growing up, I had never seriously considered stand-up. Over the years I’d hosted some industry events and award shows, but that’s just reading what’s on a teleprompter and hoping you don’t mispronounce someone’s name. Stand-up felt completely different, and honestly a little terrifying. But I got up there and something clicked. There’s really no better feeling than hearing a room full of strangers laugh and thinking, ‘Wow... I did that.’”
Scott told me that developing stand-up material is the easy part; “I just live my life and then make fun if it afterward. It’s actually a pretty healthy philosophy. Something annoying happens? Deal with it, then find the joke,” he said. Taylor gifted him a leather journal for Christmas, but most often, he’s jotting down observations and half-baked jokes on a note on his phone that’s called “Working It Out.” He shared, “Almost all of my material comes from my own life: getting older, marriage, parenting, being confused by the absurdities of our world. That said, I stay away from politics.”
I have yet to see a Scott stand-up show, but it’s on my bucket list! He’s already performed at an incredible array of places: the Hollywood Improv, the Ice House in Pasadena, and even West Side Comedy Club in New York. When I asked what his goals are with stand-up, he said, “I mean, a Netflix special wouldn’t be terrible.” He’d also love to perform at The Comedy Store and Laugh Factory. “And if we’re really dreaming big, I’d love to get on stage at the Comedy Cellar in New York.”
He reflected, “For now, though, I’m mostly focused on getting a little better every time I go up. The funny thing is that when I started, I thought performing would be the hard part. It turns out writing good jokes is the hard part. And even when you think you’ve written a joke, you’re really just starting. Every time I perform a bit, I’m tinkering with it, changing a word, adding a line, cutting something that isn’t working, or finding a way to connect it to another joke. It’s kind of like remodeling a house where you’re never completely finished. The version that gets the biggest laugh is usually nowhere near the version I started with.”
If you’ve seen the Will Arnett movie that came out last winter, Is This Thing On? About a divorced dad getting into the New York stand up scene, it’s basically Scott’s life to a t. At any age, it’s great to have something to work towards. Scott shared that stand-up has been a great gift at this stage of life: “I joke that stand-up is my version of golf. Lots of guys my age spend their free time chasing a better golf game. I spend my free time chasing a better punchline. The nice thing about starting later in life is that I have decades of material. Marriage, parenting, work, getting older—I’ve already lived through most of the things comedians eventually write about.”
For the record, this piece has existed in my head with the title “Find Your Golf” since I first ideated it months ago. Scott just so happened to make the same analogy!
Not so dissimilar from Scott, Brian Hartstein recently began craving a creative outlet, but in his case, he’s returning to a dream he put on hold when he was in his 20s. By day, Brian works with law firms and corporate legal departments to provide alternative legal services. I’ve known him since his daughter Edina and I became friends in 7th grade.
Last May, Brian began taking acting classes at the Lesly Kahn acting school in LA. The first class he took was a four-week boot camp to get him back into acting. “What inspired it was a lifelong desire to act but not the financial ability to take that kind of a risk as a kid. Now, as an adult with a house no longer full of kids, all of my time is my own for the most part. It seemed like something that I would love to pick up again, try to get back into, yes as a hobby, but also with the serious intent of actually getting jobs and staying relevant and useful in the world,” he shared.
I did not know this about Brian—that he acted all through high school and had this dream—but I’m inspired by his return to the craft. Most of his acting classmates are in their 20s and 30s, usually making him the oldest person in the room. He told me that “it has been the most eye-opening time of my life, in terms of 1. being in touch and understanding Gen Z and millennials and 2. in finding ways to use my brain in a really tough field that isn’t what I spend most of my time thinking about in my work life. I find it to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but also, when you achieve something in it, it’s the most rewarding achievement of all.”
In these classes, he is learning helpful skills from making a self-tape and breaking down a script to managing his own idiosyncrasies that come across as larger gestures through a camera than they do in person. “Very little things are big things on a camera. I’m learning a lot about how I come off to other people. I’m learning how to talk to other people. I’m learning how to talk to people younger than me. It’s fascinating,” he said.
Brian hasn’t acted in anything yet, but he’s auditioning and hoping he’ll find the right project to pursue soon. The first thing he was told at acting school was, “You’ll work because you’re cheap,” meaning that there are a lot of roles for people over 50 who are late in life to acting. Since they haven’t done it previously, they don’t cost much to hire.
When I asked him what role acting has played in this stage of his life, he said, “It gives me something to strive for and look forward to, and something to immerse myself in that isn’t business-related. I also have to be mindful of the fact that for a lot of people, this is their career. They are risking it all, and I’m in total admiration of all of them. There’s a lot less on the line for me.” I told him the people my age must appreciate his perspective because at my age it’s easy to think myopically about a dream like acting. People often see artistic pursuits like acting as black and white; if you don’t make it big now, you switch gears and you can never come back to it, but Brian is showing his younger peers that you can.
My uncle Danny has always been a man of many hobbies with a foot in the door of myriad niche communities. His hobbies range from pickleball and hiking to volunteering, but what I’m most fascinated by is his monthly podcast club.
For the past decade, Danny has been the Executive Director of Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, a program of the Smidt Foundation, which was founded by the owner and founder of the national tool retailer. The program works to advance skilled trades education in public US high schools. Danny has worked in education for a long time, but he’s also never stopped learning on the side. He is incredibly curious and always sharing anecdotes and facts from books he reads and podcasts he listens to.
In August 2022, a man who Danny knew from raising kids together in the Larchmont neighborhood pitched him on getting a group of guys together to start a podcast club. “He reached out to me because I see him running a couple times a week when I’m walking the dog and listening to podcasts in the neighborhood, so he knew I liked podcasts,” Danny said. “The reason I think it started was right after the pandemic, a couple of guys honestly just wanted connection. To learn about friendships and community and the importance of both—to carve out time and make it a regular part of one’s life, so it was pretty intentional in terms of why we put it together. It’s rare, I think, for men to do that and not shoot the shit and talk about sports and whatever else, so that’s been kind of novel, which I appreciate,” he shared.
The club meets monthly. The only podcast content that is off limits is politics and religion. Everything else is fair game, which has resulted in a diverse selection of subjects, ranging from tech and art to history and science. “One of the first podcasts we listened to was Lex Friedman on AI. We still think we’re one of the first groups of people who discussed AI.” I bet they were!
In terms of how the club functions, they have a website that one of the members designed where everyone lists podcasts that they are interested in, and then everyone votes on one to focus on for the month. “We listen to it and then, typically we have a couple of prompts, but it’s pretty open and flexible. We come together and have pizza and beer and just discuss what we learned, what we had questions about, and what we thought was interesting.”
Danny says he’s learned about topics he never would have considered diving into otherwise. He shared, “I’ve really grown to appreciate that it’s time that’s just focused on conversation about ideas and learning and curiosity. We don’t gossip, we don’t talk about our families too much, and there’s a diversity within the group.”
While podcast club is a true communal hobby that lends itself less to a potential career arc, I had to ask Danny what his own podcast would be about, if he were to start one (which, I’d love to see him do). “It probably would be kind of Seinfeld-like about common experiences that humans have that we don’t necessarily talk about. For example, I think you know that I walk my dog two to three times a day, and I’ve met a lot of strangers in the neighborhood who have become regular acquaintances. Just those daily interactions that allow people to connect with common interests, common values, I think fleshing some of that stuff out would be interesting, kind of like This American Life—daily routines and what people don’t necessarily articulate but live and experience could be healthy to dive a little deeper into.”
I believe this phenomenon of pursuing niche hobbies isn’t just anecdotal; it reflects a broader shift in how this generation of men is approaching aging. Without the same social permission structures previous generations lacked for emotional expression or creative exploration, these pursuits are becoming an unexpected outlet: a way to build identity, community, and meaning later in life. In many ways, it’s an evolution of the golf archetype—but more ambitious, more public-facing, and more creatively fulfilling.
Brian told me that acting allows him to explore parts of himself that he basically neglected for 30 years. He aptly stated, “Is it harder than golfing? Yes. Is it more mentally taxing than golfing? 100%. Is it social with people my own age? Mostly not, but I’m making friends with people who are younger, and they’ve accepted me as one of their own, which has been the greatest thing.”
These hobbies are allowing men to slow down, reflect on the lives they’ve lived so far, and set goals on their own terms. Scott said that “one thing I’ve learned is that stand-up isn’t really about being funny. It’s about being observant. The older I get, the more I realize life is absurd in ways I completely missed when I was younger. Stand-up gives me permission to pay attention to those things.”
It’s never too late to follow a decades-old dream or reignite a hobby that brings you joy. Happy Father’s Day to all the amazing dads out there, who, after many years of dedicating their time to raising families, are discovering new things about themselves and finding their golf.
You made us look better than we are, D. Well done. I've got to go read some books now, so I live up to "finding my golf."
Loved reading this! Thank you!!!