Golf carts aren't yet outnumbering Town Cars, but suddenly everyone on both coasts seems to be swinging. Next month, ex-Details editor Michael Caruso launches Maximum Golf, a glossy geared to players whose skills have heretofore been limited to reciting lines from Caddyshack. "Matt Damon and Will Smith have taken it up," Caruso reports, "and so have Smashmouth and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We'll do a kind of Behind the Music on the green." Esquire devotes its April issue to the lure of the links; Wallpaper's Tyler Brûlé introduces a new Time Inc. title dedicated to luxury sports like golf later this month. The New York City Parks Department has just green-lighted construction of a 175-acre public course in the Bronx, and at Chelsea Piers, golf-academy attendance is 50 percent female, including Rolling Stone and Mirabella editors as well as Catherine Zeta-Jones: "She came with her own set of Callaway irons," notes an impressed instructor. And with Harper's Bazaar and Vogue featuring fairway fashions, Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Hugo Boss are expanding their golf-clothing and -accessory lines. Could Gucci's orange-and-black golf bag ($1,390) be this season's L.L. Bean tote?

Related:

• Archive: “Gotham Style”
• Articles by Maura Egan
• Table of Contents: Mar 20, 2000 issue of New York | Subscribe!