Multifaceted Musician Cam Avery on Golf, Flow, and Finding Focus
Forget what you thought about golf—its cultural revival is reshaping the game, and the man.
It wasn’t that long ago that golf felt more ‘dad joke’ than cultural moment.
It was the Boss’s sport. A pastel game for staid dads. Defined by pleated khakis and Scotch-at-the-lubhouse vibes. A tad anal-retentive. Exclusive…yet unhip.
A good walk spoiled, as the famous old line says.
But then a few years ago, something weird happened: golf became cool.
Against all odds (or perhaps we should say: coming out of deep rough against heavy cultural winds), golf found its verve: brands like Metalwood started showing up on pro skaters, the LIV tour brought music and creativity to the course, categorically epic mullet-lords like Cam Smith started winning, and suddenly… the most austere game of them all got fun.
And, in our humble opinion, it’s about time the complicated, borderline-transcendent sport got the credit it deserves. Because, at its core, golf is a game of the self versus the self.
Much like life.
Viewed from the right angle, the sport’s an advanced physical metaphor distilled to the highest proof. It’s a game of flow, performed with a certain Zen musicality, and played in a strange and pastoral mirror, where the tiniest tweaks of emotion or lapses in focus can break the heart. It’s full of aesthetic possibilities, of concurrent chances to both fail and outdo yourself.
But still: for those who haven’t fucked around with the game, all of the above may not make any sense at all.
So.
To shed some light on golf’s transformation from country club energy to nightclub energy, we got in touch with a friend of CONVICTS whose cool needs no credentials.
You probably know Cam Avery as the bassist for Tame Impala. You may not know that Cam nearly became a professional golfer in lieu of rock stardom. He grew up playing golf (expertly), quit the game for a decade, and then, during a moment of personal transition, picked it back up.
Since then, Cam’s founded an alt-golf media company called The Fade and is currently collabing with CONVICTS on a project that aims to bring golf’s fun and philosophical side to the fore.
Cam’s journey from golf to music to golf-and-music mirrors the game’s recent cultural progression. We recently caught up with this one-man metaphor to learn more about his—and the sport’s—evolution.
The below interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Heya Cam. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. To start, where did you get into the game?
I’m from Fremantle, which is next to Perth. It’s the most isolated major city on earth. It’s closer to Bali than Sydney. I was playing baseball when I was a kid—
That’s way wilder than golf. You were playing American baseball at the end of the world in Perth?
Yeah, I played T-ball. I got into baseball when I was five or six. I didn’t want to play cricket. I thought it was lame. Then, when I was 12, this guy came to our school to promote junior golf. He gave us these rubber balls and saw that I had a knack for the game. So they put me into a talent identification program, and I got better and better. I came from very humble beginnings, and by the time I was 14, they let me play at the Royal Perth Golf Club. Which was hysterical. It’s hard to get into those clubs, but a testament to what I think golf is: the ultimate meritocracy.
Golf’s a pretty…mature game. What kept you coming back to it as a kid with a rock-and-rolling future?
It was really good for my brain. I’m a little bit on that ADHD spectrum, and I think it helped me slow my mind down a little bit. There’s five minutes between every shot, so you have to learn how to be present and understand your capabilities. I liked the tiny little increments of progress as I got better. If I spent a week practicing pitch shots and went out for the weekend competition, I could really execute those shots.
Did you always gravitate towards competition?
I’ve never been overly competitive with anybody else. I’ve always been really competitive with myself. I liked golf as a measuring stick: the closer you get to a zero handicap, the better you are. Because you don’t usually win or lose in golf…it’s a self-betterment thing. Even if I didn’t beat anyone on the weekend, as long as I beat myself, I knew I was getting better. It stabilized me mentally, which, for whatever reason, was something I wanted at that age.
Plus, I had a scholarship at the school, so I got to play golf during school hours, which was great. Then I made it onto some state teams and was looking to go to college in the States to play—I was talking to people at UNLV and Alabama, who I’d met at the Australian Amateur. But…in hindsight, I don’t think I’ve ever had the killer instinct you need to play professional golf. You’ve got to be able to step on someone’s neck, which isn’t something I could ever do. I mean, I liked winning—everybody does. But I didn’t like it quite as much as I did the art of the game. I didn’t marvel in trophies, I marveled at the ways you can get around the golf course with some idiosyncrasies.
Alright, so given that you’re hanging around the course, hitting balls, and playing all the time…how did you find your way into music?
I started playing guitar when I was about 16. It was a social thing, and I could play with my friends and girls thought I was cool. Then, very quickly, I started playing school socials and realized that I love performing. I like being on stage. I’ve always liked it more than being in the studio. And pretty soon, that took over.
But I was still playing golf. I have a very vivid memory of going to see Oasis play in Perth and being like, yeah, this is me, I want that job—just having the crowd, the sound, and the lights.
It’s not like I didn’t want to play golf anymore. The music thing just gained too much momentum. And golf became sort of really dorky—I just didn’t play for 10 years. I loved the game and would watch it every now and then, but I didn’t really touch a club for a decade.
How did golf inform your musical progression?
As I got older and was playing in Tame, golf created this structure for learning that I don’t think a lot of other people have. When I’m practicing, I’d stretch for 45 minutes, do a half hour on the range, play nine holes, and assess my play. Then I’d come back, practice, and go out for another nine holes.
So that’s sort of incremental, structured learning I’m talking about. I remember, it was two weeks before my first Tame gig, I was trying to learn 20 songs, and I was never overwhelmed because I’d break it down incrementally.
Can you walk us through that process a bit more?
If I got to a part of a song that was a little tricky, I would practice it—woodshed it, as it’s called in music—over and over again. I was very comfortable doing mundane things in pursuit of a new skill. I quickly saw the parallels between ‘shedding and grinding out on the driving range. I think that made me a better musician. Not a better artist, but a better musician.
Elaborate on that a bit, if you would.
There’s a great crossover between the two. Good artists are brave. They’re not afraid to really put themselves on the line. And I think the same is true with golfers. To take a calculated risk…you’ve got to be brave when it comes to the inflection or execution point.
Also, I mean…flow states are real in both golf and music. To get yourself into a good flow state, you need to be challenged and stimulated. Whatever you’re doing has got to be hard. And you’ve got to like it. That’s when your mind starts concentrating hard enough on the moment to stop thinking about extraneous things.
Is that state easier to achieve on the course or on stage for you?
I think music. I’ve played and practiced so much music, I’ve done so many shows in a year that things that might’ve felt hard before seem completely effortless.
You don’t have time to think when you’re on the stage. You just have to accept what you’re doing as you’re doing it. There’s no second take. I wish I could get into that state with golf…where you’re almost very stoic. It’s like the stoic archer: once you’ve let go of the arrow, it’s just deal with it.
I’ve come close to that in golf only a couple of times, when I’m like, there’s no way this ball isn’t going to land exactly where I need it to.
Right on. So, on the flipside—where do the experiences of playing golf and playing music diverge for you?
With music, I’m always trying to catch something. I’m trying to capture an idea or capture a feeling, which is great. But at this point in my life, I love having something with a finite score. A win or lose thing—even if it’s against myself. If I shoot under par, I win. I’ve done good. If I shoot a couple over, I haven’t. It’s that finite.
It’s an interesting split between subjective and objective pursuits. Let’s switch gears a bit. You said you quit golf for a decade—when and why did you pick it back up?
It snuck up on me. It was really by accident. I was living in Ojai, going through a weird time in my life and just started going down at twilight to play nine holes by myself. I’d just tune out of everything else and into the game…because it’s about rhythm, it’s about thinking, it’s about strategy. It’s hard to think about anything else when you’re playing golf.
I remember there were these two par fives on the back nine, and I loved that little stretch, out in the middle of nowhere at dusk in California. And that’s when I fell in love with hitting the ball again.
What aspect of the game are you most excited about these days?
Golf is just a journey. But the coolest thing is all its parallels to life. On the course, you might’ve messed up. In life, you might not know whether you’re going to get the promotion or whether you’ve made a mistake. But the thing is: mistakes are great—you can learn the most from them.
But compounding errors really start to fuck with you. Say you’ve missed a fairway. You can try to go for it, but if you miss that, you’re going to go way left. You have to retreat a little to go forward. And I think that’s a big lesson in life—taking a second to go, hang on, what are my options? Is the next thing I do going to be a compounding error or a possible save? That teaches you a lot.
Basically, I think of the old rolling stone metaphor. If I really focus on being better at golf, it creates positive momentum in other aspects of my life.
Love to hear that, Cam. And it’s funny how infectious positive momentum is. Lastly, tell us a bit more about your new endeavour,
.I’d love to make an online publication that feels like there’s a lot of tuition. There's a lot of punditry and there's a lot of gear review in golf media. Which is great. We all love that shit. But there's not enough focus on what golf does for your life if you get good at it…or if you even try to get good at it.
Yes, we all love having a day, getting out there, and having fun. But what’s more important to me is what the game can do for your life. I just don’t think the inherently mentally fulfilling and socially rewarding aspects of golf are highlighted enough. I want to change that with The Fade.
I’m trying to build a little publication where people can draw parallels between the sport and the rest of life.
Golf gives you a lot of tools.
If you just want to be 20% better at cycling, 20% better at your job, 20% better at picking your way around tough situations—golf gives you a lot of tools to do that. I want to highlight that… especially because the game gets such a bad rap.
We’re going to be changing that one little article at a time.
Right on, Cam. Stoked to see how it all unfolds. Thanks for your time. We’ll catch you on the course…
 | A guest post by
|