Las Vegas, home to penny slots and billion-dollar casinos, and all-you-can-eat buffets and all-you-can-bet blackjack games, may have given golf one of its best inventions since the ball, the tee and the club:
The beverage cart.
While Friday’s Match between Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka featured a Koepka beatdown at Wynn Golf Club in Vegas and countless one-liners from Phil Mickelson and Charles Barkley, it also delivered this fun nugget: The Desert Inn Golf Club, where the host of the event now stands, once catered specifically to a few of its higher-end clientele, and golfers haven’t gone thirsty since. From here, since this is Balionis’ story, it’s only right that we quote her directly from the TNT broadcast.
“It has a ton of history on these grounds,” Balionis said. “But nothing more in line with Las Vegas lifestyle more than this story. Take a listen to this. Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra used to tee it up here, but they would never play an entire 18 unless cocktails were provided. So what happened? Desert Inn, as it was called at the time, said we have a solution for this. We’re going to create a golf cart, but stock it full of all of the possible cocktails that Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra could possibly want.
“So yes, you’re hearing this right: You can thank Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra for inventing the beverage cart. And what better place for it to be invented than right here in Las Vegas.”
Of course, like a lot of great inventions, there could have been another beverage cart or three somewhere else in the world before this. But we oh so want to believe that two of the members of the Rat Pack made it happen.
“Hey, when I get down on my knees to pray to that, I’m going to make sure I include those two guys because I really appreciate that,” Barkley said on the broadcast.
“Keeping beverage carts in business since 1975, Charles Barkley,” announcer Brian Anderson said.
“Oh my goodness. I thought those guys were just great entertainers,” Barkley said. “I didn’t know they invented something that great.”
