‘Absolutely frightening’: Gary McCord recalls terrifying commercial shoot

One of the joys of listening to Gary McCord and Peter Kostis’ podcast, “Off Their Rockers”, a GOLF Production, is the opportunity to experience peak storytelling from the duo’s decades-long careers in golf.

And on the latest “Rockers” episode, McCord delivered a doozy by revisiting his experience filming a golf commercial for FootJoy underwater. Wait, what? Yes, it’s true. Readers of a certain age may remember the first iteration of FootJoys DryJoys golf shoes, which, true to their name, were waterproof. To highlight the technology with a comedic spin, McCord was tapped to promote the shoe while underwater.

“The idea was, I was gonna be immersed in the water with shoes on and then talking to the camera underwater about how dry my feet were,” McCord said.

While the concept sounds simple enough, according to McCord, the shoot was no picnic. Not only did McCord have to venture 22 feet below the surface with a Navy Seal on hand for potential rescue purposes, the DryJoys he was wearing were made of lead to keep him anchored to the pool floor.

How was the shoot supposed to work? McCord would take a gulp of air from a respirator, then the Navy Seal would swim off the the side with the respirator, allowing McCord to say his lines for the camera, then he would return with oxygen when McCord needed it.

“So we start this thing, and now I’m a little claustrophobic,” McCord said. “I’m sitting there and I’m waiting, I’m hearing guys underwater. It’s amazing. Camera’s there, camera’s over here.

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“So they go, OK, Gary, go. And so the guy goes, OK, hold on, Gary, take a deep breath, now! And he swims off. Navy Seal swims off. Camera, action. I go blah, blah, blah, blah. You gotta say it really loud because they yelled at me for a while. And I’d say it, and I’m out of breath. And he is 30 feet away.

“So the first time that happened, I panicked, and I tried to leave the bottom of the pool, but I got lead shoes on. Lead FootJoy shoes. They don’t make those, by the way, for golf.”

The Navy Seal came to McCord’s rescue and brought him to the surface, where McCord said he couldn’t go through with the shoot.

“I get on the side of the pool and I go, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it,'” McCord said. “I said, ‘that was absolutely frightening.’ He goes, ‘Gary, it’ll be fine.’ So he finally talked me down, I went down and did it again, and I panicked again.

“When there’s nobody around you and you’re out of breath, it’s fight or flight,” McCord continued. “And you are gonna go straight up, and you can’t push off the bottom of the pool. And my guy is over there hiding behind a camera somewhere with my oxygen.”

McCord ultimately made peace with the unorthodox nature of the shoot, giving the story a happy ending.

“I was in that pool and got it done for seven and a half hours,” he said. “I never left the bottom of the pool. I finally just went — I did the whole Zen thing like, OK, I don’t think I’m gonna die. Let’s do it. We’ll do it right.”

For more entertaining stories from McCord and his podcast cohort Kostis, check out the full video of the latest episode below.

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.

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