The New Yorker's View of Golf : As the Open comes to New York, another institution gives its take on the lighter side of the game. - book review

Most of the jokes in The New Yorker Book of Golf Cartoons, which has just been published, explore familiar themes: the game's mechanical frustrations, its role as a theater of battle in the war between men and women, its utility among aging males as a placebo for work, marriage and sex. But the apparent simplicity of the gags, like the apparent simplicity of the swing, is an illusion. Like golf itself, the best of these cartoons shrink life to a tidy circumference, then crack it open.

Golf is an unusually accommodating subject for humor--as any golfer with an e-mail address and more than two or three acquaintances already knows. Part of the reason is that the game is inherently ridiculous. But the main explanation must be that golf somehow cuts deeply into the human psyche--and more deeply than do certain other frivolous pastimes. (During the 77-year history of The New Yorker, golf cartoons have outnumbered tennis cartoons by more than 2-to-1.)

My favorite selections in the book are "The Male Biological Clock," by Roz Chast, and two contributions by Robert Weber: one about a grateful old guy on a desert island, and one whose caption begins, "Gotta run, sweetheart." All three of those cartoons seem almost poignant, at least to someone golf-obsessed. They are funny in the way that existence is funny, and for some of the same reasons.

Remarkably, perhaps, neither Chast nor Weber has much first-hand knowledge of the game. Chast has never knowingly set foot on a golf course, she told me, and her husband, who looks a little like the conflicted figure in her contribution, doesn't play. Weber said, "For my birthday once, my son gave me a half-hour of instruction with someone. I don't think it was even a pro. I just went out there and swung the ball for a while--I mean the club. That's my only experience of golf." He paused. "It was enough."

From The New Yorker Book of Golf Cartoons, edited by Robert Mankoff. [C]The New Yorker Collection 2002 from cartoonbank.com. Bloomberg Press, 112 pages, $21.95. Reprinted with permission.

COPYRIGHT 2002 New York Times Company Magazine Group, Inc.
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