Ball Boys: why golf is the driving obsession of middle-age alpha males

Washington Monthly, June, 2003 by Jamie Malanowski

HERE'S A GREAT MOMENT IN Barry Levinson's classic film Diner in which the young husband Shrevie, played by Daniel Stern, is asked by one of his buddies if he's happy being married. "I don't know," he sighs, before proceeding to air a big but. "When you're dating, everything is talking about sex. Where can we do it? Why can't we do it? Are your parents going to be home so we can do it? ... Then when you get married, you can get it whenever you want. You get up in the morning, and she's there. And you come home from work, and she's there. And so all that sex planning talk is over with ... I cannot hold a five-minute conversation with my wife"

And thus is revealed the great secret problem of adulthood--finding things to talk about once there's no more talk about sex. Of course, you can find other people with whom to talk about having sex, but that's an awful lot of work--more, if you get caught. You can talk about work, which for most people is a subject gleefully and immediately abandoned at quitting time. You can talk about one of the pastimes you have developed to replace talking about sex--barbecuing, for example, or watching "Six Feet Under"--but these are invariably less interesting than talking about sex, and you and everyone else knows it. But the human being is a determined animal, and more and more people, especially men, are finding an acceptable substitute: Golf.

Golf is almost always there. You can always go golfing, or think about golfing, or practice golfing, or think about practicing golfing. You can play golf at home, or you can play golf when you're away. Many people can play golf at work, and many people--Ken Lay, for example--work while they play golf. You can also drink and play golf, and you can gamble and play golf, and, as many elites have discovered, you can drink and work and gamble and play golf, all in one tax-deductible, Dick Cheney-defended outing. But golf can more than be played--it can be endlessly discussed. There are strategies and tactics, equipment and terrain; legends and lore and hallowed grounds. Sex may be a more primally interesting subject, but sex really doesn't require quite so many accessories, and your companions' tolerance for hearing your stories about whatever is the equivalent of landing in a bunker or being stuck in the rough or messing up a two-foot putt is substantially lower. Perhaps only war affords more various topics of conversation, but I believe that I will live long enough to see the birth of a new biathalon combining golf with live fire, and because it will be more interesting than watching drones obliterate SUVs, golf will eventually surpass war. Furthermore, golf has many rules, which many people observe and many more observe when others are looking, which means that golf attains in some minds the equivalence of a moral code. Finally, many people find golf fun. Or have at least convinced themselves that they do.

Golf can also be written about, which is a tremendous boon to children of all ages who feel that they must, however grudgingly, observe Father's Day, the most manufactured, "yeah, right" holiday on our calendar. Golf is an activity that has been brilliantly present-ized. Many people have grown rich designing items in the $20-$50 range--golf shirts, golf caps, golf gloves, golf-ball-imprinted ties, and so on--that can be easily obtained and tossed into Dad's lap on the third Sunday in June. Publishers have grasped this, and the six or seven weeks before Father's Day has become golf book season in your bookstore.

Among the offerings this year are First Off The Tee: Presidential Hackers, Duffers and Cheaters From Taft to Bush, by Don Van Natta Jr. of The New York Times, and Who's Your Caddy?, by Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly. The two authors have very distinct personalities--Reilly is a professional cutup who seems contractually bound to deliver two jokes every three sentences, while Van Natta is a very fine investigative journalist who brings to his work the seriousness of a hog hunting for truffles. Both, however, believe the same thing: that through his golf game is the inner man revealed.

"Almost everything is revealed on a golf course--a player's shortcomings and strengths, most of all, but other subtleties of personality and foibles of character that you may never see across a desk," writes Van Natta. "Because so few presidents could play with any consistency, the game presents itself as a clear prism to view how these powerful men tried to cope with all that can go wrong"

I guess. But of course all human behavior reveals character, and while we might learn a great deal about our presidents from their golfing--and make no mistake, Van Natta thinks he's got the Rosetta Stone here--one might fairly wonder if we wouldn't learn as much about their inner lives from watching how they get through a weekend with their in-laws or what rides they avoid at Disney World or conducting an in-depth audit of their tax returns. Indeed, there may be less predictive power about their presidencies in watching how they golf than in watching whom they golf with. It's true that you can see the combination of awkwardness and determination that characterized Richard Nixon's golf game as a reflection of the awkwardness and determination he displayed in his political career, but you can also see that same awkwardness and determination displayed when he was courting Pat. She decided she wanted to date another fellow, so Nixon chauffeured them. It's more reflection than revelation.