It’s not surprising that golf is also high up on the national joke barometer, close to, if not surpassing, humor aimed at sex and male-female relationships.

Know any good golf jokes? Of course you do. Have a particularly funny or ironic golf tale? Most anyone who’s tried to hit the dimpled white ball with an aluminum-shafted stick probably does.

My Dad told me my first golf joke when I was a teenager just taking up the sport in the late 1960s. It went something like this: “On his return from America a Japanese businessman was explaining a strange new game he had learned to his colleagues. It was played with a little white ball you hit with a club and was called, “Oh Shit!”

So taken was my Dad with that bit of golfing humor that he had a placard of the joke, complete with an illustration, hanging on the wall of his home office for all to see and enjoy. To him it was the essence of golf’s simultaneous futility and incongruousness.

Golf humor, in all its wonderful, glorious hues, is everywhere. You just have to recognize it when you see it.

One of my favorite personal golf stories occurred more than 20 year ago when I was living in Lake Tahoe, Calif. Myself and a few buddies enticed one of my roommates, who had never touched a club in his life, to come golfing with us.

The first tee on this particular public course, located between Kings Beach and Truckee, was situated along a busy state highway. Recognizing the potential hazard of this lie, the course’s owners had constructed a 40-some-odd-foot high safety net that separated the first fairway from the highway traffic.

My friend, who was nervous but determined to give it a go, leaned into his first golf shot ever and sent it slicing towards the safety net. He caught it flush and the ball cleared the netting and nose dived into the oncoming line of traffic. The ball came careening out of the sky and landed on the windshield of an unsuspecting motorist.

The windshield shattered and a minute later the frightened driver was in the golf course parking lot, demanding an explanation and seeking restitution for his blemished automobile.

My buddy walked meekly away, but not before swearing at us and swearing never again to pick up a club.

Another friend was taking golf lessons in high school. The practice area wasn’t far from the administrative office. One day while warming up, he shanked an iron in the direction of the school. Before he could say Fore! the ball struck a window and broke it. It was the principal’s office and at the time, he was at his desk working.

Fortunately for my friend, the principal was a golfer. He understood.

When my game is a wreck and storm clouds are gathering over my putting and the wind is batting my drives into the rough and I can’t seem to stay out of the sand, I don’t get mad, I try and think, “Gosh there’s got to be someone, somewhere on some remote golf course having a worse round than me.”

If that’s doesn’t work, I go to the bar, cry in my beer and contemplate some good golf jokes. Like the time ... Courtesy of the Internet and people like John Black and Jim Willingham, AKA Coach Rufus, I bring you some random golf humor you can use for any occasion:

• “Honesty is the best policy, but cheating improves your golf score.” - Dwight Eisenhower.
• If your divot continuously travels farther than your ball, consider reading as a pastime.
• Golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle.
• “The best wood in most amateurs’ bags is the pencil.” - Chi Chi Rodriguez.
• “If you think it’s hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball.” - Jack Lemmon.
• “Tee your ball high...air offers less resistance than dirt.” - Jack Nicklaus.
• It’s not whether you win or lose...it’s whether I win or lose.
• The term ‘mulligan’ is really a contraction of the phrase ‘maul it again.’
• Why is it that when you tell yourself, ‘don’t hit it in the water’ your body only seems to hear the word ‘water’?
• A ‘gimme’ can best be defined as an agreement between two golfers... neither of whom can putt very well.
• An interesting thing about golf is that no matter how badly you play, it is always possible to get worse.

(Kevin Dwyer is Bainbridge Island free-lance writer and triple-handicap golfer)..