Tennis and golf are frequently associated with a leisurely bourgeoisie. Yet, the two sports inexorably linked to a country club class differ within fictional and filmic representations. Forgetting trite, convenient sport-as-life metaphors, tennis seems to have an advantage (pardon the pun) in which works have presented the game. Infinite Jest, a novel by David Foster Wallace, Matchpoint, a film by Woody Allen and The Squid and the Whale, a film written and directed by Noah Baumbach are recent examples where authors portray tennis prominently in a work which can be considered good art. I will exclude Henry V because it is a history. The gift of tennis balls by the Dauphin really did precipitate the Battle of Agincourt. 

 

Moreover, unlike other students of Literature, I begrudgingly accept Shakespeare rather than accept him unquestionably. There is no ‘great work’ which prominently features the game of physical golf. There may not even be a mention of golf in ‘good literature’ barring perhaps Vladimir Nabokov’s, Pale Fire, in which characters play ‘word golf,’ where one word is transformed into another by iterations of individual letter substitution. Like in actual golf, the lowest score, measured in steps (strokes), wins, and, tangentially, the CAT-DOG transformation, cited in Wikipedia as one of the longest, could be solved in three steps: CAT-COT-COG-DOG. P.G. Wodehouse, an avid golfer and a prolific, witty, and cogent writer, wrote much about the gentleman’s game. Writing in a humorous tone, he set a precedent for depicting golf and the type of people who played it as things not to be taken too seriously by either reader or participant. In that, having kept golf out of a serious context has been a good thing. No surprise that some of the most popular and possibly best movies about the game are comedies: Caddieshack and Dead Solid Perfect. Popular books include light hearted treatments of the game. Biographical renderings by John Daly and Rick Reilly are enjoyed en masse. However, as appealing as fictionalized humor pieces are, serious, documentary, non-fiction works – Men on the Bag by John Feinstein or Q-School Confidential by David Gould – have as much cachet for the reading public. Of course, instructional literature sought by die-hard enthusiasts focused on improving also sell. The Greatest Game Ever Played was a biopic of sorts. The Legend of Bagger Vance was rubbish. 

 

So these facts beg the questions: is it even possible to write a fictional novel or film script in which golf features prominently without falling back into cliché as well as have it end up as objectively good literature and not be primarily comic? There is certainly scope, but should it even be attempted?