Every foursome has one. The guy who waits until somebody is standing over a four footer and then says, in a completely normal voice, "hey, you know what the best wood in your bag is?"
He is not trying to be funny. He is trying to produce a groan. There is a difference, and golfers are the only people on earth who understand it. A joke that makes a golfer laugh is fine. A joke that makes all three of his partners exhale through their noses at the same time, shake their heads, and say "that is awful" while clearly enjoying it, is a successful golf joke. The groan is the applause.
So that is how we ranked these. Not by how clever they are. Not by how new they are, because none of them are new and that is part of the point. We ranked twenty of the best golf jokes ever told by how hard your foursome is going to groan when you tell them, biggest groan first. Number one has been told on first tees for about sixty years and it still lands every single time.
And because this is what we do for a living, we have paired the ones that are wearable with the shirt that makes the joke for you, so you can get the groan without having to say anything at all. That is the premium version of this whole thing. The joke that works before you open your mouth.
How The Groan Scale Works
Five levels, and they are not the same as "funny."
One groan. A polite nod. Somebody says "that's good" without their face moving. This is a failure dressed up as a success.
Two groans. A single short laugh from the one guy who had not heard it. The other two were already walking to the cart.
Three groans. A genuine head shake. At least one person says "oh come on." Solid working joke, safe to use on strangers at a scramble.
Four groans. Audible. Somebody puts a hand over their face. Somebody else immediately retells it badly to the group behind you on the next tee.
Five groans. The full body. Everybody groans at once, somebody says "I hate that you told me that," and then four hours later, in the parking lot, one of them repeats it to his wife on the phone. This is the ceiling. These are the ones below.
1. The Funeral On The Fourteenth
Five groans. The best golf joke ever told, and it is not close.
A man is standing on the fourteenth tee, which runs along the road, and a funeral procession comes past. He steps off the tee, takes his hat off, puts it over his heart, and stands perfectly still with his head down until the last car has gone by.
His partner says, "that was the classiest thing I have ever seen on a golf course."
He puts his hat back on. "Well, it was the least I could do. We would have been married forty years tomorrow."
This joke is perfect and there is nothing to add to it. It is built like a watch. Everybody in the group thinks it is going somewhere warm for four straight sentences, and the last six words take the whole thing apart. Tell it slowly. Do not rush the hat.
If you want to wear it, Til Death Do Us Par is the pun version at $29.99 and I Love My Wife is the one that gets the exact same reaction in half the time.
2. You Have Already Moved Most Of The Earth
Five groans. The greatest caddie line in the sport.
A golfer, after a long and difficult front nine, leans on his club and says to his caddie, "I would move heaven and earth to break a hundred today."
The caddie says, "try heaven. You have already moved most of the earth."
What makes this a five is that the caddie is not being cruel, he is being accurate, and accuracy is the funniest thing available on a golf course. Nobody in your group will groan harder than the one who took the biggest divot on the last hole, which is how you know it worked.
Swing Easy is the advice version of this and World's Okayest Golfer is the version that beats everybody to the punchline, which is genuinely the best defense there is.
3. We Left The Course An Hour Ago
Five groans. Works on any course, including good ones.
A man hacks his way around for two hours, finally stops, looks around at the weeds and the trees and the general situation, and says, "this is without question the worst golf course I have ever played in my life."
And the caddie says, "sir, we left the golf course an hour ago."
Use this one when somebody in your group has genuinely lost the plot off the tee and is getting quiet about it. It is the kindest possible way to say something, because it makes the whole group the subject instead of him. Every golfer has been an hour off the course. That is the universal part.
Have You Seen Me is the missing-ball poster version and Toxic Slice is the one that explains how he got there.
4. Two Pairs Of Pants
Five groans. Pure, unapologetic construction.
Why did the golfer wear two pairs of pants?
In case he got a hole in one.
That is it. That is the whole joke. It is forty years old, your father told it to you, and it will outlive all of us. The correct delivery is completely flat, as though you are passing along a piece of useful equipment advice, and the correct follow-up is to say nothing at all while they figure out whether to respond.
If somebody in your group has actually made one, Par 3 Champion is the shirt, and he has earned the right to wear it and to bring it up unprompted for the rest of his life.
5. The Golfer And The Skydiver
Five groans. The best structural joke in golf.
What is the difference between a golfer having a rough day and a skydiver having a rough day?
The golfer goes whack, "dammit." The skydiver goes "dammit," whack.
This one is a magic trick. It is twelve words long, it has a perfect rhythm, and it gets a bigger reaction than jokes four times its size. The only way to ruin it is to explain it, which somebody in your group will immediately try to do. Do not let him.
Golf Ball EKG and Golf Heartbeat Line are the two shirts that live in the same neighborhood as that punchline, both $29.99.
6. The Best Wood In The Bag
Five groans, and it is the most useful joke on this list.
"What is the best wood in your bag?"
"The pencil."
Here is why this one is more valuable than it looks. It is the only joke in golf you can tell about yourself, out loud, on the tee, that is both self-aware and completely free of self-pity. It says you know exactly what your scorecard is going to look like and you have made peace with it, which is a genuinely attractive quality in a playing partner.
It is also the fastest joke here. Six words. You can get it off between somebody's practice swing and their actual swing, which is either a public service or a crime depending on who you ask.
U Suck Go Again is the scorecard version of the same energy, and it is the most-quoted thing anybody says in a cart all year.
7. One Under
Five groans. The humblebrag with a trapdoor.
Guy comes into the grill room, sits down, and announces to the table that he shot one under today.
Everybody looks up. One under?
"One under a tree, one under a bush, and one under the water."
The reason this is a five and not a four is the pause. You have to let them believe it for a full two seconds. If you rush into the punchline you have told a pun. If you wait, you have run a small con on four adults, and the groan you get is for the con, not the joke.
8. She Said She Would Leave Me
Four groans, five if your group is married.
"My wife told me this morning that if I do not give up golf, she is going to leave me."
"That is terrible. What are you going to do?"
"God, I am going to miss her."
Tell this to a foursome of guys in their fifties and you will get a reaction that is about seventy percent groan and thirty percent recognition, which is the most golf ratio there is. Everybody has an opinion on the number of Saturdays that is reasonable.
I Love My Wife is the one that does this joke in four words, and about a third of the people who buy it are buying it for somebody else, which tells you the joke runs both directions.
9. Golf Is Like Taxes
Four groans. The one that gets repeated by somebody who thinks he made it up.
Golf is a lot like paying taxes. You drive hard to get to the green, and then you wind up in the hole.
This one has a long life because it is short enough to remember and clean enough to say at a work outing. If you only carry one golf joke in your head for the charity scramble where you do not know anybody, carry this one. Nobody has ever been offended by it and nobody has ever been impressed by it either, which is exactly what you want in a stranger's cart.
Drive It Like You Stole It is the tee for whoever in the group hits it hard and worries about the rest later.
10. The Blind Golfer
Four groans. The best setup-and-switch in the sport.
A guy at the bar is going on about his game, and a man at the end of the bar says he will play him for a hundred dollars.
"Sure," the guy says. "What is your handicap?"
"I do not have one. I am completely blind."
"You are blind? And you want to play me for a hundred dollars?"
"Absolutely. Any time you like."
"All right," the guy says, feeling pretty good about it. "Name the day."
"Tonight," the blind man says. "Midnight."
This one is longer than the rest and it is worth the real estate. It is the only joke on this list where the person you are telling it to has time to get smug before it turns around, and the groan at the end has some actual respect in it.
11. Are You Going To Play Golf Or Just Mess Around
Four groans. The only golf joke that needs a cast.
Three friends are on a par three over water. The first one hits it in, walks out, parts the water, plays it off the bottom and makes four. The second one hits it in, strolls across the surface of the lake, stands on top of the water and makes three.
The third one shanks it so badly it never even gets to the water. It skips off a rock, lands on a lily pad, and a frog hops over and takes the ball in its mouth. An eagle swoops down, grabs the frog, and circles out over the green. The frog drops the ball. It lands six inches from the cup and rolls in.
And the second guy turns around and says, "Dad, are you going to play golf or are you just going to mess around?"
It is a long haul for one punchline and it is still worth it, because there is no golfer alive who has not had one round where the ball did something no amount of skill could explain. We have all been the frog guy once. It is the single best day of golf most people ever have and none of it was on purpose.
Gunga Galunga is the shirt for whoever in your group tells the longest story for the smallest payoff, and he knows exactly who he is.
12. All The Other Four Letter Words Were Taken
Four groans. The reliable one.
Why is the game called golf?
Because all the other four letter words were already taken.
Old, flat, bulletproof. Best used immediately after somebody else's tee shot has gone somewhere unfortunate and before anybody has said anything, because it converts a bad moment into a group joke in under four seconds. That is a real skill and it is more valuable in a foursome than a low handicap.
Noonan! is the shirt that heckles for you, and You'll Get Nothing & Like It is the one you wear when you are the one collecting on the bet.
13. A Golfer's Favorite Music
Three groans. Dad joke, proudly.
What kind of music do golfers listen to?
Swing.
There is no defense of this and none is offered. It is a three because it is over too fast for anybody to build up a proper groan, but it is genuinely undefeated on a cart ride with a teenager who is being too cool about being there.
Swing Easy is the shirt and it is the only piece of golf instruction that has ever worked on anybody.
14. The Easiest Shot In Golf
Three groans. Devastating if timed correctly.
What is the easiest shot in golf?
Your fourth putt.
The timing on this is everything. Told cold on the first tee it is a three. Told from eight feet away while somebody is standing over his actual fourth putt, it is a five and possibly the end of a friendship. Use responsibly.
They See Me Rollin is the putting shirt, and the Texas Wedge towel at $27.99 is for the guy who has decided the putter works fine from forty yards out, which is a joke that tells itself every time he pulls it.
15. The Slow Group Ahead
Three groans, and it is not even really a joke.
Golf is the only game where the slowest players in the world are always in the group directly in front of you, and the fastest players in the world are always in the group directly behind you.
Nobody groans at this one so much as they nod and then get quietly angry about a Saturday from two years ago. It is on the list because it is the truest sentence anybody has ever written about the game, and because it is the one line on this page you can say to a non-golfer and have them understand immediately why the sport takes five hours.
Fueled By Turn Dogs and Back Nine are the two shirts for the man who has made peace with the pace of play and brought snacks.
Five More, Rapid Fire
Short ones for the cart. All between a two and a four depending entirely on your delivery.
16. I would quit golf, but I have too much invested in it. Have you seen what sweaters cost? Three groans.
17. My doctor told me I should take up golf. Then he saw my swing and told me I should take up the doctor's advice more carefully. Two groans.
18. Golf: eighteen holes of therapy you pay for in advance and then make worse. Three groans.
19. They say golf is ninety percent mental. Which explains a lot about my group. Three groans.
20. I finally found a way to cut five strokes off my score. I stopped counting the ones in the woods. Four groans, and somebody in your foursome does this.
The Three You Should Retire
Nobody says this part out loud, so we will. Some golf jokes have stopped working and the people still telling them have not noticed.
Anything about a golfer's wife being angry that he plays golf. One version of this is a classic, which is number eight on this list, and that one earns it because the punchline is on the husband. The rest of them are just a guy complaining with a rhythm. The room has moved on. Also, roughly a third of our customers are women buying golf shirts for themselves, so the premise is out of date on the facts as well as the comedy.
Anything that requires somebody in the group to be humiliated. There is a line between a joke about everybody and a joke about one guy, and the tell is simple. If the joke only works because one specific person in the cart played badly, it is not a joke, it is a comment. Comments do not get groans. They get a long quiet cart ride.
Anything you have to set up by saying "stop me if you have heard this one." They have heard it. You are not going to be stopped, because golfers are polite in exactly the circumstances where they should not be. Just tell it.
The whole trick with golf humor, and this is the thing we have learned making shirts for golfers, is that the funny part is never that somebody is bad at golf. It is that the game does the same things to all of us. The scratch player loses a ball in the leaves too. He just loses it closer to the hole.
The Caddyshack Loophole
There is a second category that does the same job as a joke without technically being one, and it is the most efficient humor available to a golfer: the quote.
A quote beats a joke in a foursome for one simple reason. A joke asks everybody to stop and listen. A quote asks nothing. You say three words in a slightly different voice and whoever gets it, gets it, and whoever does not keeps walking. There is no risk and no setup and no "stop me if you have heard this one." It is the lowest-effort, highest-return thing you can do in a golf cart.
Which is why half the shirts we make are quotes rather than jokes. Noonan! is four letters and an exclamation point and it is a complete heckle. You'll Get Nothing & Like It settles a bet. Gunga Galunga is the one that gets pointed at across a parking lot by a total stranger.
For the clubhouse lane, Bushwood CC and Bushwood Country Club are the straight ones, Bushwood Country Club Varsity is the collegiate version and Bushwood Caddy Day Champion is for whoever claims he caddied as a kid. Ty Webb Silhouette is for the one guy who is genuinely good and relaxed about it, and Chubbs Peterson Golf Tournament is the other movie, and the only part of it we will defend. They all live in Caddyshack.
The Shirt That Tells The Joke For You
Here is the actual argument for a graphic tee, and it has nothing to do with shirts.
Telling a joke costs you something. You have to pick your moment, you have to commit, and if it does not land you have to stand there in the silence you created. A shirt does none of that. A shirt sits there and waits. Somebody in the group reads it, decides for himself whether it is funny, and says something. You did not do anything. You just put a shirt on in the dark at six in the morning.
That is the entire business, honestly. The best ones are the short ones, because a shirt gets read at a glance across a table and a paragraph does not. Golf Is Easy does it in three words. Nice Shaft and I'd Tap That are the two that get read out loud by somebody who did not mean to. Looks Good On You Though is the backhanded compliment, Here For A Good Time is the mission statement, and World's Okayest Golfer is the one that has outsold almost everything else we have ever made, because it is funny and it is also just true about nearly everyone.
If the joke you want is a place rather than a line, St Andrews, Pebble Beach and Bandon Dunes are the course maps, which start a different and much longer conversation about a trip somebody is going to take eventually.
And for the gear-based joke, the towel is underrated. It hangs off the bag where everybody sees it on every hole, your partners pick it up and use it, and it costs less than a sleeve of balls. Worm Burner, Texas Wedge and Wisconsin Stripper are all $27.99 and all three are real golf terms, which is the whole joke and the reason they work on people who do not play. The rest are in golf towels.
One Thing About The Collar
The clarification we end up making every week, so here it is plainly again. Our tees are t-shirts. Nearly every course in the country wants a collar on you at the first tee, so a graphic tee is not the shirt for the round itself. It is the off-course shirt.
Which, for a page about jokes, is actually the point rather than a limitation. The round is not where the jokes land anyway. The jokes land in the grill room afterward, at the bar, at the tailgate on Saturday, in the backyard, in the garage. That is where somebody has the time to read your shirt and the room to react to it. The shirt is a bar shirt, and the bar is where the groaning happens.
If you need the collar for the course itself, that is what the polos are for, and in October the long sleeves and hoodies are what you want for the cold front nine.
The Honest Shopping Note
No code attached to any of this, so here is just the price list. Tees are $29.99 and the heavyweight version is $34.99. Long sleeves are $32.99, crewneck sweatshirts are $49.99, hoodies are $57.99, polos are $59.99 and quarter zips are $64.99. Towels are $27.99 and embroidered hats are $39.99.
If you are buying one thing off this page, buy the shortest joke you can find. Three or four words, readable from across a room. That is the one that actually gets the reaction, every time, and the long clever ones sit in the drawer. We have been making shirts for golfers since 2025 and that has been true from the first week.
If you are buying for somebody else, the safest pick in the whole catalog is World's Okayest Golfer, because it is funny without being about anybody in particular, and the next safest is whichever Caddyshack quote he says the most. You already know which one it is. He has been saying it for twenty years.
The full lineup is in The Tee Box, the newest designs are in New Arrivals, the seasonal rack is in Halloween Golf Shirts & Tees for the rest of this month, and the hats and golf towels are the under-forty-dollar way in.
If You Only Read The Last Paragraph
The best golf joke ever told is the one about the man who takes his hat off for the funeral procession on the fourteenth. The second best is the caddie telling a guy he has already moved most of the earth. Both of them are older than almost everybody reading this and both of them still get a full five-groan reaction, because they are not about being bad at golf. They are about the game doing the same thing to everybody who plays it.
Learn two of them. Keep them short. Never tell one during somebody's backswing, which you are going to do anyway. And if you would rather not do the work, wear the joke and let the shirt take the groan for you.
See you tomorrow.
Dan
Shanked Right
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