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

• Author: Malanowski, Jamie

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...