Why novelty golf gifts get binned
Every golfer has received one, and almost none of them still own it. That is not snobbery about novelty gifts. It is a pattern with a cause: a joke aimed at golf cannot be about the golfer, and a gift that is not about the person has nothing to hold it in the house once the laugh has been had.
The half-life of a printed joke
A gag on a mug is delivered in full the first time it's read. There's no second reading, because there's nothing left to find, and from then on the object has to survive on being a mug. It's competing with the plain ones, and it usually loses, which is why the cupboard archaeology in most kitchens turns up at least one.
Aim decides everything
A joke about golf is a joke about everybody who plays it. A joke about their golf is a remark about them, and that is a different object entirely: it gets kept because it is evidence somebody was paying attention. How funny the joke is barely matters. What matters is who it is pointed at.
Which is inconvenient for anyone selling novelty gifts at scale, because the aimed version can't be printed in advance. It has to be chosen, by someone who knows the golfer, from a set of things that are each about something specific.
What a wry gift looks like instead
The alternative is not a serious gift, but a funny one with a longer fuse: a picture that knows something true about the game and lets the recipient arrive at it. A painting of tea and a bacon roll at the halfway hut says what golfers actually look forward to without printing it in a novelty font. A bag propped against a bench at golden hour makes the same point about the nineteenth. Our funny golf gifts page has the four that do this and says plainly what we don't sell.
The budget question
Novelty gifts are usually bought because they're cheap, and that's a fair reason. The trap is spending the whole budget on the laugh. Splitting it works better: something small and daft from wherever sells those, plus one thing that stays. A mug carrying a real painting is £16.99, which is joke-money rather than present-money.
The one exception
A booby prize is genuinely a different job. It has to be handed over publicly, get a laugh in a room, and then belong to someone who didn't want to win it. A wooden spoon fails the third part. Something small and wry passes all three, which is why the society prize table is costed with one on it.
More to browse: funny golf gifts · golf gifts for dad · the whole stage
Written by Craig Fearn, The Golf Gift Co. Last updated .
