So, the other day, I got it in my head to watch that old Robin Williams stand-up bit about golf. You know the one, or maybe you don’t. It feels like a lifetime ago he was with us, doing his thing. I just had a hankering for some real, laugh-out-loud comedy, and that routine, for some reason, popped into my mind.
First off, finding it wasn’t as straightforward as you’d think. Oh, it’s out there, alright, but spread across a million little clips. Some are grainy, some have sound that’s like listening through a wall, and others are cut off right before the punchline. It’s always the way, isn’t it? You want to see something specific, something classic, and you spend half your time just digging through the digital junk drawer. I eventually tracked down a decent enough version, probably pieced together from a longer special. Had to squint a bit, but the audio was mostly there.
Anyway, I finally sat down, cleared my desk, and just let it play. And man, even after all these years, knowing some of the beats, it still hits. The sheer energy of the man. He wasn’t just telling jokes about golf; he was embodying the whole ridiculous, frustrating, addictive nature of the game. He’d become the stiff old guy, the frustrated amateur, the caddy, even the ball probably, if you watched him long enough. It was a physical comedy as much as it was verbal.
What really got me, watching it again, was how he could take something pretty ordinary, a sport a lot of people play or at least know about, and just twist it into these absurd, hilarious shapes. He’d start with a simple observation, like how people dress or how seriously they take it, and then his mind would just explode in a dozen different directions. It’s not just jokes, it’s a performance. He’s working, hard, up there. You can see it.
And the golf stuff itself – so relatable, even if you’ve only ever played mini-golf. The swearing, the self-loathing after a bad shot, the bizarre rituals. He nailed it. I remember trying to play golf properly once. Just once. Borrowed some clubs, went to a driving range. Let’s just say my experience was less “sport of kings” and more “public menace.” I think I spent more time apologizing to people nearby than actually hitting the ball. So yeah, I felt that frustration he was talking about, deep in my bones.
It made me think, too. Comedy like that, so wild and untamed, you don’t see it as much these days, or maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places. Everything feels a bit more polished, a bit more careful. Robin Williams, he was just a force of nature. Watching that golf routine, it wasn’t just about a few laughs; it was like tapping back into that raw, chaotic, brilliant energy he had. A good reminder of what a genius we lost. Definitely worth the effort of digging it up.
