Golf Playing Cards

Novelty Playing Cards has a handful of silly-suited decks like this, with subject matter ranging from the golf shown here to Christmas trees. The motif of the decks is fairly consistent - choose four iconic facets of the activity and make them suits, and then fill in the deck with cheerful and humorous caricatures. That motif takes precedence over the particular subject matter, and while it does detract from the pungency of the satire that can be applied to something as deserving as golf, at the same time time it relieves us from suffering a completely self-absorbed deck.

In this deck, the suits are Sand Traps, Balls, Bags and Clubs, but in a nod to playability, the real suits are shown alongside the silly ones. So this deck is completely usable in standard card games. The Sand Traps are all depicted as hungrily eating golf balls; the bags are ready and faithful; the clubs dance about madly, trying to throw off your swing; and the balls, well, they're cheerfully oblivious to the whole show. Not a bad set of characterizations, actually.

There's almost a complete absence of additional digs at golf or golfers, except the joker (shown above), depicting a man taking his club, still wrapped around a tree, to his psychiatrist. The absence of additional golf jokes is, for me at least, not unwelcome. Golf jokes are at best well-heeled, and at worst cliched and tiresome. This deck manages to remain light hearted precisely because most of the poking happens only in the mind of the beholder, rather than blatantly hammered home on the cards themselves.

All images © 1993, Novelty Playing Cards, displayed here for commentary, analysis and appreciation only.