Follow TV Tropes

Following

Golf Clubbing

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Golf_Clubbing_7918.jpg
Bonus points if the wielder first shouts, "FORE!"

"Okay, you guys, it's dangerous, so we need to be prepared. So I brought a golf club!"
Yosuke, Hiimdaisy: Persona 4

When you think of sports equipment-as-Improvised Weapon, you probably think of a baseball bat. But thugs who want to be a bit different, perhaps show a bit more class, reach instead for their 9-iron. Where the former is essentially a big stick, your golf club is more like a hammer with all the weight concentrated on the point of impact.

The weapon of choice of the Corrupt Corporate Executive, because they're likely to have one lying around anyway. They might even have several, in which case you can expect them to consult their Number Two on the best club for the shot. Alternately, the Number Two might make a recommendation of their own volition part way through the assault.

It is also obviously the weapon of choice someone whom plays golf either recreationally or as a professional Golfer.

This trope displays varying degrees of realism. While pretty much anything you hit with a golf club is going to feel it, golf shafts are lightweight and liable to break if you hit something too heavy with too much force, or hit something with the shaft, having the club head swing beyond the point of impact. While a broken metal shaft would leave an end sharp enough to serve as a stabbing implement, the fragility of golf clubs compared to baseball bats or solid metal poles make them a poor choice for zombie defense or the like.

Has nothing to do with Not My Driver.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Taiga does it in GaoGaiGar, even Calling His Attack while doing it ("TITANIUM HEAD DRIVER!").
  • Higurashi: When They Cry: Keiichi gets a golf club in preparation for a fight at one point. Said fight was actually a friend asking for help at a baseball game.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica: This is Homura's first weapon. She trades up pretty quickly.
  • In You're Under Arrest!, Aoi Futaba (who was in the golf team at high school) attacks some yakuzas who were armed with guns and taking cover beside a short cliff by hitting golf balls at them with a club. (The anime version of this story was much different; in that version, Aoi, who used to be a basketball player instead of a golf player, uses basketball moves to stop some delinquents from stealing a valuable pair of shoes.)
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! (first anime series), Dr. Goyu tries to kill Dark Yugi with a golf club after losing his Shadow Game, but Dark Yugi just dodges and lets it break on the floor before giving his attacker a Penalty Game.

    Asian Animation 

    Comic Books 

    Comic Strips 
  • Peter hints at wanting to beat Roger up with golf clubs when he has to golf with his dad in a torrential rainstorm in an arc of FoxTrot. Similarly, Andy Fox has hinted at wanting to beat Roger up with buying an expensive golf club when she finds out in another arc. In a Sunday strip, she even tried to play Golf while envisioning Roger's face on the ball out of irritation at having to go golfing, to which she hit it extremely hard, which Roger, oblivious to his wife's anger, states "Easy, dear. You want to hit the ball, not kill it."

    Fanfiction 
  • In the Harry Potter fanfic Brutal Harry, the incident that leads to Vernon Dursley's arrest is him bludgeoning Harry with a three-iron after Harry attacks Dudley while the latter is attacking one of Harry's classmates.
  • In Panem Reborn:
    • To tie in with the country club arena, the 105th Hunger Games cornucopia weapons are reinforced golf clubs with sharpened ends. Most of the tributes use them to beat their opponents to death, while Heffer uses the end of his club to slit the throats of all four Careers after driving his golf cart underwater.
    • Those golf clubs make a return for the 106th Hunger Games despite the arena being a convention center. And while not mentioned during the 107th Hunger Games, it's presumed that the sporting goods store in the mall arena would contain golf clubs as weapons.

    Films — Animation 
  • Wendell & Wild: Father Bests is murdered early in the film by a golf club to the head courtesy of the Klaxons.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In The 51st State, Samuel L. Jackson's character, Elmo, manages to destroy a gang of (5?) Skinheads with one of his Golf clubs, apparently without straining himself.
  • In 68 Kill, Chip takes a golf club from the motel office when he goes looking for payback. However, it is taken off him and used by Amy to knock him out, and later by Monica to torture him.
  • Anger Management: Jack Nicholson's characters uses one, reflecting a Real Life incident of his a little while before shooting the film.
  • Batman Begins: Alfred knocks out a member of the League of Shadows with this.
  • In the prologue of The Butchers, young Simon cracks his abusive father over the head with a gold club, then keeps whacking him once he is on the ground.
  • Die Hard 2: John McClane uses a golf club against the first terrorist in the baggage area of the airport early in this installment.
  • Dogma: Silent Bob whacks Azrael in the chest with a golf club, which Azrael believes to be a futile gesture... until it smashes his chest open. Turns out Cardinal Glick is the kind of pompous person who would bless his golf clubs for a better game, and being hit with a blessed object doesn't do a demon like Azrael any favors.
  • Evoked and made more badass in Don: The Chase Begins Again, where you think for a moment that a man is going to be clubbed to death... Before Don kills him by hitting a golf ball right into his face at close range.
  • "It's time to do what doctors do best!", quips the eponymous villain in Dr. Giggles when he picks up a golf club to attack a cop with. It eventually gets bent out of shape, and he muses that he "should have used an eight-iron".
  • In Funny Games, Peter uses a golf club to break George's leg, and Paul later kills the family dog with it.
  • The Gravedancers: When Harris first suspects someone is in his house, he grabs a golf club as a weapon when he goes to investigate.
  • In Judas Kiss, Friedman attacks Grimes broken foot with a golf club in an effort to force some answers out of him.
  • In Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Dog raids a pair of small-time drug dealers and tortures the whereabouts of their stash out of them by pelting golf balls at one while using the other's mouth as a tee.
  • The Mask: Mob boss Niko sticks a tee in Dorian's mouth and hits a golf ball.
  • Murder, She Said: When Miss Marple spies someone lurking behind the curtain between her room and the next, she grabs a golf club from her bag to confront them.
  • Rock N Rolla: Yuri the Russian gangster and Lennie Cole the London Gangster are playing a game of golf, and Lennie is enraging Yuri by being racist to him (Yuri's already in a bad mood from the theft of his lucky painting). Yuri's response is to have his enforcer Victor break Lennie's kneecaps with a golf club, so that he'll never walk again. Luckily, Gory Discretion Shot is applied. Unluckily, we get to see Victor wiping his club afterwards.
  • Starsky & Hutch: Reese Feldman slaps Huggy Bear while he's posing as a caddy, for forgetting the nine iron. Later, Huggy whacks him in the head with it.
    Huggy Bear: Found your nine iron, bitch.
  • Suicide Kings: The Denis Leary character uses an iron to severely admonish a minor character, then complains loudly about these damn flimsy plastic shafts.
  • Near the end of The Suicide Squad, Agent Flo picks up a golf club and brains Amanda Waller to stop her from blowing up the Squad.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Casey Jones, who is known for using sports equipment as his weapon of choice, uses a driver to good effect against Tatsu.
    Casey: I'll never call golf a dull game again.
  • Wasabi is a French-Japanese action comedy. A golf culb is used by the hero (played by Jean Reno) in a scene where Yakuza brings him to a "negotiation" on a golf driving range.
  • In When Evil Calls, Samantha beats Daniel's undead stepfather to death with a golf club.

    Gamebooks 
  • In the gamebook Toy Terror: Batteries Included, you're a kid trapped alone in your house with a man-sized Killer Robot stalking you. As the robot enters your dad's home office, the book gives you an option to either run from it, or grab one of your dad's golf clubs and whack the robot from behind. Choose the latter option and the robot breaks into half, revealing it to contain two mini-robots, one evil mini-robot which is in control, and the other good mini-robot which assists you to defeat its twin.

    Literature 
  • Used at the end in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Given a stealth Call-Back in the dedication in Mikael's book;
    To Sally, who taught me the benefits of the game of golf.
  • In The Hobbit, it is said that the game of golf was invented by hobbits at the Battle of the Green Fields, in which Bullroarer Took scored a decisive blow by knocking off Golfimbul's head with a wooden club for a hundred-yard drive into a rabbit hole.
  • In P. G. Wodehouse's Leave it to Psmith, Lord Emsworth thinks his secretary, Baxter, has gone insane and sends Psmith round to knock some sense into him. Psmith, always the sort to come prepared, takes Freddie Threepwood's golf club with him. (However, since he finds Baxter unconscious, all he does is poke him with it.)
  • Subverted in World War Z; one character recalls that he saw a man trying to fight a zombie off with a golf club, but he missed hitting the zombie with the head of the club and only bent the shaft around the zombie's head. That left the man weaponless and afterward he had a very bad day indeed.
  • An exterminator in Hoot brings a five-iron with him when he goes to a construction site overrun by cottonmouths, but he ends up not having to use it.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Amen: A fantasy sequence shows Ernie preparing to kill his son-in-law Rueben this way after the latter interrupts a liaison.
  • Annika (2021): In episode 2x5, Harper is on the phone to Annika when she sees the Victim of the Week's business partner drive up and start smashing the windows of the victim's husband's car with a golf club.
  • The killer in the Bones episode "The Gamer in the Grease" bludgeoned the victim to death so violently with a golf club that it snapped in half, then proceeded to stab the victim repeatedly with the broken handle.
  • In Burn Notice, a guy takes a baseball bat to the man who tried to rape his sister. Fiona tells him he should have used a golf club instead, he'd get more velocity concentrated on a smaller impact area.
  • CSI: Cyber: The Victim of the Week in "Why-Fi" is killed when an intruder snatches a golf club off him and beats him to death. Because he was using a game system to improve his swing at the time, the murder is caught on a motion-capture video.
  • In the CSI: Miami episode "Blown Away", a flashback shows that the Victim of the Week was killed this way—she walked in on her assailants robbing her house and while one distracted her, the other picked up a golf club and bashed her head in. note 
  • Father Brown: In "Flower of the Fairway", the first Victim of the Week is cracked over the head with a five iron and then has his body dumped in the water trap.
  • Forever: In "The Man In the Killer Suit" the father of the victim of a con man used one of his golf clubs to hit the con man over the head. Turns out he's not the killer, though.
  • The Glades: The Victim of the Week in "Breaking 80" was done in by a blow to the head with a nine iron.
  • In Higher Ground, Daisy is sent to Horizon after hitting her father in the head with a seven iron.
  • L.A. Law: In one episode, Grace prosecutes a golfer for cruelty to animals after he beat a swan to death with his club after it honked and ruined his shot. Later it is revealed that in another incident a toad had croaked to distract the golfer and he then literally teed off on it.
  • In the Law & Order episode "Bitch", the Victim of the Week is beaten with a golf club by an ex-lover, a powerful mogul of a cosmetics company.
  • In the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Lead" a child molester is beaten to death with a golf club.
  • Major Crimes: The Body of the Week in "All In" is found at the bottom of a water hazard on a golf course, his head having been beaten in with one of his golf clubs.
  • On Melrose Place, Amanda hits her abusive ex-husband Jack in the legs to stop him from killing her after he lured her to his home. It ultimately ends with him falling from the second floor of his home and dying of his injuries a few days later.
  • Midsomer Murders: In "The Dogleg Murders", bullying snob Alistair Kingslake is killed with a golf iron at the Whiteoaks golf club
  • Murder, She Wrote: The Victim of the Week in "How to Make a Killing Without Really Trying" is a stockbroker who gets brained with his own putter.
  • The Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode The Screaming Skull has an intermission segment where Crow disguises himself as a skull and scares Mike. Mike completely freaks out and hits Crow with a variety of weapons, with his golf club being the last one. What makes the scene particularly amusing is that Mike brings his entire golf bag and spends a few minutes carefully considering which club would make the best weapon—screaming in a panic the entire time. And Tom Servo, who's trying in vain to stop Mike from further hurting Crow, gets distracted admiring Mike's nice driver.
  • Mythbusters used a robot-driven golf club to explode cigarette lighters.
  • NCIS: In S11 Ep 19, "Crescent City" McGee collects the wrong end of this from a perpetrator's father.
  • New Tricks: The Victim of the Week in "Good Work Rewarded" was 10 year old boy killed with a golf club on a golf course.
  • In The Sopranos episode "Another Toothpick", "Mustang" Sally cracks a man's head with a putter for talking to his girlfriend. Of course, because the man he did this to was the brother of a made man in the New Jersey mob, Sally gets a bullet to the head not too long thereafter.
  • Wiseguy. John Kousakis beats Harriet Weiss with a golf club, then provides the following Bond One-Liner.
    "Harriet can't come to the phone right now. She's in the rough."

    Professional Wrestling 
  • In 1999, WCW repackaged Barry Darsow as "Mr. Hole in One" Barry Darsow, an evil wrestling golfer. The gimmick involved him challenging his opponent to hit a putt... setting up Darsow beating him up with a club.

    Theater 
  • In the Agatha Christie play Spider's Web, the murder victim was killed with a blow to the head from a blunt instrument; after some red herrings, it turns out that the murder weapon was a golf club.

    Video Games 
  • BioShock
    • In BioShock, a main character, major antagonist Andrew Ryan, is killed with his own golf club... at his own request, by the brainwashed player character.
    • BioShock 2: While not actually a usable weapon, while in the "Journey to the Surface" ride in Ryan Amusements, you come across an animatronic Andrew Ryan. Behind him is one of his golf clubs. If you use Telekinesis, you can use it as a weapon by throwing it at something. If you throw it at the Andrew Ryan animatronic, you get an achievement: 9-Irony.

      In the multiplayer, a golf club is the signature melee weapon of the Businessman, Buck Raleigh. Also, the "Kill 'em Kindly" mode gives everyone a golf club and limits them to melee only, regardless of their chosen character.
  • Dead Rising: One of the survivors you can rescue in the second game is a pro golfer who's using her favorite club to keep zombies at bay. She's very nonchalant about the situation, saying that this is good practice for her swing and she hopes her favorite club won't fall apart. While you can use a club in the game, all you can do is drive golf balls into zombies' faces until you run out. It apparently never occurs to your character to use it as a melee weapon.
  • Fallout: New Vegas has a 9-iron weapon, and it has a special move in VATS called "Fore!", where you hit the enemy in the groin. This is also the weapon of choice of Driver Nephi, one of the Fiend leaders, who carries a unique driver. Killing Mr. House with a golf club completes the "A Slave Obeys" challenge.
  • This is the signature weapon of Seto in Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, although there are better alternatives available. It even shows up on the cover art.
  • Ginga Ojousama Densetsu Yuna: A golf club is the main weapon of Fraulein Mai of Roppongi.
  • Grand Theft Auto series
    • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: In "Four Iron", Tommy Vercetti is asked to 'persuade' a businessman to do a deal. During the mission he lacks his usual weapons. note  So he has to get persuasive with a golf club. The club can be used as a melee weapon during the rest of the game.
      • In the Definitive Edition, to receive the "Iron-y" trophy, Tommy must 'persuade' the businessman with a golf club.
    • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Golf clubs can be used as a melee weapon. If CJ knocks someone down, he will then uses a golf swing.
      • If you hit a taxi driven by a man in just his boxers and a green hoody, he'll automatically come after you with a golf club.
    • Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony: Rocco uses an entire shooting range for improvised torture, by tying someone to a golf cart and having a Mook drive the poor guy around wherever Rocco feels like practicing his swing.
  • Halo 3 got a 7-wood golf club with the Mythic Map Pack, which is a reskin of the Gravity Hammer. It goes along with the golf ball and golf hole Forge items. It returns in Halo: Reach, and can be used in Firefight.
  • The Hitman series has golf clubs among other things as available weapons.
  • Golf clubs are one of the numerous melee weapons featured in Hotline Miami. They're the weapon that the player has to use to fight against the game's second boss.
  • There is a game called Itchy and Scratchy in Miniature Golf Madness. Three guesses whether it features this trope.
  • In The Last of Us Part II, Abby beats Joel to death with a golf club while Ellie is Forced to Watch.
  • In Left 4 Dead 2, the Golf Club is a melee weapon exclusive to a single official campaign and custom campaigns.
  • Let's Go Island has an interesting level where the player fends off a horde of Giant Crab enemies by using golf clubs to launch golf balls as ranged projectiles.
  • A regular in the Like a Dragon series, golf clubs (like every other solid object the protagonists get their hands on) can be used as a melee weapon with a unique attack: in this case, swinging it into an unfortunate thug's chin to flip him onto his ass.
  • In MadWorld, Jack can use a golf club as a weapon, including in the Man Golf minigame.
  • One of the weapons you can find in Naughty Bear is a golf club. You can thwack bears to near death reliably with it, and its execution is forcing the victim on their face against the ground as Naughty Bear sets up a careful golf swing that uppercuts them in the chin before slamming the club back down on their head, killing them. Also an invisible sports commentator and crowd of spectators quietly clap and cheer for Naughty's good form when swinging.
  • In Persona 4, the main character's traditional weaponry is two-handed swords... or, alternatively, golf clubs. The protagonist's starting weapon is one, as Yosuke had to put together fighting gear from just the stuff in his possession, as are a few later-game weapons. When he buys actual weapons (a katana and a nata) for their second expedition to the TV world, and waves them around in Junes, he and the protagonist get arrested.
  • In Pokémon Sun and Moon, you can go to Guzma's house on Route 2 and talk to his dad, who says "I tried to set that boy of mine straight, but when I did, I was the one who got beat." There's a golf bag in the corner, full of bent and broken golf clubs.
  • In Project Zomboid, golf clubs are fairly common and make a subpar weapon, with good damage and reach, but poor durability. Better than a pool cue against the bogeyman, but if you're green and still want to get your kills the fair way, the real Caddy of blunt weapons is the baseball bat.
  • In Ragnarok Online, the Priest class can be armed with Iron Drivers.
  • RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore: Golf Clubs, a type of One-Handed Sword, that give a Money Multiplier when wielded, and have a Flavor Text of:
    Used for golf, but feel free to hit whatever you want with it.
  • Silent Hill 4: Henry can pick up a couple of golf clubs as weapons, they're rather fragile and not practical to haul around given his limited inventory slots.
  • In South Park: The Stick of Truth, Kyle's weapon is a golf club, though rather than hitting people with it, he uses it to hit golf balls at his enemies.
  • Super Smash Bros. series: One of Peach's randomly-selected weapons for her forward smash attack is a golf club, with the other possible weapons being a frying pan and a tennis racket. Of the three, the golf club has the lowest power but longest reach. Her Echo Fighter, Daisy, however, always uses the golf club.
  • In Team Fortress 2, there's a golf club available as one of the Demoman's many melee weapons, called Nessie's Nine Iron. It's a re-skin of the Eyelander, meaning you can in fact decapitate opponents with a golf club.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge: Casey Jones's heavy melee attack causes him to pull out a golf club and swing it to send enemies flying. He also (somehow) produces a golf cap when he does it.
  • In Unturned, golf clubs are fairly common and make a decent weapon with good damage and reach.
  • In Wandering Hamster, getting a perfect score in mini-golf course earns Bob a golf club to use as a weapon.

    Web Animation 
  • Homestar Runner: Crazy-Go-Nuts University has the Golf Club Team, which just seems to be an excuse for The Cheat to whack things like "Pile of Electronics State" and "Homestar's Knees Tech" while people cheer him on.
    Fighting, and sometimes striving / Wondering what the Dumple is / Excellence, and what is valor? / And The Cheat will hit stuff with a golf club! / C! G! N! U!
  • Not Web Animation exactly but the student film Working Late on YouTube involves a golf club being used during the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse in Britain.

    Western Animation 
  • In the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "For Your Ed Only", Sarah tries to find something to hit Ed with; she finds a golf club with a large dent in the shape of Ed's head, and she remarks "Used it."
  • Family Guy: In "Patriot Games", Stewie beats Brian with a golf club during his second attack on him over an unpaid gambling debt.
  • In the Gravity Falls episode "The Golf War", Mabel and Pacifica use putters as rather effective weapons when the Lilliputtians turn against the both of them.
  • Mr. Cat from Kaeloo frequently does this to Quack Quack and Stumpy, especially in the Minigolf Episode.
  • In King of the Hill, Hank is not afraid to use golf clubs to defend himself. He keeps a bag full of them by the front door. In The Buck Stops Here, Hank pulls his club against the bouncer who's after Bobby's given wristwatch which Buck waged on.
    • In a later episode, Dale gives Hank a set of golf clubs he got at a police auction. They are very nice golf clubs, but one of them — Dale does not tell Hank which — was used to murder someone. Hank does not want to use that particular club, but he's still willing to roll the dice. They are very nice golf clubs.
  • The Loud House: In "No Guts, No Glori", Lola knocks Lincoln out with a golf club.
  • ReBoot: during a dream episode Bob has Glitch turn into a golf club which he used on Hack and Slash. He made a hole-in-one.
  • The Simpsons:
    • In "Treehouse of Horror III", Homer is trying to scare the children at a Halloween party with a tale of a woman who hit her husband with a golf club, but is so bad at telling it, that he forgot that the man's sport of choice was bowling, not golfing.
    • In "Treehouse of Horror XIX", Homer kills Neil Armstrong with a thrown golf club to the head.

    Real Life 
  • Golf Clubs are ideal improvised weapons for dealing with venomous snakes. Since they're designed to hit things at ground level anyway, they're much easier to reach a snake's head with than a bat would be, and long enough to keep the user out of the snake's reach, unlike most sticks. Even better, the club end can be used as a hook to pick up and move the snake (use a second club to pin it securely) more easily than most tools if the situation is controlled enough that the snake can be moved without killing it.
  • They're also a favourite weapon against cane toads in Australia.
  • Jack Nicholson made headlines when he smashed the windshield of a Mercedes-Benz with a golf club during a road rage altercation.
  • Before the Scots turned it into a worldwide sport, golf was in fact, an execution method used by the Manchus...simply replace the golf balls with the heads of offenders, who would be buried up to their necks and decapitated.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Alternative Title(s): Golfing Fore Fighting

Top

Abby Anderson

In what is easily the game's defining moment, Abby brutally murders a fan favorite character...

How well does it match the trope?

4.5 (8 votes)

Example of:

Main / HeroKiller

Media sources:

Report