The story behind Dangerfield`s famous

The story behind Dangerfield's famous Caddyshack line
"My golf game is getting real good. Last week, I got through the windmill." — Rodney Dangerfield
Comedian Rodney Dangerfield didn't play golf, but his wife says he'd be thrilled that his humor is the centerpiece of a
campaign to speed up play on courses across the country. One reason Dangerfield didn't play, even though he was
intrigued by the sport, was because it took too much time, Joan Dangerfield says.
"Rodney was, I'm sure you can tell, a really keyed-up kind of anxious guy. So it was actually the pace of play — the very,
very thing this campaign is addressing — that kind of made him golf-phobic or teed him off against the game," she told
USA TODAY Sports in a phone interview from Los Angeles.
In the 1980 comedy film Caddyshack, Dangerfield played Al Czervik, a
boisterous tycoon who rattled the pretentious members of Bushwood Country
Club with, among other things, a golf bag equipped with a beer tap. In one
scene, Czervik is irked that Judge Elihu Smails, played by the late Ted Knight,
is taking so long to hit a shot.
"Let's go — while we're young," Czervik barks.
(Photo: Courtesy of Warner Home Video)
The United States Golf Association (USGA) turned heads during the recent
U.S. Open when it announced "While We're Young" as the theme of a new
campaign to encourage more people to take up the game or return to playing.
Videos promoting the initiative include Arnold Palmer uttering the line to a
slow-playing Clint Eastwood — and adding "please" after a menacing look
from Eastwood. Kids shout the line to Tiger Woods when he takes too long on
a miniature golf course.
"The fact that this organization is using his zinger, I know he would just be doing cartwheels, actually," said Joan
Dangerfield, who married Dangerfield in 1993 after a 10-year courtship and was with him until his death in 2004 at age 82.
Joe Goode, USGA managing director of communications, said, "Rodney Dangerfield and his iconic line ... are part of the
game's vernacular and ethos. Golf is fun. Fun is why we all took up the game to begin with. And while the issue of pace of
play may be a serious one, the cure need not be."
Joan Dangerfield said Rodney admired people, including his doctors, who played golf.
"He figured since the games holds ... the interest and enthusiasm of so many intelligent people, you know that there really
must be something gratifying that they get out of it," she said. Yet he was puzzled that golfers might spend seven hours at
the course. "He wondered, 'Oh, are they just
trying to get away from their wives?' and stuff
like that," she said.
She once suggested they take up the game
because the couple was getting invited to golf
events in places such as Ireland. She also
told him that she'd heard playing golf
increased life expectancy by five years.
"He said, 'Well, how long do you have to play
to get that longevity benefit?' I'm going, 'I
have no idea,' '' she said. "So we didn't take it
up."
Now two stars of women's golf, Paula
Creamer and Annika Sorenstam, appear in
USGA promos saying, "While We're Young,"
while yanking at imaginary neckties — just as Dangerfield yanked at his tie during stand-up routines.
The USGA got permission from Warner Bros. and the Dangerfield family to launch the campaign.
"They were so respectful," Dangerfield said. "I thought the idea was pretty bold for such a conservative organization, but
super fun."
Joan Dangerfield is working on a new website, www.rodney.com, to be launched later this month, and a new online game
called "The Dangerfield," to be launched this fall. She says the website will be devoted to the full sweep of Dangerfield's
career.
She says Dangerfield "forfeited a high-paying
Vegas gig to do Caddyshack — and for peanuts,"
she said. "He actually lost money making the
movie. But it did open doors for him and helped
him kind of live the movie star life, which you
know was fun for him."
Caddyshack was her husband's "biggest break in
film." It helped launch him into starring roles in
films such as Easy Money and Back to School.
She said she contacted Jon Peters, executive
producer of Caddyshack, to confirm Rodney had
come up with the "while we're young" line.
"He assured me that Rodney did," she said. "And
it sounds like a line Rodney would come up with
anyway because of his comments just in general
life ... born out of impatience and frustration.''
Accustomed to the audience laughing and
clapping in comedy clubs, Dangerfield had a hard
time with movie making. Quiet on the set meant
no laughs. "It was an adjustment for him to say
something and not get the feedback of the
laughter," she said.
Joan Dangerfield, widow of comedian Rodney Dangerfield, says her late
husband would be thrilled that a famous line he uttered in Caddyshack is the
centerpiece of a new USGA pace-of-play initiative.(Photo: Cherie Steinberg)
She also said it was an adjustment for him to work with Chevy Chase, who played cool playboy golfer Ty Webb in
Caddyshack. Dangerfield's pace was always frenetic. Chase and his character were the opposite.
"What really grated on his nerves was that sometimes Chevy Chase just spoke too slowly," she said, noting that if you
watch scenes with Dangerfield and Chase you can see Dangerfield shifting his weight from foot to foot in jittery fashion.
She said she helped Dangerfield realize Chase was in character as a "suave" guy and that he wasn't speaking
deliberately just to get more camera time.''
Dangerfield stole the movie in his own way. Yet he also wondered afterward why nobody ever offered him an opportunity
to endorse a golf product.
"Maybe something that he could add his unique brand of humor to promote," Joan Dangerfield said.
The USGA has come up with something.
"Rodney was aware that Tiger Woods had mentioned that Caddyshack was his favorite movie," she said. "... He was
especially proud of that because, again, he always wondered, 'Does the golf crowd really look down on the movie?' "
Rodney Dangerfield's signature line in his career was "I don't get no respect." But in the world of golf, "while we're young"
also lives on.
Dangerfield said that if golfers are reluctant to say her husband's line on the course, they can always get their meaning
across to fellow players by yanking on an imaginary neck tie.
"If they just make that gesture, that's going to be, 'Hey, hey, hey, hurry it up.' '' she said. "Rodney would be so-o-o-o proud
of that.