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What: “Golf in the Comic Strips,” a collection

by Howard Ziehm

Publisher: General Publishing Group ($29.95)

Hal Linden, the actor and entertainer, likes to tell this one: “How can you tell golf is more popular than tennis? Heard any good tennis jokes lately?”

Humor has been a part of golf since the sport made its way to this country from Scotland in the 1890s, about the same time the newspaper comic strip was born. The two have been intertwined ever since.

Howard Ziehm, who grew up in Monterey and used to watch the Bing Crosby tournament at Pebble Beach, spent 14 years collecting more than 4,000 comic strips that have a golf theme. He calls them golftoons. About 200 made it into this 175-page coffee-table book, which is about 50 too many. Some simply aren’t worth it, and others are in bad taste.

Hot Corner found one glaring error on Page 167, which contains a Conrad cartoon of President Clinton, combining two of his hobbies, lining up to hit a tee shot with a saxophone. One problem, though. Ziehm confuses The Times’ Paul Conrad with author Joseph Conrad.

The error provides one of the book’s better chuckles.