Keeping It Light with Dad Jokes

Congratulations to golfer Will Zalatoris, who won the first tournament of the PGA TOUR playoffs yesterday. It happened to be his first PGA TOUR win, too.

I’m not a sportswriter. So I won’t go into the details of Zalatoris’ first win. But let me just say that the last hole was compelling TV.

What I do want to highlight is what Zalatoris mentioned in his post-round interview.

Zalatoris winning wasn’t likely. His performances this year, at least before yesterday’s win, hadn’t met expectations. So Zalatoris secured a new caddie, veteran looper Joel Stock, just days before the first playoff tournament.

“We tried to communicate as much as we possibly could Monday through Wednesday to make this adjustment as easy as possible,” Zalatoris said after his win. “But you never know what it's going to be like until you're in the heat of the moment. Joel was really playing more sports psychologist today. He was awesome. He was ripping dad jokes the entire day to try to keep it loose, and they're terrible but it gave us some pretty good laughs and kept it light.”

Yes, dad jokes helped Zalatoris win his first PGA TOUR tournament!

Merriam-Webster defines a “dad joke” as “a wholesome joke of the type said to be told by fathers with a punchline that is often an obvious or predictable pun or play on words and usually judged to be endearingly corny or unfunny.”

Zalatoris said his favorite went something like this:

Q: What’s brown and sticky?

A: A stick!

Indeed, “keeping it light,” as Zalatoris mentioned, is important when you find yourself on the verge of something new, like winning your first tournament.

Laughter is a great form of stress relief, according to the Mayo Clinic.

For example, laughter increases your intake of oxygen, which in turn, releases endorphins that are released by your brain to help you develop that good, relaxed feeling. And that feeling can prevent muscle tension and reduce some of the physical symptoms of stress.

Teachers should take note of Zalatoris’ recognition of the benefits of “dad jokes.”

Research shows that the use of humor provides lots of benefits to the learning environment. It shouldn’t matter whether it’s a K-12 classroom, a college lecture hall, or a law school courtroom.

Benefits include an increase of interest in learning, a reduction of anxiety and stress in dealing with difficult material, the creation of a positive social and emotional learning environment, and the development of a common psychological bond between students and faculty, just to name a few.

I’ve been a law professor since 2008. Teaching future lawyers is serious business. But teachers don’t always have to be serious to be effective.

I try not to take myself too seriously.

For example, when new students arrived on campus recently, I welcomed them with a sign reading “It’s no joke … law school has started!” with some of my favorite law-related dad jokes plastered around it.

Something simple like this may help reduce some of the anxiety new law students are likely feeling.