When Golf Humor Hits the Rough

Golf is a sport that, once played, can be dangerously addictive. “The Sweet Spot” is a show that, once viewed, holds no such peril.

The series, premiering tonight at 10 on Comedy Central, follows Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, Joel Murray and John Murray as they address the game of golf through skits, parodies and brotherly banter. The problem is that too many jokes are seriously shanked.

Tonight’s show, the first of five half-hour installments, opens practically like an infomercial for a Florida course. It’s a sly commentary on pro golf’s fawning broadcasters, if you give the Murrays the benefit of the doubt. If you don’t, it comes across as a shameless plug. Either way, the announcer tells us that the men will compete for a sad-sack trophy called the Braggart’s Cup.

The next scene takes place in the clubhouse, where the brothers are staring one another down so intensely that they get stuck in the doorway trying to exit simultaneously. They emerge not at the first tee, but onstage, dancing around like ‘N Sync. (Think of them as the Backswing Boys.)

After this sort-of transition, the game kind of begins. Despite their various talents, the Murrays don’t have anything more interesting to say on the course than your typical Saturday foursome does.

Maybe that’s why they’ve punched it up with a wide range of parodies of everything from ESPN to the MasterCard “priceless” commercials to Tim Conway’s “Dorf on Golf.” Those are among the show’s funniest bits, whereas a subplot about Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth quickly gets old.

The Murrays clearly know a lot about the game and can write a lot of jokes, good or bad, about it. Although they pretty much succeeded in “Caddy- shack,” a film co-written by Brian and co-starring Bill, they could use a mulligan for “The Sweet Spot.”