There was just one moment this year, between all the questions, the soft and the hard ones, when Tiger Woods seemed to forget all his troubles.

It was at the Memorial when he was reminded that Caddyshack debuted 30 summers ago. His face lit up and that familiar kid’s smile returned.

“Is it really?” he asked.

“I don’t remember the first time (I watched it). As for how many, I’d have to say pretty close to a hundred by now,” Woods said. “I’ve got a bunch of lines but for some reason you kind of remember the more times you go through. It’s the little things. That’s what makes the movie so great.”

He was asked if he’d worn out the DVD yet.

“I’ll just buy another one,” he said. He can buy the new Blu-ray edition.

Tiger’s all-time favorite flick – and he isn’t alone – debuted to zero fanfare and rotten reviews exactly 30 years ago today when the prodigy was four and golf was an institution needing a good poke in the ribs. Harold Ramis and the late Doug Kenney were looking to follow up on the commercial success of Animal House with another irreverent work. They considered spoofing the Nazis – Mel Brooks had done it with The Producers – before targeting the country club scene outside Chicago where collaborators Brian Doyle-Murray and Bill Murray once caddied.

The Murrays had seven other siblings in their Irish Catholic family and the Danny Noonan character (played by Michael O’Keefe) was supposed to be the movie’s main protagonist, fighting the system at toney Bushwood Country Club. “Slobs against snobs,” is how Cindy Morgan (sultry ingénue Lacey Underall in the movie) describes the plot. It didn’t exactly turn out that way, not after the sardonically dry Murray, slapstick master Chevy Chase, bug-eyed zany Rodney Dangerfield and the purposefully pompous Ted Knight were brought together to create a perfect storm of comic confusion.

Caddyshack didn’t win any Oscars. But who’s quoting from Ordinary People these days?

“It’s a funny movie. Nobody thought it was going to be a funny movie,” says John Barmon, who plays Spaulding Smails, Judge Smails‘ slovenly grandson. “I remember standing at the magazine rack, while my mom was shopping, reading an article in Esquire about this upcoming horrible film and they just trashed it. It was like the worst pre-review ever. It was like, ‘here are the upcoming summer movies, you can miss this one.’”

They were wrong. Go to any professional golf event and you’ll hear some line from what is now a cult classic – in the galleries and the locker rooms.