There comes a point in life where every saying, no matter how witty or how funny at first, eventually passes from clever to stupid to teeth-grindingly annoying. When your mom is saying the Austin Powers-style "Yeah, baby!", that's a pretty good sign it's a dead phrase, one you should never mention again.

Screaming "Get in the hole!" on every golf shot reached that nails-on-a-blackboard agony sometime in 2000. Its variant, shouting "Get in the hole!" after a tee shot on a par 5 (see, irony! there's no way it'll get in the hole!) followed in 2002. And yet, every hole, every gallery still has hordes of these mouth-breathing, I'm-gonna-hear-myself-on-the-tee-vee idiots. They spawned in the wake of Tiger Woods' ascent, babbling morons transplanted from Fenway Pahk or Lambeau Field to the previously placid golf course. And they've gone from minor annoyance to serious problem.

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that it's time to deal with these idiots once and for all.

My proposition is twofold. First, we offer amnesty. Anybody who has said "Get in the hole!" at any point since 2000, admit it here. Your sins will be forgiven. You have twelve hours from the time of this post.

Next, we turn loose the hounds. Now, I probably can't use Yahoo! as a forum for advocating violence, even against those who so desperately need it. But what I can do is this: recommend a temporary suspension of golf course gallery etiquette ... in a retaliatory capacity.

What exactly does that mean? Well, let's say some clown hollers "Get in the hole!" at the next tournament you attend. You now have the right to demonstrate, in no uncertain terms, that such behavior is no longer tolerable on the course. Could you, say, pour a sticky Coke over their head in the heat of summer? Blow an air horn in their ear? Lock them in a Port-a-Potty? Sure. All these remedies and more are available to you. (Hey, how about suggesting a few in the comments below?)

It's time to take out the trash, ladies and gentlemen. Let's make way for some good hecklers on the course -- the kind that would have no problem yelling "Uuuupppp ... dowwwwnnnn" during any of Phil Mickelson's 47 chips on Torrey Pines No. 13.

(Of course, if they yell "Freebird," as my blog colleague MJD suggested yesterday, buy them a beer. That's cheap irony doubling all the way back around to genius.)