Golf. There’s a sport to stir up hot passions or deep waves of apathy among certain people. British blogger Clive Davis is clearly not a fan of the sport once described, I believe by Oscar Wilde, as a good way of spoiling a good walk (okay, it may have been said by one of those other smartypants writers who are quoted for their supposed wit and wisdom, but whatever). Clive does not care much for the sort of people who often play golf and for the way it is often used by political types – mostly rightwing ones – in the United States. He has a point. Golf bores are tedious, just as football bores, rugby bores, athletics bores, horse racing bores (now that is really boring) or F1 motor racing bores, are, er, boring. However, Clive’s post hits a duff note in having a poke at Michael Douglas, in my view. Douglas, as well as being outrageous enough to have married Catherine Zeta-Jones, is a golf nut! Aaaaggghhh. I do not know why Douglas seems to bring out a certain hostile reaction in some folk. His Gordon Gekko remains, for me, one of the highlights of 20th Century cinema (yes, really). And I distinctly recall that Douglas, shortly after 9/11, decided to fly over to the UK for an Anglo-US amateur golf tournament, shrugging off worries about security to slug it around the links. He won my respect for that move.
Golf is both a team game and an intensely individualistic one and the latter point may explain its enormous popularity in certain parts of the world and also explain its appeal to a certain demographic. Although the number of people has expanded a lot in recent years as people get richer and due to the influence of the mighty Tiger Woods, it is still overwhelmingly viewed as a sport for the gin-and-tonic slice of the population (although I see nothing actually wrong with that). It is also a social game in that it is often the sort of game that allows people to discuss business and so on as they go around the course. My brother, a lawyer, seems to get briefed most of the time when he is on the fairways. (He once beat his boss and made a mental point not to do so again).
And I suspect this taps into the continued links between sport and class in the English-speaking world, especially in Britain. Golf, rugby union and arguably, cricket, is middle class, while polo or yacht-racing is seen as posh, and football (soccer) and rugby league is working class. I often find that people often reveal themselves quite a lot when “their sport” gets “invaded” by non-typical supporters. In the last soccer World Cup tournament in Germany, for example, I remembered reading comments by football regulars denouncing all those Home Counties types for showing a sudden interest in the English team selection, although perhaps England would have fared better had Ericsson paid some attention to their views. And the same goes, I recall once, when I went along to a sailing regatta and overheard some old salt muttering about “Chavs” becoming interested in sailing (an unlikely prospect, as far as I can tell. I cannot quite envisage this part of the English population wanting to navigate a yacht or change a spinnaker at speed in a heavy sea).
Anyway, as I write, it is around 3pm. Time for the football to begin.
In Scotland, where I grew up, golf is a game for everyman; there are no class associations with golf.
“A good walk spoiled,” is Mark Twain. Not convinced Wilde was in favour of walks at all. I think the country walk aspect of golf might be OK, but I can’t see myself ever being other than frustrated with the ball and stick bit.
My deeper hatred of golf is founded in its aspirational associations (outside Scotland); that it is precisely associated with post-war Corporation Man and a certain form of social placement and social striving. I have the same thing about bridge. It is the clubbishness based on exclusion and tightly defined artificial etiquette, that I am damn sure excludes me and has nothing to do with the enjoyment of the game.
Is that just lower-middle-class chippiness? If so why don’t I feel the same resentment and revulsion towards Oxbridge and Ivy League, Senior Common Rooms and gentleman’s clubs, where I’m even more out of place?
I quite like gin and tonic these days. That’s an age thing, not a class thing, perhaps.
Well quite Robert. In Scotland, where it was invented, (dont you dutch folk start sticking your oar in again!) it was open to all. A way of utilising the narrow strip of unproductive land between the seashore and salt free fields. That is what links golf is all about. Nine holes out along the seashore and nine holes back.
The class thing alas is the ruination of a beautiful game.
And stops many people getting to enjoy it, and it is very real in places like England and America.
Oh, and by the way, when did that facecious, narcissistic little prick, Oscar Wilde, EVER go for a long walk, with or without a bag of golf clubs?
I met a very intersesting person on a golf course, once, in the mid-80’s. See, two of my best friends are golf nuts, and I’d always though is was insufferably boring, too, until one of them dragged my out on a local nine-hole course at an outrageous hour of the morning when I had fallen into his clutches. So I was sort of getting the hang of it, when I got a call to attend a foursome one Sunday afternoon. I get out there, and I meets this cat with this Welsh accent to his spoken word. “Hmm… nice guy. Really good golfer.” I had no idea who he was.
It was weeks later when Alan called me again in the afternoon and said, “Bring your gear over because we’re gonna jam.” Alan is a drummer, Garry is a bassist, and when I turned up, there was this Welsh cat with his guitar. We plugs in, and gets about thirty seconds into it before I looks at Alan and asks, “Okay; what the fuck is going on here, and who is this guy?”
It was Kim Simmonds, from an old British blues project known as Savoy Brown. I ended up going to work for him for about a year and a half.
There came a day when I watched Kim strike a 4-wood about 175 yards downhill to the green. It was a sensational shot, and I figured right then and there that I would never put into the game what it would take to make a shot like that, and essentially gave it up right on the spot. However, I’d seen enough of the game to get it, and actually began to watch it on TV. And you know what? Jack Nicklaus’ 1986 win at The Masters was one of the most thrilling moments that I recall in all of sports in my lifetime.
Golf in England has been played and enjoyed by all classes for all the twenty-five years I have played it.
I’ve played with plumbers and bankers, builders and property developers, at many courses around the UK, and I’ve usually enjoyed the company and the game.
Of course there are exclusive clubs that cater for the ‘posh’ and those that cater for the rich, but there are also municipal clubs, pay-and-play courses and clubs with open membership lists that will take anyone who wants to pay the, (modest), membership fees. I’m a member in one of the latter in Surrey no less.
The attraction of the game is that it is you against the course, and no matter how well, or how badly, you play there is always an incentive to do better.
It’s addictive, but compared to some other addictions, it’s relatively harmless and for me personally it helped me through some bad times by giving me something else to think about.
The G&T set meme is an old cliche and should be put out to grass, but there are enough old calss-warriors out there to keep it alive. Their loss I suppose.
Yes Kevin , thankfully it is getting more and more relaxed
I have been playing since I was six. First at Caerphilly golf club that was basically a tin shack with a bar in it and somewhere to change your shoes. Hardly posh I’d say. Didn’t even have a professional, or indeed a full 18 holes. It had twelve and you had to play some twice.
Ah but when we moved to Cardiff, dad being a scratch golfer and Wales and Glamorgan player, we ended up joining Cardiff Golf Club. Now that was posh then. The professional had to be signed in by a member to get a drink and you had to wear jackets and ties in the bar.
All this really used to piss me off.
The game was what me and my family were all about (they were all single handicappers) not the clubbable business opertunity thing.
There is still much of that about Kevin despite what you say.
Guy if you want to cme down to the SW I’ll teach you to love the game and ignore the social bearpit.
It’s philosphical too!
My ol Daddy used to say to me
If you keep ending up in the bunkers in this life son
Dont blame your opponent
dont blame your equipment
But have a long hard look at your stance.
If you want to see a picture of the said sage,
google caerphilly golf club, click enter and scroll down to an ad for their 100th anniversary book. That’s my dad aged 19, teeing off on the first in 1934.
Never really seen golf as a “posh” sport at all.
It’s the very definition of self-made middle-of-the-road semi-retired CORGI-registered Annie Lennox loving decaffeinated respectability. At least in the South East. I suspect this may be different in rural areas where people give a monkeys about belonging to clubs.
Guy, given your pro-liberty views, I really find your dislike of “aspirational” pursuits surprising. As for Bridge, I have never played it and am absolutely crap at cards, although I like backgammon.
If memory serves, Guido Fawkes used to be a professional cardplayer.
Cricket is only a middle-class game in England. Everywhere else in the world it’s played by the working classes equally as much. Which is why Australia always (usually) beats you.
People like Jason Gillespie, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne are what we would call bogans and you english might call “Chavs”. If they lived in England they would likely have grown up to become football hooligans instead of cricketers.
Yobbo, a story that illustrates your point: in about 1976, West Indies were playing Australia. Denis Lillie, the fast Aussie bowler fired a bouncer which went right over Viv Richards’ head. Lillie, as was and is typical of the Australian cricketer, started swearing and making rude gestures to Richards, reminding him what a cricket ball was supposed to look, like, you f**king black b**tard, and other pleasantries.
The next ball that Lillie bowled at Richards was sent out of the ground for six. Richards responded: “If you know what a cricket ball looks like, Denis, perhaps you can go and fetch it.”
I love telling Australian friends of mine that story!
No class associations with Golf in Scotland?
Hmm. Visit Royal Troon some time (if you can get, which is doubtful in itself), and see if you still think that.
otoh, the great thing about hockey* is that it really is classless.
* the real thing, not that imitation game played on a field, of course!
The class associations of golf are a thing of the past, athough the stereotype persists. Here in the US it’s an everyman’s game, and has been since the fifties or so. I’ve worked in the business for a dozen years, and have a good grasp on who our clients are. Here in a large urban area the golfers are mostly Democrat, as is the general population.