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| In an ideal world... |
When I die and go to hell, I will find myself sitting at a table in a club house surrounded by golfers. For eternity I will have to overhear their detailed conversations about the 18 holes they have just played. “Did you see that shot I made up the slope with my six iron approaching the green at the 14th?” Every time I plead with Satan to be stretched out on a rack and have molten lead poured down my throat for a few million years, he’ll just cackle and turn away. The devil knows that the golf punishment is sicker than any twisted nightmare that Dante could have envisioned.
The US Open starts today just up the road from us, and that means more traffic and many more bona fide wankers in the bars of Bethesda. This has prompted me to analyse what it is about golf that I so detest, and the answer I came up with is simple: golf is the tidy sport for tidy people. That final putt on the pristine, flat green is like the player combing that final preppy hair into place before the Country Club Annual Golf Awards Dinner. On the green itself, each perfectly manicured blade of grass boasts as much individuality as the golfers themselves. And there’s not a scantling of noise allowed, because a golfer is deeply concentrating. Not defusing a bomb, or re-connecting the arteries of a transplanted heart. No, you have to be really, really quiet because they are trying to nudge a small ball into a
small hole. Why? No one knows. No one will ever know.
small hole. Why? No one knows. No one will ever know.
Golf is sport sucked of passion, because it’s about precision, not about energy. Its target audience necessarily consists of (b)anal retentive neatness freaks, motivated by a need to clean up. “Got to get that ball slotted into its hole. Can’t have stray balls lying about the green, that looks bad.” They have turned a simple child’s game – hitting a ball into a hole with a stick – into a complex, cash-driven, rules-suffocated ritual played by bores masquerading as eccentrics (see the clothes). But the brittle stab at eccentricity is hopelessly contrived, for the only place they dare parade such sartorial ugliness must be out on the course or within the confines of the heavily secured club house.
The game is also still overshadowed by a heavy penchant for exclusivity, snobbery, elitism, egregious chauvinism and surplus wealth, all the while taking up vast realms of open green land that, on a persons-per-yard basis, are negligibly used. Why are masses of people not swarming across the fairways and impaling these conformist twats on their own seven irons, then settling down for lively picnics and impromptu kick-arounds? I’ve no concrete stats, but see that global economic crisis kicked off by the avarice- and stupidity-driven US sub-prime mortgage fiasco? Want to bet that at least 75% of the people who caused that play golf? That the whole concept of sub-prime mortgages was hatched out by four tartan-trousered tossers hunched over their hard, dimpled white balls on the back nine? “Yeah, we’ll make millions doing nothing, then we can retire and play golf all day heh heh.”
Still, in the interests of balance, I’ll make the case for golf as well. It may be a game for obsessives and perfectionists, but fortunately it’s extremely difficult to play. Because most golfers are intellectual dullards, they haven’t noticed that their quest for perfection is futile, so they spend hours and hours of their lives out there. This in turn means that they’re not so likely to be in any of my favourite places, annoying the bollocks off me. So, at least until I get to hell or I lead the golf course revolution carrying a picnic basket and a sharp flag pole from the 18th, I will rarely get to meet them.
Finally, an apology to all the people I know and love who play golf: I’m very sorry that you play golf.
8 comments:
It's not all about greens and holes though, is it? You've got bunkers and heavy rough and trees and massive drives. Have you heard
of Happy Gilmore?
One of my proudest local boasts is that the people of Borth, not far from my hometown of Dolgellau, set about some English tourists with clods and femurs when they dared to play golf on the Sabbath on the newly-laid links in the 1930s.
I like to think the Sabbath was a secondary consideration; they went on the offensive to stop golf in all its plaid horror.
Too funny, mate.
There's definitely an aspect of elitism which I've always disliked as well--the idea is the same as "I can get rich too, as long as I imitate them long enough!"
Monkey see, monkey do. Monkey fall through.
Oh and @No Good Boyo,
As a fervent Yank and totally free of any Royalist tendencies or suspicions--
I'm gonna quote from "Get Him To The Greek" (based on your hometown's name): "What is this? Middle Earth?!?"
Dear Kreig, you are very welcome to both the town's name and, if you've got a few dimes to spare, the town itself.
I can understand your feelings, Ian. I'm in the tiny minority of those who don't play the game within my group of friends at Burridge AFC. Although I find it enjoyable to watch on TV, if it's being played in the UK. I also enjoy smoking when watching golf, but can't really say why; I'm not being evasive, I just have no reasoning behind it. Not so interested when it's being played in the States, it's too showy.
Very nice, thanks for sharing.
Quite odd, in that this past Sunday I actually and literally scorched an uphill six iron on the 14th at Oak Glen. I must protest the crushing bore inference, a good cigar, a pint of brandy and the fellowship of real men hiding from reality is the essence of a life well lived. On television however, a sure cure for insomnia and a chance to bore your family cat.
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