another cycling forum
=> acf 1.0 => Post of the Day => Topic started by: librarian on June 06, 2008
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I used to play golf when I was a younger 'un and I'd opine that there are golf courses and there are golf courses.
The traditional links courses (existing from at least as early as the 15th century) just used the marginal "links" land between sea and pasture/forest. Courses were/are shared with sheep, horses etc. Golfers weren't just the kings and queens: in Scotland in particular, golf was - still is - a game of the artisan classes. It's just that it caught on with the social-climbing middle-classes somewhere in the 19th and 20th centuries and then, like everything you care to think of, became commercialised and turned into the ghastly spectacle it now is. But as far as environmental malpractice is concerned one could turn one's ire much more profitably on transportation, food production, house-building, you name it.
But the especial foible of golf is that it became a strange ghetto at some late C20 point where the husbands of the Stepford Wives joined the Freemasons and invented a strange faux - Scots uniform of plaid trousers or plus- fours and naturally, argyle sweaters (http://www.stewartsofstirling.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=48). Of course, there is simply no defence for dress sense like that, so on that count, Trumpton must be A Very Bad Thing.