Is there any other "sport" so perfectly encapsulating everything shitty about capitalism? It's got everything:
- Extremely large amounts of nature converted to courses made out of non-indigenous plants that waste water and labor keeping the grass at a constant height
- Course are owned by tax-dodging private social clubs with hefty membership costs
- New members have to be approved by the existing membership, so undesirable (read: non-WASP) members of the community can be rejected even if they can meet the economic costs
- Special discount rates offered for family of current members, ensuring generational wealth and privilege is maintained
- Most of the workforce is made up of undocumented laborers from Central America who do manual labor in exchange for shitty wages
- Middle school-age children are employed as off-the-books pack animals so the players don't accidentally do any amount of manual labor
- Players also have the option of driving little cars (with no safety mechanisms at all) so they don't accidentally get exercise
- A whole match takes four fucking hours to complete, requiring substantial free time on top of the sunk costs in fees and equipment
Climate destruction, resource waste, tax-dodges, racism, nepotism, illegal and child labor, and extremely high artificial costs for a leisure activity: I can't think of a single more appropriate avatar for capitalism. Well, maybe if there were slaves.
Go to Scotland, see who plays golf regularly, it's the working class. They play at good old links courses, that are often cheap and accessible.
Hyper luxury golf with the carts, perfect greens and a 10 course meal at the end can fuck off. 18 holes on a windy links course with a pint and a pie at the end? bliss.
Was going to say, Scotland is the only place where golf is cool. It even fits into the natural landscape there.
There are a couple of Australian courses that use the natural landscape too.
I basically came here to say something similar. Golf far predates golf courses and country clubs. This is actually another perfect example of capitalist bullshit: taking something populist (hitting a ball with a club outside) and making it exclusive and restrictive.
I will stan public golf courses. In my city it's usually that they are compact parks that only have 9 holes and you can pay for a $25 yearly unlimited use pass for all public courses, and some even have cheap rental equipment that you can play with if you don't have your own clubs. Workers are probably payed shit, but it's also technically a government job so they probably have a union or at least good benefits.