Golf and its "clubs"

Talking with B about the conundrum that is the board of directors of the tennis club of which he is now president, I started musing about other upper-middle-class sports.  Golf sprang to mind. 

"Golf club boards are exactly the same," said a friend here who otta know.  "The minute you get involved with an elite sport such as golf, you're gonna run into people who think they know everything.  And because you're not paying them to sit on the board, you have to be very skilled to shut them up," he added.  But, still there is something uniquely annoying about tennis players and the clubs to which they belong.....................you get the idea.

Back to golf.  Apparently, this unplayable insanity started in Scotland when a few farmers whittled a few hickory sticks and started batting a ball around various fields -- hence the term "links".  From one "stick" and one ball to what golf is now has been a long, tortuous and expensive journey.  I remember wandering the links with my late very-gentlemanly uncle -- who indeed called them golf "sticks" -- and marvelling at the fact that this was the only time I ever heard him swear.

Golf is now a multi-billion-dollar game (not a "sport", mind you) and a golf club membership is something many people would prefer to kill their spouses over than forfeit.  In spite of having spent more money than any other country on golf, Japan does not have a top-ten ranked player.  Go figure.  "The average player needs a minimum of eight clubs in their bag," said B, a sometime duffer, "so, the more clubs you have, the poorer the player you are."  Well, that's brilliant.  Just like the tennis player who needs a raquet made out of satellite-worthy material to hit anything over a net.

As long as any society has a guaranteed source of food and water, golf and tennis will continue to annoy the rest of us.