A day that suits some to a tee
Today is World No-Golf Day, a festival more honored in the breach than in the observance. It is a green letter day on my calendar because years ago I met Gen Morita, founder of the International Anti-Golf Alliance, who started the movement.
Gen has moved on, to global peace activism and the kooked-out 9/11 "truth" (read: conspiracy) movement, but his anti-golf message lives on. In the Beam family we will be celebrating April 29 as we do every year, by resolutely refusing to pick up our clubs and head for the golf course. Our determination is stiffened by the fact that we have no clubs, we are not members of any golf club, and we can't stand golf.
As go the Beams, so goes America: "More Americans Are Giving Up Golf," The
How could this happen? It seems like only yesterday that Esalen cofounder Michael Murphy was spinning his hypnotic tales of Shivas Irons, the golf guru protagonist of his best-selling book, "Golf in the Kingdom." "Golf is a game to teach you about the messages from within, about the subtle voices of the body-mind," quoth Shivas. "And once you understand them you can more clearly see your 'hamartia,' the ways in which your approach to the game reflects your entire life."
Right.
I remember living in the suburbs in the early 1990s, when everyone was taking up golf with their wives, in order to spend more time together. What happened? I suspect the couples gave up the game first, and then each other.
The enemy is time. If you are not a plastic surgeon or an agribusiness executive getting fat off ethanol subsidies, chances are that you don't have four hours to spare, chasing a little ball around the landscape. For some reason, wives are less tolerant of young fathers spending all day Saturday at the course than they once were.
David Owen - this is the Golf Digest columnist and New Yorker writer, not the former British foreign minister - welcomes the triage of fair-weather fairway clutter who play only eight times a year. "I say let's get rid of these people, get them off the links," Owen raves. "Let's shrink golf." This is a man who once played 136 holes in a day, and has written of his desire to take vows and retire to a "golf-astery."
Owen will be observing World No-Golf Day at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. Astonishingly, he wasn't even aware of the holiday until I told him about it.
What is to be done? Hurry-up golf seems like one option. Some courses have experimented with six-hole rounds. Paradoxically, Owen thinks that golf carts slow down the game, because golfers have to park their carts on the sides of fairways before they can find their balls. He says TV coverage has corrupted Jane and Joe Duffer. "The ordinary golfer watches TV and sees the pros taking forever," he says. "They'd play better if they played faster; they would think less."
The plaid-pantalooned Chamber of Commerce types can take heart; there is one country where golf courses are not closing. That is Raul Castro's Cuba, where the government has at least 10 new courses on the drawing boards, according to The Wall Street Journal. Raul's brother Fidel was famous for nationalizing country clubs - and for enjoying the bourgeois pastime. He lost a storied round in 1960 to his pal Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who had once caddied in his native Argentina.
Mike Hughes, chief executive of the National Golf Course Owners Association, insists that golf's demise has been greatly exaggerated. "I don't think the number of golfers has changed, their avidity has changed. Economic cycles come and go, but golf is the kind of game that ignites people's passions. It's been around for four or five hundred years, it's not a fad. Golf isn't going away."
I hope not. Otherwise what would I do on April 29?
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
