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by John Norton Does anyone actually feel comfortable at a country club? Stiff chairs, scratchy woolen pants, pompous managers nodding their heads- always nodding, dress code police analyzing your every article of clothing, and an equity membership threatening to press you into bankruptcy. This aristocratic quagmire is further enhanced by the game of golf- a game that demands each participant to succumb to the most bitterly socialistic rules and procedures. It may be argued that golf is everything we hate about the English, while tennis at its core is more frontier than any other American pastime. Craftily infiltrating each department, dress code police are found throughout the country club system. Whether it be the golf pro or the fitness trainer, certain employees are empowered to refuse service to paying members based on the content of their apparel. The country club is not about comfort. The dress code issue is not merely about looking good and maintaining a nice atmosphere. The dress code is status. And at the country club the dining room managers, golf pros, and even the snack shop attendees have the authority to analyze each article of your clothing, judging whether it is appropriate for the high-browed community in which they themselves could never live. Rarely a day would pass that the one of the club marshals would not confront a member or the child of a member about the inappropriateness of his/her outfit. The crotchety old marshal would often go beyond merely refusing the member a tee-time, but he would often ask the members to leave the premises. Dress codes are established by the membership and for the membership, but comically enough, it is the members who having created these codes find themselves creeping carefully into the club, hoping to meet the standards they themselves have set. If dress code police were not enough, the country club demands an initial membership deposit that is often in excess of fifty thousand dollars. Sugar-coated by the term equity, the deposit is subject to the whims of the country club market. Many sad souls will buy into a membership only to find that they have paid five times the amount that the membership will ever be worth. When this man or woman wants to sell her/his membership, the original deposit will not be returned, rather, only a fraction of what was once paid. The equity system keeps out the riff-raff, naturally, and it demands that all members stay on the up side of the market. The country club has no affection for struggling stockbrokers, small town doctors, or non-profit lawyers. The country club does not appreciate businessmen who are on the losing end of big deals or mortgage bankers who are going through a dry spell. By keeping the monthly dues in rich figures, the country club is able to protect itself from the downcast of society and ironically remain a place of discomfort and judgment. All this about the country club community and no mention of the game that it surrounds. What better way to support a community of phony, esteem-depraved rich folk than to engage in a game that has been founded upon socialistic rules? This is socialism for the rich. There is no better way to protect the dignity of non-athletic old money-grubbers than to pass out legitimate handicaps. With the proper stroke floating in place, any pale faced, private school workaholic can compete against Tiger Woods himself. Loosely strung boundary markers allow overweight lawyers and black-lunged bankers to casually kick their ball back into play, while conveniently forgetting to add strokes for lie improvement. Keeping track of your own score is an invitation to lie to yourself and the three trust-fund babies who follow you around the course. Golf is so gentlemanly that it has become absurd. With the absence of accountability on the golf course, the sport becomes a joke, and falls quite below the dignity afforded to other competitive pastimes. Golf lets you feel good about yourself as long as you are comfortable lying to yourself. And this is what the sport breeds- self esteem junkies who strut proudly through gold plated dining rooms while secretly correcting lies and conveniently forgetting strokes. Are all these rantings just the plea of a jealous poorman who would jump at the chance to call himself a member? In truth, these thoughts come from a trust fund baby. Having grown up in a society of money-grubbing fools I believe my only chance at survival was in choosing tennis over golf. Tennis is not innocent of snobbish idiots and expensive clubs and associations, but the game stands above the society. The game of tennis, in the purest way, often decides winners and losers. The lines are clear and the boundaries are set into steely concrete. The rich and poor compete on equal platforms on a tennis court, and the winner is decided only after much sweat and hard work has been poured out upon the playing field. Tennis refuses to bow to a queen or dictator; tennis refuses to make amends for the rich, and tennis refuses to give esteem to those who have not earned it through many years of hard work. Tennis is the game of democracy. |