The Country Club: Contradictions in our Caviar
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.
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The views expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect those of this magazine.
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Last updated 26 September 2015
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