What the Hell Has Happened to Professional Golf?

Golf is important to me because I used to play in the days when I wore a younger man’s clothes, very much a middle handicapper but I loved to play. I don’t know how you feel about it, but it is a widely televised national sport and it’s going entirely to hell.

First of all the Saudis got involved, ‘cause they have lots of dough and a shitty worldwide reputation—something to do with luring a prominent dissident into a Saudi embassy, strangling him, cutting him into very small pieces with a bone-saw and dissolving what was left in acid. That and beheadings for theft and throwing Saudi women in prison for leaving the house without a male escort. You know, little stuff.

Now you might well wonder what that has to do with playing 18 holes of golf on a lovely day

Eighteen holes of a gentleman’s sport, played under gentlemanly circumstances is the antithesis of bone saws, dissidents and acid. But it’s one thing to stage a brutal murder and quite another to stage a world sport with rules about fa…