The Common Golfer

Lately, my posts have been getting very political…but I only follow where the golf world takes me.  The latest news is that President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has declared golf to not be a “people’s sport.”  Adding golf to his list of “bourgeois” activities, he is currently aiming to close down two of Venezuela’s most popular golf courses.  If the closes are successful, it will total nine closures over the past three years.

On Chavez’s live television show, he spoke negatively of golf, saying I respect all sports,” said Chavez.  ”But there are sports and there are sports. Do you mean to tell me this is a people’s sport?”  He also pointed to the use of golf carts as proof of how lazy golfers are.  I’m not going to waste my time writing to contest the statements of a madman, but it makes you wonder what his angle is.  Are golf courses really a perceived threat to his “dictatorship?”  At the location of one of the proposed closures, officials plan to use the space for low income housing or to create a campus for Chavez’s Bolivarian University.  However, I doubt that is the primary motivation for attacking golf.

Thoughts?