So I just ordered my ‘Yoga Kills’ t-shirt from my fave British t-shirt shop Toby Pimlico. Sadly they aren’t yet stocking any ‘Golf Blows’ 3-button nylon shirts but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. It’s not so much golf that I have a problem with, everyone has the right to make a tit of themselves, it’s more the attitude towards golf that bothers me.
In England, most public golf courses are filled with American tourists who find it’s about the only place where they blend in, aesthetically and mentally. The private clubs are full of bloated gin and tonic drinking, middle England managers, retirees and Essex wide-boys who take golfing holdays in Marbella and laugh at Jimmy Tarbuck’s jokes. Rather than just at Jimmy Tarbuck.
The professionals don’t fare much better. The British Open Golf Championships are held in the small town of Sandwich in Kent, a place that can’t even claim to be the birthplace of the sandwich, although you can have your picture taken next to a signpost that points east and shows the distance to Sandwich, just below the sign to the village of Ham. That’s one for the family album, dear, we’ll put it next to the photo of the cow with the face like Aunty Jean. British golfers are marginalized at best and that’s just the way we like it. Over here though it’s much more out in the open. Golf is still seen as a way to get ahead, rather than to get beaten up. Of course being America, it has its own added level of laziness and so no-one actually walks, they merely cruise in golf carts on courses that are all part of the special golfing communities in which they live. This isn’t as bad as it sounds — I’d far sooner know that they’re all in one special gated area rather than have them roaming among us. This is particularly necessary, given that most men here seem to choose to dress like golfers. I’m not sure when it first happened, but the patterned 3-button nylon shirt is regularly showing up at 11.30am lunches, tucked neatly into stay-press Dockers shorts and finished off with a belt. All without a hint of irony. Tony Soprano has something to answer for here, but then he also lives in New Jersey which is a fashion state unto itself. Golf is supoosedly more hip over here and I guess Tiger Woods has been a part of that, being young, black, rich and with a name that sounds mildly aggressive. Who cares. He could be Roaring Rhinocerous Woods for all I care, but he’d still be the Steve ‘interesting’ Davis’ of golf.
And as for all this stuff about letting ‘ladies’ into men-only clubs? You’re damn right they should. Not for any women’s lib reasons, it’s just that the more time these freaks are out of regular circulation, the better off we all are.
And finally there’s miniature golf, that hilarious game where you’re required to hit a golf ball through the left nostril of a pink plastic elephant that’s standing on tiptoe and performing a pirouette at 30 revolutions a second, while bypassing the small moat and the ring of fire. In England it’s actually called Crazy-Golf on account of it being one of the last things you’ll do before being sectioned to a mental hospital, where you’ll probably be required to play on your ward’s team.
But what about yoga? I think my new t-shirt sums it up pretty well, but in case it isn’t clear. Just because it came from India doesn’t make it great. No-one raves too highly about pestilence, train wrecks and starvation. And the positions they do in yoga class make no sense. The sun salutation should only be performed on a beach towel, with a strong bevvy and a trashy book and the moon salutation, in a short skirt after a night in the pub.