Clubhouse at Prestige Hills

Can golf get any more grandiose?  Without collapsing under its own weight?

 If I were a cartoonist, I’d draw golf as a house, a McMansion, over-sized, over-priced, over-amenitized,  shamelessly over-the-top, located in a subdivision – er, “gated community” –with a name like Prestige Hills:  The Estates at High Networth National.   Owners in this “elite enclave” would be promised the “ultimate golf experience,” a.k.a.  the “V. I. P. experience,” meaning that they would be greeted at the course by flunkies wearing headsets, who would bow, scrape, and call them by name (“Allow me, Mr. Big!”) as they were relieved of their golf bags and whisked over to the range, where they could warm up in a heated, covered bay with three video cameras, a fully stocked fridge, and a shoeshine boy and a sports psychologist on call.  From there they would proceed to the first tee to play the $50 million dollar course where every hole was a signature hole by the Legendary Architect and the whole place was manicured nightly by actual manicurists wielding only nail scissors and wearing special deerhide slippers so that they didn’t leave behind a single footprint, and afterwards they’d relax in the million square foot clubhouse, a replica of Windsor Castle but larger. . . 

            I know, I know, this is a gross caricature, and I probably shouldn’t give a hoot since no one is forcing me to play at Prestige Hills.   But it’s the mindset I’m objecting to, a mindset that persists in spite of the Great Recession, a mindset that is in evidence everywhere from the Tavistock Cup to your local upscale daily fee course, a mindset that seems to hold that golf needs to be tricked out and pimped up, that golfers should be spoiled and pampered at every turn, that the game is hardly worth playing unless it costs a bloody fortune and comes fully loaded with perks, privileges, and cheesy pretensions.

            Well, obviously, I beg to differ, and I dislike this mindset for the same reason that I drink single malt straight up.   I prefer the flavor of the thing itself. . . and so endeth my rant.