Golf is better than running or cycling, we need to encourage it not seize the golf courses

We should be promoting golf as a gentle sport that can be played by people from ten to ninety. We should thank the sport for aiding the mental and physical health of nearly a million people in England

Bingley St Ives Golf Course

Earlier this week Kathryn and I were, as we often do, walking through Bingley’s St Ives Estate. As the path winds up out of the (sadly for reasons of disease largely felled) woods it crosses the golf course and then tracks the edge of the course. It was a sunny spring midweek day and the golf course was busy. Each hole featured three or four men, almost all in their 60s or 70s enjoying a round of golf. And while I don’t play golf, ‘a good walk spoiled’ and so forth, it struck me that golf, like walking but unlike jogging or cycling, is something that men can do right into their dotage and, in doing so it provides social interaction and interest.

But golf, unlike walking, attracts a particular sort of sneering criticism. It uses up too much suburban land, it is played by slightly boorish men, and let’s face it is inescapably lower middle class. Except when it causes apoplexy in the commentariat. Even the usually measured George Orwell succumbed to the hatred of golf:

“..an inherently snobbish game, which causes whole stretches of countryside to be turned into carefully guarded class preserves”

Golf was seen as the game of the haut bourgeois, an expensive, exclusive pastime where overweight businessmen gathered to plot and scheme while pretending to play a game. It was the game for Jerry Leadbetter and his pals, parading round manicured fairways and greens in garish trousers. Here’s Barney Ronay, a Guardian sports writer, setting out with spectacular sneer, what is, without question, the dominant elite view of golf as a sport:

“This is after all the people’s game, or at least the People Like Us game, still played on every cobbled street and in every playground, providing that playground is at least 300 yards wide and fenced from public access; a place where all you need is the ball, the green grass, hundreds of pounds of equipment and not to be in the inner city”

We know where we’re going with this. After all, pretty much every sport played seriously is done in a place fenced off from public access. There isn’t a footpath running past the pitch at The Den where Ronay’s beloved Millwall play football. You have to pay to get to see the sport. Yet here in Bingley the footpath (in a council-owned country park) rambles in and out of the golf course with nothing more than a reminder to watch out for balls and to keep off the greens. And the men playing (there are plenty of ladies too) aren’t the sort of snobby blokes inhabiting the head of Barnet Ronay and other critics of golf (truth be told they simply don’t like golfers).

And expensive? Is golf really more expensive than cycling? A quick visit to ebay shows me full sets of golf clubs, lots of them, for less than £100. And there are plenty of places where you can pay to play golf without being a member - in Bradford there are eight such places with fees starting at less than £20. You might not be able to play golf in Bradford’s terraced streets but you can play at Bradford Moor slap in the middle of those inner city terraces.

The people I know who play golf are, or were, salesmen, plumbers, accountants, police officers, and shopkeepers. Orlando Rossi used to run an Italian restaurant and Owais Shah was brought up in an inner city terrace by his taxi driver dad. And they play golf because it is a sport that is challenging and social. There’s a handicap system to level up (or down) the competition and the game gets them out of the house on a sunny morning to take a five mile walk interrupted by waving a stick at a little white ball.

Better stil this exercise isn’t done in search of a passion for physical activity like gym, jogging or cycling but in search of social pleasure. Those men Kathryn and I occasionally chat with as they cross the path with their clubs are cheery, relaxed and enjoying the company of friends. ‘Men need social activity’ say those concerned about mental health but it doesn’t cross their mind that golf provides a wonderful and healthy environment for that social interaction.

Instead we’re told, falsely, that golf is exclusive and bad for the environment. All the golf courses (there are about 40,000) in the world take up about 2 million hectares, just 0.01% of the world's habitable land area. Yet this doesn’t stop people losing it over the existence of golf courses, in this case ‘science communicator’ Abbie Richards:

“The ice sheets are melting, the oceans are rising, global temperatures are increasing, and species are going extinct. Actual nature is collapsing but maybe the golfers aren’t noticing because the view from their astroturf looks just fine. The 20th century is over. It’s time we, as a society, admit that golf was a bad idea and move on.”

England’s 2270 golf courses occupy about 0.8% of the nation’s land area providing healthy activity, social interaction and the pleasure of sport for nearly 800,000 members and thousands more occasional players. And golf, unlike most sports, can be enjoyed to a ripe old age. But there are still people like architect Russell Curtis who want to seize golf courses to build houses, allotments and parkland. Curtis tells the Guardian it isn’t a ‘war on golf’ but, from my reading, it does rather look like one:

“It’s quite difficult and emotive because it’s not just about planning but about ownership and – let’s be honest – about class too. This land could be thought about in a more creative way.”

Curtis arrives at the crunch after a lot of talk about housing, parks and so forth. The truth is that, as Curtis’s report makes clear in the end, the attack on golf isn’t really about building houses, it is about an essential dislike of the sort of people Curtis and others perceive play golf. These commenters dislike golfers because they see them as rich, entitled, and selfish when the reality is that golfers are like Jerry Leadbetter: pleasant, sociable, interested in others and welcoming. As Matthew Draper from England Golf put it:

“The sport provides people with a myriad of physical and mental health benefits, with courses allowing access to open green spaces, time away from the day-to-day stresses of work and life, a social community and a gentle source of exercise that is enjoyed by over 3 million people, of all ages and ability, on a monthly basis.

Analysis shows that a high percentage of golfers are reliant on the sport for their physical activity in comparison to other sports, especially in densely populated areas.

Furthermore, golf courses provide a natural habitat to wildlife and plant life and, with governing bodies recognising and emphasising the importance of sustainability, have a role to play in positively impacting the environment and the communities in which they sit.”

I don’t feel deprived because I can’t walk along the fairways at St Ives, there’s ten miles of footpaths, a wonderful three acre field kept for hay but used by hundreds of dog owners to exercise their charges, and several square miles of open woodland. London has over 3000 parks covering 14,000 ha along with canalside paths, farmed green belt and a host of other spaces and places with free public access. Yet the golf-haters, sneering at the sport as a vulgar, bourgeois pastime, want to deny Londoners the opportunity to play a sport they love.

Like Russell Curtis, I want to fix London, indeed England’s, housing crisis but I don’t think this aim is best served by making a new set of enemies simply because people like Curtis sneeringly dislike their sport.

Rather we should be promoting golf as a gentle but challenging sport that can be played by almost everyone from ten to ninety. We should be thanking the sport for the benefit it gives to the mental and physical health of nearly a million men, women and children in England. Councils, public health and the national government should ignore the golf-haters and adopt a strategy of supporting and promoting this great sport. Golf is so much better than solitary, inward-focused activity like cycling and running, it is designed to be competitive for beginners through to professionals. And the people who play the game are the best sort of people.