Culture
What I didn't mention about golf yesterday is that I was always a muni player.Municipal golf, on public courses, is totally different from country club golf. It's inclusive. It's messy. It's definitely louder.
Country clubs are not like that at all.
The family of Eli 18.0s best friend has a country club membership, and they asked us to play last week. Eli's already played there several times, but this was my first.
It's funny, but even at my age, I feel like an impostor when I'm at a country club. Someone asks if they can take my clubs, and I feel like saying, "No worries. Don't you have something more important to do? I can carry these."
I definitely feel like a ten-year-old at the grown-up table.
The luxury is nice, to be sure. It's great to have range balls waiting for you at a hitting station instead of buying a bag every time you practice.
Something about it is less nice, though. Country clubs are a way to keep one kind of people away from other kinds of people. It's the private school of sports.
It seems like so much of the foundation of this country has been creating institutions to keep one kind of people away from other kinds of people. It's been particularly, painfully true for golf. I didn't really understand that as a kid, but I do now.
When I stepped out of the car (wearing nice golf shorts and shirt), our friend who asked us to play said, "You have to tuck in your shirt."
I said, "What?"
He said, "You have to tuck in your shirt. If you don't, I'll get a letter."
That's just not the kind of world I understand.
I went back to my home course, our little public course, and I told the story to a woman who works the counter. She said, "I had a guy call once and asked if we had a dress code for shirts. I said, 'Wear one.'"
Yeah, that's definitely the right place for me.
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