Golfers: Threat or Menace?

Photo from ecocentricGuy on Flickr.

I came across this earlier today. It's a complaint about a bike path constructed along a public golf course. Now, pay attention. The path cost $3 million in public money and Flannagan is complaining about that cost while ignoring the simple fact that he's playing on a public golf course!

How could I resist?

Excerpts follow:



LaTourette bike path is a waste of money
by Tom Flannagan
Sunday June 07, 2009, 7:36 AM

The bike path trough LaTourette golf course is a wast of the city's money, says our columnist.

Those attractive bicycle paths at LaTourette have been complete now for several months and at a cost of $3 million dollars of taxpayer money for the three-mile stretch of cinder track that runs from Richmond Ave. to Rockland Ave.

...However, the bike riders are still absent...We ask why...the city has decided to spend $3 million on this unnecessary three-mile bike path at LaTourette?

In addition to that cost, there will be at least another $500,000 needed to build the new fourth green (already under construction) at LaTourette to allow more room for the missing bikers.

The construction of the new fourth will also become a problem when play begins, since we are now talking about a hole that will be a "dogleg right" and eventually will require the removal of some nice old trees in order to make the hole playable for the average golfer.




In a related story, the Broken Elbow Meteor News ran this editorial today:

What can we expect from men who dress funny and play with their balls?

In a new development here in Broken Elbow, rogue golfers are arrogantly flaunting the rules, golfing wherever they like. Strangely dressed men have been observed putting in crosswalks, shining their clubs, and even scrubbing their balls in public.

Sneering and yelling epithets as they whine across the landscape in cute little golf carts, they flaunt their supposed superiority while dressed in outlandishly funny clothing. They impotently wave their sticks in the air and shout obscenities at passerby. Common courtesy be damned. These golfers believe themselves to be an exalted form of the human species, determined to carry out their plans for world conquest, forcing the rest of us to pay homage by adopting the same dress code.

Photo from Jeff the Trojan on Flickr

G. Winston Fotherington III summed up the attitude of his fellow golfers. "There's a very, very good reason so many view us as rude, arrogant jerks. Most of us are. And we don't care."

Fotherington says his group has a plan to clog the roads with roving bands of rogue golfers. Those of us in the lower orders are merely in the way of an elite few to who intend to golf wherever they want.

This community of privileged, white, self-absorbed golfers - though 'lawless band of thugs' is far more descriptive - encourages its members to treat the rest of the population as mere serfs, expected to tug their forelocks at the approach of their golf club wielding betters.

The arrogance of these rogue golfers is only surpassed by their taste in clothing. Grown men go out in public wearing clothes that came from a third rate dollar store re-selling cast-offs from a Shriners convention. To describe this stuff as garish is being too modest.

Why should our taxes be used to encourage more people to take up this barbarian 'sport'? Why should our hard-earned money be spent to support recreation for these people determined to make our lives harder?

Once, we had quiet streets lined with neat houses. But if these rogue golfers have their way, that will be nothing but a quaint memory as we dodge golf balls on our way to work. We'll be assaulted by shouts of "Fore!" in the parking lot of the grocery store, and our children will grow up in a climate of fear and intimidation as they see their parents, siblings, and classmates cut down in a hail of golf balls.

Please, for the love of God, help us put an end to this golfing menace before it's too late.