Steve Wilson, very well said.
It seems to me that most people writing in on Mike's thread get his point, and I also believe I get it.
But, Lou is all exasperated, seemingly more so about redistribution of wealth and someone else or some other wealth entity subsidizing the common other golfer's good time, and making this somehow the perfect analogy to what he perceives as the larger characteristic of a modern US political/economic scene. Well, I find irony in Lou's exasperation. Now Lou, I'm going to do something uncop like and ask or pose a few questions of which answers I don't know, but here goes>>>
Lou, as I understand it, you learned or at least hoaned your game at the Ohio State courses, and love the Scarlet as sort of your touchstone home base, no? I'm going to assume when you were a student in the late 60s or early 70s, that you paid a certain reduced green fee to play the Scarlet, and assume it was somewhere less than what a walk-up non-student/faculty would pay. You played on a course I assume is owned by the STATE! So, the taxpayers subsidized you, a lowly poor student at the expense of the taxpayers and the retail, presumably more wealthy golfers. Go ahead and kick me if I'm wrong.
To further the irony, your love of the game is the love of a game that was conceived as basically a socialist community passtime, where the rudimentary and original courses were played by both the common folk and kings and queens alike, on the common links ground, and any fees were so modest that they only payed a farthing or two to the greenskeeper for minimal maintenance of those common links ground. Wasn't it finally the Willie Parks and the like that started to move the game to other not suitable to much else sort of ground, paying little to nothing for the land that then spread to heathland and such. But, like Mike Y., says, all of which were designed and intended not to make $$$$ but to provide more places for the game to be enjoyed. Then, as wealth came more into the criteria to build new courses, not on common ground, did the private funds of a private club come into being, thus dues to buy and build courses, and then after that private money to build and charge common folk in open to public fee participation... So Lou, you love a game that was conceived as socialist!!!
And Lou, is there not many inhabitants of this forum page that have played many a fine course on a raters card, for free!!!! Are they not is some way benefiting and enjoying a leg up on the common folk to play a king's game on a low budget? Not that the raters aren't performing a vital service to all of the society of golf. I don't know what we did before the rating game... oh yeah, we read Bernard Darwin and the like to imagine what the fine courses might be like and decide if we pined to play there... Never mind that 'some' raters always offer to pay, then get comp'd, that game is well known.
Finally, what about the invitation by a wealthy or forutunate club member to play a highly covetted course? Oh sure, the guest most often pays the member, a guest fee (not always). But, still aren't many of those guest fees artificially low for the cost of the maintenance and overhead, whereby if it were a fully public course that relied solely on the guest green fee, the place wouldn't be viable. And, it still has an element of the wealthy member subsidizing the invitee to a bit of an absurd extent trying to make the analogy, IMHO.
Lou, don't give up the game as a matter of 'teaparty principle due to it's origin in 'socialism', taxpayer subsidy of a recreation, or intent not to make $$$$ at it's core foundations.
