Here's the viewpoint of another Scotsman (Hugo Rifkind), from the (London) Times
"Until this morning, I’d imagine, my views on the President of Venezuela were probably much the same as yours. Portly despot, talks too much, dodgy friends, redeemed by a thoroughly excellent first name, right? Suddenly, though, I am looking at him with a new affection. For Hugo Chávez has declared war. On golf.
It started last week, on the President’s live Sunday TV show. (All Hugos should have their own live Sunday TV show.) “Let’s make this clear,” he said. “Golf is a bourgeois sport.” Seven top golf courses in Venezuela have been closed since 2006. Now Mr Chávez wishes to force the closure of another two. Instinctively, I approve. Mark Twain called golf “a good walk spoiled”. Too kind, in my view. Golf is a disease. It swoops upon areas of outstanding natural beauty and turns them into the set of The Teletubbies, patrolled by humourless braying clowns.
As I am a Scot, people often assume I must approve of golf. Or worse still, play it. I don’t. I never have. Nobody hates golf like the non-golfing Scot. It’s not just the clothes. It’s the self-satisfaction, the clubbiness. There has always been a closed, complacent smugness about Scotland’s middle class, and golf has exported it to the world. Whenever I see a rapper play golf, something inside me dies. Golf is the final assimilation. To play is to give up on changing the world.
And yet I have friends who play golf, and family. When I shout and scold, they just laugh. Sometimes, I sense they want to pat me on the head. Because only non-golfers see golf as a political act. Those who play, just play. Several years ago this newspaper sent me to St Andrews to cover a fight about a bunker that had got slightly bigger. God, I was cross. Ridiculous people, I thought, with their stupid socks and back-slapping exclusivity. But then I got there, and it was all rather pleasant. There was a crowd gathered around the hole, like slightly adorable bird-watchers. They didn’t seem like agents of complacency and division. They didn’t even seem particularly middle-class. And I was shaken.
Still, never let actual humans get in the way of a good theoretical prejudice, that’s my motto. So I maintain my anti-golf position, and I salute President Chávez for his. I just hope he’s doing it for the right reasons. A man of his age gets urges, after all. He starts wanting a nice walk, but an easy one. A bit of sport, without breaking sweat. Maybe even a nice pink sweater. When a Hugo rails against golf, it’s not impossible that there could be a degree of self-loathing involved. Or so I’ve heard."