Who has authority to say what golf's image is to the general public, but for me its been racing to the bottom before CoVid, well before the repeated mouthed sedition and armed treason incited by the brand name of 17 golf courses, and an (inactive) member of the club/course where the US Open was most recently played...
Again image is different to you, to me, to some person who hasn't played golf, to people who play and watched a lot of golf but for me the top end of the sport continues to demonstrate craven, avarice for the bucks with lip service to the people who play, minister and experience it locally season in and season out....
When I think of "golf as a public image now;" I see the eye-rolling faux nonsense of the Fed Ex Cup... this manufactured patriotic puffery of the Ryder Cup, which is actually a Palm Beach member guest (with luminaries like Tiger and Phil once grumbling about pay); $800 fees for PB; I see that disgusting spectacle of Phoenix every year, where drunken catcalls and gladiatorial lust destroy whatever dignity remains of the game... I see Matt Kuchar trying to claim the legal right of parsimony with a local caddie... I see the governing bodies cowed by the almighty dollar, by equipment and advertisers...I see a world expectantly agog about BDC's certain domination of the future; I see them having events at Moloch's courses in the first place.
...and now the games' greatest winner, old and in his dotage, clinging to this mythical separation of the body real and the body politic... its YOUR colonoscopy Jack, own it and keep the results to yourself... no comment, please.
But then, the more congealed private image of golf here... as CoVid raged, this board exchanged ClickGear prices and product specs, bemoaned governmental lockdowns and single rider carts, parroted the Executive Pestilence, spread amateur false comparisons about H1N1 ten years ago, (in FUCKING APRIL):
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html#:~:text=From%20April%2012%2C%202009%20to,the%20(H1N1)pdm09%20virus....carped about boring golf coverage, decried the loss of their precious golf trips, and whether they would get refunds... Posters who don't own a golf course, insure a golf course or minister a golf course, mused about insurance and profits for golf courses they will never play or perhaps never heard about before a thread... we had posters (even some of our brightest, most professional minds) opportunize CoVid to grind an old axe on walking, on faster play, on utilization of tee sheets.... to bandy the diminution and economic destruction of caddying...
...and when yours truly posted the national list of those private and proprietary golf clubs that took the
PPP (the greatest gift swindle and abandonment of working class in recorded history), we had the number one loudmouth idiot of this boards history, the Olymprick try to make the case that waitressing part-time for $500 a week working in CoVid conditions, where the employer can cook the books to keep 39.99 of the loan, with no repayment was better for our world than $850 a week for that same worker, and his or her pandemic community staying home...
We have a September 11 almost every day for 9 months and these are the some of the things this board cared about, most of it having nothing to do with GCA.
So I don't know about the public image for all, but my private image of golf is that most of the world is well-justified in interpreting a "Hooray for me and fuck you" coming from the game... I give my finger back.
The best thing for golf would be if no one was talking about it.
The game would be better off if it was like, say, checkers or bowling -- with millions of people happily playing it well under the radar, with nary a single television broadcast or voluminous writings or endless podcasts out there to promote it and 'grow the game'.
A cogent comment Peter, but would that be true if there were anything good to say of it? Would it be true if the public figure most associated with it, were not Commodus?