Think golf and you might imagine well-heeled, middle class men enjoying G&T at the 19th hole, but Nights’ leftist pundit Brian Roper reckons otherwise.
Golf, he says, still endures - in New Zealand, Australia, and to an extent Scotland - as a working class game, even if it’s elitist big business in much of North America and Europe.
Photo: dskdesign/123RF
Listen to the full interview with Brian Roper
Roper, himself a keen golfer (with a handicap of 13.6), told Nights presenter Paul Brennan that golf in a differently structured society is a game for all.
“Golf as it might be, if humanity at some stage in the future creates a more egalitarian, democratic and environmentally sustainable socialist society.”
Although golf is eye-wateringly expensive in places like the UK and the US, he says in New Zealand it remains in reasonably accessible in terms of cost.
“Australia and New Zealand have the highest number of golf courses per capita, and because of that golf is comparatively cheap.
“There are still working-class golf clubs in Australia and New Zealand, I’ve played at quite a few of them, and am proud to be member of Port Chalmers golf club which is a predominantly working-class sporting club that sustains a beautiful 9-hole course through a lot of voluntary labour.”
Roper dismisses the idea that golf is a simulacrum of capitalism as has been suggested by some – most famously by Armen A. Alchian in the Wall Street Journal in 1977.
“As an experienced [golfer] I would say that’s complete and utter rubbish.”
He says what’s great about the game is anyone can play and enjoy the game no matter who they are.
“You can be tall, you can be short, you can be small, you can be big, you can be thin or you can be rotund and you can still play the game very well.
"It builds physical fitness, it’s really good for one’s mental health, it can be very relaxing if you play on a beautiful scenic golf course.
“It can be competitive, you can play non-competitively, you can play it alone providing solitude or you can play it with a group to provide social contact. It is actually potentially an inclusive sport the overwhelming majority of the population could play.”
However, golf requires time and that is something most working people have little of, he says.
"The Employment Relations Act [2000] maintained the central features of the industrial relations regime that was introduced by the ECA [Employment Contracts Act].
“It led to almost the elimination of penalty rates, more weekend work, more shift work - New Zealand’s households are under a lot more pressure in terms of the amount of time that paid employment is absorbing.”
He says time poverty makes it difficult to maintain courses, let alone play 18 holes.
As to a suggestion by a listener that golf is a white, middle class, male, elitist scourge and the sooner it goes the better, Roper says he sympathises with the view but looks at it differently.
“As a socialist I should be saying golf should be gone, but in actual fact I think it’s a wonderful sport that the overwhelming majority of people should be able to play if they want to, and I think one of the things that would make it possible is there’s a particular economy of time associated with socialism.
“The idea is you eliminate unemployment, you eliminate unproductive employment, that means you’ll have more people engaged in productive labour, but on average working fewer hours per week.”
Or, he says, as Marx put it: “shrinking the realm of necessity and expanding the realm of freedom”.