Kmflett's Blog

Before the Augusta golf. Eric Hobsbawm on golf & class

As far as I can ascertain Eric Hobsbawm was not a golfer. He was however interested in golf as an indicator of class and gives a number of examples in the Age of Empire

Golf clubs were to play an equally important role in the (Anglo Saxon)masculine world of middle-class professional men and businessmen. The social potential of this game played on large, expensively constructed and maintained pieces of real estate by members of clubs designed to exclude socially and financially unacceptable outsiders struck the new middle classes like a sudden revelation

The late miners leader Mick McGahey described golf as a waste of time. At his election victory party in November 2024 Trump had as the guest of honour Bryson DeChambeau. He is a championship winning golfer, aside from being extremely annoying, which no doubt endears him to Trump. There was a certain element of Karma on Friday when DeChambeau failed to make the cut for the final weekend rounds.

The class divide is clear from a historical perspective too. Eric Hobsbawm noted in Labouring Men that in the late nineteenth century as the male working class was identifying itself by wearing a cap, the middle class turned to golf courses. Twenty-nine golf courses were laid out in Yorkshire between 1890-95. Before 1890 there had been just two.