"Golf's symbolic legacy as an indulgence for the wealthy appears to have come back into play."

Mark Frost fills in for John Paul Newport's WSJ column spot and pens a compelling look at the evolution of golf and senses that the sport really hasn't figured out what made Scots start playing in the first place.

Then came Tiger, the next avatar. He swept away most of the last vestiges of "restriction." Golf was big business now, and money streamed in from flush and eager corporate partners. High-end daily-fee courses cropped up like weeds, offering amenities that had remained out of most players' reach. The trend culminated in the appearance of a new breed of private club that catered to the super rich -- and charged accordingly; membership as conspicuous status symbol -- that would have shocked the Old Money aristocrats of the early USGA.

Most of the money for those courses and their membership fees flowed from superheated Wall Street spigots; then greed, hubris and the stubborn human inability to see danger coming from a distance led to September 2008. Amid the economic wreckage of all this steroidal excess, the future of golf's high-flying recent past seems at best uncertain. The grand old clubs, built on sustaining cultures rooted deep in their communities, will weather any storm, but many of those daily-fee courses had already gone under; and the survivors face hard times.

Corporations will no longer have the same discretionary funds to express their affection for golf. The image of the game itself has taken a hit from these cautionary tales of executive excess. The number of amateur golfers has flat-lined and with an injured Tiger on the sidelines, so have TV ratings. A path forward can be found in the recent victory of the U.S. Ryder Cup team; a group of untested kids and seasoned veterans putting their egos aside, and playing their guts out for nothing but pride. Captain Paul Azinger borrowed a page from the Scots, who still play golf the way they've always done on their local, minimal masterpiece tracks. Their game, taken to heart, teaches discipline, equilibrium, modesty, moral rectitude and the lesson that any player forgets at their peril: Golf, like life, is a humbling game.