"High-profile abuse like this is nothing but a positive for golf."

Thanks to reader John for John Paul Newport's WSJ analysis of the hatred towards golf:

High-profile abuse like this is nothing but a positive for golf. It's a sure sign that the game is healthy, and a good, spewing antigolf rant enriches everyone. Robin Williams's profane riff about the stupidity of the game (check it out on YouTube) is a classic, as is "Caddyshack." That movie was a wicked, all-out send-up of golf at its most boob­ish, yet 29 years later it remains every golfer's favorite golf movie. For young assistant club pros, knowing the key "Caddyshack" passages by heart is practically a job requirement. So golf's got that going for it, which is nice.

And...

As a longtime connoisseur, I've identified three dominant strains of antigolf rhetoric: the athletic, the political and the environmental. The last of these is the least fun because, though often exaggerated, environmental objections to golf have some actual basis in reality. (I intend to write more about this soon.) Cultural attacks, on the other hand, are almost always based on flagrantly unfounded stereotypes and comic personal prejudice. One of my best friends from high school, for example, whose father played football with Davey O'Brien at Texas Christian University and whose grandfather was a mounted Texas Ranger, still cannot suppress a slight snigger at the corner of his mouth when the subject of my golf infatuation comes up. In his eyes, I might as well be skipping after butterflies through meadows with a dainty net on the end of a pole.