"Golf, at its worst, is Donald Trump."
/It took nearly the entire campaign for someone to blame golf for everything on the planet including Donald Trump, and while the piece certainly scores a few legitimate points, he digs a little too deep into golf's past to make the case.
Michael Peppard is described as "a lifelong golfer and former employee at both public and private courses."
In a guest contribution to the Washington Post, he writes...
Male golfers at private clubs are misogynist in casual and structural ways. The acronym “Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden” is so widely disseminated as an etymology for the word “golf” that it needs to be refuted in the first line of a prominent golf history site. Many private clubs have divided their restaurants and courses by gender, with men eating in “Men's Grills,” while women play on “Ladies' Day,” which is often compressed into a midweek morning.
While men are playing the course, a woman often drives around selling drinks and food. Called the “cart girl,” even though she is a grown woman, she is almost always very attractive and, while alone, must frequently deal with unwanted advances or even cash propositions for sexual favors. Last year, a journalist went undercover for Golf Digest to record the experiences of cart girls. One who had formerly worked in human resources at a large corporation said: “It was total culture shock. Every single day golfers were saying things to me that would get them fired in a professional setting.” The hidden recording device captured a toxic masculinity, fueled by crippling insecurity. “I drove up to a group one time,” one cart girl recalled, “and the guy holds out a $50 bill and says, ‘Let's see your chest.’ “
Anyway, you get the idea.