In today’s Impromptus, I have a bit about golf — about ideological attacks on same. (Chávez seems on the verge of outlawing the sport, which he has denounced.) For many years, of course — since the dawn of golf in Scotland, when shepherds swung at dung with their crooks — golf has been a “people’s sport.” The stigma attached to it is just plain weird.

Anyway, this topic naturally provokes a fair amount of mail, and I wanted to share just one letter with you (for now).

Jay,
My dad, after winning the war as a Marine in the Pacific, worked for Chicago Ironworks in the late 1940s. For play, he and his Polish buddies would hit the links and maybe get in nine holes before dark. [Classic.] They carried their own bags filled with hickory-shaft clubs, and would lay the bags down on the ground as they hit their shots [like everybody else].
My dad came up with an idea — a way to make the bags stand up. He used scrap rods and shaped them into lightweight, two-legged holders that could fit any bag, and sold 50 of them to steelworker friends. They were called the Had-leaner (our last name is Hadley). If only he had patented this: It may well have been the first practical bag-holder.

The Had-leaner — how American.

Anyway, the next time someone tells you that golf is the province of the rich — invite him to emerge from whatever enclosure he is living in and get out a little. Besides, even if golf were the province of the rich, which it is not — the freedom and right to play is sovereign.

By the way, the world of black urban golf — in part a hustling world, and an altogether joyous world — is a phenomenal subject unto itself. I was lucky enough to have a taste of this — just a taste — in and around Detroit, years ago.