Tennis, Golf, and the Culture War

Most evenings I go on a “skate.” Since I can’t really shred-it-up with the kids anymore, and it’s no fun to session a bench or manual pad alone, I skate the same line each evening. I ollie the exact same manhole covers, always do manuals down a certain stretch of road, and bomb the hill in front of Chapel Hill’s Glen Lennox cottages. OK, ‘bomb’ isn’t really accurate. Cruise, maybe? It’s a pretty sad spectacle. Regardless, it’s still fun as hell. Each evening I pass a small tennis court. The surrounding chain-link fence bows out and weeds grow in the middle of the court. It’s not totally run-down and occasionally I even see people playing casual games. I imagine neighborhood kids use the court for various activities, none involving racquets. But like so many other neighborhood courts, it’s reached its twilight years. Many courts like these were built in the ’70s and ’80s, when tennis was poised to explode in popularity. But it never did. Golf and tennis, once two sides of the same WASPY coin, don’t have much in common anymore. This Slate article contends that tennis never shed it’s country-club elite image, while golf–though far more expensive with greens fees– is now thoroughly All-American. According to the article, our president was an avid tennis player until he presumably realized that he needed to be seen playing golf, not tennis:

So, while George H. W. Bush is a dedicated tennis fan and player and his eldest son was an avid player well into his 30s?part of W. and Laura’s courtship was spent at a Texas tennis ranch?the president now seems to make a point of never being seen with a racquet. Tennis has become a political liability: effete, preppy, what high-schoolers call a “wussy sport.” Whereas golf, no matter how fey the links attire or how pricey the greens fees, has become so solidly red-blooded and all-American that even our folksy president can embrace it.

September 22nd, 2005