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Chávez Takes a Swing at Golf

A 'bourgeois' sport? Or a forced march spoiled?

Scots must be shaking their heads. Fresh from nationalizing almost every capitalist enterprise that yields a profit (or used to anyway), Latin American strongman Hugo Chávez has found a new class enemy: golf. Declaring it a "bourgeois" sport, the Venezuelan leader has ordered the shut-down of some of the country's best-known golf courses.

For a socialist like Mr. Chávez, banning golf might be considered, ahem, par for the course, even if he is a bit late to the game. The likes of China, Russia and Cuba banned golf decades ago—although today they all enjoy practicing their swing. Perhaps this is exactly the historic precedent Mr. Chávez fears. The Soviet Union built its first golf course in 1988—and a year later the Berlin Wall fell.

Or maybe Mr. Chávez—known for his paranoia about alleged Western plots to overthrow him—has read up on Scottish history. In 1457, King James II of Scotland banned the game from the hills on which it was created. He argued that golf was a danger to national security as it distracted his soldiers from practicing their archery.

It turns out the king's fears may not have been entirely unfounded. Believing the threat of war had dissipated, his grandson, James IV, a keen golfer, lifted the ban in 1502. Eleven years later, in the Battle of Flodden against the English, Scotland suffered its worst ever military defeat. James himself was killed on the battlefield, along with a large contingent of Scottish nobles (many no doubt golf enthusiasts as well). Superior English archery played its part in the battle's outcome.

There could also be another reason a socialist like Mr. Chávez might dislike golf: The game is rich with religious overtones. Golf prompts many players to think about God—and not merely because his name is so often (blasphemously) invoked on the course.




Banning sports, though, can quickly spoil a strongman's game. Even the old Romans knew that panem et circenses were crucial to keeping Caesar in power.

When English missionaries introduced Test Cricket (which takes place over several days) to Samoa, the natives loved it so much they stopped working in the Hamburg-owned sugar-cane fields. When the German consul-general banned the sport to restore productivity, it provoked a civil war.

Repressive regimes are thus usually smart enough to embrace most sports. They often even waste scarce resources on star athletes, citing their victories as evidence of their regime's superiority.

Perhaps then, Mr. Chávez's attack on golf is a sign of serious deficits in Venezuela's golf talent. This explanation would fit with Mr. Chávez's attacks on the quality of the game itself. "There are sports and there are sports," he stated on Venezuelan television. "Do you mean to tell me this is a people's sport?"

Just wait for him to echo Mark Twain's aphorism that golf is "a good walk spoiled."

Mr. Freedman is director of policy analysis and communications at the Soufan Group, a strategic consultancy.

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