Golf -- Power & Control Rule

It's Sunday afternoon and my son is watching the Masters from Augusta, GA. As the professional golfers give their best to win the green jacket, the tradition of the crowd being quiet continues. But I must ask why.

Football, baseball, soccer, basketball, all of them have spectators stomping and yelling and the players still play. They're not thrown off their game by people talking. What is it about golf where they must maintain such quiet decorum? In my view, it's because that's the way the rich set it up in Scotland way back when, and by god, it's going to continue that way. The rich control and they have the power. And no other sport, exception perhaps being polo, shows the rich strutting their stuff more than they do in golf.

It's such a strange game, yet even blue collar fans seem to like it. They must not realize how little the rich players and others who have country club memberships really feel about them. How can a black person play golf -- think Tiger Woods -- when Augusta and many other such clubs didn't even allow blacks to play there until this century? Perhaps it's because Tiger and other rich blacks don't think of themselves as being black. Think O.J. Simpson and President Barack Obama.

Country clubs and golf courses are strange places indeed. My husband and I moved to a country club, residential, gated community 20 years ago. We lived there for 12 years. If there was one thing we didn't miss when we moved, it was that country club atmosphere with the golf members running the boards of director and everything else. Power and control and the rich -- the ultimate trifecta.

But back to the rule where spectators must be quiet when the golfers hit the little ball, it's certain that I'd be kicked out in seconds if I were along the sidelines (or is there another word for that area)? Anyway, I'd yell out that I like the pink shirt on one of the guys or some other nonsense. And that would be that. Out I'd be, escorted to the sidelines. Wait, that's where I was. I wonder where they would take me. Maybe there's a tea and crumpets table nearby. Not exactly punishment, right? Bring on the clotted cream and strawberry jam.

And maybe, just maybe, the birdies I'd see would be so much more interesting than those that come from the golfers' swings. Anything would be more interesting to me.