Susie Dent has spent many years on our screens, most famously on Countdown, but has now turned her hand to a new project, penning an idiosyncratic phrasebook.
Susie Dent has spent many years on our screens, most famously on Countdown, but has now turned her hand to a new project, penning an idiosyncratic phrasebook which looks at Britain's secret languages.
Modern Tribes: The Secret Languages of Britain explores the country's many tribes, all talking with our own distinct phrases and mannerism to discover what makes Britain’s tick.
One of the many tribes of which the reader encounters is the golfer.
Describing golf as ‘Marmite,’ Dent sets about dispelling the many inaccurate assumptions about the game, be it that golf is a sport for old fogies or that the term golf is an acronym for ‘Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden.’
‘Belief number two is that golf is a leisurely pastime for those who like a potter with a putter. This one is easily dispelled. The game is about as competitive a sport as you’re likely to find – not only that, but the behaviour of a player on the green is a pretty accurate reflection of their true personality. From the surreptitious ball-nudger to the wild slasher or silent swinger, what you see on the eighteenth is generally what you’ll get at home. ‘To find a man’s true character,’ P.G. Wodehouse observed, ‘play golf with him.’
Dent also gives an insightful look at the barriers which still exist for women in the game:
‘While some clubs today are boldly choosing a female chairman, president or club captain – hitherto an exclusively male domain – it was only in 2014 that the Royal and Ancient, golf’s governing body, voted to allow women into its inner sanctum (two years later, in another historic move, it announced it was going to merge with the Ladies’ Golf Union). The very public debate over the decision by Muirfield golf club to continue excluding women from membership in 2016 proved just how much of a discriminatory history the game still has to deconstruct.
It’s in the members’ clubhouse that women will tell you they really feel the barriers. The regimental ties and checked ‘slacks’ may be disappearing, but it will take time before the philosophies that accompanied them do the same, and before ‘golf widower’ becomes as much a staple as the long-suffering female equivalent. In the meantime, if a male golfer hits a rather short ‘girlie’ putt or moves it only a few yards up the fairway, you might hear his male opponent ask, ‘Does your husband play golf?’
The above is an extract from Susie Dent’s, Modern Tribes: The Secret Languages of Britain published by John Murray and available at www.amazon.com for £7.99.
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