Golf must crush the ‘game for toffs’ lie
It is impossible to win the debate if you attack one lazy stereotype with another. Nobody prevails in that schoolyard scenario. So it proved after Humphrey Cobbold appeared on a national news channel to label golf and tennis “rich people’s sports” and social media ganged up on
Real world: Rory Mcilroy, the son of a bar steward, became a top player without a privileged background him for having the temerity to have earned a small fortune.
In outrage, I too was guilty of allowing the jerk within to take control of the knee. Of course, there was the name, “Humphrey”, and, of course, when put alongside his title as the chief executive of Pure Gym, a company valued at £700 million, there was evidence aplenty to accuse this well-heeled fellow of grotesque hypocritical privilege. “Look at this multimillionaire saying we are playing rich people’s sports,” was the general gist as the clip went viral.
Now I wish I had not joined the indignant pile-on. Yes, he was talking cobboldswallop and yes, as the nephew of the late Lord Runcie, of Archbishop of Canterbury fame, and someone who owns two houses, it was perhaps a little much to paint himself as a working-class hero batting in the unequal shadows of the lordly pursuits.
Cobbold is not stupid – well, he cannot be after an education at £17,000-per-annum Bromsgrove and then at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge – and knows full well that tennis membership can cost much less than gym membership and that playing golf does not require his own Little Lord Fauntleroy heritage.
But, hey, Humphrey is fighting for his corporate life here and must have looked on in anguish while the traditional outdoor sports enjoyed such a boom period, as golf, in particular, did last summer.
A respiratory pandemic is plainly no time to be in charge of hundreds of indoor outlets making their money off gasping humans building up sweats. And there must be genuine concern whether Britons will return to the treadmills with the same gusto as before. Not now they have become accustomed to taking their exercise elsewhere, in their own accommodation or maybe, if the geography of their scenario allows, in rather more idyllic surroundings than that converted video-rental store at the bottom of the high street.
Cobbold was essentially acting as a salesman on Sky and, in making the urgent case for the reopening
of the Lycra studios, he did what every peddler worthy of his barrow should do – he poured scorn on his rivals’ product. And there is no more effortless way to do this than characterising golf as the preserve of toffs.
The sport should take notice of Humphrey’s trilling and trolling, not because of his own background, but because he showed it remains possible to fire up that dusty image. It is a perception that has long since failed to enjoy any connection with reality, but that does not matter if folk still believe it is true. And let’s face it, if a survey asked: “What are the rich people’s sports?”, golf would figure highly.
Rather than bleat about the unfairness of this misconception, it is time to act. The R&A and respective golf unions are experts at devising schemes enticing kids from all backgrounds and so, too, are the golf clubs themselves, as demonstrated by the cosmopolitan memberships at all but the very snooty establishments. What the sport must now do is publicise the inclusivity. A radical rebrand is necessary.
It should tee off with a huge ad campaign highlighting from where the UK’S great players emerged: Rory Mcilroy, the son of a bar steward, Lee Westwood, the son of a maths teacher, Georgia Hall, the daughter of a plasterer…
Not one of our top players came out equipped with a silver spoon, and that says everything required. Golf and its marketeers need to strike while the four-irons are hot and spend millions, if that is what it takes, to crush those crusty myths. And Humphrey can get back to sanitising his dumbbells.
It is time to act. A radical rebrand is necessary