Golf and Socialism

I used to have a friend who was a socialist. No. Correction. I think he must have been a communist. He must have been since he hated America so deeply. He didn't hate Americans - a bit like Tony Benn there who always said he didn't dislike Americans, after all he married one (which I always thought was a bit of a "get-out") - what he hated was America's policies abroad. He'd say something like "the Americans have broken 25 (or was it a 100?) treaties in the last twenty years...." And if I were to say, back then, that it was a disgrace that the Russians were waging war against the Afghans he would go very quiet indeed.
He would not go to see American films. He would not buy anything associated with America. When he bought a car it was a Swedish one (socialist country don't you know?).
One day we were out having a few drinks and lunch at a pub when he noticed that people were watching golf on the TV. "Golf!" he said scornfully. "Dreadful."
I wondered what he meant.
"Do you like golf?" he asked.
I said no because I was not any good at it. But I had the feeling this was not about if I enjoyed the game or not; I felt the question had deeper connotations.
This morning I read a passage in a book called "Black and White" by Shiva Naipaul (brother of the other Naipaul, the one with the Nobel Prize for literature, the awkward one, the beastly one - though I have to say I have a strange sort of liking for the old curmudgeon); it was about Guyana - Shiva Nailpaul was there investigating the Jonestown massacre.
"The golf course," he wrote, "a relic of the displaced planter regime, was set amidst the fields. Before the sugar estates were nationalised, the road leading to it used to be well maintained. Since then nature had been given a free hand and its deterioration had been swift. Golf and those who played it had no place in a society that was moving inexorably to socialism."
Get it? Golf: clubbish, elitist, played by people with wealth. Socialism: for everyone, fair to everyone, a way of life for everyone to enjoy the benefits of.
Er.... maybe.
Now I think I know what my friend was thinking when he said, so scornfully, "Golf!".