The greens party

Once the whitest of white, golf has become the very essence of cool

by David Andrew Stoler

Turn on MTV right now. Okay, now turn it to BET. On one of the two, at this instant, is the new hit video for the new hit single on rap's latest smash album: "Mo Money Mo Problems," the latest single from deceased rapper Notorious B.I.G. One problem, says B.I.G., as if in chilling retrospect, is that when you get money and success you always have to watch your back, because somebody wants to take them from you, and they'll do whatever it takes to do that.

But this isn't about the death of B.I.G. or rap's over-hyped rivalries. This is about something far less intense, far less serious. This is about the B.I.G.'s trademark -- the cap on his head. It's a golf cap.

This is also about the video itself. It features rap's current favorite heavyweight, Sean "Puffy" Combs, aka Puff Daddy. The video begins with Puffy, sporting a Lacoste-type golf shirt and full golfer gear, sinking the winning putt of a golf tournament before a huge crowd. Golf, at this very moment, is the sport to play and wear. Rappers, rockers, and slackers alike, as well as pro-basketball, baseball, and hockey players, are all heading out to play the ultimate country club sport, rallying in both conversation and promotion, about the merits of carrying clubs on tour and taking any free time to play a quick 18. And in every urban environment from the Bronx to Fox Point, kids are sporting golf visors and polo shirts.

As recently as the mid-1980s mainstream America (for whom, note, the most popular recreational sport is bowling) looked at golf as a sport practiced behind the sanctified walls of super-exclusive country clubs by rich, white men of leisure -- and maybe sometimes their rich, white wives of leisure would play, too, but only with other wives.

Suddenly, though, it's down to play golf. And despite what most media would have you believe, it has little to do with Nike or their new-found wunderkind. No, golf has been the sport of the young and hip for a bit longer than Tigermania, however just the lauds for his game might be.

It's got to be going on 10 years since ill-singing Biz Markie followed up "You Got What I Need" with "It's Spring Again," whose video featured the Biz in golf beret and knickers madcapping it around the country club. The Beastie Boys carried clubs on Lollapalooza '93, and Dinosaur Jr.'s J. Mascis used a golf CD-ROM to promote 1994's Without a Sound.

From these roots golf has risen through the MTV mainstream, with bubble-gummers like Collective Soul and Hootie angling for their piece of hipster pie by holding celeb golf tournaments for charity. And all this before it was legal for golf's new poster child to drive anything but a golf ball.

In an effort to find out just how golf became New School, as well as just what its appeal is, three friends of varying golf skills and I of zero golf skills crashed the links in that mecca of hipdom, Seekonk, Massachusetts.

A brief interlude establishing cast and mise-en-scene as backdrop for the day's adventures proceeding directly to Hole #1

It is 4:30 Sunday afternoon at the Firefly Golf Course in Seekonk. Firefly is a small course -- par is 60 shots, as opposed to the standard 72 -- good for beginners like me. This should make me feel welcome, but for some reason it doesn't. Instead, approaching the pro shop and seeing all of the people lounging about in golf whites (and I do mean whites: everyone I see is) I feel uncomfortable at a gut level.

It is not as if my own group is particularly diverse. Aside from my own Semitic background, in fact, we're pretty much as pasteurized as it comes. Here's our rundown:

Chris C., 25, works the counter of an indie record store. His only golf experience is a lone father-son tournament when he was 12, of which he offers no further details;

Stack, 22, works promotions for the local alt. rock radio station. He's the most experience-heavy in our group -- he grew up a hard-core New Jersey suburbanite with all of the perks, including the country-club membership;

Chris N., 23, is a recent Rhode Island School of Design grad. He has played a few times, mostly with his pop when Chris was a tyke growing up in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

My own experience on the course is basically nil. That is, my own experience playing golf -- I actually grew up right next to the third tee of the muni course in my home town, but the only thing I ever used it for were high-school parties and the occasional make-out spot.

Cooler full of beer in hand, we pay $16 a pop at Firefly and encounter two of what will turn out to be many obstacles. The first is that, eyeing our outfits and our cooler, the guy working the counter refuses to rent us carts. "It's too late in the day," he st-stammers. "I'll never get them back before closing time." The excuse rings funny, but ok, fine.

The second thing is that the course is packed. It's a gorgeous Sunday, the first cool day in a couple of scorching weeks, and Tiger's already out of contention in the big golf tournament on TV, so everybody's here. Because of the crowd, we'll have to wait some time to tee off, and there are a lot of people congregated around the first tee. This means that a lot of people will be watching us, and although I have no doubt that they will be awed and astonished by my mega-man first-ever drive, I must admit the gallery has me jumpy.

Part 2