Dennis Shaw on how Golf exports its education, free of charge

Well, here’s a clue, in another lovely line from the song: “We all know, people are the same, wherever we go…”  And that’s what it’s got to do with golf. Golfers are the same wherever we go.

For a sport that is so often represented as being elitist, snobbish, exclusive, a founder member of the ‘old boy network’, the fact is that, at the very highest level, it is just about as ‘globally inclusive’ as it’s possible to be.

Ebony and Ivory would be the ideal theme tune.

Let me explain:  At the very pinnacle of golf administration - for amateurs, professionals, men, women, boys, girls, around the world – stands The R&A, The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrew’s.

Among a list of duties as long as the shaft on your new driver, they run The Open Championship (staged in 2008 at Royal Birkdale). This is one of world sport’s great events, attracting eye-watering amounts of income from every commercial source that it is possible to imagine.

“Here we go,” say the sceptics  “more cream for the Fat Cats.” It’s a fact, of course, that the Prize Fund for the players is astronomical. And lots of privileged business folk wine, dine and socialise there in lavish fashion. But there’s also another face to it…an intensely generous, non-elitist, non-racist, human face, at that.

By almost every post The R&A receives appeals from around the world, from amateur golf federations and unions in faraway places, across the five continents, saddling deserts and mountains, peopled by Muslims and Christians, Buddhists and Sikhs, black, white and every shade between, asking for ‘support’ in furthering their golfing capacity.

‘Support’ means advice, consultative visits, supply of equipment…and cash.

If  The R&A were the hard-nosed, blow-you-Jack, uncaring crew of snobs that some seem to perceive, then what could easily be categorised as ‘begging letters’ would be binned without reply.

But what happens in fact, is that they have a budget, comprised of untold thousands of pounds from their Open Championship surpluses for a joint initiative on aid for these under-developed golfing nations from anywhere on the planet.

It is run in conjunction with The PGAs of Europe, who are based on the fringe of this publication’s circulation area at The Belfry.

When The R&A receive a request from a body whom they’re confident are qualified to administer golf, and will not waste what they receive, they ask the PGAs of Europe to nominate a professional consultant/tutor to travel there and recommend a programme of help over, say a three year term.

 In short The R&A, helped by the PGAs of Europe, exports golf education around the world… & foots the bill.

Over a period some years, well over 30 countries have been helped including the likes of ….Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Ivory Coast, Botswana, Greece, Estonia…etcetera, etcetera. Two countries currently in the early stages of this process are Bangladesh and Trinidad and Tobago. Jordan is also to be included. Iran has received several visits and significant R&A investment.

It seems to me to be an unfathomable contradiction, that when youngsters in various parts of the world are taught golf from time to time, free of charge, by UK or other European coaches, financed by visitors to The Open Championship, in other regions members of similar faiths are blowing each other to bits.

Maybe I’m getting a touch over-sentimental and screwy in my dotage, but I do wonder whether golf could be more effective in international affairs than politics. Just a simplistic, trite, rather silly  dream, I know but better than guns and tanks, eh?

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