(Federalist 10 is one of the most heralded Federalist papers, discussing the danger of “Faction” in small governing bodies, among other topics. I took this framework and applied it to the large ecosystem which golf has become, purely as a writing exercise. Curious to hear your thoughts and opinions. Enjoy.)

To the Golfers of America-

As the game has grown, so too have the pointed interest groups within it. Each is convinced they know what golf should be. Each is poised to remake the game in their own image. These factions are not new. But, their organizational capacity is. And left unchecked, any one of them could capture the institutions and norms that govern our sport.

The instinct to complain about these groups is universal. The instinct to stamp them out is understandable. Both are futile. Faction springs from the very diversity of thought that makes golf culture worth having. Kill the disagreement and you kill the passion that sustains it.

The prevailing wisdom among traditionalists offers a different remedy: “shrink the game.” Fewer golfers, higher standards, a more serious culture. Elegant in theory, but it would be disastrous in practice. A smaller golf community does not weaken these interest groups, it actually empowers it. The fewer the number golfers, the easier for a well-organized minority to dominate.

The game cannot shrink its way to health. It must grow, but in the correct manner and for the right reasons.

Golf twitter, and the golf universe as a whole, is an aggregated hodgepodge of countless factions. Ranging from gear-heads to public golf populists, I’ll break them down below.

The Traditionalists. Screaming “Shrink” from the rooftops.

Public Golf Populists. A polo shirt tucked in is too much to ask.

The Logo Chasers. The top 100 is nothing more than a checklist for them + shopping opportunity to flex their status as a lifelong guest.

Big Data. Fail to grasp the idea of “feel” and the fact that golf is inherently not a technical sport.

Big Architecture. Can only talk about bunker placement and different types of rye and bent-grass.

The Covidians. Learned how to play golf via Instagram and TikTok. Deeply unserious faction without an iota of deference to the traditions and etiquette of the sport.

The Content Creators. View golf as a live-taped version of “The Truman Show”

The Tour Watchers. The sport starts and ends with professional golf. Nothing else matters.

Gear Heads. Chase speed and distance at all costs. Aspire to turn golf courses into 8000 yard goat tracks.

Each faction cares deeply about a different element of the game, and is honest in their attention and focus. The Traditionalists (I am one of them) believe that private club culture and proper attire are key pillars in the sport. The populists want to tear down the gates, believing that clubs are antithetical to the growth of the game. The architecture nerds aren’t wrong in believing that routing and hole design shape experience. Each group has beliefs that are true and rooted in an element of truth.

However, each holds a genuine blindness to a critical element of the sport.

The danger here is not that each faction is inherently wrong in their ideology, it’s the threat in which one faction gains too much power in the broader golf ecosystem. Any of the above factions would remake the sport in their own image if given the power and sovereignty to do so.

Given supreme power, any one interest group will strip and destroy elements from the game which are crucial to it’s survival. A game run by Traditionalists would shrink the game into irrelevance. A game run by the logo chasers and populists would strip the sport of all gravitas and austerity. The Gear Heads would turn all golf courses into 8000 yard pitch and putts. You see the point.

To be in a faction is to be human. We are a diverse group of beings with differing opinions. It is what makes golf, and life, beautiful and interesting.

So, how do we eliminate the aforementioned threat of a single interest group wielding unchecked power?

To the first point: To destroy a faction would be to destroy the beauty of human nature and thought. Complete destruction of interest groups would require mass censorship, a ban on organizing around ideas, and crush all forms of dissent against the ruling class.

To the second point: Homogenous thought is impossible to solve for in the game, not to mention a dangerous feature for any group to espouse. Golfers all came to learn the game through different means and terms. A kid who grew up at a private club has a different relationship to the game than someone who picked it up at 35 on a municipal course. A player in Scotland, where golf is woven into public life, experiences the game differently than someone in Phoenix playing target golf in the desert. A single-digit handicap who played in college has different instincts than a casual weekend player.

Any attempt at a total destruction of factions means an attempt to flatten the diversity which makes the game great. It means destroying what makes golf, golf. The cure would be ruinous!

So if we cannot destroy the interest groups, what can we do?

Control the reach and impact of any single group.

As much as we dream about shrinking the game and kicking Covidians to the curb, we must now focus on growing the game the right way. Golf must be structurally sound. It has to be unsinkable in it’s macro position as a lifelong gentleman’s sport. The internet is the perfect place to start. The energy that produces Golf Twitter’s heated debates is the fuel that keeps the sport alive.

The internet has flattened all barrier to entry. While newspapers and editorials once owned the distribution channels, media is now run by the people. Anyone who has picked up the game, whether as a child or as an adult, is entitled to their opinions and actions on the golf course. Contrary to what you may believe, inherent diversity is a feature, not a bug.

How simple and fun would it be, to simply abolish those from the game whom we deem “undesirable”? To banish those who play in untucked shirts, blast loud music, and drink like it’s an open bar. After a unilateral banishment, wouldn’t only the true believers remain? Wouldn’t the tee sheets open up to the purists who truly love and respect the game?

A tight-knit community is immune from a degradation of standards and a loss of community, right?

This is a fantastical vision which cannot exist in reality. It is wishful thinking for a utopia.

You’d be lying to yourself if you haven’t thought about it at least once.

Now, to Golf Twitter. It is a microcosm of what a “shrunk” golf universe would look like. Representing a tiny fraction of the 25 million + players in the world, the accounts are opinionated and loud (myself included) the ferocity in which we espouse our ideal golf culture would lead any bystander to believe that our opinions are the discourse, when in reality the vast majority of golfers have not and will not ever interact with us. The participants are disproportionately engaged in all things golf. The factions are loud.

Now imagine if the broader golf population were to match the intensity of Golf Twitter. The battles currently contained to a niche corner of the internet would become the main event. Whichever faction builds the most effective coalition, captures the institutions that govern the game.

Now, some of you reading this may feel like that is the correct solution. You may believe in the strength and mission of your interest group. But I ask you, what happens if another faction out-duels yours?

The concrete impacts of total ownership and say over the golf world are significant. A single interest group would have control over:

Should the game be reduced to a small pool of players, the dissidents would have no standing or legitimacy. They would be cast aside like a scuffed ProV. It’s a winner-takes-all system; it is inherently flawed and counterproductive to the healthy growth of the game of golf.

For fun, let’s play through what a golf culture dominated by the Populist movement would look like.

The chain of logic is as follows:

The Populist Capture Scenario:

When accessibility becomes the only value, courses optimize for throughput. Tee times stacked tight, carts mandatory, layouts designed to move bodies rather than challenge them. Cathedrals of the game are reduced to goat tracks. The soul and lifeblood sucked from them. The populists don't have to win the argument about what golf means, they just have to keep lowering barriers until nothing distinctive remains.

Think I’m biased? Let’s map this out for if the Traditionalist faction were to overtake the game and impose the “Shrink” manifesto on the game.

The Traditionalist “Shrink” Manifesto

When the population of golfers shrinks, the courses that fail first are the municipals and affordable daily-fee tracks operating on thin margins. What survives is what can survive on exclusivity: private clubs with wealthy members who don't need public play. Like the aforementioned populists, the traditionalists simply have to wait for the accessible courses to close.

A large, diverse golf universe renders interest groups and factions useless. Structurally, no single group will have enough power to speak for the entire community. While growth may feel like dilution, it presents checks to purists like myself who may hold extreme views. Competing visions are important for the health of the game.

In a culture of 25 million global players, we can all find our interest groups. The architecture nerds are balanced by players who've never heard of Mackenzie. The traditionalists are balanced by newcomers who learned on a muni and don't know the old codes. The tour watchers are balanced by those who never watch a single tournament but play every weekend. The content creators are balanced by the grinders who've never posted a single swing video. The gear heads are balanced by feel players who haven't changed equipment in a decade.

Each faction is real. Each has a voice. None can claim to be golf, because golf means too many things to too many people.

This is not a feel-good argument about inclusion. It is a mechanical argument about power. Diversity of participants creates diversity of interests. Diversity of interests prevents consolidation. The game becomes unconquerable by any single vision, not because everyone agrees, but because agreement at scale is impossible.

Crucially, this does not mean abandoning all standards. Private clubs can still be private. Walking-only courses can still exist. Difficult layouts can still punish the unprepared. Elite competition can still demand elite preparation. The point is that none of these becomes the only legitimate form of the game. They exist within a larger ecosystem that contains multitudes.

Growth also creates the economic conditions for variety. More golfers means more courses across the entire spectrum, from ultra-private to wide-open municipal. More viable niches. More entry points. An ecosystem where the traditionalist vision and the populist vision and everything in between can coexist, each serving its constituency, none dominating the whole.

The game does not need a single answer to what golf should be. It needs a structure that makes the question unanswerable.

The game of golf has grown to a point where clashing ideas will always coexist. The burners will continue to “shrink” while the covidians continue to exist in a world where booze-fueled 6 hour rounds are commonplace and acceptable.

My goal is to teach, instruct, and inform the broader golf world of what the game can be if played as I play it. With strict etiquette, rules, and traditions attached to every swing and clubhouse.

The end goal is not universal agreement on what is right vs. wrong. The goal is a golf culture so large, so various, and so structurally resilient that no single faction can mistake its preferences for universal truth.

Grow the game, but grow it wisely.

Founded in 1895 outside Chicago with only about 35 members, it's one of the most eccentric clubs in America. The club has a patron saint (St. Barnabas, "a golfer from the 1st century A.D."), members wear red jackets with green collars modeled after Royal Liverpool, and there's a pink bench where Marilyn Monroe once sat.

In 1912, when the railroad tried to condemn part of the property, members procured four bodies from the local morgue, buried them on club grounds, had it reclassified as a cemetery, and the tombstones remain today.

Their rules include: "There shall be no such thing as a lost ball. The missing ball will eventually be found and pocketed by some other player, in which case it becomes a stolen ball. There is no penalty for a stolen ball."

Aimpoint. It’s gotten so bad that Fred Ridley, Chairman of Augusta National, had to institute pace of play revisions for the Drive Chip and Putt competition. It’s not even real golf! Seeing 9 year old kids take 3 minutes to Aimpoint a 12 footer finally broke him.

It’s entirely absurd, but guess where these kids learned it? The guys and girls they watch on TV.

Watching TOUR guys unironically Aimpoint 2 foot putts is a huge problem. I don’t want to have to petition for the PGA Tour to be rated “R” for the sake of our children, but we’re approaching that level of absurdity on the greens. Aimpoint is quickly becoming a global pandemic, and patient zero is the PGA TOUR.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,

BTG