I t is impossible to consider the fiendish question “Is golf cool?” without looking at the sport’s history. Because the answer for close to a century was: well, of course not. Close your eyes and think of golf — even now you are thinking of the green haze of courses on TV; the polite flutter of applause after a nicely pitched chip; putting a little coin down on the green while a single glove flaps out of your back pocket; not really knowing what to buy your dad for Christmas so getting him a novelty mug full of tee pegs.
For years golf was white, and it was old, and it was weird, with secretive-for-no-reason clubhouses, scores named after birds and one of the game’s main rewards a big green jacket — until 1997, when a Nike-sponsored super-athlete started to dominate the game and golf moved away from being the thing presidents do on their one day off a year to become a blockbuster event..