January 5, 2008

How many gay male golfers are there?

I never made it out on a golf course in all of 2007, but I have been playing since 1971. Over the years, I've played in foursomes with hundreds of people, the majority of them strangers, and run into hundreds of others around the golf course or driving ranges in Chicago and LA. Not one has ever triggered my gaydar. A gay friend who is an intense sports fan and I went to several pro tournaments together, but I could never talk him into actually trying to play the game.

Sure, private country clubs would likely tend to discriminate against homosexuals, but 95+% of my rounds have been played at public courses where anybody who pays the greens fee can play. By way of comparison, my playing partners over the years include perhaps two dozen blacks, almost as many Latinos, and more Asians.

Golf isn't much of a team sport, so discrimination by teammates wouldn't be an issue as it is with gays and other sports.

Even stranger, golf doesn't seem particularly macho either. It's non-violent and there's no danger involved. There are some polite, upper class rituals involved in the game that would seem not uncongenial to gays.

So, it could be very informative to understand why golf appeals to some straight men but almost no gay men. But we don't really understand the appeal of golf yet. (I take my best guesses here in this 2005 American Conservative article.)

Since lots of celebrities are golfers and lots of celebrities are gay, for years I've been trying to falsify my hypothesis that gay men almost never find golf appealing by finding a bunch of gay golfing celebrities. But I haven't found any, other than maybe Danny Kaye, the amazingly talented comedian-actor-musician of a half century ago (Michael Richards's Kramer on "Seinfeld" channeled a little of Kaye's shtick), who was an avid golfer and baseball player/fan (he owned the Seattle Mariners). He was married for 47 years, but, at least in the years since his death in 1987, has been subject to rumors of bisexuality.

As you know, one of my favorite tricks is to take a list (The Top 100 Whatevers) and use it to investigate some question that never occurred to the people who created the list. That way, my question doesn't bias the data, which could happen if I made up the list myself. The list might not be particularly good at ranking the Top 100 Whatevers, but it provides a decent source of data unaffected by my preconceptions.

So, here is Golf Digest's 2007 list of "Hollywood's Top 100 Golfers," which lists actors/actresses, but not behind the camera talent. It's ranked in terms of handicap (the lower the better).

Soap opera star Jack Wagner is the only actor with a "plus" handicap (meaning, roughly, that he is expected to break par).

The list reveals what Billy Crudup, the New York actor with the superb diction, is doing besides voice-over commercials and turning down Hollywood roles: he's ranked #3. Recently it became possible to live in Manhattan and play a lot of quality golf with the opening of two super-expensive courses in New Jersey's industrial wastelands just across the Hudson River. Crudup plays to a 4.5 handicap at the new faux-Irish Bayonne Golf Club amidst the docks.

The biggest stars in the Top 20 are probably Dennis Quaid, Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Murray, and Hugh Grant.

I'm sure they are missing some people who should be on the list and some who shouldn't be on the list are making up handicaps. Generally, the players who list a handicap to a decimal point actually have played enough to have a handicap, although that might not be, technically, their current handicap. I'm a 16.9, for example (or that's what I was for one glorious week in 1990).

The ones who round it off to a whole number may be just blowing smoke entirely. For example, Sean Connery has dropped to a "22.0," but he definitely is a fanatical golfer. On other hand, while I'd like to believe that lovely Jessica Alba is a "22," it sounds too much like Cameron Diaz's male fantasy character in "There's Something About Mary" who hangs out at the driving range on her days off from healing sick children. (Cameron is a 34 on the list). Jessica has been photographed playing golf with her fiance, the world's luckiest man, but, somehow, I don't think she's quite as dedicated to the game as the old Scotsman.

Among actresses, Alba ranks second following the more plausible Cheryl Ladd (from the original "Charlie's Angels") at 18.

Anyway, this list mentions 92 men in a profession with an above average number of homosexuals, so there is a lot of data to work with. Quite a few of the actors are fairly obscure, like Richard Kind of "Spin City" and "Mad About You" (who is indeed kind -- he helped me look for a club I had lost at Robinson Ranch). But you can look up a lot of information about each one. For example, Kind is married and has three kids.

So, how many of the 92 are rumored to be gay?

There's Tom Cruise (#95). I have no opinion on all the rumors, but he's clearly not a very intense golfer, if somebody that coordinated is only a 32 handicap. And there's young Zac Efron of Disney's "High School Musical," who is #52 at a 14. He gets a lot of crap from the celebrity snarksites who are jealous of his girlfriend Vanessa Hudgens (e.g., "he's basically a dancing candy cane come to life"), but, who knows? (Getting totally off topic, here's a picture of her father that you have to see.)

I'm sure there are others on the list, but I think my old hypothesis is supported.

Update: Here's Golf Digest's list of the best 100 golfing singers and musicians. The only scratch golfers are Kenny G and Vince Gill. Bob Dylan is supposedly a decent 17 handicapper, while Neil Young is an 18.6. (When Young's band Buffalo Springfield signed their first contract, Young's last request of Ahmet Ertegun was: "I'm a golfer. Can you help get me in a country club out here?") The list has lots off country singers and lots of black singers and even a black country singer (Charley Pride).

And there's a black gay golfer in Johnny Mathis, who plays to a fine 10.5 handicap at mighty Riviera. I don't think it's all that secret that he's gay.

The only other gay on the list who jumps out at me is Lance Bass, who is in the "New to the Game" category with a 36 (the worst handicap allowed under USGA rules).

I'm sure more expert researchers might find a couple more, but far fewer than in a list of top 100 singers or musicians who don't play golf.

In summary, we have two lists with 185 men on it in two professions, acting and music, that are well know to feature an above average number of gays. If you exclude the men with handicaps over 30 as not very serious golfers, that leaves one obvious gay out of about 160 men, and, likely, several more discrete gays.

But if you took a random list of 160 prominent male musicians and Hollywood actors who aren't golfers, what percentage would be homosexual? Let's say 15%, just for sake of argument. So, at 15%, you'd expect 24 gays out of 160. Right now we've got Johnny Mathis, so we'd need to dig up 23 closet cases off the lists. I don't think that's going to happen.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

51 comments:

Anonymous said...

I play alot of pick-up tennis, and gaydar is definitely activated on a regular basis. By the way, marriage is not any guarantee, imo, of not being gay.

Anonymous said...

How about gay boxers? I'm thinking of Emile Griffith.

Anonymous said...

How about gay mixed martial artists? When they roll they can look kinda gay (except for all the blood and stuff).

Here's a challenge. Try to identify the very least gay profession/job out there as well as the traits: balls (sports), brutal violence (like MMA), danger (special forces), etc.

Sriram said...

Apparently there is a term for this
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/magazine/02/17/teeing_off0223/index.html

Happy Gilmore: An openly gay golfer.

one gets twice as many hits on google for "lesbian golfer"

Steve Sailer said...

The interesting thing about golf in this regard is that there's no violence; no danger; it's not much of a team sport; there's not much of a stereotype that gays don't play golf. They just don't play golf.

Anonymous said...

Interesting topic, Steve. As you probably know, one famous Hollywood actor who had gay rumors swirling around him throughout his career was Randolph Scott. The rumors started in the 30's when Scott and fellow starving actor Cary Grant shared a bachelor pad together and were photographed in publicity poses that today look like gay beefcake camp. Scott never had kids (his son was adopted) but he stayed married to his wife throughout his life. Scott was also a conservative Republican, the richest man in Hollywood for a while (thanks to property investments) and one of Hollywood's most fanatical golfers. As recounted by his son in the book about his father, Scott golfed practically all day, every day, lived next door to a golf course, and went on golfing vacations. It was his chief passion in life after retiring from movies, when he was still in his prime. Being a big Scott fan, I tend to disbelieve the gay rumors, though Hollywood in the 30's WAS a surprisingly wicked place. Ken Anger's Hollywood Babylon 2 has a brief bit on the Scott/Grant relationship, but Scott's son vehemently denies the charges.

Anonymous said...

What is surprising about that list is that there are not the type of guys (in acting) involved in Golf that are known to be openly gay. Rupert Everret, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, etc. do not play golf.

But there are a lot of other A-Listers who don't play either. Which is weird since both NBA and NFL players are known to be golf fanatics and hit the links quite often. Charles Barkley, Deon Sanders, and Michael Jordan all play. And played during their careers in off-days or off-season.

Up and coming actors Colin Ferrell (unibrow Irish guy not Will), Josh Hartnett, Sean William Scott, and Casey Affleck don't play. Neither it seems does Ben Affleck. It seems that Golf as a pastime is marginal among Hollywood where it used to be central to the Bing-Hope-Wayne-Sinatra crowd.

Fascinating how quickly tastes change in a few generations.

Re: Zac Efron and Vannessa Hudgyens. Disney makes a huge investment in promoting Princess Romance with various performers and characters. You could characterize their business as getting parents of 9 year old girls to cough up money to feed that princess fantasy. Hannah Montana and Hillary Duff and Britney (in her teen years) were all part of that. I smell old-fashioned Studio "fake romance" there.

Reportedly, Jamie Lynn Spears was not impregnated by her 19 year old boyfriend (he was merely rushed into service ala the Edwards campaign worker with Rielle Hunter), but by a much older Disney exec.

IF true (it might not be), it would make that business even more tawdry than it would be at first glance.

But back to Golf, yes Steve I think you're right -- golf just does not appeal to gays. I think that because it is a tradition bound, very "straight" past-time it just isn't appealing to them.

Un-gayest sport? Bowling. No gay guy would *ever* wear those shirts.

Hey maybe that's it. Can you imagine a gay guy wearing Payne Stewart's PLAID knickers?

Steve Sailer said...

Right, Cowboy movie star Randolph Scott should go on the maybe list with Danny Kaye. Thanks. Scott got into the LA Country Club, which banned actors, by proving he had made a fortune as an investor.

The Randolph Scott rumors are like the Danny Kaye ones because they both involve a single ambiguous relationship with a man of world famous charm: Scott and Cary Grant, Kaye and Larry Olivier.

Anonymous said...

Evil,

Yeah, the Jamie Lynn Spears' story only came out in media res because teenage girls have this knack of getting pregnant. Lou Pearlman didn't have that problem.

LOU Pearlman - the hog-fat, boy-band honcho who created *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys and launched the careers of Justin Timberlake and Nick Carter - was a pervy pedophile who preyed on the young men he mentored, Vanity Fair reports.

"I would absolutely say the guy was a sexual predator. All the talent knew what Lou's game was," Steve Mooney, an aspiring singer who was Pearlman's assistant, told VF's Bryan Burrough. "Some guys joked about it. I remember [one singer] asking me, 'Have you let Lou [fellate] you yet?' "

Mooney said he once asked Pearlman, who was known as "Big Poppa," what it would take for him to get into a band. "I'll never forget this as long as I live. He leaned back in his chair, in his white terry cloth robe and white underwear, and spread his legs," Mooney told Burrough. "And then he said, and these were his exact words, 'You're a smart boy. Figure it out.' " Mooney added that a singer groped by Pearlman told him, "Look, if a guy wants to massage me, and I'm getting a million dollars for it, you just go along with it. It's the price you got to pay"...

http://www.nypost.com/seven/
10022007/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm

Anonymous said...

old beefcake photos:

Steve has written about how straight males in modern society are consciously tilting as anti-gay as possible -slob chic- as a reaction to the attempted mainstreaming of male homosexuality. Steve mentioned various upper class pursuits of European tradition in which the modern male won't even participate for fear of being labeled gay. This makes perfect sense, of course. Action produces reaction. The attempted norming of homosexuality has impacted society in many ways. Not the least of which is the reengineering of our First Amendment in the guise of Hate Crime Laws.

Anonymous said...

dave david -- the ultimate will of course be when marriage itself becomes gay.

The only practice which will always be masculine is having sex with women. By contrast, marriage is already emasculating...a steady drumbeat of nyt headlines on gay weddings will finish the job.

And that's not even getting to the mpending pressure for instant divorce once gays start pushing the legal instituitions surrondng marriage to accompdate the reality of gay promiscuity.

Anonymous said...

Gays follow fashions closely. If only enough famous or uncloseted gays started to cultivate golf, they´d rush to the golf courses.

Another reason for the lack of gays in golf could be that gays typically worship youth and there´s litle of it to be found in golf courses.

The moment there will be some "action" to be found in public golf courses, gays will crowd out straights.

Anonymous said...

I got a kick out of your golf as gaydar comment a post or two back because it was...so iSteve (which is to say rational), and I'm happy to see you elaborate on it here.

Steve, Hockey Night In Canada was an institution here. Last night there was a female colour commentator for the first time, the last straw in a long line of feminizing of the broadcast.

She's awful, which is to be expected from a rookie commentator with a squeaky high pitched voice who didn't play in the NHL, is immersed in a feminist field, and has little broadcast experience.

It's actually the commercials - invariably white male bashing commericials for hours at a time - which have turned me off hockey broadcasts.

There is also the problem of "hockey wives" dictating the cities where men play, often to the detriment of Canadian teams. Canadian players are noticeably more wussy than American players or Euros in this regard.

Also, you can look at a list of the top 100 draft prospects and tell which are American (guys named Jack and Tom) and which are Canadian (guys named Shea and Brandon) with moderate accuracy merely from their given names.

I download commercial free Mixed Martial Arts videos now, and am a huge fan. Never heard a fighter yet thank his wife or girlfriend for "support" after a win. Never caught a whiff of feminism or any noteworthy kind of political correctness in hours of watching.

There is a fighter, Andrei Arlovski, who has the words "Fighting Solves Everything" emblazoned on his trunks. So true on so many levels, and yet how often does one see such wisdom expressed in our society? With the state being such an uneasy substitute for vengeance on its best day, I for one find it refreshing.

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's because the other men who golf are not appealing to gay men? While there certainly are a lot of attractive men who golf, I see more middle-aged paunchy guys on the course. Golf is a sport where you can be kind of out of shape physically and still be good at it; whereas tennis is pretty intense aerobic exercise, so if you play a lot you are probably pretty fit. Most of the gay men I know make fitness a higher priority than straight men (e.g. the stereotype of a man who is over thirty, single, thin and neat and therefore must be gay).

Anonymous said...

This is going a bit off topic, but can anyone suggest why there are so few bald rock stars?
This has puzzled me for years. I don't think any of them go in for prosthetic hair, as it's impossible to pound around a stage for three hours with anything other than your real hair on your head.

Anonymous said...

Singer Johnny Mathis is a golf fanatic, plays I think several times a week at Bel Air and maybe other places, and is of course gay. Also the best singer of his generation.

Anonymous said...

That is strange. I've played for years and can't recall a single gaydar ping.

While the sport is not particularly macho, the golf culture is. Most guys don't like to play with women. There's typically a fair amount profanity, teasing, off color humor, in some cases drinking, betting, spitting, smoking, bad clothes, bad hats, lots of fat bald guys, etc.

While golf is stereotypically portrayed as a rich man's game, in my experience it's more a middle and working class hobby, a chance to get four hours to yourself away from the wife and kids, the boss, etc.

While the sport itself is fun, the environment is what makes it for me. I can see why a gay male might not enjoy it.

Anonymous said...

Steve-- do gay men generally like to hit balls with sticks?

Anonymous said...

Golf is boring, especially to watch. That's why.

Once gays were through with witty double entendres about 'balls' what else could they do?

Anonymous said...

A friend of mine wound up in a foursome with Johnny Mathis several years ago, and said he was an enthusiastic golfer as well as a nice guy. It has always been my understanding that Johnny Mathis is gay.

Anonymous said...

Interesting topic and very interesting list, Steve. As far as the gay thing goes, it's possible that golf doesn't appeal much to gay men because it doesn't offer the physical workout that a sport like tennis provides. Gay men are famously preoccupied with having good physiques. Golf requires time, effort and expense that gays might prefer spending on a sport that also toned their bodies (and offered a greater opportunity to meet other men with toned bodies). There's also the self-perpetuating aspect of the question: Gays don't play golf because gays don't play gold.

Steve has written about how straight males in modern society are consciously tilting as anti-gay as possible -slob chic- as a reaction to the attempted mainstreaming of male homosexuality.

Yes, and I think he's mostly right. Another example of hetero males' reactions to the increasing visibility of homosexuals is noticeably increased modesty among men in locker rooms compared to a couple of decades ago. On the other hand, how to explain the fact that many straight men routine trim or shave their body hair? I mean, how much gayer can you get? It also appeals to many women, though, so maybe straight guys are willing to "go (a little) gay" if it gets them laid.

Anonymous said...

I would bet the lack of gay male golfers relates to the recent "women and gay men drivers" study.

Sexual orientation-related differences in allocentric spatial memory tasks

... The present investigation sought to examine if spatial learning and spatial memory in humans is also linked to sexual orientation. ... Here, we show that in contrast to heterosexual men, and in congruence with heterosexual women, homosexual men displayed significantly greater search latencies (spatial learning) during a virtual Morris Water Maze. ...

Driving somewhere new? Take a heterosexual man

... Homosexual men and heterosexual women share a poor sense of direction compared with heterosexual men, and are more likely to rely on landmarks, scientists have found. The results, from a study, at Queen Mary, University of London, and published in the journal Hippocampus, build on previous research that has identified differences in spatial reasoning related to sex and sexual orientation. ...

Here's why I think what was covered in this study matters to athletes.

To play tennis, for example, you don't require much in the way of a sense of direction. There's the ball, your opponent, two rectangles with a net between them, and your choice of how to hit the ball will be based on these things. To play golf, as a contrasting example, you must think more from the point of view of the ball. To decide how to take the next shot, you have to choose where you want the ball to end up, and you choose where you want the ball to end up based on what choices that will leave you for subsequent shots.

In other words, tennis requires you to have a sense of the space around you; golf requires you to have a sense of (a much larger) space around you, and in addition, be able to reason abstractly about that space.

Therefore, if the conclusions in the study are correct, it's no surprise that groups identified as having poorer spatial abilities in general will be less commonly seen as golfers.

Anonymous said...

Isn't Kenny G a scratch golfer? Shouldn't he count for something? Or his music?

Anonymous said...

I am a regular golfer, maybe there are gay golfers out there, but they may just want to keep it to themselves and just enjoy the game of golf.
Callaway FTI square headed driver

Anonymous said...

Steve: You--or at least i think it was you,yes,now i'm sure it was you--writing about designing golf courses,commented that the course is pleasing to the eye because it reminds man of his bucolic past,with the rolling grass and the trees and what not. Golf is a throwback to the rural past. Its obvious why men like it,chasing the ball down those beautiful but wasteful greens;also it may answer MY question of why so many women like golf,but the ones who DO are invariably post-menopausal and kinda "kludgy",( a word I made up)more Kate Hepburn and less Audrey!:) I think young women and gay men are less tuned into the bucolic thing. Gay men especially are like Woody Allen,"two with nature." Interestingly gays like softball--a sport that lesbians are fanatic about--which is a pretty blue-collar beer thing.But what they really like---I mean aside from you-know-what--is CHORUS. So there ya have it! _Josh

Anonymous said...

There's no body contact, no tight clothing or exposure of flesh, and no vigorous physical activity in golf. Not much to appeal to gays either as spectators or participants. Would heterosexual males given the chance to play or watch a sport with (attractive) women choose golf?

Steve Sailer said...

Kenny G? Nah...

From Wikipedia:

Kenny G is currently married to wife Lyndie Benson, with whom he has two children – Max (aged thirteen) and Noah (aged nine). They have expressed an interest in saxophone and piano respectively.[20]

He plays golf regularly, and has a playing handicap of +0.6.[2] He has participated in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am tournament seven times as of February 7, 2007,[3] and Golf Digest awarded him the position of number one musician golfer in their December rankings of Top 100 in Music.[2][3]

Steve Sailer said...

Right, Johnny Mathis plays at Riviera and maintains a pretty good handicap for his age. He was an Olympic hopeful in the high jump in the old days of sawdust pits, but found singing hurts a lot less than falling 7 feet out of the sky.

Steve Sailer said...

Here's Golf Digest's list of top 100 golers in music: a quick scan shows only Johnny Mathis and, in the New to the Game category with a 36 handicap, Lance Bass. Somebody more tuned in might find more:

http://www.golfdigest.com/rankings/2007/musicianrankings_gd2007

But, my general point holds: If we look at 185 prominent male actors and musicians and we find only a couple of percent homosexuals, that suggests that golf isn't appealing much to them.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you wrote that baseball seemed undersupplied with gay men. Tennis seems short of them too: http://www.afterelton.com/archive/elton/people/2006/11/tennis.html
When the unusually-talented Dartmouth lacrosse player Andrew Goldstein came out in 2005 he was hailed as the first openly gay player in the history of the sport, though there is at least one openly-gay lacrosse coach out there, Kyle Hawkins. (Considering how politically-correct it is to be a gay college athlete nowadays, I would not estimate there to be a large number of closeted gay college lacrosse players.)

There's a persistent rumor in the "anti-gay therapy" community (please note I do NOT think it is correct) that poor eye-hand coordination in boys causes them to become gay (try Googling "eye hand coordination homosexuality"). While I do not believe that notion and do not think gays generally have poor eye-hand coordination, I'd be willing to believe that gays on average show less enthusiasm for "hit ball with stick" games than other sports-- for some as-yet unelucidated reason. The reparative-therapy kooks may have noticed that and built up some bogus theory from it.

Google shows that there are plenty of gay & lesbian ice-hockey clubs and tournaments. I wonder if hockey appeals more to gays than golf or baseball? If so, I wonder why.

Steve Sailer said...

There were two famous pre-WWII gay male tennis players. The top player of the 1920s, Bill Tilden, was a pedophile. Nabokov's Humbert Humbert hires the ruined old champ Ned Litden (sp?), who travels with "his harem of ballboys," to teach Lolita the game.

And the top German player, Baron Gottfried von Cramm (?), was flamingly effeminate, which caused Hitler a lot of mixed emotions about the aristocrat representing the Aryan Master Race in the Davis Cup.

Anonymous said...

Mark Seecof brings up an interesting point. I'm gay and I grew up with uncorrected "anisometropia", i.e., the refractive power of one eye differs from that of the other. That would affect hand-eye coordination when young boys are developing strong peer-identification through their sports performance. This intuition comes from my youngest, non-gay brother. Four-eyes of all orientations, weigh in!

Anonymous said...

"... Homosexual men and heterosexual women share a poor sense of direction compared with heterosexual men, and are more likely to rely on landmarks, scientists have found."

I think an interesting study would be to poll people who use google-maps, mapquest and similar services, and ask them their sex. My guess is that those who print out maps are overwhelmingly men, whereas those who print out written directions are overwhelmingly women.

Anonymous said...

How about gay boxers? I'm thinking of Emile Griffith.

There were some rumors about Lennox Lewis, but they were untrue.

Anonymous said...

evil neocon: the gay male bowling scene at the league level in every major US city is huge: http://www.igbo.org

My gripe about this site is how freely people make hypotheses regarding subjects with which they have too little real-world experience to make hunches that are likely to pan out. This seems especially true when the topic is homosexuality. Just because you have a gay friend or two doesn't make you well informed. The unfortunate thing about ignorance is that one is usually ignorant of one's ignorance.

Anonymous said...

Although not exactly relevant to golf (but maybe it is, has it been tested?), here's a study by an old Watson protegé hypothesizing a gene for homosexuality (among other things) that is related to lateralization:

"My best guess is that this gene’s function in our species is to allocate a small percentage (about 20%) of the population into these pathways of alternative brain architectures, because having some individuals who think differently from the norm is somehow advantageous to society."

I thought you might be interested in this because you suspect there is selection for diversity. Seems Klar thinks so too. Klar's study is very compelling, but he hasn't found a gene yet, so I'm not quite ready to accept it. But it sure is hard to ignore the study of handedness-discordant identical twins he did, which is in this article:

"Ultimately, it is this possibility that drives Klar's research into hand preference. Well, that and the urgings of Jim Watson, a lefty, who has been "constantly nagging me to map the handedness gene." By identifying the relevant locus, Klar hopes to gain insight into the "final cause of schizophrenia."'

Watson's efforts may yet bring more to light. Isn't it ironic that a man called a bigot may end up in large part responsible for the discovery of the holy grail of gay rights activists -- a biological origin of homosexuality?

Unknown said...

Great posting and comments.

My hunch is that part of it may have to do with style. Golf style (clothes, rituals, jargon, beers, etc) seems to me to overlap with gay style hardly at all, maybe even to be the exact opposite of it. Plus many of the straight guys I know who play golf do it in suuuuuuuch a straight guy kind of way: it's a way to hang out with the buds, get away from the wife, rib each other, work on a pointless set of physical-prowess skills ...

And I think that one commenter's hunch that the idealized-rural setting may speak more to straight guys than to gay guys (who seem to prefer more urban or domesticated ideals) may have a lot to do with it too.

Plus there's that gay-lesbian thing. If something appeals to lesbians, then it almost certainly won't appeal to gays. Why that should be I don't really know. But then I don't really understand why golf appeals to lesbians in that special way either.

But, hey, I work in the media and live in Greenwich Village. I should go consult with some neighbors and friends.

Mark said...

I'm gay in Chicago and I play golf. Lots of it as a kid. But once or twice a year since 1990 or so. Still, I play between 86 and 92. I still hit the ball long and straight, but the short game has lost its precision. Also, the shanks creep into the game at least once a round. These days, it's "par for the course" to breeze through one nine at four over par, and then post double-digits on par five because the shanks crept into my game.

As for low number of gay men in golf, it could be that golf is a suburban game and the concentrations of gays are urban. I notice moreso a lack of bachelors and bachelorettes in golf, because the foursome and other rituals favor older upper middle class couples.

Anonymous said...

Any list of music industy golf nuts HAS to include Alice Cooper!

Anonymous said...

*off topic*

Steve, how about a response to Auster's claim:

"... but if Obama's book showed all these racial obsessions that Sailer says it showed, why didn't Sailer present any evidence of it in his article?"

The quote appears at the bottom of this page at VFR

Steve Sailer said...

Look, Obama is, at the moment, the most likely next President of the United States. He put a huge amount of effort into writing his life story, so is it really too much to ask pundits to read his autobiography?

If the new Presidential frontrunner's autobiography is too long for everybody else except me and Shelby Steele to read, they can just read Steele's much shorter summary and analysis of it. Or they can read Steele's essay in Time Magazine summarizing his summary. Or they can just read my 750 word review of Steele's book in the Washington Times.

James said...

Judging from his pictures over at Wikipedia Johnny Mathis is gay, black and a corpse. No I'm kidding but doesn't he look odd in the top one.

Anonymous said...

Somewhat OT --

Steve, no way in HELL is Obama going anywhere. Right now he's a media creation peddling "hope" but no policies whatsoever. As a politician he's bad, even worse than GWB. He has less experience than Bush and running for President is no place for amateurs.

As a practical matter, Hillary will soon unleash her dirt including likely, drug dealing while in College by Obama-the-Messiah. And quotes from his autobiography that you pointed out. Or his racist church and pastor. Or his world-apology-tour-for-America plan.

All it takes is for Iran to light off a nuke, North Korea to sell one, Iran to sink a US warship in international waters, Pakistan to go belly up for Osama (which is likely), and Barack Hussein Obama is toast, the "safe" play of Hillary goes back for Dems.

The world is a dangerous place, 9/11 proved Americans can be slaughtered by Muslims at home any time, and the "safe" play in times of turmoil is a person who will answer the "pull the trigger?" question.

Hillary, McCain, Fred, Romney, Rudy all meet that criteria.

Obama? Please he exudes "West Wing" weakness.

Anonymous said...

Alba may in fact be dedicated to her game because she possibly is a Scotophile(is she part Scots?). She is also Scotch connoisseur, a strange thing to be for a young hispanic woman

Anonymous said...

Golf doesn't attract gays because of many things.
Too much time with a lot of not very hot guys.
Except for caddy,no kind of diversions or socializing.
Expensive for equipment and most gays would dress better.
The fans also are not attractive like other sports.Sedentary types.
Main reason:no hot men,no good bodies.Heavier, because all time is spent practicing.

Anonymous said...

I'm openly gay and I like golf. I play with straight friends and business associates, family and my boyfriend; no big deal. As well, I'm a power boater (My straight brother is a sailboat racer). I love to ski, and take friends and family on annual Rockies ski trips. I love football and have four club seats on the rail at The Redskin's Fed Ex Field. But then I am accepted by all my family and friends, vendors, investors and associates. Maybe that acceptance made these pursuits and entertainments more interesting and accessible to me?

Anonymous said...

Golf is a difficult sport. In bowling, you might get a strike the first time you throw the ball down the lane. But in golf, I doubt you parred the first hole you ever played.

As far as I know, I have never played with any golfer that I knew was gay. I'm the only person in my weekly foursome that isn't married. I've never told them that I am gay and they have never asked. I play for the beauty of the courses and the fresh air. Unfortunately a lot of straight guys play to drink beer and smoke while they play.

Steve Sailer said...

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

I am a gay man who started golf at age 10. Serious golfers, gay or not, will say sexual vibes are the last thing on their minds. Yes, most of us gay men would love meeting our mate on a golf course, but I can see why golf has little appeal to gay men. It is difficult to play well, time consuming, expensive, and public courses can be crowded. Unless you took up the game at a very early age, other sports will more likely appeal to most gay men.

Steve Sailer said...

A reader writes that Indian Canyon near downtown Palm Springs (which is a gay retirement destination especially for Hollywood people) has about 30 gay male regulars playing the course.

Anonymous said...

I am a gay man who also started playing golf at age 10. Played to a 4 hdcp earlier in life but am now at 10 hdcp at age 76. Agree totally with the opinion that sexual vibes are the last thing on my mind. I know a few serious gay golfers who agree that we are not looking to connect on the golf course.