Wealth & Money Quote by Dave Barry

Golf gets skewered here not as a sport but as a social costume party with a scorecard. Dave Barry’s punchline hinges on a neat fake-arc of progress: from an old, exclusionary pastime for “wealthy, overweight Protestants” to a supposedly democratized modern game. Then he yanks the rug: access hasn’t expanded through equity or openness, it’s just been rebranded around a new gatekeeping requirement - “hideous clothing.” The joke works because it turns inclusivity into a retail checklist, suggesting that the barriers to belonging rarely disappear; they just mutate into different signals.

Barry’s specific intent is to puncture golf’s self-seriousness and its aura of respectable leisure. The original stereotype is doing double duty: it evokes the WASP-y country club world (money, religion, body type as shorthand for comfort and complacency) while also mocking how golf has long functioned as a networking arena disguised as recreation. He’s not making a sociological argument so much as using caricature to expose the soft power of taste: who gets to look like they belong.

The subtext is about American status rituals. Golf sells itself as relaxing and “for everyone,” yet it’s still policed by codes - collars, brands, etiquette - that convert participation into performance. “Hideous clothing” isn’t just an aesthetic jab; it’s a marker of conformity, the willingness to buy into a tribe’s uniform. Barry’s cynicism lands because it targets a familiar cultural trick: we rename exclusivity as tradition, then call the ability to purchase the right props “access.”