Wealth & Money Quote by Bob Hope

Bob Hope’s line lands because it treats a golf swing less like a skill than a luxury good. “You’ve got to be rich” isn’t really about biomechanics; it’s about access, leisure, and the quiet class codes baked into supposedly “gentlemanly” sports. Hope is doing what his best one-liners always did: flattering the audience while gently accusing them. If you’re hearing this at a club dinner or a televised pro-am, you’re already inside the world he’s teasing. The joke works as a wink between insiders who know golf’s real entry fee isn’t the greens fee, it’s the life that gives you time to practice.

The subtext is also transactional: money doesn’t just buy better clubs, lessons, and manicured courses; it buys the illusion of effortlessness. A “swing like that” implies elegance, ease, a kind of unbothered rhythm that reads as natural talent. Hope undercuts that romance by insisting it’s purchased. He’s puncturing the myth of merit in miniature, using golf as a stage where privilege can be mistaken for grace.

Context matters: Hope built a persona around country clubs, celebrity tournaments, and entertaining the affluent without sounding bitter. The line is a pressure-release valve for an audience that wants to laugh at its own advantages without surrendering them. It’s class critique delivered as a compliment, which is why it’s survived: it’s funny, it’s true enough to sting, and it lets the room keep smiling.