A flaming golf ball has just dropped down the cleavage of a blonde model in a black bikini top. We’re thinking “Ouch” but it’s just the cover of Golf Course News shouting out “Women and Golf: The Burning Issue.”    It’s a burning issue, alright, enough of one many golf clubs, including the Old Course at St. Andrews, trash canned the issue.

    The British magazine, Golf Course News International, had a nice little niche among European golf course professionals. It specialized in telling pros and groundskeepers whether to grow Buffalo grass or Bermuda and when best to cut it. It spread the news to golf course architects on latest design trends.

   The magazine decided to sex up its last two issues to capture a new generation of young readers. How better to do this than trot out partially naked women and double entendres. How indeed? Didn’t they realize the industry they were in was… uhhh… GOLF?

   Golf and sex don’t mix, we think, especially in the staid, plaid communities of Scotland and throughout the rest of Europe for that matter. To start with, Scotsmen invented the game of golf to get away from women. They wanted to go out and play a game where they could wear their kilts without ladies making fun of them.  They fashioned sticks and hit rocks along the seacoast where the wind sent breezes up their kilts. It was there they built the first clubhouse with the words: G entlemen O nly L adies F orbidden.

   GCNI Magazine wants to change that. It’s flaunting ladies and their sexiness right under the greens keepers’ noses. Renowned editor Geoff Baker has vowed to yank the stodgy right out of their kilts. Go to page 34 and there’s a naked golfer – Sophie Sandolo – covered in a fishnet standing on a well manicured green. There’s an expose revealing US marketers are secretly eyeing lady golfers for the most marketable beauty in an article they call “The Hunt for The Birdie Bucks.” They’ve installed a new gossip section called “Tell it to Tonto” asking for tattle-tales and “bunker stories.” Tonto is a guy in a mask with his faithful dog companion, Lily The Wonder Bitch.

   There’s even an article touting the medical opinion that twice a week sex improves a golfer’s game. The article says studies show the old belief abstention keeps you “pumped up” for a game to be wrong. They found relaxation actually improves performance on the course.

    This is exactly what the golfing establishment doesn’t want to hear. They want to go to the course sexless, wearing plaid with no ladies playing in front of them. Especially no ladies in bikini tops with burning golf balls bouncing off their chests. They want to pull out their sticks and hit their balls with no female interference. They want to tell you how much better golf is than sex. Like if you are having trouble with your game it is acceptable to pay a professional to improve your technique; Or if your partner takes videos of you golfing you don’t worry about them landing on the internet. Nobody tells you you’ll go blind if you golf by yourself and you can watch golf on television without subscribing to a premium channel. Nobody complains if you golf with a total stranger and your regular partner doesn’t mind if you golf with others. And all upstanding golfers using the “golf-is-better-than-sex” argument always say you don’t have to sneak your golf magazines into the house. Well, now, maybe you do.