The Case For Nationalising England's Golf Courses

It's time to reclaim the gold courses from the golfers! It's time for a land revolution!

Ever since its invention in 1522, the sport of golf has captivated elderly, rich men from every corner of the world. And what a riveting game it is. Players hit a ball the size of an acorn with a crooked stick across a field 10,000x its size and then tepidly walk after it – if they manage to find it – before hitting it again. It seems like a fairly innocent game, right? Well, my aversions to the ‘sport’ wouldn’t be so passionate if it didn’t consume an enormous swathe of land in this country.

To speak bluntly, golf courses are a blight on our land. Approximately, 300,000 hectares of land is consumed by this mind-numbingly boring activity, amounting to around 2% of the UK’s entire landmass. To put that into perspective, that is twice as much land as we dedicate to housing, around 1.1% of the UK’s surface area. 11,000 acres of land in Greater London alone is wasted on golfing, twice the size of Hackney, a borough with a population of over 250,000. In times of great crises as these, where house-building has grounded to a halt and affordable living spaces are becoming more and more rare, it seems a grave insult to allow this disease to continue festering.

But it’s more than just how much land is wasted on it. It’s about what it represents. Nothing encapsulates the massive gulf between the economic classes more than golf does. It is a mindless activity, primarily engaged in by the very wealthy, that usually involves sectioning off large areas of pristine land for their secluded country club. It is the epitome of class segregation. No other activity demands so much land to be enjoyed by so few people.

I offer a very simple solution: every golf course in this country – all 2,400 of them – should be nationalised by the government. Once taken into public hands, they should be converted into either space to build affordable, low-cost public housing or large public spaces for people to enjoy themselves in, cycling, walking, having a picnic, etc. Tens of thousands of new homes could be built from the policy alone without infringing on the rest of our beautiful countryside.

But do not despair, the golfers can still have their fun. Miniature golf – a far more interesting and fun game – can be used as a substitute. And what makes it much better is that it doesn’t involve cordoning off huge swathes of pristine land.

While it will most likely face resistance, if successful, it might provide the answer to the UK’s current housing crisis the government is searching for and offer a rebuke to our landed aristocracy that is long needed.