Kollengode S. Venkataraman Written in 1998
Last year end, December 8 to be exact, I was stuck for several hours in one of the cavernous concourses of Atlanta airport after missing my flight. You can kill only so much time reading papers. So, I watched the CNN Airport News’ disjointed bits of information telecast with slick graphics and voice-overs. The news piece was on sports, on golf in particular. The reporter, with a balmy Southern California golf course as his backdrop, discussed a recent trend among golf courses in the US banning shoes with metal spikes.
Not being familiar with golf—other than deriving a vicarious pleasure when I see on TV a star golfer missing an easy putt, or drives into deep rough, a sand trap, or into water—I didn’t know that golfers wear shoes with metal spikes. Only sprinters, I thought, need spiked shoes. Golfers don’t even jog on golf courses. In fact, they barely walk. Many move around in golf carts a la Presidents Bush and Clinton.
Then why do they need shoes with metal spikes? Golfers, the reporter explained, use spiked shoes for getting better traction so that they cannot blame the ground below when they miss an easy putt.
The reporter continued. On his calculation, each green gets millions of spike marks annually. His creative camera crew showed the consequences of these spike marks on golfing: Veteran golfers missing easy putts in spite of taking into consideration the wind speed and the terrain of the green (assessed by sitting on their toes while leaning on their putter for balance, and pensively looking at the terrain between the ball and the hole. The balls roll over the dimples of the spike marks, get deflected erratically, and miss the hole. Ohhhhhhh!
The reporter then went on to estimate the dollar value for repairing the greens, and for the damage the spike marks do to the flooring inside the building, not to speak of the wooden foot bridges along the walkways. Therefore, an ever-increasing number of golf courses across the USA are banning spiked golf shoes on their golf courses.
Stupefied by boredom, I yawned. I agreed. Very good, indeed.
I had two more hours to kill. I picked up a news magazine lying around. The lead article discussed the Ottawa treaty banning land mines signed by over 120 nations, and why the US refused to sign the treaty.
The contrast between the two news items was cynically stark.
Of course, land mines are primarily a Third World or Fourth World problem exacerbated by the First and the Second Worlds. They are planted along highly populated fertile river deltas as in Vietnam and Kampuchea, and not along the path where their leisurely classes go for their evening stroll. And along mountainous trails in Afghanistan and Africa where poor, uneducated men, women, and children walk barefoot carrying their merchandise on their heads or on their backs to eke out their meager living. And along the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, where millions of land mines are planted by South Korea with US help giving a protective shield from invasion from the North.
In places like Vietnam, years after the treaty was signed over a champagne toast and the aggressors retreated, poor farmers go back to their land to eke out a living. When they plow, the land mines explode killing them or even worse, maiming them for the rest of their lives. In the mountains, there are no roads because of the rough terrain. Only trails. Since the trails are mined, whole communities either have to live immobilized or take a chance to get killed/maimed.
On explosion, these land mines leave not tiny spike marks, but craters large enough to resemble unmanicured sand pits in expensive golf courses. The damage land mines inflict in terms of misery and pain during hospitalization, and in incapacitating men, women, and children from useful life is incalculable. Since the damage is not amenable to computations, they’re not worth worrying about. Further, even if you can compute them, because of the poor living standards in the Third World and low value of their currencies, in terms of dollars, it is not worth much, anyway.
That is why it is easy for the US golf courses to ban spiked shoes in their manicured golf courses, and convenient for the US for refusing to sign the treaty banning land mines from the face of earth even as it is working hard for selectively containing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and ban weapons of mass destruction in the Third World. END