At some point in the past decade or so, Golf Digest became a lifestyle magazine. With reviews of $100,000 cars and style columns featuring $250 belts, Golf Digest morphed from golf magazine and something more like an off-shoot of the Robb Report. At best, it’s become a great way to scoff at the elite members of society who happen to play golf while reading through the same re-trodden tips you read a few years ago. At worst, it’s a coffee table flipbook for top-tier country clubs – completely worthless to the 98% of golfers who don’t need to spend a hundred grand to drive to their local muni or $250 to hold up their pants.
The latest evidence – not counting the belts and cars, of course – comes in the form of Editor in Chief Jerry Tarde’s “Golf’s Five Sacred Rules.” This week in Trap Five we take a quick look at Tarde’s “rules” and come up with a real list of five sacred rules – if, that is, we’re sufficiently pretentious enough to think that golf is religious enough to warrant calling anything “sacred.”