Snooty Sports

All expensive.^note From top to bottom: Crash Landing on You, New Girl, Die Another Day.

"Golfing is an arrogant, elitist game which takes up entirely too much room in this country. Too much room in this country! It is an arrogant game on its very design alone, just the design of the game speaks of arrogance."

— George Carlin

There are many different sports that exist in this world. There are worldwide sensations like American Football, Soccer, Hockey, Basketball, and Baseball, which millions of fans enjoy them. Then there are the sports that people who are considered to be of higher standards enjoy, such as Golf, Polo, Racquetball, Fencing, Field Hockey, Croquet, and Sailing.

In general, sports that are perceived as upper-class but which are more active (such as tennis) tend to be met with less disdain than more sedentary-seeming sports like golf or croquet. Which sports are perceived as snooty can vary by country as well; while in most of the world, the stereotype of rugby is that Rugby Is Slaughter, in Britain it often carries connotations of a player having an upper-class, public school-educated background. Another way sports can be seen as snooty is if they're primarily played in college or otherwise considered "preppy", such as lacrosse or field hockey.

Various other reasons may include them being considered too slow or boring, not being considered a real sport by most of the populace, some of their equipment and gear being expensive, the players not being very good at it, the Impossibly Tacky Clothes that are often worn (especially in golf), or the rules do not seem to make sense to a non-player. Golf, in particular, meets all these criteria, which is why it has a bad reputation. It's expensive, hence its association with snobby old rich people, and according to many stats and polls, golf is voted the most boring sport in many countries.

Whatever the reason, these higher-class sports will usually be met with disdain from outsiders or lower-class individuals, just to spite the snobs who play them.

Such stereotypes involve the players too since the type of sports they choose to play says a lot about them and how they want to present themselves. Comparisons being made to these sports also count as examples.

Compare Upper-Class Equestrian (the notion that owning horses is for rich people). They can overlap in cases where Equestrian Sports are considered to be for the wealthy. See also The Grand Hunt, another pastime of the upper crust. (Significantly, tennis,^note Most especially "court tennis" or "real tennis", the Renaissance-era game from which modern "lawn" tennis is descended polo, horse racing, and hunting are all traditionally called "the Sport of Kings".) Equestrian sports and hunting also bring up issues of animal cruelty, which also increases the resentment toward the upper class. Wealthy Yacht Owner overlaps in the case of sailing (although that trope also covers motorized yachts). The Super-Trope to all of these, and this trope itself, is Snobby Hobbies.

Contrast with any bowling tropes as bowling is a sport largely considered more of a blue-collar sport, and low brow. Contrast also with any ball games which are usually available to everyone since they only require balls. (But compare with Soccer-Hating Americans for another sport being a common target of mockery.)

Note: This isn't just about a wealthy person playing a sport of the upper class. It's about the snootiness associated with the sport and the people playing it.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Birdie Wing is about the dichotomy between a pair of young teen prodigies at golf. One is the rich daughter of two professional golfers who run a multi-million dollar sports equipment company, who is on the junior pro tour, the other is a wrong-side-of-the-tracks underground hustler who uses the money she makes to support a family implied to be illegal immigrants.
• Gundam Wing sees the students at Relena's fancy prep school practicing fencing. Heero gets into a sparring match with one of the young men at the school, with his opponent chastising him for ripping up Relena's invitation to her birthday. Heero leaves his saber penetrating the young man's safety visor, stating that next time, the guy should just tell Heero he wants it, instead.
  • Later, Heero gets into a duel with Dorothy Catalonia at one of their classes. The end result is that he has penetrated her mask with the epee, just barely missing her face. Unlike the young man from the earlier episode, Dorothy seems largely unfazed by the close call.
• In the Grand Finale movie of How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend, Akane Kousaka uses golf as a metaphor for how boring Tomoya's script is.
  Kousaka: [scolding Tomoya] You've refined your writing so much it's turned dull! This script looks like it's about to put on a polo and play golf!

Comic Strips

• Discussed in Calvin and Hobbes a couple of times.
  • One strip had Calvin playing a bizarre version of golf with Hobbes, and remarking that "if you don't want to play with old geezers, you have to make golf a contact sport."
  • Another strip had Calvin playing croquet with Hobbes and claiming it was "a gentleman's game". . . shortly before getting into an argument that culminated in a Big Ball of Violence.
• In a Garfield arc, Jon goes to a mini-golf course and has Garfield come along. Garfield does not enjoy it, having to carry the clubs and being ashamed of Jon's ridiculous golf outfit.

Films — Live Action

• Central to the British sports-comedy movie Blackball - The snooty sport in question is Lawn Bowls^note ... which is kind of like Curling without all that exciting broom-related action, while the protagonist is Lower-Class Lout Cliff Starkey, a stunningly talented bowler who isn't allowed to play at the local club because the membership committee are all snobs... and because he's a lout. Bizarrely, this was Very Loosely Based on a True Story.
• Downplayed in Coneheads; when Beldar and Prymaat move to the suburbs, Beldar gets quite enthusiastic about golf (which even becomes a Chekhov's Skill when he returns to Remulak and has to "narfle the Garthok") and plays it regularly with his neighbor. Despite this, Beldar does not become a snob or particularly wealthy; the Coneheads and their neighbors live a decidedly middle-class lifestyle (Beldar is a driving instructor), and if anything Beldar's golf playing is more a sign of his assimilation into the local culture than a sign of snobbery.
• Corsage: As in real life, Empress Elisabeth burns off energy with equestrian sports and fencing.
• The James Bond film Die Another Day has Bond encounter diamond magnate Gustav Graves at a fencing academy, which is located in a converted chateau. Bond and Graves conduct a fencing match that escalates quickly and goes way outside the sparring lane. Fencing has become a snooty sport ever since semi-automatic firearms replaced the sword as the standard issue weapon for soldiers. Today, the sword is relegated to a parade dress uniform, purely for ceremonial purposes.
• In Falling Down, a wealthy golfer is one of William Foster's Asshole Victims.
  Foster: What the hell are you trying to do? Kill me with a golf ball? It's not enough you got all these beautiful acres fenced in for your little game, but you gotta kill me with a golf ball? You should have children playing here! You should have families having picnics, you should have a goddamn petting zoo! Instead you've got these stupid electric carts for you old men with nothing better to do!
• In Happy Gilmore, this is the biggest reason why Happy's Love Interest Virginia (an advertisement executive for the PGA) asks the chairman to not kick out Happy after he is determined to be too obscene and angry for broadcast: because Gilmore is a Working-Class Hero (Virginia even uses this exact term), audience ratings and sponsorship offers are going through the roof because people who dismiss golf as a "snob" time slot are tuning in. The chairman relents but asks Virginia to convince Gilmore to tone down his anger or he will be kicked out (a decision Shooter McGavin exploits later).
• A Knight's Tale, where the sport in question is Jousting, and the snobbishness level is so high that you have to present your Patents Of Nobility to prove your right to compete. Truth in Television, for the period. Watching the tournaments is presented as a much more egalitarian matter, on the other hand. One might presume that the serfs and peasants rather enjoy seeing members of the nobility get smashed in the face with the tip of a long wooden pole moving at a decent gallop...
• The Man In The Iron Mask 1977 depicts croquet as a snooty sport. It's being played on the immaculate palace lawn of King Louis XIV, with the King himself as a participant, along with some of his nobles. Colbert steps up to drive his ball through the final wicket when Duval discretely inquires, "Can you make it?" Colbert's response is, "And risk another royal tantrum? I shall miss by a league." Immaculate lawns are few and far between in war-ravaged, starving France at the time.
• Spencer: Prince Charles has Prince William practice for a pheasant shoot with skeet shooting. Diana finds it disgusting, while Charles has accepted it as a 'noble' sport.
• Swingers: Golf's inherent snootiness is used to establish the characters' everyman status. They are shown playing golf for recreation... but the course they play at is patchy and has dead grass, and they are shown to be bad not just at the sport but even trying to keep count of high their score is.
• In Violent Saturday, the golf club is exclusively the province of the upper-class characters; some of whom (like Emily) don't even enjoy golf.

Literature

• The Belgariad: During a visit to the Melcene Islands in The Malloreon, the party sees a group of nobles out on a fox hunt. Durnik can't understand why they bother since no one raises chickens on the island, to which Silk tells him that there are no native foxes on the island either; they have to be imported. They both agree that it's a ridiculous sport, with Silk observing that rich people's sports are, "Usually exotic and often cruel." Meanwhile, Beldin amuses himself with the thought of raising a pack of trolls for the nobles to try chasing instead.

Live-Action TV

• In the Adam Ruins Everything episode "Adam Ruins: the Suburbs," as Adam explains to Ron that his suburban neighborhood is an example of modern-day racial segregation, Ron tries to deny it, but labels the yuppie neighbor practicing his golf swing across the streets as "a bad example."
• Bridgerton: In "Off to the Races" the ton goes off to watch a horse race; Viscount Bridgerton and his brothers also spend the afternoon fencing.
• Blue Mountain State: "LAX" introduces BMS Lacrosse, which is a radical departure from BMS football's lifestyle. The members all wear sports coats and ties when not playing, their fathers are all insanely wealthy old-money types, and their house is a mansion with more high society gatherings in comparison to the football house's more casual frat-style parties.
• Crash Landing on You: Skeet shooting is used to establish Seung-joon as a wealthy layabout in an early episode. It becomes a Chekhov's Skill when he uses a shotgun to rescue Dan from some hostage takers in the final arc.
• In Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Nathaniel is introduced as an antagonistic character in the second season. He's characterized as being largely about business, snootily looking down at the small-town residents of West Covina. The one visible flaw in his professional facade is the fact he's obsessed with his water polo career at his Ivy League school, providing a double-whammy of pretentiousness.
• Frasier: The title character and his brother Niles regularly have squash matches.
• The Gilded Age: One early scene takes place at a fantastically wealthy croquet party, which is just an excuse for idle rich Blue Bloods to mingle and gossip.
• In The Good Place, upper-class Brit Tahani and walking Florida Man Jason form an unlikely couple. At one point they go on a secluded retreat, where Tahani teaches Jason croquet saying it combines "both classic aspects of British sport: whimsy and restraint" and goes on to quote Neville Chamberlain saying that it's "barely a game." Jason, on the other hand, introduces Tahani to his version of the game: where they put the ball in a wine glass and hit it as far as they can in any direction while yelling.
• Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha: In episode 13, Hye-jin's posh friends from Seoul pop by for a surprise visit to her rural clinic. They look down on Gongjin and her boyfriend Du-sik (who is dressed like the handyman he is) before inviting them for a round of golf at a nearby country club, an invitation Du-sik accepts because he can tell they're looking down on him. Being a Renaissance Man who is good at everything he tries, he easily smokes them, and Hye-jin's friends later chatter on about how she has a great boyfriend.
• House of the Dragon: King Viserys participates in The Grand Hunt, which is an enormously expensive and elaborate state affair. The hunt itself is purely ceremonial, as the stag he's hunting is caught by professionals and tied down so that the king can deliver the killing blow.
• Kim's Convenience: In "Tennis Anyone?", Mr. and Mrs. Kim pretend that they're rich in order to play at a private tennis court in an upper-class neighborhood. They play with a well-off couple and become friends, but the Kims feel that they need to keep inflating how much money they have to maintain their charade, assuming their new tennis friends will look down on them if they find out the Kims just own a small convenience store. Eventually the Kims build themselves up so much that the couple thinks the Kims are too rich and snobby for them.
• In the "Summarizing Proust" sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus, one of the contestants introduces himself by listing his hobbies as "Strangling animals, golf, and masturbating" which elicits a chorus of boos from the audience.
  Announcer: Well there he goes. Harry Bagot. He must have let himself down a bit on the hobbies, golf's not very popular around here, but never mind, a good try.
• New Girl: In "Par 5" Jess accompanies city councilwoman Fawn Moscato to a charity golf tournament (which Fawn identifies as a networking event) in an attempt to advance her agenda for her school. Jess ends up embarrassing herself in front of the city's movers and shakers.
• In an episode of Not the Nine O'Clock News, a Gag Dub of a televised golf tournament's announcer makes it seem like what's being shown is really a stupid trousers contest.
  • Another episode had a similar Gag Dub of an announcer expressing schadenfreude at a series of showjumpers falling off their horses.
• In Parks and Recreation the town of Eagleton is full of rich snobs, who have a penchant for such expensive hobbies as equestrian sports. This causes a rift when Eagleton merges with the less-affluent town of Pawnee.
  Leslie: There are two Eagleton departments Pawnee does not have: The Department of Infinity Pool Design and the Department of Dressage, which I'm told is a fancy horse-riding thing.
  Eagleton Resident: It is horse dancing, madam!
• Red Dwarf: In "Timeslides", an alternate-timeline version of Lister becomes rich and successful and marries into the very posh family of the Duke of Lincoln. It's mentioned in passing that the Duke was at clay pigeon shooting when his daughter broke the news of her engagement.
• Superstore: In "Lottery," Amy and Jonah visit their district manager Laurie at a golf course to ask for a raise and remark on how many other rich white ladies are playing there. Jonah is more familiar with golf and other high-end sports than Amy since he had more wealth growing up. This doesn't amuse her.
  Amy: I'm not used to these things. Not everyone grew up going to country clubs.
  Jonah: I feel like you just think of me as this like, spoiled rich kid who spent all of his time playing tennis and golf.
  Amy: All right, well, what did you grow up playing?
  Jonah: Mostly tennis and some golf. Uh, and I was a pretty decent skier.
  Amy: Ugh.
• Ted Lasso: In "We'll Never Have Paris", Jack invites Keeley to a polo match with her spiffy social circle. When that falls through, they go for minigolf, and Jack turns out to be great at it:
  Jack: What can I say, I'm the daughter of a billionaire. I learned to read the green before I learned to read a book.
• The BBC's sports quiz/comedy show They Think It's All Over made a Running Gag out of this, pretending to be dismissive of British successes in golf or tennis as they didn't involve the important things, like footballs, at any point.
  It's August and we go into Wimbledon Fortnight, an opportunity for every man in Britain to remember we're still three weeks away from the start of the football season, and he's got to put up with a lot of tennis first.
• You (2018): The London aristocrats play a game of croquet on the grounds of Phoebe's estate. Pointedly, the horrifically classist Gemma humiliates one of the servants by demanding that he get on his arms and knees to act as a hoop.

Music

• The Jam: Rugby is mentioned in the song "The Eton Rifles" as a game played by the Eton students that the working-class protagonist of the song gets into a fight with.
  "All that rugby put hair on your chest, what chance have you got against a tie and a crest?"
• "Weird Al" Yankovic recorded "Buckingham Blues" which satirized the British royal family, namely (then) Prince Charles and (then) Princess Diana. The second stanza paints the sport of polo as the sport of snobs: "Chuckie wants to grow up / And be a polo star / And ride his little horsies / All around the backyard." Considering the upkeep of a horse is a money sink, this view is close to the truth.

Print Media

• A lampshaded aversion: During the COVID-19 Pandemic, John Niven wrote in his column in the Scottish Daily Record that golf was the perfect social distancing sport, and said that if the Conservative Government had allowed it to continue over lockdown, all golfers in the country would have voted for them. He then said that when he mentioned this on social media, he was besieged with English people saying all the golfers in the country did vote for them, and he had to explain that the "golf = posh" association doesn't really exist in Scotland, which may have some absurdly exclusive golf clubs, but also many municipal courses with relatively cheap green fees.
• In the early-mid 20th century, tennis had this sort of reputation, leading “Anyone for Tennis?” to become a cliche line spoken by an Upper-Class Twit bit character in plays and cartoons.

Radio

• Bleak Expectations: The fifth series begins with Pip being invited to a hunting weekend by Lord Clampvulture of Too-Many-Titles, an unbelievably rude and aristocratic man who looks down on Pip for being a "jumped-up prole" and is in on a plot to murder most of the guests. His idea of hunting involves hunting peasants using guns made from elephants. He ultimately meets his end when he insults Pip's wife (after she'd been blatantly flirting with him all night) on class.
• The Now Show: After Marcus Brigstocke took a break for a skiing holiday, he admitted on his return that this might be in conflict with his left-environmentalist credentials, but "I'm sorry. I'm posh; I like sliding!"

Stand-Up Comedy

• George Carlin frequently complained about the lameness of golf compared to other sports. At one point, he even suggested turning all golf courses into housing for the homeless.
• Mitch Hedberg admitted that he was not a great player, never getting a hole-in-one, but that hitting a guy with the ball was more satisfying.
• Eddie Izzard points out that rowing tends to be a posh sport because it usually requires a school that's on riverfront property.
  ''"You can't go, 'I was pretty good in the bath!' 'The water has to be on the outside, Kevin.'"

Video Games

• Sim City 3000: If you unlock the "country club" reward, which features a golf course, your zoning advisor will advise you against approving it, saying it takes up too much room and the space should instead be used for low-income housing.
• Space Colony: Charles is an Officer and a Gentleman with an upper-class background and is also an avid golfer.
• Tropico: Among the many buildings that the Capitalists may ask you to build are golf courses. They're categorized as luxury entertainment buildings catered towards the well-off or better, and give you a temporary bonus to relations with the Capitalists, who are often snobby and self-absorbed.

Web Comics

• Girl Genius: Early in her stay at Castle Wulfenbach, Agatha attends a fencing lesson, where Zulenna, the haughtiest person around, sneers at her for her lack of knowledge in "the art of the high-born" while effortlessly deflecting Agatha's every strike. Agatha manages to get back at her by hitting one of Zulenna's own sensitive spots - namely, her not being a Spark.

Web Originals

• The Comics Curmudgeon: Golf-related comic strips are a frequent source of Snark Bait.
• When Dan Harmon appeared on an episode of Guest Grumps to play some Cat In The Hat (an adaptation of the life-action film), his biggest complaint about golf is that it's a snooty sport not because it should be or needs to be, but because snooty people took it over and made it snooty to fit their wants and needs.
• Deadspin’s list of The Preppiest Sports, Ranked, includes polo, dressage, crew, fox hunting, yachting, and Inheritance Murder.

Western Animation

• Archer: Archer was on the lacrosse team at the upper-class boarding school he attended for most of his childhood and would've gotten a lacrosse scholarship to a prestigious university if not for getting shot by a loony fan. He treats it as the greatest sport of all time, but the other characters usually respond with derision when he brings it up.
• Celebrity Deathmatch: One episode features a fight between Andre Agassi and Tiger Woods, which is described as the "War of the Wussie Sports". Before and during the fight, Nick and Johnny crack a lot of jokes about the snobbery associated with both tennis and golf, such as saying Agassi and Woods are "as thirsty for blood as they are for fancy bottled water".
• Goofy: The 1949 cartoon "Tennis Racquet" has a lot of jokes about how unpopular tennis was at the time. A long line of cars that appear to lead to the court is actually going to a flower show. The tightly packed spectators actually take up a small portion of the bleachers. The groundskeeper is seen cutting down six-foot-tall grass before the match as if it hasn't seen action all year; and is seen tending the court during the game, oblivious to the players running around him.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • "She's the Mayor": The rich mayor Roger Doofenshmirtz plays golf with his downtrodden brother Heinz, who finds the game so boring he creates an invention to speed up Roger playing just to get through it quicker.
  • "Phineas and Ferb Interrupted": The boys are hit with a ray that makes them dull and boring, and this results in Phineas proudly proclaiming that they're "gonna watch golf on television!"
• South Park: In "Here Comes the Neighborhood", Token invites several wealthy families to come live in South Park after feeling that he doesn't fit in with the other kids since he's the only rich kid in town. The rich kids are seen playing polo and view the things the non-rich kids do like snowball fights or kicking each other in the balls as barbaric.

Real Life

• Truth in Television; A lot of people really hate golf. It's a relatively slow-paced sport that, for most of its history, could not be played by certain groups, and to this day is mostly associated with wealthy men. There's also the fact that golf requires a lot of land and a lot of water, making golf a form of Conspicuous Consumption in many parts of the world, such as in the American Southwest where droughts are a common occurrence. For example, during drought conditions in much of Europe in 2022, water-use restrictions in southern France specifically exempted golf courses. This led to widespread criticism of golf being a waste of water and good land on a hobby for the wealthy, even to the point of activists sneaking onto courses at night and filling the holes with concrete.
• In much of Europe in the medieval and early modern periods, good hunting grounds were aristocratic property used for The Grand Hunt, so hunting was practically illegal for poor people, though this didn't completely stop them from doing it. There is an 18th-century German hunting sword inscribed with a line of poetry on the blade that spells it out:
  Das Jagen
  Ist Ein
  altes Recht
  es gehört
  für den Adel
  und Sein
  geschlecht.

  "The hunt is an old right,
  Meant only for the nobles
  And their kind."
  

---