A Cuban Golf Federation?

By Fernando Ravsberg

golfHAVANA TIMES — US and Spanish golfers have pledged to support the creation of a Cuban national golf federation. The question is should the National Sports Institute dedicate part of its meager budget to finance the practice of an expensive sport that almost no one plays in Cuba?

The Spanish ambassador to Havana, Juan Francisco Montalban, acknowledged that “today golf is an emerging sport in Cuba, but certainly soon will have champions and be inserted in the island’s sports tradition.” He recalled that Antonio Castro Soto del Valle (son of Fidel Castro) was a winner at an international tournament held in Varadero in 2013.


6 thoughts on “A Cuban Golf Federation?

  • Using her logic we should ban competitive sailing, a truly expensive sport. Or how about hockey? That equipment is very expensive. Bicycle racing? Do you know what one of those bicycles go for? Many thousands at the very least. Comparatively, golf is rather inexpensive. Perhaps she will ad these other sports to her “stupid” list as well.

  • Elitist and expensive are relative criticisms. What makes a sport stupid?

  • It’s a great idea! golf doesn’t have to be elitist … In fact the best thing for golf’s sustainability is to market to a broader audience ii e women, children, students, seniors, instead of limiting the target audience to white men age 25-65…. Encouraging 9 holes, pace of play and other golf 2.0 ideas the game can appeal to a much larger audience. Cuba would be a perfect place to introduce these concepts

  • Typical communist drivel. Let’s bring everything and everyone down to the lowest common denominator.

  • Golf is a stupid elitist expensive sport. To keep the greens green, requires huge amounts of pesticides fertilizers and fresh water.

  • This post highlights the irony if not hypocrisy of the current Castro regime. The Castros once belittled the sport of golf calling it the sport of the rich bourgeoisie. Their opposition to the sport was punctuated by the now famous Korda photo of Fidel and Che playing golf. Fidel later said after the photo was taken that he did so to mock President Eisenhower who had chosen to play golf instead of meeting with Fidel. Fidel ordered that the golf course where the photo was taken be plowed up to make way for a school. The irony is that for all of that ridiculous socialist bluster about golf, the Castros are now compelled to build luxury golf resorts and now this, a national golf federation. The hypocrisy is that despite the clear aboutface, the Castros continue to spew their revolutionary nonsense.

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