Imagethief is not a golf fan, for several reasons. First, I had a bad early experience in high school when I signed up for archery and flag football for PE and was instead assigned to tennis and golf. My resentment over this enforced sissification (weapons and body armor traded for racquets and plaid trousers) has simmered for nearly twenty-five years and to this day I can't look at a photograph of Tiger Woods without thinking, "get a job".

As a golf-hater working in business consultancy in China I can't help but feel that I have boxed myself into a career-limiting corner. This is inflamed by dislike of macho, all-night liquor-swilling competitions. I realize that this may seem at odds with the toughness I was aspiring to in those early archery and flag football days. Deal with it. I'm an iconoclast.*

Nursing that ancient and bitter memory of having once shot a 279 over eight holes at the Palo Alto VA golf course (c'mon, I was in high school), I was interested to see a story in the Financial Times (subscription) remarking on golf's tumble from official favor in China. Yes, as we all suspected, Golf is in fact at odds with the development of a harmonious society:

[Just when Golf] should be taking off by Asian standards, the game is on the wrong side of [China's] political campaigns and has become indelibly linked with corruption. A senior official, Hao Heping, who had been in charge of state purchases of medical equipment, was convicted of taking bribes of $64,000 (£32,000) in the form of golf course memberships. The deadpan report by Xinhua, the official news agency, noted that Mr Hao had not kept a mistress. "His only hobby was golf, and he travelled around the country to play with public funds or money taken in bribes," Xinhua reported.

Since coming to power in 2002, Hu Jintao, China's president, has focused on a number of issues: the gap between rich and poor; the plight of farmers; and the environment, including water.

Golf runs up against all three. It is expensive and elitist, takes scarce supplies of arable land off impoverished farmers, and uses large quantities of both water and environmentally unfriendly pesticides and fertilisers.

A round of golf in China costs anything between $100 and $250, and course memberships, tens of thousands of dollars. With annual average incomes even in the wealthy coastal cities about $1,500, it is not hard to see where golf's elitist image comes from.

Such expense makes the game a sitting target for critics. A hitherto obscure official in coastal Jiangsu province got national publicity in China last month when he called on the Communist party's anti-graft unit to investigate anyone who played golf.

The party already sends circulars to officials warning them not to play (tennis is considered more acceptable). And golf clubs are taxed as a luxury item, along with jewellery, expensive watches and yachts.

So dimly is golf viewed that the official media branded the game "green opium", a pointed reference to the addictive drug associated with China's capitulation to foreigners in the 19th century.

As someone who thinks that the key to livening up a round of golf is to plant landmines on the fairway (the trick is to make the trigger sticky enough that a strike from a golfball won't set it off but golf spikes or a cart will), I am pretty much on board with the government's campaign. Yet the black spin-doctor's heart within me beats just a little bit faster at the thought of a wicked PR challenge. After all, how can you sell the most bourgeois of sports to a government that is desperate to cling on to its last vestiges of socialist credibility? Well, the pro-golf spokesperson quoted in the article, Dennis Allen, the regional manager for TaylorMade, has some ideas:

"We need to get to people of influence to prove that golf is not an evil thing," said Mr Allen, in Beijing this month to sign a sponsorship agreement with the China Golf Association. “If we could go back 10 or 15 years and start over, we would have done everything possible not to turn it into an exclusive sport for the rich and famous.”

Golf without exclusivity? Well, that...that wouldn't be golf then, would it? I thought the whole idea behind golf, like the whole idea behind yacht racing, was that it was exclusive by nature. After all, if politicians and business luminaries wanted to mix with the hoi polloi, they'd bowl, wouldn't they? Or watch NASCAR races from the cheap seats? Still, the sentiment is admirable. But you can't climb into Mr. Peabody's wayback machine to fix this one. You have to solve the problem as it exists now. And what some local clubs are doing is not helping:

The courses are developing new tricks to keep off the radar screen as well. In Beijing, they offer customers the choice of alternative receipts when paying fees: one that records money spent on golf, or the second, more popular option, a receipt that says it was spent at a restaurant.

Great. Your going to overcome the whiff of corruption that surrounds you by issuing fraudulent receipts. Good thinking. That's going to make it all better.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I'd suggest that the China Golf Association named in the article get cracking on this. A little good, old-fashioned corporate social responsibility might be the way to go. Ramp up golf-based fitness programs for schoolchildren (donate some tee times!). Redirect some of the revenue from toney courses to local school athletic programs. Start finding ways to make the sport more accessible for average people. Start increasing the number of low-cost, public golf courses. Locate a couple of charismatic, Chinese golf advocates who can mix it up with average folks. Start grooming a Chinese Tiger Woods who can be a point of national pride. And plan now for the trouble you'll have when people in parched north China find out how much water it takes to keep a golf course green.

And stop issuing the dodgy receipts. Otherwise the government is going to mine the courses before Imagethief can do it. And that would be a real tragedy, because I know where the Claymores should go for best effect.

*Not really.