PGA rookie Vegas aiming to boost golf in Venezuela

[naaman fletcher]

CARACAS, Venezuela — While some golfers in Venezuela see a dim future, Jhonattan Vegas sees an opportunity.

Vegas has become the first Venezuelan to earn a PGA Tour card at the same time that golf is under assault in his country with President Hugo Chavez calling it a pastime of the rich and threatening to seize elite clubs to make way for public housing. Chavez's government already has shut down some courses, including the one where Vegas' father was the groundskeeper and first introduced his son to the game.

The 26-year-old Vegas qualified for next year's PGA Tour by finishing among the top 25 on the Nationwide Tour money list in his third season of professional golf. He wants to use his position on the PGA Tour to help keep golf alive in his homeland, particularly among those who can't afford to join expensive private clubs.

"One of the things I hope to do for the country is take the sport to the people, and to have people get to know golf a lot better," Vegas said in an interview with The Associated Press.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/golf/2010-11-24-926228873_x.htm

[dipsydoodle]

1. That remark by Hugo was from over a year ago

and concerned a course which may well have been better used for housing for the poor due to its location. His general attitude may now have changed since learning of Cuba's plans to have 10 or so by Canadian and Euroean developers on 99 year leases.

[social_critic]

2. Golf courses better for the poor due to their location?

I guess so, if you want to cause a mass exodus from the areas around it. Venezuela already has serious brain drain, they put up public housing in the diplomatic quarters area, and where the upper middle class lives, and they'll see the mother of all brain drains. They won't have anybody left to do the real thinking. Don't kid yourself, communists hate the middle class, but the middle class makes things work . Keep on making them flee, and Venezuela is going to be ruined.

[naaman fletcher]

3. So,

You are saying that hugo's opinion of golf courses is not based on any sort Pf conviction but rather on what Castro thinks of them?