AFTER the 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro denounced golf as a "bourgeois" hobby. Though he once played a round with Che Guevara, the comandante preferred ordinary Cubans to participate in earthier sports, such as baseball. Despite demand from visiting foreigners, no new golf course has been built in Cuba since the revolution. The island has only one rather shabby nine-hole course in Havana, as well as a full-size course in Varadero, a tourist town. But the government has just given developers permission to build an enormous new golf resort, promising "a whole new policy to increase the presence of golf in Cuba". Why has the frivolous hobby of the bourgeoisie suddenly become permissible to revolutionaries?
