State Department Official Takes Swing at Chavez for Golf Comments

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, a once-a-week golfer and proud defender of the sport, is teed off at Hugo Chavez after the Venezuelan president called golf a "bourgeois sport," and vowed to close down several swanky Caracas courses.

Describing himself as the department's "self-appointed ambassador-at-large for golf," P.J. Crowley took a shot at the leftist leader who last month said rich people who want to play golf at the public course in Maracay, Venezuela, can build another one on the city's outskirts.

"The government should take over that course in the urban area and make room for housing," Chavez said during a live broadcast of his Sunday television program.

"Let's leave this clear, golf is a bourgeois sport," Chavez said. The president then proceeded to mock the practice of using golf carts, alleging that the sport allows for laziness.

"It isn't justified that in the middle of a city there's a golf course, with so much land lacking for buildings for the people," Chavez said.

Crowley, who describes himself as a long-time golfer with a low handicap of 8, launched the daily press briefing at the department to protest what he called the "unwarranted attack" by Chavez on the game.

"The suggestion that golf, a truly global sport, is 'bourgeois' is a mulligan," Crowley said, using the term for retaking a bad shot with a new swing. "And once again Mr. Chavez, one of the hemisphere's most divisive figures, finds himself out of bounds."

President Obama is also a fan of the sport, playing golf regularly on the weekends.

Chavez has long been the target of U.S. officials for taking his country in a leftist direction and not honoring democratic commitments.

The Venezuelan government has carried out a broad nationalization, seizing assets from within the oil industry to coffee roasters, cattle ranches and tomato-processing plants.

If the golf course closings go forward, the number of courses shut down in the last three years will be about nine, Julio L. Torres, director of the Venezuelan Golf Federation, told The New York Times. A project on Margarita Island, designed by the American architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. and intended to be South America's top course, was halted because of financial problems.

Chavez insisted that his government was not banning the game of golf. But the mayor of Caracas, the capital, in 2006 announced plans to expropriate three exclusive golf courses for public housing projects. The plan has not been carried out.

The Associated Press Contributed to this report.