Golf Code Redressed

   Golfers who show up this month at Montauk Downs State Park wearing T-shirts without collars or cutoff shorts have a big surprise coming. As of next spring, they are being warned, New York State plans to institute a required dress code at all its public golf courses. On Long Island, besides Montauk Downs, Sunken Meadow and Bethpage State Parks will be affected.

   No longer will tank tops, cutoff or "muscle" shirts, halters, short shorts or running shorts, torn pants, or work boots be considered "proper attire" on the course, and any duffer so clad will not be allowed to play.

   According to Edward Wankel of the Long Island State Park and Recreation Commission, the new policy is not really new, it's just being newly enforced. Similar restrictions have been in effect at county parks, including Indian Island in Riverhead, for three years, having been imposed by the self same Mr. Wankel during his tenure as Suffolk Parks Commissioner.

   What's going on? The state, or at least Mr. Wankel, is trying to legislate taste, good or otherwise, and moving into a realm where it simply doesn't belong.

   John Updike, musing in his latest book, "Golf Dreams," upon "Golf As a Game of the People," writes of "the daily mob, costumed in tank tops and cut-offs, sneakers and baseball hats." The "mob," says the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, "leaves the rough downtrodden and turns grass tees into dust bowls."

   But the barbs, it turns out, are chiefly tongue-in-cheek. Comes the stinger:

   "What a harvest of pleasure springs from acres so democratically exploited!"

    When push comes to shove, or in this case putt to cup, what's really important is not what golfers wear but how they behave. In that, golf is just like any other game. In fact, it's just like life.