British Open remains a hot topic on the web, the English-reading web that is. It appears, however, that the RuNet, as we call the Russian-language part of the World Wide Web, is hardly bothered. This will probably tell you that golf is not one of the most popular sports in Russia. Honestly, I learned about its existence from English-Russian dictionaries and language textbooks, and I had not seen a live golfer until, if I remember it right, 2007.
Apparently, this is not all that surprising. According to Wikipedia, there were no golf courses (none!) in the whole then-USSR until 1988! That is 22 402 200 square kilometers (8,649,538 sq mi) and not a single golf course! The same Wikipedia article states that even now, there are only six golf clubs in the whole country. On a more positive note, though, thirteen more golf clubs / country clubs are being built.
That having been said, there is - or should I say was - such thing as The Russian Open, part of PGA European Tour, and Russia does have a National Golf Association and a national team.
The other thing I have to mention is, of course, that as you move up the social ladder, the closer to the executive world you get, the more you will hear about golf. But then you will also hear about a numerous other things non-existent for the majority of Russia's population.
For those learning the Russian language, here is an interesting Golf Glossary. While it was obviously developed for beginner golfers and focuses primarily on explaining the concepts, you will notice that each word has an English equivalent. And since there are only 47 items on the list (at the time of writing), it shouldn't be impossible to use this reference as both a Russian-English and an English-Russian "Golf Dictionary". Happy Putting!
No girls or spies for today - sorry.
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