Golf is a popular sport in many countries including Japan — Yet I cannot help noticing that golf represents a sport of the evil upper-class who conducts dirty politics and exploits the working class in Japanese TV dramas. It is common to see the contrast between corporate executives playing golf, having evil laughs, and his employees working hard, being exploited by them. In other words, there is a rule that heros don’t play golf in Japanese dramas (with an obvious exception if the drama is about golfers).
Is this a common phenomenon in other cultures too?
There are definitely some sports in the US that have a white and elitist tradition. I’d say the two most prominent are golf and tennis. Golf is pretty obvious when you consider its noble-class roots and the fact that playing it requires paying for the upkeep of 100′s of acres of land that can’t be used for anything else. Tennis doesn’t really require a lot of expensive real estate or gear like golf does, but it does have noble-class roots and still has a bit of a stigma as being a sport for rich white people. That’s why big stars like Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters were such big phenomenons, because they broke both class and race barriers in their sports (the Williams sisters perhaps more so than Woods, since Woods had more of a solid middle-class upbringing and doesn’t really identify himself with the black community, while the Williams sisters initially grew up in a very neighborhood of LA).
As for how they’re portrayed in TV shows, golf is very similar to how it’s showed in Japan. Usually there will be politicians, company executives, and wealthy doctors that keep light hours in the office and skip out early to play on the golf course. As for tennis, I can’t think of any examples off hand.