Oh, sure, our long economic slough has claimed plenty of casualties, from the (largely) chastened automobile industry to the shameless investment-banking sector. But there is one site of carnage that no correspondent has surveyed: the sheer scale of human loss is unfathomable and the implications of its long-term failure are simply unendurable to contemplate. We speak, of course, of the nation's beleaguered private golf clubs, which fearless embed Dean Foust, the Atlanta bureau chief for Business Week, reveals is embroiled in nothing less than an "existential crisis."

At first glance, one would assume that means the nation's great preserves of pastel-slacked privilege are now festooned with Sleigh Bells concert posters and Wes Anderson DVDs, their bars doling out absinthe and clove cigarettes by the fistful. But as Foust observes, the crisis is a more free-floating affair, steeped not in the excesses of indie subculture but rather in good old American status anxiety: "For generations of golfing executives, joining a private club not only provided a venue to entertain clients, but also served as a validation of their success."

And where, pray tell, is that validation now? Consider the fate of suburban Phoenix's all-too aptly named Superstition Mountain facility, which opened in the hale, heady days of 1998, and charged each new member a healthy $100,000-plus initiation fee. Once the economic system shuddered to a virtual halt a decade later, the members drifted away-the club now enrolls less than half of its 780-member capacity-and an adjoining luxe real-estate development got promptly swallowed up in the meltdown.

Now the club is in foreclosure, scheduled to be sold at auction next month.

Arriviste operations like Superstition Mountain are dying off in droves, Foust reports, together with the "thousands of middle- and lower-tier courses" that serve as testaments to the striving executive's lot, a situation every bit as touching as the latest episode of Mad Men. The number of club members nationwide has plummeted to 900,000 from its early nineties peak of 2.1 million; one industry analyst estimates that as many as 400 American country clubs-"worst case, 1000" Foust stoutly reports-could join Superstition Mountain in its well-manicured green oblivion. Either that, or they may merge with more robust clubs, or (one scarcely can bring oneself to say it) "convert to public play."

But because country clubs are such storied merchants of status, they're poorly suited to do what any business does when facing a harsh new economic climate. A survey of 500 National Golf Foundation clubs now operating at a deficit found that most of them were trying to fight off membership declines with reduced or waived initiation fees. But those efforts have met with outrage-and subpoenas-from aggrieved old-money members, who have sued to save the social value of their links sanctuaries from being unduly diluted by contact with the great unwashed.

"In Lexington Kentucky, five members of the University Club of Kentucky filed suit in 2003 after club officials slashed the initiation fee from $12,500 to as little as $6,000," Foust reports. "That, said club members, violated the club's vows that the value of their memberships wouldn't decline." The suit resulted in a private settlement-worked out, no doubt, over a tour through the back nine-but as Foust notes, the trespasses against the portfolio of link-related perks just keep multiplying as club finances grow more desperate. "Offenses include opening the banquet rooms to outsiders and renting the courses for corporate outings and charity events."

Just ponder, if you dare, the fate of Bella Collina country club in San Clemente, Calif.-the city best known as the West Coat retreat of the nation's most status-anxious president, Richard Nixon. True, the facility-which bears the revealingly downmarket name Bella Collina Towne and Golf Club-has stirred to life out of bankruptcy, adding 120 new memberships in the past six months. But look at the hidden costs! The membership outreach plan has meant "adding pilates, karate lessons, and even a vegetable garden (for the restaurant) that members' kids help plant."

If that last populist flourish seems uncomfortably close to the cultural-revolution style organic garden captained by our nation's socialist First Lady, well, that's probably no accident. For as Foust notes, the true horror of the existential golf crisis is that it is rooted in the tax policies of the last Democratic White House. Back in the early nineties, "Congress enacted tax reforms that eliminated or reduced the ability of club members-and more practically, their corporate employers-to deduct club dues as a business expense." That was all it took, he ruefully reports, to give rise "to a new breed of upscale public courses that some executives view as suitable, and cheaper, places to entertain clients."

Don't you see? It's but a short step, you poor commie stooges, from laying the groundwork for unsubsidized golf junkets to having your beloved greens ploughed under to grow, um, greens for the worldwide organic gardening socialist cabal. Surely it can't be long until the nation's disenfranchised country clubbers rise up as one to throw off the yoke of multi-use club design. Then the six-figure initiation fees will return; Madagascar sweatshops will overflow with work orders for bright green blazers; the fairways will resound with drunken cries of "Shankapotamus." And we will at long last have an answer to the haunting refrain, "Who is John Golf"?

Chris Lehmann is a critic without portfolio, unless you would like to hand him a portfolio. Would you?