In this town of 13,000 inhabitants with a love of fried catfish and a reverence for "Duck Dynasty", a television show about hunters whose stars live nearby, golf used to be a regular indulgence for many, and that mild autumn weekend was ideal golf weather. Yet by the end of the afternoon Mr Owens had taken in only around $200 in green fees, a tenth of what his course earned on Saturdays a few years ago.

On weekends Mr Owens's 12-year-old course once swelled with golfers, but that ended when the economy sliced into the rough in 2008. He offers prices "affordable for rednecks", but bargains are not enough to bring back customers. "I sometimes believe that I could give golf away, and they still wouldn't come," he says. At the end of December he will close the course, and it will become a public park.

What is happening in West Monroe is not unusual. In America, the heartland of golf, the game is in decline.

Teetotallers

Golf traces its modern origins to 15th-century Scotland, where people played with wooden clubs and balls full of feathers. In 1457 King James II temporarily banned it, along with football, because it interfered with archery practice, but he was no match for its growing popularity. Mary, Queen of Scots was an enthusiast; her clubs were carried by students she called "cadets" (now known as "caddies"). The game of "gawf", as it was first called, spread: first to England, and subsequently to its colonies.