Tough golf: it’s the game we need in today’s world.

The rules are no different from those of the old-fashioned game that has outlived its appropriateness. The difference is in the course. Tough golf takes the golfer into the woods, over mountains, down canyons, through thickets, and into territory new not just topographically but environmentally, economically and psychologically.

It’s not a game for the wimps and wusses who expect a buzzcut carpet of bentgrass, no obstacle less benign than a shallow pond or sculpted sand trap. It’s a game for the hearty and robust, the free and the brave, the frontiersperson all Americans imagine themselves to be.

As such, tough golf is reminiscent of the Westward Movement away from the restrictions of urban life and into the challenges of the new and unknown. For that reason, the proper tough golf game is always played east to west, that most American of directions, the one toward independence, prosperity and a new future.

The tough golf course is simple and low-budget — just holes in the woods and discreet flags to mark them. The fancier courses might offer a rudimentary map. Trespassing may be part of the game. So are balls ricocheting off trees.

Not part of the game: clearing brush, trimming branches, sweeping leaves, smoothing earth, whining about the weather or making a lot of noise. Leaving a ball behind forfeits the game.

It’s what America needs — a bipartisan sport that can be enjoyed by tree-huggers and Trumpistas alike. It lets players invade nature while preserving it as a kind of obstacle course that photosynthesizes.

As such, the tough golf course is a perfect fit for today’s environmental concerns. It does not require replacing 50 acres of forest or field with a lawn that needs fertilizer, pesticides, water and mowers. The course itself provides shade, topsoil, birdsong, uplifting breezes and plenty of places to sit.

The tough golf course requires minimal maintenance and expenditure. It just needs to be preserved for its natural beauty and random challenges. Nothing gets modified, which is to say messed up, for the golfer’s convenience. Swamps, thorns and boulders are metaphors for much of life. The tough golfer deals with them.

If you search the Internet for “golf challenge,” you will get 148 million hits. But not one explains what’s so challenging about crossing a fairway in stretchy chinos or a pastel skirt. Not one of them mentions such real and rigorous challenges as copperheads, poison ivy, bears, swamp muck, mosquitos, deer ticks, deer hunters, cliffs, sleet, map-reading, magnetic north, or the weight of ammunition.

I’ll tell you the challenge I’d like to see: one of America’s hotshot golfers smacking a ball through grizzly territory for 48 hours without benefit of cart or caddy. I can think of one semi-pro in particular, recently unemployed, overweight and without much else to do. Golf like that I could watch on TV — the ultimate reality show!

Yes, 48 hours. Why not? Or 48 days. Or more. Theoretically, one could spend a month golfing Yosemite, which my attorney tells me would be perfectly legal. I can imagine a tough golf iditarod — iditagolf! — up the Appalachian Trail. A really serious golfer could sink thousands of holes between Caribou and San Diego or, for that matter, Patagonia. What would it take? Just time and lots of holes.

Or, in a variation, just one hole far, far away. It’s more like a marathon. No need to count strokes. First golfer to get there wins.

Tough golf’s predecessor is an existing game called cross-country golf, a hybrid of the even wussier traditional game. A golfer tees off at, say, the second hole of a golf course but drives as directly as possible toward the 15th hole, even if it means clearing a wooded area. The next leg heads straight over to the ninth hole, and then over a hill to the 12th. Golfers get their adventure and smooth putting greens.

Southeastern Connecticut is perfect for tough golf. Plenty of woods. A challenging topography. Not many bears. A population of Yankees with a genetic tendency toward independence and tight-fistedness. It’s time we shed our stupid Nutmeg moniker and be known as the Land of Tough Golfers.

Glenn Alan Cheney is a writer, translator, and managing editor of New London Librarium. He can be reached at glenn@NLLibrarium.com.