Bill Gates is cocking a snook at uptight golf snobs, by building his very own £20 million golf course. The exclusive Vintage Country Club in Indian Wells, California laid into the world's richest man for looking too scruffy, in a case of the Emperor's Old Clothes. Vintage rebuked the Microsoft chairman for wearing a T-shirt on the practice tee. He should have been wearing a shirt with a collar or turtleneck, according to club rules. For all his wealth, Gates has found it hard to crack America's ultra-bourgeois golfing scene. Eighteen months ago, he was denied membership of the Augusta National, home of The Masters tournament, one of the world's four most important championships. He was told to wait in a seven-year line. ®