I've just seen too many of these threads. The OP is a Legend and plays in Rookie with the Hacks, Amateurs, etc does that mean he's one of "the types that like to beat up children and old ladies in order to make themselves feel better"
Until recently I, as a Tour Champion, played in Rookie and I only stopped as I hate these balls you get there.
There are three choices of what to play and they cost different amounts, unfortunately wgt called them Rookie, Veteran and seriously 1,000c? This gives the impression to some there's some sort of tiering which is wrong. There is no reason to suppose that higher tiered players can afford to, or want to, spend 100c or 1,000c on a competition they know they're very unlikely to win any more than lower tier players would want to. There are many tiered competitions starting every day, week and month.
In Rookie everyone plays off their own tees which is meant to give some fairness, it's not the case in the other two showdowns.
As to high levels being these bullies; my last few promotions (I think to TL, Champ and TC) were all me being grandfathered there.
The way it has worked is if you've been here long enough you'll be at the top tier and the occasional good round will see your average drop while average or bad rounds are ignored. A new tier is introduced and everyone under a certain average and saturated is put into it. Then new criteria are applied to that tier, instead of needing an average of 55 over 200 rounds you need it over 1,000 rounds or whatever. It's been five years since there was a new competitive tier so many have reached the top one since then and they've done it the hard way (or at least achieved the low average over more rounds). There are an awful lot of Tour Champions these days and the difference in skill will be as great, if not greater than, at any other tier. The new ones are likely to be better than some of the grandfathered ones, at coin games especially.
Generally tournaments are tiered or tierless meaning I have to play against the likes of Fmagnets and JSmithers this is the only one I can think of that's not. There are also the coin room specialists and they have been playing this way, with apparel, a lot longer than I have and they are better at it.
So you want anyone at a higher tier than you (although you're fine playing with lower tiers) to spend more money to have less chance of winning and if we don't then we're "the types that like to beat up children and old ladies in order to make ourselves feel better" Lol, I'd be tempted to go back to playing Rookie if the balls you got there had more distance than spin.
While you are playing at Rookie I feel I should warn you a lot of the children and old ladies currently at low levels on this site were different in previous incarnations ;-)