Let’s get straight to the point and put this controversy to rest; golf is not a sport. Now I’m not saying that golf is not a tough skill to acquire, far from it. Golf is an extremely difficult talent to master. If someone put a gun to my head and told me to hit a 300-yard drive straight down a fairway or told me to sink a 20-foot putt, I would have departed from this world years ago.
But with the term sport comes athleticism and in golf you need none. What other “sport” can you play at a competitive and professional level until you are 65 years old?
The answer: none. Golf is the only “sport” where there is a women’s tour (LPGA), a men’s tour (PGA), and a senior tour (Senior PGA). And why is this possible, you might ask, because in golf you don’t have to be athletic or even in good physical condition to be good. You simply just have to be able to walk 18 holes on the professional tours, and for the casual golfer you can simply use a golf cart at most golf courses. After all, you would not want to break a sweat in one of those ridiculously flamboyant polo shirts.
Look at John Daly for example. He has been on the PGA tour for the past decade and even won a major tournament (1995 British Open) despite being an obese alcoholic. The sad part of the story is Daly will continue to play on one of the tours (PGA or Senior Tour), even into his twilight years, so long as he can walk those treacherous 18 holes. If for some reason he can’t do that, then he does not deserve to even be considered by some as an athlete.
However, perhaps the best case confirming golf as nothing more than a great skill occurred this weekend at the Sony Open, where 14-year old Michelle Wie of Honolulu, Hawaii missed the weekend cut by one stroke, finishing with an even par 140 score in two days of golf. Wie tied or beat some of the tour’s most accomplished golfers, including last year’s British Open champion, Ben Curtis, and the 2003 U.S. Open champion Jim Furyk.
Yet, why does this verify that golf is nothing more than an incredible ability? Well, let me point out that not only was Wie a woman competing—and competing well—on the men’s tour, but she is 14! She is not even a woman, but a girl, a child. A young teenager should not be able to compete with the world’s best, plain and simple.
So there it is for you, plain as day, golf is not a sport. A complicated task for sure, but not a sport. And for all those golfers out there who disagree with my assessment of the situation, I ask you to prove me wrong. Find a sport that requires athleticism and is played on a professional stage, and if there is a young teenage girl playing, and beating the world’s best, then send it to me at sports@poly.rpi.edu and I’ll write a reply acknowledging my poor judgment and short-sighted view.
