Most people wouldn’t consider chess as sport. It’s definitely a challenging mental game, but for me, there is no way that it qualifies as a true sport since it involves no physical element.
Likewise, golf involves little athletic rigor compared to most actual sports. Golf only allows for the burning of at most 360 calories per hour, and that’s without the use of a golf cart.
But according to my parents, who basically live in Golfsmith and take years off their lives watching the Professional Golf Association tour, golf is a mental game as well as an athletic pursuit.
While golf requires skilled physical coordination, golf’s actual physical exertion is on par with walking. As a result, professionals participate up until they’re 50 or older. This age is incredibly old in comparison to that of other low-contact sports such as tennis, where athletes’ ages usually range from 18 to 35.
The average peak age for most sports is around 26, yet an astonishing 33 percent of active professional golf players are over the age of 35. Renowned golfer Tiger Woods, 39, is struggling with injuries now, but he still hopes to return to his previous form in his 40s. By contrast, how many 39-year-old basketball players are hoping to the level they played at when they were 25?
Perhaps the best evidence that golf isn’t a real sport is professional golfer John Daly. At age 49, he is notorious for chain-smoking during competitions and being abnormally overweight as well as his struggles with drugs and alcohol off the course. Even so, in a long PGA career, he has won many tournaments and made millions of dollars. An athlete in no other sport could enjoy this level of success with such a sad body and so many horrible habits.
Clearly, if you can smoke and drink while still playing at the highest level, the “sport” you’re playing clearly doesn’t meet the rigorous physical demands that “sport” entails.
Sadly, golf is soon to be an Olympic sport for the first time since 1912. If the calories burned from playing the “sport” is the result of walking short distances and carrying clubs, you cannot be playing a sport. If you can fracture two left tibias and continue to play and win the “sport’s” largest national competition as Woods did in the 2008 US Open, you are definitely not playing a sport.
The bottom line: If you think golf is a sport and golfers are athletes, you are either wrong, or you are a golfer.
