We were one hard bounce off the 18th green at Turnberry away from having that tedious debate all week.
Some people - not the most thoughtful among us -are having it anyway.
What people who say golf isn’t a sport mean is they don’t like or respect golf, and I’m not going to argue with that. You like what you like. The substance, if that’s the right word, of the argument is based on some sliding subjective scale of strenuousness, and that’s just ridiculous.
Is walking 18 holes or more in 95 degree heat in a U.S. Open less strenuous that playing leftfield in a major-league baseball game? Or being an NFL placekicker? Golf is closer to, say, baseball in strenuousness than baseball is to, say, triathlon. That’s what I mean by subjective sliding scale- where do you draw the line?
But if you try to come up with a serious, sensible, honest definition of sport that excludes golf, you can’t do it. And why do you want to? It’s not an award. It’s a noun.
To be a sport, an activity must be 1. inherently competitive, and 2. require, in order to compete, athletic movements. Many things are athletic and not sports, amd many things are competitive and not sports. Have to be both.
There are a few tough judgment calls - auto racing, gymnastics (I’m inclined to say yes on both) - but golf isn’t close to being one of them.
Inherently competitive means the act of doing the activity is an act of competition. Judged performance is not inherently competitive. Thus figure skating, for example, is not a sport, and that’s not a knock on figure skating. Ballet could be “competed” at in exactly the same way figure skating is - utterly subjective judging of a performance - but ballet obviously isn’t a sport, and no one considers that a knock on ballet.
As for criterion 2., athletic movements require at least a couple of the following- speed, strength, agility, stamina, physical coordination, reflexes, flexibility, visual acuity, muscular and body control, etc, etc. There is no quality of the physical act of playing chess or poker(physically moving the pieces, pushing chips around) that has anything to do with winning or losing at chess or poker. I like and respect chess and poker, but they’re not sports.
The golf swing is obviously an athletic movement, and the game is among the more inherently competive activities created by mankind. End of argument.
Of course, golf is a sport. Come on, people.
