Top 10 Reasons Why Golf Is Not a Sport

So, this past Monday, I saw a copy of the New York Daily News. On the back page, instead of baseball, it was talking about golf.

Already, my day was ruined.

The previous day, the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) Championship was held at Bellerive Country Club, in the suburbs of St. Louis. It's the last of the 4 "majors" in golf tournaments, following, in chronological order, The Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open. (The PGA has announced that the tournament will move to May next year, making the order Masters, PGA, U.S. and British.)

The winner was Brooks Koepka, age 28, from West Palm Beach, Florida. It was his 3rd major, as he'd already won the U.S. Open this year and last year. He shot 264, for an average of 68, a record for the tournament.

The runner-up, finishing 2 strokes behind him, was Eldrick "Tiger" Woods, who's won 14 majors, 2nd only to Jack Nicklaus' 18 -- but none in 10 years, since the 2008 U.S. Open.

It was a very good performance for Tiger, probably his best since that 2008 U.S. Open. But he didn't win the tournament.

And yet, the Daily News put him on the back page. Indeed, TV and print sports coverage was full of "Tiger's back!" stories, instead of focusing on, you know, the guy who actually won the tournament. With a record score.

Think about that for a moment. Suppose the Triple Crown horse races were not limited to 3-year-olds. And suppose Citation, the horse that won what was then the last Triple Crown, in 1948, had lived to compete in the 1973 races. (He actually died in 1970.)

And suppose Secretariat had done what he actually did, winning the Triple Crown, setting records in all 3 races, each of which still stand, 45 years later. Secretariat won the Belmont by 31 freakin' lengths.

Now, suppose a 28-year-old Citation had finished 2nd, even 10 lengths back. It wouldn't have taken anything from Secretariat's achievement. Would the papers be focusing on Secretariat's achievement? Or would they have focused on Citation finishing 2nd?

Golf is messed-up in so many ways. It's not even a sport!

That's right: Golf is not a sport. Here's the...

Top 10 Reasons Why Golf Is Not a Sport

10. The scoring. The winner is the one with the lowest score, not the one with the highest score. In what other sport is this true?

I'm reminded of an edition of Johnny Hart's comic strip B.C. Panel 1: Woman asks male golfer, "Let me get this straight, the less I hit the ball, the better I am doing." Golfer says, "That's right." Panel 2: Woman asks golfer, "Then why do it at all?" Panel 3, at night, so, clearly, golfer has been thinking about it the whole time: "Why... do it... at all?"

Found it. The date was April 20, 1999 --

the date of the Columbine High School massacre.

9. The clothes. There's a reason teams in real sports stopped wearing the uniforms they wore in the 1970s. They were garish monstrosities, which are now broken out only on nostalgia days.

But in golf? As the late, great Robin Williams put it, "The manly sport of golf, where you can dress like a pimp, and no one will care! Where even a blind gay man would go, 'Oh, dear Christ! That is loud! This is not Carnival! What the fuck are you on?'"

8. The spatial relationship. As the late, great George Carlin put it, "Just the design of the game speaks of arrogance. Think of how big a golf course is. The ball is that fuckin' big! What do those pinheaded pricks need with all that land?"

I know, a baseball field takes up a lot of space for a small ball. But think about this: A baseball field is about 400 feet long by about 300 feet wide in the outfield. A golf course has "holes" (not the actual hole) around 100 feet wide by an average of 150 feet long... and it has 18 of them. So we're talking about a total of 270,000 square feet, compared to around half that for a baseball field.

7. The spectators are told to be quiet. Name one other sport where that's true. Tennis? Okay, that's one. Name another. Figure skating? Not a sport. Gymnastics? Not a sport.

6. The announcers. The late, great Jim McKay of ABC Sports once said that the 2 greatest sports are golf and horse racing, because they have the best stories. I love his reason, but he was totally wrong. Golf announcers are terrible. The word "murmur" comes to mind.

Robin Williams again: "I want the guy who does Mexican soccer to do golf one time." He meant Andrés Cantor, the Argentine announcer now working for Telemundo. He imagined Cantor watching the ball go in the... "Hoooooooooooooooole!" 

5. No athleticism. Sure, you need strength to hit long drives. But putting? Essentially, you only have to stand there. Pool is every bit as athletic, and you don't see anybody calling pool a sport.

Or, to put it another way: When a team is eliminated from Playoff contention, we say they're "off playing golf." If a golfer doesn't make the cut at a major, we don't say he's off playing a different sport. Not baseball. Not football. Not tennis, which is another traditional sport for elitists.

4. No defense. Tiger Woods has never had to worry about hitting a golf ball that Clayton Kershaw has thrown 100 miles per hour, or one that Pedro Martinez has thrown at his head. Jack Nicklaus never had to putt with Mean Joe Greene bearing down on him. Arnold Palmer never had to worry about John Havlicek stealing the ball. Bobby Jones never had to putt with anyone having put spit on the ball, or the green for that matter. And no golfer has ever had to putt the ball into a hole guarded by Hakeem Olajuwon, or Martin Brodeur, or Gianluigi Buffon.

Somebody once told me that the course itself, with its trees, bushes, high grass, sand traps and water hazards, counts as "defense." No, it doesn't. Nobody calls Fenway Park's Green Monster "defense." Nobody calls Wrigley Field's ivy "defense." Nobody called the parquet floor at the Boston Garden, with its "dead spots," "defense." John Facenda of NFL Films never actually called the grass in Green Bay "the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field," and nobody calls that "defense," either.

3. No opponent. Yes, there are other competitors. But that competitor isn't in your way. Tiger never had to putt past Phil Mickelson. And Ernie Els never talked trash to Tiger while he was trying to putt. You don't face your opponent. Again, this makes pool closer to being a sport than golf is.

Now, you might say, "What about races? Track, swimming, cycling, and so on? You're not facing your opponent when you do that." True. But you could see him, you definitely hear him, and you know he's there. The way a golf tournament works, Tiger could be on the 1st hole, Phil could be on the 18th and last hole, and every other major golfer could be in between. Unless you see the leaderboard, as far as you know, the other players don't even exist.

2. The elitism. I'm not even talking about prejudice, against race, gender or religion. It's a game favored by fabulously wealthy people who don't like people who aren't, and by people who'd like to be them.

And, as the great Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan would say, "I'm saving the best reason for last, the reason you can't top. Can't top it!" The Number 1 reason why golf is not a sport: 

1. Donald Trump likes it. He can't play it -- not without cheating -- but he likes it. Okay, that might not be a reason why golf is not a sport. If Trump was good at it, that would be a reason why it's not a sport! But he likes it, and could there possibly be a better reason to hate this stupid game?

The exception that proves the rule? The officials -- referees, umpires, judges, whatever they're called in golf -- can't steal the game from you. They can rule that you didn't sign your scorecard, or that you used an illegal club, or that you broke some rule or other, intentionally or otherwise.

But no golfer ever lost a tournament because an official was corrupt, or even made a mistake. Nicklaus never lost the Masters because there was a Don Denkinger ruling that his ball hadn't actually gone in the hole, when it had. And Tiger never lost the U.S. Open because Mike Dean gave him an unfair penalty.

So, if golf were a sport, you could cite that as a reason why it's the best sport.

But golf is not a sport.

Left to right: Alice Cooper, Heather Locklear, Haley Joel Osment,

Dean Reimuth, Michael Douglas, Cheryl Ladd, Josh Duhamel, Kenny G,

Kyle McLachlan (blocked out by Kenny G), Catherine Zeta-Jones,

Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Sheen, Jim McLean, Mark Wahlberg, unknown

And I don't care that Catherine Zeta-Jones loves golf, or that she plays it with the others in the photo above. It's a game, but it's not a sport.