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.

Lefty Beats Tomcat

I hate golf, but I'm glad Phil Mickelson won the Masters. I just hope that, with all that he and his family have gone through, Sports Illustrated does not make him its Sportsman of the Year. They'd have to put his entire family on the cover with him, and they do NOT need The Dreaded SI Cover Jinx.

So, Tomcat Woods... Did you learn anything?

I wonder if the right-wingers, with their hypocritical braying about "family values," will use the white family man Phil Mickelson as an example of a "good American," and the black/multi-racial/foreign mother/cheating-on-his-wife Tiger Woods as an example of a "bad American."

I hope they do. Because it means they'll be cheering a man whose nickname is "Lefty," and then they'll really look like a bunch of morons. Because they've done things even worse than what Tiger has done, from cheating on Elin to desecrating his own father's memory with that commercial. Tiger has hurt people, a lot of people, but he hasn't hurt this country the way the wingnuts have.

In the Daily News this weekend, both Bill Gallo and Mike Lupica ripped Tiger for comparing his comeback to that of Ben Hogan, whose car was hit by a Greyhound bus in 1949, then he came back and won the Masters in 1951.

As Gallo, who actually knew Hogan, put it, they had one thing in common: Both were driving Cadillacs when they crashed.

Hogan threw himself in front of his wife to save her life from a bus. Woods repeatedly "threw his wife under the bus."

Imagine... Elin finds out just how bad it was, and she says, "That's it. I'm sick of you sucking up to your sponsors. Time to make a choice, big shot. Dump Nike and Gatorade, or I walk, and take you for half your dough. Either they go, or I go."

Make him choose between her, or his sponsors. Would he say, "Okay, honey, you're right. I'll call my lawyer, and we'll sever the connections in the morning."

Or would he say, "Here's your Samsonite, bitch, what's your hurry?"

If he chooses the former, we'd know that he actually had learned something. And that he actually was sorry.

I wouldn't bet his winnings, or even a plugged nickel, on that, though.

*

So the Yankees won another one yesterday, beating Tampa Bay again. Tonight is their "welcome home dinner," and tomorrow, they host the Angels in their home opener, raising their 27th World Championship banner, and giving out their World Series rings -- including one to Angels DH, last year's World Series MVP, Hideki Matsui. I hope he gets a huge standing ovation.

Seeing the photos of Yankee Stadium, the one I knew, demolished, is heartbreaking. But seeing the footage of Texas Stadium being imploded, I love it.

The Hole Bowl. A stadium with a hole in its head, and fans to match. Cowboy fans liked to say that Texas Stadium had a hole in the roof "so God could look down on his favorite team."

A, The Green Bay Packers only made occasional visits to that dump.

B, If God is such a Cowboy fan, why have they won fewer NFL Championships than the Packers, the Chicago Bears and the New York Giants? True, they started winning Super Bowls in the 1971-72 season... but the Pittsburgh Steelers, also an old team, have won more Super Bowls in that same span, and the San Francisco 49ers as many in a shorter span. Corollary to B: Newsflash, NFL Championships won before the NFL Campionship Game was called the Super Bowl still count. Just as fans of the British equivalent of the Cowboys, Manchester United, refuse to concede the truth that Football League titles won before it became the Premier League count just as much -- and they should, since their team did win a few of those, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s.

C, If God is such a Cowboy fan, why did He not tell "God's Coach," Tom Landry, to get his drug-addicted, boozing, philandering players off the field and into treatment? And why, then, did He let Jerry Jones buy the team, and hire a corrupt college coach, Jimmy Johnson, and turn Texas Stadium into a bigger Sodom & Gomorrah Southwest than Southfork Ranch ever was?

D, Since when can God not look through a stadium's dome?

Cowboy fans = Idiots. Like Man United fans, like Notre Dame fans, like Penn State fans, they are idiots first, and glory-hunting cunts second.

*

Tonight is the Nets' Meadowlands finale. I have the time, and I have the money. Do I really want to go? On WFAN last night, they were joking about whether 500 people would show up at this wake. I don't know, but the Prudential Center seats 18,500 for basketball, and I'll bet you the price of a ticket that the Nets' 1st game there, next November, will sell out, no matter how bad the team still is.

The Devils won the Atlantic Division again. That's their 11th Division Title, all in the last 13 seasons (14 years, minus the 2004-05 cancelled season, thank you Bettman you goddamned troll).

It should be noted, though, that, of the 3 Stanley Cups the Devils have won, only 1, 2003, came when they also finished 1st in their Divison. They finished 3rd, 5th in the Eastern Conference, in 1995; they finished 2nd, 4th in the East, in 2000. On 9 of the first 10 occasions when they won the Division, they did not win the Cup.

Then again, the Rangers would love to have the Devils' problems, wouldn't they? All they had to do to clinch a Playoff berth was hold a 1-0 lead for 13 more minutes, and they fucked it up.

Good. Means the Broadway Boozehounds are off playing golf (and not as well as Lefty and Tomcat), and the Devils get to play the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round. The last time these teams played was in 2004, when the Flyers embarrassed us. Revenge time. Of course, that's probably what the Flyers thought in 2004, as they avenged their ignominious defeats (do the Flyers have any other kind of defeat?) in the Conference Finals of 1995 (Claude Lemieux vs. Ron Hextall) and 2000 (Scott Stevens vs. Eric Lindros).

WFAN is bubbling with anger from Ranger fans, and Met fans. At least Met fans have another 156 games for their team to possibly get out of this hole. Ranger fans? Hell, they're in a hole no matter what their team does.

I'm not saying that the Rangers suck... then again, it doesn't matter whether or not I say it, does it?

Yeah, I know, that last link is from the Islanders. Well, they have some taste.

You know what, yes, I am saying it: RANGERS SUCK!

A Thought About Tiger

Alan Trammell belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

So does Lou Whitaker.

Face it, if Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance could go in as a unit (and only Chance really deserves it, and that for his managing), why not Tramwhit?

We could then do this for the Yankee big 3 of the 1949-53 dynasty, Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi and Eddie Lopat.

Another Tiger who might belong in the Hall of Fame is Mickey Lolich. Maybe even Rusty Staub. Nice trade, by the way, the Mets sending an in-his-prime Rusty for a washed-up Lolich in '75.

You were expecting something else when I said, "Tiger"? Did I ever mention that golf is not a sport?

Divorce the bastard, Elin. He doesn't deserve a gorgeous chick like you.

The Masters: A raging bore like no other (TM).

Tiger Woods, 1996-2009; Eldrick, 1975-?

Orenthal James Simpson killed three people. He killed Nicole Brown Simpson. He killed Ronald Goldman. And he killed "O.J. Simpson," the guy we thought we knew, the guy we liked. Born 1967 (the year "O.J." burst onto the national consciousness with USC), died 1994.

Eldrick Tont Woods only killed one person. He killed "Tiger Woods," the guy we thought we knew. Tiger Woods, born 1996, died 2009.

People who excel, at anything, have seen themselves do amazing things. Some of them get the idea that they can do anything.

Well, sometimes, they can, until they can't. Sooner or later, the public catches on.

Even Presidents. Lyndon Johnson found out he couldn't lie about Vietnam. Richard Nixon found out he couldn't like about Vietnam or the things he did to get himself re-elected. Ronald Reagan found out he couldn't lie about the things he did to combat terrorism in the Middle East or Communism in Nicaragua. (But, to the end, he got away with lying about the harm he caused the American economy.) George Bush the father found out he couldn't lie about the economy. George Bush the son found out he couldn't like about the economy, Iraq, torture, and his own apparent saintliness -- which, in the end, was apparently only to him.

More to the point, Bill Clinton found out he couldn't like about his marital transgressions. Sports stars have had this problem, too. The New York media covered up Babe Ruth's philandering and boozing, Joe DiMaggio's suspected violence toward Marilyn Monroe and suspected ties to organized crime figures, and Mickey Mantle's attempts to, uh, break the Babe's records.

But those days are over. Joe Namath may have killed such protections with his attitude of, "Yeah, I like to fool around with ladies and have a drink now and then, so what?" So what? Joe, you might have won a 2nd Super Bowl if you'd... Oh, who am I kidding: The Babe won 7 World Series (3 in Boston, 4 in New York), Joe D 9, Mickey 7.

Here in the New York area, we've seen blowups of the personal peccadilloes of Alex Rodriguez, Darryl Strawberry, Tiki Barber, Michael Strahan, Patrick Ewing, Isiah Thomas and Sean (the Slug) Avery. Frankly, I'm surprised Derek Jeter has managed to guard his private life as much as he has. Come to think of it, Reggie Jackson was a very wealthy, highly eligible bachelor (though a divorced one) in the post-Namath era, but we rarely heard anything of his love life.

But no one is immune. Not even Michael Jordan: Eventually, it came out that he had habitually cheated on his wife Juanita, and they split up.

If Jordan -- before Tiger, before Derek (still unmarried, though rumored to be engaged to actress Minka Kelly), before Peyton Manning (as far as I know, true to his wife), the original Nike-and-Gatorade man -- couldn't be protected forever, how could Tiger?

Face it, Eldrick: When the National Enquirer looks more credible than you do, you've got a problem.

He now acknowledges he has a problem. It's not the sex; that's a symptom, not the disease. The disease is an entitlement complex.

It's an old story: An athlete is told from the time he's a boy, "You are special. You can do anything." And he sees that he can do anything on the field. He begins to think he can do anything off the field. The next thing you know, he's caught in the VIP Room during a raid, or he's wrapped his car around a pole (I think you've had enough, Mr. Dykstra), or he's in rehab for some chemical or other (including, possibly, his own hormones), or he's kicked to the curb by the wife.

In Ball Four, Jim Bouton said that whatever an athlete's chronological age is, take off 10 years. This makes Tiger 24, not 34. (Of course, at the time Bouton wrote that, he was 30, therefore, by his own reckoning, he was 20.)

Tiger has admitted that he had this sense of entitlement, and that he took advantage of it. Point in his favor. He says he wants to make up for it. Another point in his favor. He also defended his wife against the allegation that she tried to clock him with a golf club, and that she shouldn't be dragged through the mud. Another point in his favor.

Right now, the first thing in his life should be straightening himself out. The last thing in his life should be what Nike, Gatorade, the PGA, and the people who still overlook his behavior want.

Being "Tiger Woods" is what got him into this mess. He has to be Eldrick again. That is the best thing for Eldrick, and the best punishment for "Tiger."

The next-best punishment for "Tiger" is to ignore him. Besides, it's golf. It's not even a sport.

*

Now, let's get back to the Winter Olympics, and the hashpipe. Excuse me, the halfpipe. That's not a sport, either. It's in the Olympics for one reason, and one reason only: To get the U.S. more medals. I'd rather beat the cold countries at their own games. If we do, great. If we don't, at least we're in classic Winter Olympic sports, not stuff that was made up for our benefit.

The U.S. team has beaten Switzerland and Norway. Nice. But the big game is against Canada on Sunday night. Win it, and they're in the knockout rounds. Lose it, and they'll still be in a play-in game for said rounds. So it won't be terrible if they lose it.

Besides, they may get another shot at Canada in one of said rounds, maybe even the Gold Medal Game like in 2002. I don't know if they'll win, but I hope they'll at least play the full 60 minutes; in 2002, they barely showed up for the 3rd period, and that's why Canada won: They played 60, and hard.

*

The Nets finally reached an agreement to play the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons at the Prudential Center in Newark. Maybe now, they'll get to experience a sellout with neither Kobe nor LeBron in sight. Come to think of it, maybe The Rock will get to experience one with neither the Rangers nor the Flyers in sight.

Here's an idea: Screw the Barclays Center proposal, and keep playing in Newark for the next 50 years! Be "the New Jersey Nets"! After all, they won't all be 5-49 seasons!

The Nets -- Nots? Naughts? Nuts? -- are still on a pace for 8-74, surpassing the 9-73 '73 76ers. They host Chris Bosh and the Toronto Raptors at the Meadowlands tonight. I'm not optimistic.

*

Pitchers and catchers have reported! Which means YAY! Onward and upward to Title 28!

Days until the Gold Medal hockey game: 9.

Days until the NHL's Olympic break ends (at least for the Devils): 11.

Days until the Devils play another local rival: 19, on Wednesday, March 10, at home against The Scum. Three days later, a trip to The Island to play the Fish Sticks.

Days until Opening Day of the 2010 baseball season: 44, the Yankees playing the Red Sox at Fenway for the ESPN Sunday-night season-opener. 6 weeks.

Days until the next North London Derby between Arsenal and Tottenham: 50. 7 weeks.

Days until the Yankees' 2010 home opener: 53. Less than 8 weeks.

Days until the 2010 World Cup begins: 101.

Days until the World Cup Final: 142.

Days until Rutgers plays football again: 197.

Days until the new Meadowlands Stadium (still unnamed) opens: 198.

Days until East Brunswick plays football again: 203.

Days until the next East Brunswick-Old Bridge Thanksgiving clash: 279.

Days until Derek Jeter collects his 3,000th career hit: 467.

Days until the Rutgers-Army football game at Yankee Stadium: 631.