Golf Doesn't Care If You Think It's a Sport or Not

I have often heard debated what activities are considered “real sports” by self-declared authorities on semantics. Usually this mindless discourse is birthed at frat parties an hour after the keg runs out where the sorority girls didn't show up...again.

Most of this discussion, from what I have read, is focused on sports with participants whose skills are appropriate for excelling at a caveman-quality, survivalist existence. Valued attributes of the “athlete” include running (from wild animals), jumping (to reach the highest fruit on the tallest tree), and strength (hand to hand combat for the driest cave).

Using these neanderthalic standards, golf should absolutely not be considered a sport. However, the players and the game of golf neither pretend to be part of this group nor desire acceptance by it.  Another standard must then apply to the greatest game ever played.

I will dispense with the tired debate of the word "sport" in favor of a loftier assertion that will define golf completely as its own exclusive genre of activity.

Traditionally, new sports have been created for two main reasons:

1. Training for something much more important, such as work or war.

2. Passing empty time long before the invention of video games.

The original Olympic games were for military training, and the sports involved were directly related to the weapons and fighting techniques important for defending cities and homes.

Strategies used in basketball, football, soccer, hockey, rugby, etc. are very similar to war in the Dark Ages. Two opposing armies define a line of scrimmage and attempt to use their particular assets in the most effective manner to directly engage the enemy with the goal of breaching the other's defensive line. Although this is interesting to watch (like the brutal reality that the U.S. civil war must have been), practicing it has no modern military use and is therefore an exercise in futility.

Call them sports, if you will, but them we can relegate them to the dustbins of historical insignificance. The only modern value these sports have is to sell advertising for networks to alcohol companies who quite effectively entice throngs of cubicle and factory workers not to actually participate in their own lives.

Instead they can passively be involved in whatever activity they identify with by watching it on television and arrogantly imagining their interest in it as a fan is significant to the outcome.

Crowd support has zero effect on the outcome of games. This myth is a perpetrated by the marketing and public relations departments of sports franchises and is designed to make fans feel morally obligated to purchase overpriced tickets. Sorry college football fans, that is the truth.

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