Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
If the following are the major elements of sport:
endurance, strength, power, speed, agility, flexibility, nerve, durability, hand-eye coordination and analytic aptitude.
Seems like the bolded elements are all the important elements that are key to being successful at golf. You cannot say the same about things like poker, chess, pool, etc.
|
However, I can say that . . . . .
A panel of experts which included sports scientists from the U.S. Olympic Committee, academics who study the science of muscles and movement, sports journalists and former pro baseball and football player Brian Jordan was polled to identify the most demanding of 60 sports. Various activities were graded on 10 components of athleticism: endurance, strength, power, speed, agility, flexibility, nerve, durability, hand-eye coordination and analytic aptitude. Boxing ranked first, followed by hockey, football and basketball. Golf ranked -- take a deep breath -- 51st out of the 60 sports, just behind table tennis and horse racing. It did, however, place just ahead of cheerleading and roller-skating, with fishing finishing last.
http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=2857006
I'll club you over the head with that every time. Just be thanking they called it a sport.
I just do not see golf as being a sport. It appears to be a game. Like curling, a smoking fat guy can be the champ. Less likely these days than yesteryear admittedly, but . . . . .
By the way, one of my all-time favourite quotes, paraphrased, came out of baseball where a female reporter in the mid-90's was at an All-Star game and asked the rather portly John Kruk, batting champ, with a cigarette in his hand, what it was like to be a professional athlete to which Kruk replied, paraphrased,
"Lady, I ain't no athlete. I'm a baseball player."
Baseball too has changed through the years. Even as there were great athletes in baseball you really had to question some of them, a guy like Kruk for example who excelled but was, by his own admission, "no athlete." Most of them are athletes now, if not great athletes.
Perhaps that is the direction golf is going too.
Cowperson