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Originally Posted by fotze
before the arguing, maybe agree on a definition of "sport". If you cannot agree on that definition, then arguing about the merits of certain sports being a "sport" is fataing ######ed.
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Good idea. I consider golf to be one of the toughest sports on the world. Anyone that says otherwise has a very narrow view of what "sport" is, in my opinion.
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- any activity or experience that gives enjoyment or recreation; pastime; diversion
- such an activity, esp. when competitive, requiring more or less vigorous bodily exertion and carried on, sometimes as a profession, according to some traditional form or set of rules, whether outdoors, as football, golf, etc., or indoors, as basketball, bowling, etc.
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http://www.yourdictionary.com/sport uses golf as an example in their definition.
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(1) : physical activity engaged in for pleasure (2) : a particular activity (as an athletic game) so engaged in
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sport doesn't. However, I would argue golf falls into the second category as an "athletic game."
Athletic is characteristic of being an
athlete. An athlete is "a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina."
Physical
agility. Agility has to do with being
agile, which is defined as being "marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace" and associated with dexterity.
Dexterity is defined as "1) mental skill or quickness," which I would say is a
very important element to golf. But, seeing as how the original definition of an athlete required
physical agility, and therefore
physical dexterity, that leads me to the second part of the definition, "2) readiness and grace in physical activity;
especially : skill and ease in using the hands." One part of the definition of
grace is "
ease and suppleness of movement," where ease means "natural" and "effortless," and
suppleness means "readily adaptable or responsive to new situations," and
"able to perform bending or twisting movements with ease." Tiger jokes aside.....
....therein lies golf for me in the definition of sport. Without going into the mental aspect of it (which is the toughest out of pretty much any other sport I can think of, in my opinion), the technique required to be a good golfer is far beyond that of any other sport. Ian Woosnam weighs 160 lbs and is 5ft 4" but can drive the ball as far as anyone, and it goes straight back to his technique which has to do with physical agility. Doing the same swing over and over in many different situations where if you're off by even a degree, your ball can end up nowhere near where you wanted it, requires an extraordinary amount of physical dexterity. Not to mention doing it x amount of times during a round, 4 days in a row, with all of the mental pressure that I wont even go into.
If that's not good enough, for all of you that require big time physical exertion in order for something to be classified a sport,
you burn around 700 calories carrying your clubs during a round of golf. Not big time by any stretch,
but probably more than running a mile in any one of the olympic running sport events.
Now someone post another picture of one of Tiger's many scantily clad mistresses....
