By Alan Watson, President, GOLF+ Dothan and PCB
For years I have heard people complain that golf isn’t a sport and that the participants are not in fact true athletes. Okay, I’ll bite. Make your case! Most golfers ride in carts. They don’t even walk the way it was intended. True, but since golf carts weren’t around at the advent of the sport we will never truly know if the early adapters would have been happy to ride versus walk. Next. Well, there’s no running in golf and for a sport to be athletic you need to be moving at a fast pace. Alrighty. So then bowling, darts, billiards, cornhole, axe tossing, table tennis, and a few other various “sports” aren’t athletic either. Fine. Real sports are a young man’s game! You can play golf until you’re nearly dead so that negates it as an athletic event. So what? Most NFL running backs barely make it eight seasons before they are done. But, Tom Brady played quarterback into his 40s. And yes golfers can play until they are 80 or more but let’s be real, most golfers professional or otherwise peak in their late 20s to early 30s.
Regardless of all this jibber jabber about age, speed, or whether or not golf is truly in fact a real sport and whether or not the players are “athletes” we see validation in one arena. A big one too! The Olympics. The international sports body that holds competitions around the world and gives out golf medals to its winners decided a few years ago to include golf. There is no football in the Olympics. There is no baseball in the Olympics. Yet somehow our beloved game snuck in there right behind skateboarding.
So, today I declare golf is a real sport and the participants are real athletes. Based solely on this one criteria.
True, years ago professional golfers like Craig Stadler, lovingly known as the Walrus, and John Daly were successful in a sport when their bodies much resembled the couch potato Monday-morning quarterbacks who sat in their man caves, drank beer, and watched as many sporting events as they could each weekend. Stadler, Daly, and many others were not working out on the regular or dieting or exercising at all beyond the daily walk that was required of them to participate in their profession.
However, Tiger Woods brought fitness, regular exercise, and a hunger to excel in the sport to golf. He didn’t look like other golfers. He was trim and fit and had dare I say – muscles! And thus the shift began in professional golf to be better. To excel. To look like athletes and perform like them too. Gone were the days of spare tire bellies and baggy britches. Tiger brought us Tour trailers with fitness machines, massage therapists, and now each golfer seems to have a fitness coach/trainer. Some even have a dietician and or chef on their team. Things have gotten serious in golf!
But not to worry if you are like me, a regular guy who just loves to play the game and has no intention of being mistaken for a professional or an athlete. We can still ride our carts every time, and complain when the course is wet and the conditions are “cart path only” and we have to walk half a mile to our ball across the fairway. We can eat, drink, and be merry and still enjoy our sport. We don’t need to run. Or lift weights. Or really anything. Golf is a game for everyone. Of every size. Of every shape. Of every athletic ability. Or lack thereof!
Long live golf and all of us “athletes” as we play our “sport!” Even if that’s not what you would call it!
