Yes, among the many reasons that golf should not be classified as a “sport” is that golfers lose so little of their game as they enter their 40s and 50s, and that it is a retirement activity for people who play real sports or even just have real jobs.
(The biggest two reasons that it shouldn’t be classified as a sport, of course, are:
There is no defense (you can’t do anything to adversely impact your opponent’s performance, so you’re really competing more against the course than other golfers).
In a tournament, the first- and second-place finishers may never even see one another. How can it be called a sport if you never directly face your competition?
Mind you, I’m not belittling the skill that golf takes, nor am I saying that the ability to knock a tiny little ball into a tiny little hole a few hundred yards away in a few strokes of a club is anything short of amazing. It’s just no more a sport than chess or bass fishing. (It’s also probably the most boring thing on TV, which is saying quite a lot given the prevalence of garbage like reality TV and NASCAR.))
Yes, among the many reasons that golf should not be classified as a “sport” is that golfers lose so little of their game as they enter their 40s and 50s, and that it is a retirement activity for people who play real sports or even just have real jobs.
(The biggest two reasons that it shouldn’t be classified as a sport, of course, are:
There is no defense (you can’t do anything to adversely impact your opponent’s performance, so you’re really competing more against the course than other golfers).
In a tournament, the first- and second-place finishers may never even see one another. How can it be called a sport if you never directly face your competition?
Mind you, I’m not belittling the skill that golf takes, nor am I saying that the ability to knock a tiny little ball into a tiny little hole a few hundred yards away in a few strokes of a club is anything short of amazing. It’s just no more a sport than chess or bass fishing. (It’s also probably the most boring thing on TV, which is saying quite a lot given the prevalence of garbage like reality TV and NASCAR.))