Thoughts on this statement, which I'm many of y'all have heard many times before?

If it is a game/competition that involves at least some superior physical strength/coordination/skill to beat your opponent, it is a sport.

I've never heard that statement, but I would assume golf qualifies by that. Superior coordination and skill is pretty much the name of the game.

Or are you implying that you have to have superior strength AND coordinaton AND skill?

Golf is a sport, and it's the most difficult one I've ever tried.

I played the three major sports growing up and while not great, I wasn't bad at them and I never had a hard time making the team at a 5A high school and the feeder jr. highs. I also ran track and got a D-1 ride.

I remember in 7th grade, the first cut for the basketball team was who could make a layup. Some guys would clank it off the backboard or miss completely and I thought to myself how could someone be that bad? When I picked up a golf club for the first time at age 28, I became that guy.

Golf requires a difficult athletic move. People who claim it's not a sport probably hit four inches behind the ball or whiff it altogether.

Have only heard this from people who suck and are frustrated w/ the game. I am sure plenty of people who have never picked up a club also think this way because they have seen obese guys like Kevin Stadler or Boo Weekley playing on TV with success...but these same people would probably agree that sumo wrestling is a legitimate sport. My super competitive wife occasionally makes this claim out of frustration when she's barely making contact with the ball and I used to have that mentality a few yrs ago, until I finally started to put together something resembling a real swing and was able to get the ball up in the air here and there. Now it's pretty much the only sport I care about outside of Aggie football and I cannot think of a more humbling sport.

[This message has been edited by El Mero Guero (edited 3/4/2014 9:34a).]

My thoughts when it comes to whether or not golf or any other thing like figure skating or gymnastics are sports or not is simply, who cares? Why does it matter? I love golf, and whether someone's arbitrary definition of sport includes golf or not just doesn't matter to me.

Takes tremendous amount of coordination - hand-eye as well as the full body, uses strategy, requires mental and physical stamina, requires conducting complex physical movements while under mental pressure, and involves a very objective score vs. judging. That all says "sport" to me. The fact that fat guys can be good at it too doesn't disqualify it as a sport. Fat guys play all sorts of "sports" that aren't the object of sport vs. non-sport debate. Don't know why golf should be treated differently. It takes a great deal of athleticism to do it well. People confuse conditioning with athleticism, but even at that, it does require a fair level of conditioning to succeed at high levels.

[This message has been edited by DannyDuberstein (edited 3/4/2014 12:43p).]

Interesting that you bring up the conditioning vs. athleticism. I once got into a long stupid discussion about this very thing. My sister-in-law is a pro triathlete and I made the comment that I didn't think of running, swimming, and biking as that "athletic."

I guess my opinion is that what you're doing can't be too athletic if you can basically just zone out for an hour at a time and manage to keep doing it anyway. That's not to say that running a marathon or swimming a couple miles is easy or anything... just requires much more conditioning than athleticism in my opinion.

Anyway she got pretty pissed over the whole thing, and I basically repeated what watty said and just asked why she cared what my own personal definition of athleticism is.

bagger - I too have similarly poked fun at marathoner/tri-athlete types, only because so many of them are so smug and elitist about their sport, especially tri-athletes. I used to be a miler in high school and I've raced in 10k's and triathlons. These ultra distance types have their own little sub-culture and pretty much look down on every other sport. To them, if a fat guy can do it, it's not much of a sport.

The training that triathletes endure is impressive, no doubt, but it doesn't require much skill or athletic ability. To me, triathletes and marathoners are folks that couldn't be competitive at the shorter races or the more popular sports, which is why many of them have disdain for those sports.

I agree with what you said. To me, being athletic is more about having good hand eye coordination or being naturally gifted in a certain area. I wouldn't necessarily consider a top marathon runner "athletic." They are just highly trained, very well conditioned individuals who have perfected running long distances by training and running long distances over and over again. In my opinion a great athlete is someone who you could put in multiple sports and they would excel, or at least be surprisingly good at, all of them...for example someone who could be good at golf, tennis, basketball, baseball, football, ping pong, bowling, etc.

I'm with you guys. The greatness of Kenny Powers has opined on this subject when asked by a triathlete if he'd ever done a triathlon - Kenny's response "No, I play real sports. Not try to be the best at exercising."

There is a couple in our neighborhood that we're friends with, and the wife is/was an athlete that played both softball and volleyball in college (small college, but college ball nonetheless). On the flipside, her husband is a triathlete, but he'll also tell you that he sucked at sports his entire life. He's also a small guy (probably 5'5").

Long story short, they have 3 kids but they are all average to below average at sports. They got dad's small stature and his athletic ability. It absolutely eats the wife up that her kids aren't better at these sports. I coach their oldest kid in softball, and one of the other parents commented to me once that he was baffled as to why those kids weren't better athletes because both of their parents are athletes, and my response was "Are you sure they are both athletes??? An endurance athlete is a different ball of wax."

Being in great condition doesn't necessarily mean one has good hand-eye, body control, quickness, speed for distances most sports are played, etc. And I consider someone with the latter traits far more of an athlete than someone who is in great condition.

[This message has been edited by DannyDuberstein (edited 3/4/2014 3:37p).]

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/26/27-marathons/

quote:

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In life, there are certain milestones of physical activity that can define you. A sub 5 second 40 yard dash, a 40 inch vertical leap and so forth. To a white person, the absolute pinnacle of fitness is to run a marathon. Not to win, just to run.

White people will train for months, telling everyone who will listen about how they get up early in the morning, they run when it rains, how it makes them feels so great and gives them energy.

When they finish the marathon, they will generally take a photo of themselves in a pair of New Balance sneakers, running shorts, and their marathon number with both hands over their head in triumph (seriously, look it up, this is universal).

They will then set goals like running in the Boston Marathon or the New York Marathon.

If you find yourself in a situation where a white person is talking about a marathon, you must be impressed or you will lose favor with them immediately. Running for a certain length of time on a specific day is a very important thing to a white person and should not be demeaned.

Also worth noting, more competitive white people prefer triathlons because Kenyans can’t afford $10,000 specialty bicycles. If the subject ever comes up, just say that triathletes are in better shape than football and basketball players. It’s not true, but it will make the conversation a lot more genial.

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[This message has been edited by bagger05 (edited 3/4/2014 5:06p).]

I love golf but for me it is on the outer fringes of what i consider a sport. To me golf is a game that requires a LOT of skill but not necessarily athletic ability. More athletic ability is needed then chess, less than basketball. If I had to put together a team of "athletes" to compete in a sports type decathlon that would involve competing in sports from track and field to basketball, soccer, baseball, tennis and even sports americans dont play like cricket and rugby, I wouldnt select a single golfer to even ride the pine.

Edited to add . . .

And no, excercising a crapload so you can run real far/or for a long time does not mean you are an athlete.

[This message has been edited by Tamuagk (edited 3/8/2014 12:34a).]

Qualifies as a sport. I always felt if you can make it a competition, its a sport.

But when I was in grad school we had a class discussion regarding a sport or hobby in one of my sports psychology classes .

Some answers if I recall as its been some time were can you smoke and drink while playing said sport if so its a hobby? Which is untrue

I can drink and smoke, shotgun a beer, be obese and play basketball, baseball, hockey and football. However ones performance or outcome should not dictate a sport or hobby, be it as an individual or as a group.

The answers always brings out the claws.

Gymnastics and Figure Skating and Diving aren't sports. Golf is. If it takes me 4 shots to get to the hole I don't need a judge to tell me it wasn't as good as another guys 4 shots.