I have a friend who is one and it sucks. The public is awful to you, you have to be fast and accurate with lots of money, the boths are cold in the Winter and hot in the summer and you suck on car fumes all day.
The trouble with any sports job is that unless you’re literally a one-in-a-million gifted athlete, there are plenty of guys almost as good as you ready to compete for your spot. And even if you’re one in a million, the bad news is there are 300 other guys at your level in the United States, and 7000 world-wide.
Even if you’re Tiger Woods, you still have to get the ball in the hole today and tomorrow, or your career is over.
So a better answer than “top golfer” is “retired top golfer”, where you make all your money from endorsements and appearances rather than actually playing golf.
It’s probably pretty easy to get a job cleaning up after the elephants. 
Besides the fact that show business is so difficult to get a foothold in, I don’t think the actual work you have to do sounds particularly easy. I don’t think I’ve heard of a rock star or other famous musician who doesn’t get weary of the constant travel, to the point where they forget what city they’re in: “How ya doing, Pittsb–er Philly!”. It looks like nothing but fun but there’s a lot of work behind the scene, like writing and rehearsing new material, promotional work (e.g. being interviewed, TV guest shots, etc.).
I think established film and TV actors face their own challenges, largely from having to work so many hours when they are working on a project, but also from having to do the same sort of promotional work, with the basic goal of keeping oneself in the public eye.
If you own a dog (or other pet) that is a star. You make all he money and don’t have to do anything.
Exhibit A: the People that own Grumpy Cat.
I don’t think there are any particularly easy jobs just due to the nature of competition and the laws of supply and demand. The least taxing depend on your skills and personality but almost all of the ‘good’ jobs require lots of preparation and talent to even be considered for or they require some type of hard sacrifice and/or danger in exchange for good pay (oilfield workers and underwater welders for example).
The ‘easiest’ and most lucrative jobs overall come from developing some rather unique skill that someone really needs and developing a reputation for being good at it. For example, I am a senior consultant for a very famous mega-corp. I have my job because I have a weird combination of skills that are difficult to replicate in one person but that is what they wanted so I have it. Most days are easy. I don’t need to be there until 10 am and I can can come and go as I please as long as everything is running smoothly. I don’t have a direct boss on site either. However, I also have to carry a cell phone with me at all times and be prepared to both answer and respond to it 24 hours a day if the situation is bad enough. That happens a few times a year.
There are other consultants and talking head types that have much better deals but I don’t know of any that don’t require significant travel time to undesirable places and it can be a very unstable way to make a living. Even my theoretical dream job, airline pilot, supposedly sucks these days because of changes in the industry that require years of paying your dues in really hard ways combined with much lower pay than 20 years ago.
Supposedly fun jobs like river rafting guide or flight instructor barely pay enough to support a single college student let alone a family. The only remotely fun job that I know of that can pay well is being a bartender in a really busy upscale establishment in a tourist hotspot. That can be lucrative and fun but also physically taxing and there are only a few good shifts available during the week that everyone is competing for.
Jockey? Absolutely, positively not.
There’s a saying that a jockey is the only job so dangerous that an ambulance has to follow you around everywhere you go (which is true at major tracks). Virtually every jockey has broken a minimum of 20 bones at one time or another. Plus you have to stay in tip-top shape (since you are trying to control an animal that weighs 10 times what you do) while keeping your weight down to around 110 pounds, regardless of what your natural weight should be. This means watching every single thing you eat, and using bulimia if you overdo it.
My vote is boxer. While the job is obviously punishing, if you are at the top of the sport it is the most lucrative payday for the shortest amount of actual matches.
From Forbes Magazine regarding Floyd Mayweather, the highest-paid athlete in the world in 2013:
[Quote=Forbes]
Mayweather earned $105 million during the past 12 months for 72 minutes of work in the ring for fights against Canelo Alvarez and Marcos Maidana.
[/quote]
I admit to not being totally knowledgeable about this, but I have a fellow bandmate who is a boiler room operator at a local hospital.
As near as I can determine, his job is to sit on his ass for most of eight hours, getting up every once in a while to take some meter readings. I’m not sure what he has to do if one of those readings is off to any alarming degree, but if something really does go wrong, I don’t think it’s his specific job to fix it.
The impression I get is that this is one of those union jobs that does require a license of some sort. But once you get in, you’re really in.
I haven’t talked to him in any great detail about this, so I could be wrong. If anyone has some greater insight into this line of work, I would welcome it.
He’s like an alarm system. If you see him running, drop everything and run.
I always thought draw bridge operator would be a pretty easy job. Sit around and watch for boats, and stop traffic when one needs you or raise the bridge
The best job in the world is US Senator, not seeking reelection. You don’t have to do a damn thing, and yet you have a bit of power and prestige. Raising money and campaigning would suck, but once you have the job, you can cruise for 6 years on autopilot.
I know a guy who manned the front gate at a mine. Not much to do, could surf the net if you had mobile broadband, check paperwork and open the gate for any trucks that might show up. Downside? Paid jack-shit.
I was a night clerk at a girl’s dormitory in college. All you had to do basically was make sure that any guy who went into the girl’s dorm had a girl from the dorm escorting him up – in short, that they were invited in, not just prowling around. The major downside was the hours: 10 to 6 am. And I had to wrestle several drunk guys and one crazy guy who tried to get past me. The drunk guys were not much of a problem, but the crazy guy was literally a prolonged wrestling match and when he finally figured out he wasn’t going to win it, he ran off. I called the campus cops on him and they found him (he tried the same shit at another dorm) and arrested him and searched his room and found a cache of guns there. So could have been a much hairier experience. He got booted from college (eat my shorts, gun nuts).
Thing is, even if it was 3 am, if you knew a girl in the dorm, all you had to do was pick up a lobby phone and give her a call, and she could come down and escort you up if she was so inclined. So the guys whom I had to wrestle (most would just make the call once I explained things to them, or leave) either did not know any of the women in the dorm or figured that the woman they wanted to see would not want to escort them up. So there was a filter that ensured that the guys I had to wrestle with were either too drunk to know which way was up, or real scumbags and dumb ones at that, or crazy.
But for the vast majority of the time, all you had to do was sit at the desk and watch the lobby, and in the wee hours, as there was no one there, you could read or study or do anything except sleep. So I nominate security work for “ease of doing.” Most of the time.
Easiest sport has to be professional bowling. for certain values of “making a living.”
Not to denigrate bowlers, but I would imagine the percentage of the population that could become competitve at a professional level within a comparatively short time frame has to be much larger for bowling than for any other sport.