I wouldn’t say that baseball is athletic, or that it requires physical prowess, unless you include the actual techniques you learn to hit or throw a pitch, catch a fly ball, or run around the bases.
In other words, “Huh?”. If you don’t include the part about trying to make the ball go where you want to go, what is there left to golf? That’s the entire game!
And yes, if we’re using a definition of “sport” that includes golf, then snooker and darts are also sports. Is this a problem? In fact, if we use the “defense” criterion (which eliminates golf, most target sports, and most track-and-field events), then snooker actually remains a sport even though golf is not.
One could argue they are sports. It’s a semantic argument, after all; I’d be quite happy classifying video games as, well, “Video games,” not sports but not non-physical games.
Games that are not sports involve games that have no physical skill element at all - Scrabble, for instance - and those that a light argument can be made that they do, like chess (concentration, endurance) or poker (ability to avoid tells, and to read tells.) Chess and poker are not sports to me, but a person determined to prove they are elements of physical skill involved in them can sort of argue they are. It’s a lame argument, IMHO, but it can be made. There isn’t any definition we’ll all agree on…
… but golf is a sport. To my mind that one is really not debatable.
The problem with this as a definition is that you’re now defining games as being sports based on who’s playing them. So if a bunch of major league ballplayers - who, despite what people think, are almost invariably excellent athletes - play baseball, it’s a sport. But if ordinary people play baseball, then suddenly it’s not a sport. But it’s the same game; being played at a lower level of quality doesn’t make it not a sport.
Conversely, I think most here will agree Monopoly is not a sport, but if Michael Vick and Michael Phelps play Monopoly, that doesn’t make it a sport because they’re in great shape.
…
dtilique, I assure you, you can get a muscle cramp golfing. Stretch before you play.
I’ve heard the “objective criteria” requirement proposed many times by many people, and it’s always seemed totally arbitrary to me. Why should that matter?
It always seems like the purpose is just to exclude figure skating.
“Objective criteria” excludes things that are purely artistic.
Figure skating does have a technical element to it. Granted, that technical element is judged, but I would argue that the existence of judgment is so common to sport that it’s pointless to exclude it. Almost all sports have judges of some kind, even if their task is very simple, and as any hockey or basketball fan can tell you, subjective differences between judges can make big differences in result.
I’d be inclined to call figure skating a sport, though one that, regrettably, has a history of extraordinary corruption and cheating amongst judges (especially in, specifically, ice dancing, which went years and years without having a legitimately contested international competition.) But that’s true of other sports too.
Golf is a game of controlled violence. It is tough on the body as Tiger Woods injuries clearly show. He is in great physical condition and gets injured regularly. Lots of golfers get hurt. Bad backs are common. Knee operations are common.
Damn right it is a sport.
My kind of sport. You can have a giant beer gut (mine’s only so-so now – damned long winter) and chain smoke while playing. I guess bowling is that kind of sport too, or pool/billiards. You can have quite developed muscles and still be a fatass and still smoke like in the days of Arnie’s Army. Not a sport.
Propositional attitudes count, though, I suppose. I play tennis often, but the way I play it, it’s more like a game – a highly specialized, rigorous game like chess. J/k, but that’s the way it’s played in my dreams with my fatbody and with utmost control.
My wife claims that competitive cheerleading is a sport, which just made me realize a new criterion: if you have to add the word “competitive” or “competition” to the description to make it clear you’re watching a competitive event, it is NOT a sport. No one says they’re watching a “golf competition.”
In this part of the world, if you play a round of golf any time from May to September inclusive and do not shower afterwards, I don’t want to stand downwind of you.
I meant a heat cramp. The kind you get from low electrolytes or maybe an imbalance in them. Like Nadal got during the post-match press conference yesterday. Stretching won’t help you avoid those.
They’re misnamed, because you can get them even if it’s not hot out and if you stay hydrated, you can avoid them if it is.
We had this debate in my office. The conclusion is that golf is an “activity”, not a sport.
The test is, if you can chew tobacco and still compete then you are doing an activity. If you can’t be competitive while chewing tobacco then you are probably playing a sport. This means that baseball is an activity as well as golf, darts, poker and many other fine games.
I agree there is an objective way of winning in boxing, but how much of a subjective amount are we allowing? Olympic boxing, for example, comes down more and more often to the judges’ cards - even, IIRC, if the fight is stopped it goes to the cards, rather than there being a TKO.
To me (and of course, my word is FINAL on this topic as on all topics, so hear well O ye people :D), for an activity to be considered “a sport” involves four things:
[ol]
[li]Having a clear, objective winner from among at least 2 participants (possibly subject to impartial judging of qualifying conditions like “it was out of bounds”, “false start”, etc.). To be a sport, the result must be measured against outcomes by other people.[/li][li]Having all participants know the criteria for winning, even if it’s different for different participants, like if there are different handicaps. No “you’ll find out if you win out of the black box”.[/li][li]Having participants know the current standing during the event, while it is still possible to change one’s actions to optimize the chances of winning or placing highly. (But something like a single heat race with only once track may give later participants a “knowledge edge”, if the first guy out has no field to measure against and no second chance at another pass.)[/li][li]All participants are playing to win. If it’s just exercise or something done cursorily to pass the time, it’s not a sport.[/li][/ol]
So, to go out golfing by one’s lonesome, or to shoot “Around The Clock” solo on a basketball court, is not “engaging in a sport” per se, but is practice or rehearsal for a sport. Make it a game of 1-on-1 HORSE or a golf outing with a buddy and it’s playing a sport.
The great thing about #4 is that just about any human endeavor can acquire a competitive angle and become a sport. Even the everyday, universal act of eating can gain the trappings of sport when it becomes Competitive Eating. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Sleep-A-Thon championships somewhere out there.
While athleticism and strategy are high factors for spectator interest, they are not requirements for being a sport - just for holding my attention or earning my respect. Sometimes human ingenuity for the strategic element can surprise, though; I started to take greater interest in “Competive Eating” when I found out Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi shattered the standing record of 24-1/4 hot dogs eaten at the Nathan’s July 4th Contest by an astounding margin by eating FIFTY (50) of them. Never before had a standing record been broken in one outing by more than DOUBLE. He did this by means of a technique he called the “Solomon Method”, breaking each bunless hot dog in half to double the bandwidth, so to speak, and then to eat the bun dipped in water (to reduce its volume). Hats off to the Tsunami!
That doesn’t mean I respect or care about all “sports” equally. For example, sports with subjective judging like Figure Skating, Gymnastics or Diving skirt very close to breaking Rule #2. Sure all the contestants in a given contest are being judged by the same people, but the subjectivity of it all bugs the hell out of me - the potential for a judge being swayed by the crowd reaction, or bending over backwards in the other direction to avoid being swayed by the crowd, or stubbing his/her toe against the table in the middle of a performance.
So, to answer the OP: the activity of golf is only a sport if you care about beating at least one other person’s score in the same session (on the same course on the same day), who in turn also cares about beating YOUR score. You’re out to prove that one of you is better than the other, with bragging rights (if not money) on the line. Your “own personal best” doesn’t count.
I don’t think there needs to be a physical element to be a sport. Being a competitive person myself, I would like to think of Chess, Bridge and Scrabble as at least “mental sports”. If you need to practice to improve, keep in training and always be on guard against new techniques from your opponents, it’s a sport.
The classic paradigm of sport, the Olympic Games, were meant to showcase athleticism of course, and I agree that’s the most universally appealing expression of sport - as a not-so-subtle metaphor for battle or for warfare, especially one-on-one sports of physical domination like wrestling or boxing.
As for hunting - it could be a sport if there is some guarantee of a level playing field. The problem is that simply competing to see who bags the biggest buck is unfair because it’s not necessarily the case that everyone had an equal chance to bag him in the first place. Though there’s room for “luck of the draw” in sports, too - if the conditions of contest are “who can bag the biggest buck in this agreed-upon area in this specified period of time”, then perhaps strategies involving stalking, staking out and luring prey outweigh the simple odds of having a 7-pointer walk in front of you willy-nilly at the last minute, seeking a painless death
Though apparently I need to add another point to the list to specify that the result of the contest must be dictated by one’s own actions - the demonstration of skill or ability in excess of one’s opponent. Otherwise, playing Wednesday Night Bingo would qualify as a sport!
