Is Golf a Sport?

One of the constant questions about golfers is, are they athletes?  The honest answer is maybe, I would say there are very athletic golfers and then there are golfers that you wonder how they walk and chew gum at the same time.  I don’t know if golf is a sport.  What I see in this field, is that it is about fellowship and challenging yourself over and over again for a period of time against a golf course.  I watch men, women and children start their day with total optimism as they warm up on the range and putting green.  The first couple of holes the dopamine runs high as people feel out the day giving jabs to the course and sometimes taking the jabs.  Then something wonderful happens, performance transitions into camaraderie!  People start looking for each other’s golf ball, they pick up the other person’s towel on the green, compliment them on a well struck shot, or encourage them after a poorly struck one.  The next thing you know the end of the round is closer than the beginning and score has taken a back seat to the relationships that have been or are being established during the round of golf.  Then the group puts the flag back in the green on the 18th green, take off their hats, shake hands, but the experience isn’t over, it is just a commercial break until they arrive at everybody’s favorite hazard, the watering hole or the 19th!  This is the crescendo of the day!  You see groups of golfers discussing whether or not to eat or how the matches turned out, but my favorite view of all is seeing a parent sipping an adult beverage while their child consumes a Roy Rogers or Shirley Temple and does a once over to see if it is ok to have a second!  I don’t know if Golf is a Sport, this to me doesn’t describe any other sport I know and I love it!