Is golf a sport, or a game?

I was watching PGA.com’s live-streamed coverage of the PGA Championship this past weekend: as with a lot of tournaments that do online streaming, they had live streams for a couple select pairings of players, and didn’t keep switching between all the players like the TV broadcasts do. Even though it wasn’t one of the major-network, high-budget TV productions, I actually found I was enjoying the commentary a bit better than the usual network stuff.

Since they didn’t have to keep cutting to other golfers immediately after each shot, the commentators got to go into a bit more detail about the pairing they were following. It also happened to be probably more detail than the average TV viewer would appreciate, explaining every shot afterwards like, “Did you notice where Keegan Bradley’s chip shot landed before it rolled onto the green and came up short? Let’s take a look at this again. He should have flown it another foot – it landed on the fringe first, but it would have gotten a firmer bounce if it had landed on the green. That shot looked wide open, but he really had a slim margin of error.” The usual commentators would probably just have said, “Well, it came up short,” and then cut to the next player, but I felt like I had learned something I could apply to my own game. Another thing was, “That was a tough putt to read that Tiger just had, since it looked like it broke left-to-right, but it was sort of neutralized by the break on the right side of the hole, so it ended up being pretty straight.” I’m not sure what they meant by that, or how it’s even possible, but it was fantastic. Somehow, they also ended up talking about Timbits at one point.

And then while Keegan Bradley and Tiger Woods were finishing their short putts for par, the commentators got into that age-old debate: is golf a sport, or a game? They both firmly believed that it’s a sport, and watching the PGA Championship, I would tend to agree with them. They talked about the condition these players have to be in, and noted that if you want to play golf well, you have to do it as an athlete. That last part is something that had never occurred to me, and it raises some interesting questions.

The main acts of athleticism that pro golfers undertake during a round, as I understand it from my armchair, are that of walking the 7,000-yard golf course (which requires a fair amount of endurance), and more importantly, that of swinging a golf club with as much force as required for the shot while quieting one’s body and mind to reduce distracting movements and thoughts. And to do this well, modern-day pro golfers work out religiously with strength training and stretching, and they work with sports psychologists and chiropractors. Tiger Woods, and Gary Player before him, set an example of fitness for the pro golfers of their generations. But what about the rest of us?

I tend not to play golf as an athlete – contrary to what I’m sure must be the widespread public perception, I don’t work out – and this might be part of why I’m not a better golfer. But more than that, the two terms “sport” and “game” seem to have different connotations. Golf, to me, has lately been more of a leisure activity than an athletic activity, more a game than a sport. Perhaps it’s because I play so infrequently, and can’t really see how I improve as I get more experience at it (unlike with running, or navigating Toronto on crutches). In a way, improving my game doesn’t matter to me like it did when I was twelve: it’s just fun to be out there these days.

So maybe golf is a sport if you treat it like a sport, and a game if you treat it like a game? With golf, possibly more so than any other sport (even baseball), it’s possible to play in a totally casual, near-lazy way and still enjoy it: you don’t need to give 100% as often, so it’s a nice chance to explore the great outdoors, and a unique social environment.

On the other hand…it sounds like even the pros need to see golf as a game, lest they overthink their swing and forget to relax. I’m currently reading Moment of Glory: The Year Underdogs Ruled Golf, by one of my favourite authors, sportswriter John Feinstein, who explains the problem like this:

Golfers often talk about the key to improving being the ability not to make golf work. Tom Kite once said, “You have never heard someone say, ‘I’m going to go work golf.’ You say, ‘I’m going to go play golf'.’ You need to take that approach to your swing on the range. When it becomes work, you almost never get any better.” (pg. 59)

This vaguely zen philosophy is contrary to the modern sports ethic of constantly pushing oneself, and might be golf’s biggest differentiator as a sport. I’m reminded of the NFL coach who started his team’s training camp by holding up a football and saying, “Gentlemen, this is a football,” and going right back to basics. It’s like the best way to improve at these things is to step back for a moment, and keep them in perspective. Maybe golf is fundamentally a game – unless you want to get good at it, in which case it becomes a sport, and unless you want to get really good at it, in which case it sort of has to become a game again.

So…is golf a sport, or a game? I’d say the answer is “yes.”