Why (I guess) people love golf
(Republished from developerWorks: “Golf’s secret engine”)
As someone who doesn’t play golf at all, I’ve struggled to understand the fascination. But now I think I know. I think I’ve seen something as I drive along the road that bisects the municipal golf course here, where scores of golfers are out at all hours, in summer thunderstorms and near-dark, mostly standing around or lugging their big clubs over the green. There is a secret engine to golf-love, and it is that the game is extremely competitive, pitting one player directly against others, but totally serialized in its actual play. It’s the psychological concept of the partial schedule brought into microscopic, maddening relief.
You cannot swing while your opponent swings, or even right after he swings. You do not swing back at her or block her putt. You can’t strike him while he languidly plots his putt, though you’d like to. Between each hole there are long-ish periods where no one is playing at all, and golfers make it worse by getting into small little golf carts with one another and driving. You don’t yell things at your opponent or taunt her; you can’t practice or even prepare for your swing when the other golfers are teeing up. Instead—and this is the secret—you have to watch while your opponent waggles his hips and puts his thumb in the air, sites along his putter and rocks back and forth on his goofy, two-tone shoes. The waiting and watching is the thing! Adrenaline is coursing through your system, as it does in any good game, but it finds NO OUTLET. Rather, golfers are forced to stew in their own sport-hormonal juices and fecklessly regard adversaries—regard their competitive, can’t-stop-me preening! Because there is a lot of preening in golf, it seems to me. The formalized waiting-around of the game has created this performative aspect to golf, whereby the dude who is “up” gets to take his time, waggle, turn his back to his opponents and positively milk the slow, serialized, synchronous-transaction torture of it.
Surfing, which I do a lot of, has some aspects of this. Often there are so few waves or so few slots in the line-up that you end up watching your friends tear it up and trying to feel good for them as your testosterone melts the wax off your deck. But there isn’t a sport where this watching-and-schadenfreude is so intimate, so constant and built into the structure of the game itself, and so protracted by the actual performers themselves. It’s almost sadistic the way golfers are forced to wait around and watch their opponents—fully three-quarters of the players in a foursome are inert during game-play, and “game-play” in golf takes up no more than 10% of the time, as far as I can tell. At least in baseball, you’re occasionally throwing someone out at home while he’s sliding! Someone pitches a ball and another someone tries to hit that same ball, etc.
So you lose the golf game to a man whose back you’ve been glowering at for four hours, whose brisk, winning steps you’ve been trudging behind. And you swear you are going to get him next round, you promise yourself you’ll occupy the winners-podium-before-the-game-is-done that is that the tee, where you’ll waggle and harumph the wind, test the grips on your drivers for minutes before winding up.
I’m with you. I’ve never understood the attraction to golf. The expense, the time required to play, the petty conversations about the game’s minutiae, the waste of precious space, the exclusivity. It reminds me of a website called whitewhines.com, which is dedicated to those who have the gall to complain about access to abundance and material goods. I can think of a lot of other things I can do with my time than hit a ball around a course for four hours — and pay a premium for the privilege.
I’ve played sports all my life and never been attracted to golf, which doesn’t offer the exercise I crave in other sports.
[…] Original post by ian […]
Ian, you can state that golf is an extremely competitive sport and few would argue. My response is that golf isn’t half as competitive as, say, singles tennis, and for one very simple reason. Of the two sports there is only one where you hit a ball, and the ball comes back. At that split second when the ball is returned you have many decisions to make. Golfers hit a ball and move forward never having to contemplate what they would have to do if it was actually returned in their direction. To my mind there is no comparing the two; the physical and mental challenge it takes to win even a single tennis point is daunting. Granted both sports require a skill level and discipline far beyond what non-players can imagine. But only one is akin to physical chess, or boxing for that matter; you hit, and the hit comes back. What are you going to do now?
…and golfers are bird killers!
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/golf/pga/2008-03-06-isenhour-hawk_N.htm
Yes…I’m sure you’re right, Grant (re: competitive). I meant to suggest that the nature of the competition in golf — this serialized play and thwarted watching that makes up most of the game — gives us no outlet for our natures, no good way to flush it through the system.
I’m saying post-match tennis beers may go down easier than the 19th-holers.
Gentlemen gentlemen gentlemen… Were I an asshole I would simply say “You are not golfers so you can’t understand; by all means, go play tennis instead.” and leave it at that. But here’s the rub, as Hamlet would say. A mere comment cannot possibly do my response to this post any justice (which is not by any means a completely negative reaction…). So look for an entire post in the very near future titled “Why People Play Golf, Part I.”
David, I’ve played plenty of golf in my life, probably well over 100 rounds and from a very young age. For the past 18 years I’ve probably played tennis on average about 3 times a week. I believe I know both sports well enough to offer an informed opinion. I’ll allow my previous comment to stand on its own.
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