Is golf a sport?

Is golf a sport? This has always been something of debate, however, I believe that the answers can be varying amongst individuals when we really ask the question, what constitutes a sport? I think that the definition of sport is relatively open-ended. We often accept that sports that require high amounts of energy such as soccer and basketball are undisputably sports. But how about the more contentious ones such as golf? Well, I can say that I do think that golf is a sport. I think that a sport is something that requires athletic ability, a skill that one cannot just have but something that take years of continuous practice to perfect. I think that the image perpetuated by professional golf is based on the status quo of 20 maybe 30 years ago. This was at a point in time in which it is more common to have seen golfers smoking and drinking while playing on professional events. But I think the norm has shifted significantly. Today many of the top golfers such as Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson hit the gym very often. And when Golf.com asked an athletic trainer Joey Diovisalvi, what he thought about when people claim that golf players are not athletes he replied by saying that: “That’s ridiculous. That’s insulting.” The bottom line is that there can be arguments made from either side claiming that golf is or is not a sport. However, I can speak from experience that hitting a ball roughly 43mm with power and accuracy on a consistent basis is no easy feat.

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