Anyone who plays this wonderful game knows it’s hard.
It’s not only difficult in terms of getting that stupid little ball in that stupid little hole, but it’s also physically hard on a person’s body.
It doesn’t look it to those who don’t play, though. I mean, for those not intimately familiar with the sport, it just looks like we’re just hitting a ball with a stick, so we certainly aren’t ATHLETES, right?
I’m going to have to disagree.
Sports Fitness Advisor, a website dedicated to “scientifically-backed fitness advice for sport and life,” says it beautifully, I think.
“Make no mistake,” they write, “golfers, at any level, ARE athletes and the golf swing DOES require a great deal of athleticism.
“Strength, power, flexibility, balance, core stability, body awareness, even endurance… they’re all physical traits that every consistent golfer (even the fair-weather players) must possess.”
Even NFL football Hall-of-Famer Emmitt Smith, who many think of as the greatest running back of all time, told golf journalist David Feherty during a sit-down interview last year that he couldn’t golf during the football season because of the physical demands of the sport.
Not the demands of football – the demands of golf.
So if one of the most fit human beings on the planet says he couldn’t, even back in his prime, play both his sport and golf during the same period of the year, can we get a little recognition for how much physical effort we put in when we’re out there?
It’s actually dangerous how physical this game is.
In the medical book, The Athlete’s Shoulder, by Kevin Will, Michael Reinhold and James Rheuben Andrews, there’s a whole chapter on “Golfer’s Shoulder,” which reads, in part, “golf is a sport that requires athletic skills such as strength, power, flexibility and coordination to swing a golf club…” and goes on to cite scientific studies that say that 62 per cent of players cite golf as a contributing factor to injury.
And for those who don’t play, and just can’t believe it’s that physically taxing, I would like to issue a challenge: pick up a cheap golf club from a thrift store (or borrow one from a friend, who will gladly lend you one if you tell them what you’re doing with it) and just go outside and swing it 80 times as if you were playing golf – while you walk about 8 km. If you only want to simulate a round with a power cart, maybe only walk 2 or 3 km while making your swings.
But keep in mind many of us are usually swinging those clubs as hard as we can, because we’re not smart and don’t take less club than we should because we want to convince ourselves we’re stronger than we actually are. Our egos are complicated.
Also keep in mind that the worse you are at this game, the more you effort you exert because you’re taking more swings, and the more mileage you put on when you’re out there – because you’re not just walking up and down fairways but also trudging around in the trees.
And most of us aren’t very good.