By Tim Robertson
Can someone explain how whale-sized John Daly is considered an athlete? Doesn’t an athlete, oh maybe, need to be in good physical shape, as opposed to a giant sphere?
Many sports purists struggle to label certain individuals athletes, John Daly certainly is one of them. He proves that you don’t need to play golf sober or without clogged arteries to play well.
Golf represents one of those games that many have a difficult time labeling a sport, because athletes play sports, especially at the professional level. And one doesn’t need any sort of athleticism to play 18 holes.
No one is calling into question the athleticism of Tiger Woods, and the advantage he has due to his unparalleled strength, but he doesn’t need it to play the game. Look at his biggest rival, Phil Mickelson. Phil isn’t going to show up in a GNC commercial any time soon.
Even worse, if someone wants to play golf just to get out of the house and join a couple drinking buddies for a recreational round on Sunday, he can hop in a cart and ride around all day long. The only exercise he gets is walking from the cart to the tee and back, from the cart to the green and back, and to the bar and the stumble back.
It’s important to understand that someone can attempt to show off his athleticism at a real sport, stink it up, but he still is considered an athlete – just walk onto the basketball court at the Recreation Center any day of the week. Golfers don’t qualify for this distinction.
A sport requires a certain amount of risk of injury. How many pulled a hamstring or had to undergo Tommy John surgery? Zilch could be a near estimate.
Also failing to make the cut as a sport is NASCAR. Once again, athletes play sports, not stiffed arm people strapped in for hours looking straight ahead making no physical movements outside of their wrists. Many say NASCAR drivers lose a lot of weight during a race, therefore cars traveling in a circle is a sport, and the drivers serve as the athletes. Wrong.
If someone who loses weight while doing something, he is an athlete, should we then call Wii boxers athletes?
What makes the car go, and therefore the purpose of the event, is the car itself, not the human behind the wheel. The car, with a “beating heart,” also known as an engine, is better qualified for the label of athlete than the drivers themselves, but because a car is an inanimate object, it is not an athlete, and NASCAR is not a sport.
It is understandable that some may argue that Babe Ruth was not the epitome of an athlete, and granted his beer belly made him half the size of John Daly, but his sheer hitting power, especially for that time, his ability to pitch, and track down balls in the outfield made him an athlete, beer gut and all.
Someone just needs to compare NASCAR and golf to the real sports, like football, hockey, basketball, rugby, soccer and lacrosse to understand that while car racing may qualify as a popular hobby and golf a great game to play, sports they are not.
I would venture to say competitive cheerleading is more of a sport than golf and NASCAR… combined. After all, rarely do cheerleaders look like beached whales with beer guts.