Golf #51 on ESPN's List of Hardest Sports

[Undr Par]

trust me, being out of shape walking 18 holes is much harder for me at this time in my life then when I was in HS and played Football & Baseball, I ache more then next day in my knees and back then I ever did during a entire season.....so Golf for me has to be higher then 51st....

[bogeyhitter25]

basketballs number 4? i dont agree with that at all. golf should be in the top 2 with ufc, and russian roulette.

[WilsonWill]

Im not trying to start anything, Im simply stating my opinion, that golf is not a sport. Its a skill like chess or poker (another argument there). Its a more physical skill than those, but its no more a sport than fishing or hunting, neither of which is a sport. Its a skill for which you use specialized tools to complete it.

[seattlesfinest]

According to this ranking, Table Tennis is harder than Golf.

They really ended the credibility at #30 with Badminton. :)

[Mully]

I don't know... badminton gets pretty rough.

[RussianCarl]

According to this ranking, Table Tennis is harder than Golf.

Seriously? Have you played Table Tennis? It is very hard to play even mildly competitively. You should see the reaction time, the dexterity, the speed, and the strength it requires to hit a tiny ball traveling 50-60mph on such a tiny table.

Maybe you should watch a clip on YouTube of the professionals. It really isn't that easy and I would say it is at least as hard as golf. All the comments on this thread say they don't take into account the finesse and techniques required of the sport, but don't you realize that it takes just as much for Table Tennis? Don't bash what you don't know.

[Wisco-Kid]

Come on Golf is only 9 slots harder then fishing? Yeah right that is a joke!

[Divot]

Im not trying to start anything, Im simply stating my opinion, that golf is not a sport. Its a skill like chess or poker (another argument there). Its a more physical skill than those, but its no more a sport than fishing or hunting, neither of which is a sport. Its a skill for which you use specialized tools to complete it.

So are you saying it is on par with darts, bocce, or croquet?

[Maverick]

..Because, let's face it, compared to skating or snowboarding or skiing, or even baseball,

I disagree with your logic here. Why would you think think almost everyone with a "semblance" of hand eye coordination would hit a golf ball, but then the your same logic would apply that almost everyone would swing three times at a thrown baseball and miss? Or for that matter always fall off a surfbaord or snowboard? and table tennis? All you're doing is discounting the difficulty of golf in your argument here.

Golf is among the simplest in terms of just picking up some equipment somewhere and trying it out and having at least a modicum of success and enjoyment.

Once again, I think you're discounting golf again. Then isn't it the same "in the simplest in terms" that baseball is picking up a stick and trying to hit a thrown object, snowboarding is just getting on top of a piece of wood and going downhill, etc.

[JumpHigh_HitHard]

I think that this list does a decent job on rating sports on overall difficulty. I think the criteria they used to judge sports gives an accruate (if somewhat subjective) primer for rating difficulty. The only disagreements I have with the lists are scores they give to certain sports.

For example, I think golf was underscored on the Analytic Aptitude and nerve scores. As was mentioned before, golf is primarily a mental game. And while golfers aren't making high-pressured decisions like Joe Montana evaluating a defense while 250lb linebackers are breathing down his neck, the decision making process is still stressful. As for the nerve score, I also wonder if the panelists have ever had to sink a 5 footer for a $2 skin, let alone a major championship.

Even though I am a die-hard golfer I have to agree with the other rakings in areas like strength, power, speed, endurance, etc. While these traditional athletic attributes can be immensly important, they aren't as crucial as in other sports. The point is Tiger Woods' athelticism puts him well above other professional golfers, but I could never see him playing corner back for an NFL team or playing rugby for a national team.

Although I hear he is phenomenal ping-pong player...

[four1seven]

i disagree with that list as well. golf may not be as pfysically demanding, but the competitiveness and mental game is second to none.

I race motocross, GNCC's, hare scrambles - on the A level and agree it is a lot more difficult than some if not most of the sports listed there.

[JKilgore44]

I have been thinking about this list a lot since I originally read the list and having played the majority of the sports listed, I feel as though I have an accurate opinion on the level of difficulty of each.

First off, I believe that golf is by far the hardest game I've personally played. I also believe that games such as water polo and rodeo events can be harder than golf in many ways. A lot of the reason golf has been listed so low is because of endurance, nerve, and agility. I think that this is an unfair assessment of the game. I can testify that walking 36 holes while carrying your own bag with about two-dozen balls (practice and game balls) in the 100 degree summer heat of Texas is a true test of endurance. It is far more difficult to perform on your 32nd hole when you're battling heat exhaustion and dehydration than if your playing in the 4th quarter of a football game. I know this from my own personal experience. As far as the nerve ranking goes, the makers of this list have obviously never had to stand over a 7ft par putt to win a tournament. When a tournament is on the line, and you're looking at 7ft putt for victory, it takes a lot of nerve to find that stroke. Agility is commonly over-looked in golf. I believe that balance and agility often go hand-in-hand. I would like to see someone with no balance play golf. They would fall over on every big swing.

I'm not saying that golf is the hardest game that's ever been made, but I am suggesting that golf is in the top 15 hardest games ever made. It is harder than badminton, table tennis, auto-racing, football, basketball, handball, and surfing combined.

If you were to take an average person and allow them to practice any of these sports for 3-hours a day, I am willing to bet that they would succeed in any of them more so than golf. Even the harder sports, like football or basketball, would be easier to aquire than golf. I'm not saying that thhe average person is going to be able to be able to come out and be Peyton Manning or LeBron James or anything like that, but to I'm sure they would be able to aquire the basic skills it takes to be competent in that sport, ie the ability to use the body to tackle or to shoot a jump shot. Whereas, if you consider golf in the same context, even with good coaching, a player cannot pick up the game in a week. A player could probably learn to putt fairly decent they directed all the practice time to it, or maybe hit a straight shot, but they probably couldn't break 100.

Just my thoughts...

[Bignose]

I disagree with your logic here. Why would you think think almost everyone with a "semblance" of hand eye coordination would hit a golf ball, but then the your same logic would apply that almost everyone would swing three times at a thrown baseball and miss? Or for that matter always fall off a surfbaord or snowboard? and table tennis? All you're doing is discounting the difficulty of golf in your argument here.

Maverick, you're comparing hitting a still object sitting on the ground versus hitting a moving obejct with another moving object when the person throwing the ball is intentionally making it as hard as possible to hit that ball. They are completely different. Especially when the pitcher starts learning (intentionally or unintentionally) how to not throw the ball "straight". I put straight in quotes there since no ball is perfectly straight, but not straight in terms of being able to cause the ball to break in directions other than solely due to gravity. I think you are seriously discounting how much harder hitting a moving ball is than hitting a still one. As someone said, table tennis isn't all that easy, especially when you start seeking some good competition. And, sure, skating or snowboarding is just standing on a board, but that isn't that easy of a task, both physically or mentally. Physically because you can't just stand there and ride -- you have to keep your balance in a pretty different situation than normal life. And mentally, because your brain knows that the chance of getting seriously hurt on a skateboard or snowboard is much higher than normal. Sure, golf has its risks, but they are pretty much insignificant compared to the risks of skating or snowboarding. For that matter, there is far more risk in baseball than golf -- a batter and even a fielder is going to get hit by the ball a lot more often than a golfer. Now, if you want to compare slow-pitch softball and golf, I think those are very serious. The pitcher in slow-pitch isn't there so much to try to make the batter miss the ball as he is there to provide balls that can be hit -- that is, not walk the batter. And, the pitches are similar to one another, and not fast enough to really be able to introduce much spin like a baseball, that again, anyone with some decent hand-eye coordination should be able to hit the ball fairly often. But baseball and golf are incomparable in my mind.

[iacas]

Maverick, you're comparing hitting a still object sitting on the ground versus hitting a moving obejct with another moving object when the person throwing the ball is intentionally making it as hard as possible to hit that ball.

And yet, missing by 1/8 inch or five degrees in one sport results in BAD things, while in another sport can result in home runs or hits or whatever. As I've heard said, "in golf, we play our foul balls."

I think you are seriously discounting how much harder hitting a moving ball is than hitting a still one.

Sure, but golf isn't a matter of "just making contact."

If you told someone who'd never heard of golf that you were going to make a 4 1/4" hole in the ground, give them some funny looking sticks, put them 400 yards away, and tell them they had four chances to get the ball in the hole, they'd laugh.

As someone said, table tennis isn't all that easy, especially when you start seeking some good competition.

Neither is beating Tiger Woods. Golf is pretty tough when you "start seeking some good competition."

We just talked about this in the podcast, and I think some of the ratings are pretty stupid. Analytic ability - horse racing has more? Huh? And hand-eye coordination is LOW for golf? The "nerves" rating is laughable. I think some of the ratings are pretty off - for several sports. I'd say this is ESPN's way of getting back at the PGA Tour for the 15-year TGC deal, but they're the ones that walked out of the talks, so that ain't it...

[Bignose]

iacus, you are missing the point in my first post that at the very beginning golf is an easier sport. The ball is just sitting there. The pitching wedge isn't that long of a club.

Compare that with baseball where even if the pitcher is trying to help you hit the ball (like at practice) it is very easy to whiff time and time again.

I've seen this several times... People who are all-around good athlethes, people who play soccer, football (American for the international members), run marathons, just don't have the initial skills to hit a thrown ball with a round bat if they haven't done it since childhood or ever before. ("Initial" is carefully chosen, because I have little doubt they'd get better with practice.) And, yes, I'm not saying that these people are expert golfers, but at least they can hit the ball in the general direction of where they are aiming almost every time. Not great, frankly probably not even good, but in the general direction. These same people will strike out swinging time and time again at slow pitch softball.

This is what I am talking about -- initial skills taken to play the game. I agree that at the expert/top level of the game, ESPN did not give golf enough credit.

But, you take an average person who never golfed before and get them a bucket of range balls and a pitching wedge or 8 iron and let them have at it, and they will hit the ball fairly often and generally in the direction where they aimed it.

Give the average person who never played baseball or softball a bat and a fistful of tokens to the batting cage and they'll just flail away time and time again, hitting maybe 10%.

Give the average person who never bowled before a ball, and they'll probably get the hang of it pretty quick. Even an absolulte beginner has probably something like a 2-4% chance of rolling a strike.

This is why I think that golf is down there with the company it keeps. Golf has a gentle intial learning curve. It gets fairly steep fairly quick, but it's initial learning curve is friendly. It is hitting a still ball with a short stick, and almost anybody can do that.

[bigphil]

cheerleading is 52!? and golf is 51????....seriously

[bigphil]

If you told someone who'd never heard of golf that you were going to make a 4 1/4" hole in the ground, give them some funny looking sticks, put them 400 yards away, and tell them they had four chances to get the ball in the hole, they'd laugh.

Exactly! they would say thats impossible!

[mphsglf]

iacus, you are missing the point in my first post that at the very beginning golf is an easier sport. The ball is just sitting there. The pitching wedge isn't that long of a club.

While I think I understand your point, I don't really agree with it. First, golf is more than just hitting the ball. You have to actually get it in the hole. Hitting a golf ball 'generally where you aim it' and getting a ball 400 yards onto a green and into the hole are two very different things. Just like making contact with a baseball and actually getting it out of the infield are two very different things. The initial skills required to do many of the sports listed (throw/catch a football, do a cartwheel, snow ski, etc.) are quickly picked up. While I understand that it is extremely difficult to hit a baseball with a bat, I don't think the 'initial learning curve' theory holds water.