The World's Hardest, Most Difficult Sport?

[JonMA1]

Golf has been the most difficult sport for me to make any sizable progress with. I've posted before that other sports seemed to be easy get to the level of average.

But there are a couple of things that kind of bug me.

First, I started playing other sports at a young age and started golf at about 50. It's reasonable to assume that learning the game as a child might have made a difference.

Second, other sports involve competing against other individuals at various skill levels who may or may not be putting forth a lot of effort. While course ratings can be inconsistent, the idea is to make the degree of difficulty somewhat uniform from course to course.

My point is that skill level in golf is measured quantitatively, while judging my skill level in other sports is nearly 100% subjective.

So I've competed against and worked out with athletes who played at D2 and higher level of athletics. I've run, thrown and caught passes for TD's, gotten base hits, thrown out runners trying to stretch a single into a double, taken a couple games in a set, made jumps shots and steals, take downs...  all against athletes capable of playing at a fairly high level of athletics.

None of that really matters because it's impossible to say how hard they were trying at the time. Also, those are the things that I remember the most. There have been far, far more failures. It's simply easier to remember the successes and then look back and blindly think, Yeah, I was an ok athlete.

Unless I'm talking about golf. I have two years worth of score cards that remind me otherwise.

Golf is hard for sure. But the fact that it's a 100% honest assessment of my ability is likely what makes it seem harder than most other sports.

[PEZGolf]

On December 19, 2015 at 8:10 PM, 9wood said:

The worlds hardest, most difficult sport?  

http://www.dba-oracle.com/t_worlds_hardest_most_difficult_sport.htm

This is a great article

I agree, and there are several consequences of the game's difficulty:

1. Task of growing the game. The stats from the NGF show the game is stagnant in the US, in terms of the number of golfers and rounds played.God bless women! If not for their increasing numbers, the overall stats would be worse!
2. Declining appeal among the young. Today's youth are turned off by the difficulty of learning the game and the amount of time to play 9 or 18 holes. The near future's prospects are NOT good.
3. Because of the game's difficulty, there is always a demand for professional instruction. And good teaching pros make a good living since they charge $75 an hour up to $1,000 an hour (Butch Harmon).
4. Many golf courses are struggling financially, and are closing or being sold at a reduced price. It is a buyers market.  And they are worth more as a possible development project than an operating golf course.

There are always "exceptions to the rule", and my area here in Central New York is one of them (see the Topic I just started).

[Pretzel]

9 hours ago, PEZGolf said:

 

1. Because of the game's difficulty, there is always a demand for professional instruction. And good teaching pros make a good living since they charge $75 an hour up to $1,000 an hour (Butch Harmon)

That tends to not really be the case. At many courses the course itself gets a large cut of that lesson profit, rather than the instructor, and most golf professionals are not in it for the money (because the money isn't great). 

[iacas]

1 hour ago, Pretzel said:

That tends to not really be the case. At many courses the course itself gets a large cut of that lesson profit, rather than the instructor, and most golf professionals are not in it for the money (because the money isn't great). 

Yeah, very few instructors make good money.