The original game as invented by bored semi-drunk Scots was, I’m sure, a good laugh several hundred years ago with wee sticks and a random round thing.
The modern game and all its hideous capitalist/ classist cultural connotations is fucked.
The original game as invented by bored semi-drunk Scots was, I’m sure, a good laugh several hundred years ago with wee sticks and a random round thing.
Robin Williams did a great bit on this.
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Good Bot!
Thanks I’ll have a look.
I have it on good authority that golf was in fact invented by Bandrobas Took during the Battle of Greenfields.
🙄 modern home is just as accessible as any sport that requires gear eg hockey. Even more so. You folks just looking for enemies.
Cope harder
Tell me that you’re poor without telling me that you’re poor.
Tell me you’re an asshole without telling me you’re an asshole.
Tell me you’re American without telling me you’re American.
Hating poor people is as American as you can get. You should fit right in.
Well, not American, but I can tell you are a Classist asshole.
Uh, what?
How dare someone be poor! Anyone who makes that choice is doing it to be offensive!
Why does it matter if they’re poor or not?
Didn’t you know? If you’re poor, you’re supposed to be ashamed of it because it means you didn’t try hard enough to not be poor.
Jesus HATES poor people. It’s the American Way!
Drag’em, squiddy
Basically what they’re really saying here is that anyone with money would agree with them and have no issues with the negative impacts of golf because it’s something that all financially well-off people enjoy. Therefore, if you have any issue with golf in any way, it must be because you don’t have the money to enjoy it, because every single person that ever lived is in love with golf, and the only reason anyone might have for not golfing is lack of funds.
Of course the nonsense needs no explanation, but that’s the angle they were going for, and why they’re rightly being ridiculed for it.
For someone who spends so much time talking about growing up in poverty, this is a surprisingly callous thing to say.
Poverty sucks. Don’t be poor.
Depression sucks. Don’t be depressed.
Does that work too?
Ofc.
You have to be joking.
tell me you’re a classist prick with more money than sense, oh no, wait, you’ve already done so.
Well, I recently learned of the existence of Excel competitions, so I’m not sure about the ‘most boring’ part.
Some people really excel at spreadsheets.
Jus’ gonna leave this here:
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If you don’t see the beauty in the orchestrated beauty of Excel macros and formulae, then there’s no helping you.
What about VBA? Remote data? Python?
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Nope, this is better than golf.
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That’s horrifying, if you have the forbidden knowledge of what people only program in excel is capable of
Wait until you hear about the laws in place that guarantee them access to water their fields no matter the drought. Nobody has heard of an unkempt golf course.
Not just that, but I found a few golf courses in my city where natural habitats used to be. These place could have easily been changed into nature parks for the local residents to go wind down a bit, but noooOOOooo. Some rich assholes had to buy the land and destroy the ecosystem so they could whack a ball around some fucking grass into a little hole.
Would there be a difference to the sport if a part of the land was just left natural? I expect it would make the sport more interesting, atleast to the spectators.
It was invented in Scotland. Where there’s grass everywhere and almost no trees. Why not just play in natural landscapes that are suited for the game?
The golf course near me has spent the last month about a foot underwater.
I have never been so smug. I hope it’s ruined.
IMHO sport is a misnomer. “Game” seems more fitting to me.
I’m always interested in this take. By definition,.it’s clearly a sport.
How do you define sport and how does it not meet the definition? It’s a game of physical skill, mental concentration, and competition.
I have always viewed it as a sport involves and active defensive player and an overall greater level of physical movement
Motorsports have no defensive player and do not involve much physical movement (unless you count the car’s movement).
Giving a cat a bath involves a defensive player (the cat) and significant physical movement (depends on the cat’s mood).
Giving the cat a bath (other than the weird one I had that loved water) is classified as a blood sport.
Part of the definition of a sport is that it accomplishes absolutely nothing useful at all, other than entertainment, thought about it and perhaps fitness. Bathing a cat is not a sport because it actually has a useful goal, I.e. cleaning a cat.
Fuck that, I’m starting a competitive cat bathing club.
I would say that getting healthier and fitter is absolutely useful, and so is entertainment.
But anyways, some sports can be useful for training purposes (Ever heard of the Firefighter Olympics? It’s really cool).
Also there’s also stuff like people jogging/biking to go places, and sailing maybe can also fall into this category though I don’t think it’s a thing anymore. (IIRC in the 1700s there was a sort of sport where ships would race each other across the Atlantic to deliver stuff as fast as possible. Not sure though, take with grain of salt.)
There’s still people who sail to get to a destination. It’s a bit of a rich person thing, though. Even without a motor, boats are holes in the water that you sink money into. More so if it has to be ocean-going.
Fishing has entered the chat.
Definitely a defensive participant and an offensive participant, but way less physical activity like 90% of the time.
Sport shooting as well.
sport fucking
You haven’t played golf with me. Better watch your balls as you have your legs open to swing.
physical skill
Is this is a suggestion that golf doesn’t take physical skill?
masterbating takes more skill
I guess I can see how someone who struggles to find their tiny dick might find masturbation to be very difficult.
My dick is heavier than a golf club.
I can see how that would also make it extremely difficult.
Where do you draw the line between sports and games? Are sports competitive where games are fun? Is poker a sport? Are video games capable of being sports? What could be done to golf that would make it a sport? Are all sports games if not all games are sports?
These are the questions that keep me up at night.
Not saying I hold this opinion myself but I think people that say this usually draw the line to physical exertion being required.
When I think of sport I think of anything where one sweats due to physical exertion.
I sweat playing rocket league and working on my car, but they’re not sports.
If you can play it while drinking a beer it isn’t a sport.
Any sport can be played while drinking a beer if you put your mind to it and believe in yourself.
Chess is a sport, and one can absolutely play chess drunk
No it isn’t.
I mean you can believe what you want, but you’re factually incorrect
Ever hear of Beer league hockey, sport?
I would piss my colleague off by telling him he’s got a nice hobby…
Good. They need to accept reality.
Oh that just made him angry, I always added that no sport has the winner of a major tournament in their mid 40s.
I mean… Tom Brady was a super bowl MVP in his 40s.
Chris Chelios won a Stanley Cup in his 40s.
But your point is well taken nonetheless.
But that’s a team sport though. If we compare that to tennis the oldest tournament winner is Rosewall in the 70s at 37 years old and more recently Federer in 2018 at 36 years old.
Definitely a fair point.
Sports that are more based on endurance than sprinting tend to have older people who do well. Mid-40s is pushing it for championship level, but you can still be competitive at that stage, and still participate well into old age if you don’t have any major health/injury issues.
I actually get exhausted playing golf - but that’s because I’m BAD at it. Apparently I put too much force into my swing. Every time I’ve tried to play I get told to relax and “let the club to the work”.
So they literally have these weighted sticks to reduce the amount of frickin effort required to hit the ball.
It’s not a sport. It’s an ANTI-sport. The less you try the better you’ll be.
Can you imagine if we had an Olympic running sport to see who the slowest runner was? That’s what golf is. Get the weakest, limpest, vitamin-defficient humans and see how accurately they can hit a tiny ball into a hole.
It was invented by the Scots as a joke against the English while they all go and compete in proper sports like caber tossing and hammer throwing.
Or to keep it short, know that John Daly is one of the greats of the sport. Look up a picture of John Daly dated any time in the last 30 years, and you’ll know how hilarious that is.
And people complain that Starcraft isn’t a sport.
Is chess a sport?
As much as assaulting fish is a sport. Much more reasonable and intellectual though
Do you move a lot during chess (yourself, not the pieces :P)?
I move my balls, but that’s a different story.
As an environmentalist, fuck Kentucky bluegrass, fuck golf, and fuck lawns while we’re at it
I agree lawns are dumb but from an environmental perspective they can be net carbon sinks, which I found surprising. Though they are still bad for other environmental reasons.
Hey fuck environmental diversity, we’ve got carbon sinks. What a fucking joke.
Nothing can sink any more carbon than its weight plus any bits that fall or get taken and don’t rot. Worse, for most plants most of the weight is water, not carbon-containing organic compounds.
So lawns might be “net” carbon sinks only when compared to the extreme case of leaving the ground bare (or worse, asphalted), but only whilst they’re growing (they don’t really retain any additional carbon after grown and any grass mowned will just return the carbon back to the air when it rots and a lot of it will be Methane, a worse greehouse gas than CO2) and they’re a lot worse at it per unit of area than, say, trees or even just the natural ground cover in just about any land environment but desert.
That’s why I dig up my lawn every year and bury it underground inside sealed plastic bags
I’m doing my part!
Asphalt is definitely a carbon sink though since it’s a petroleum product!
It is if one does not count the heavy hydrocarbons taken from raw crude and used to make asphalt in the maths of carbon pulled out of the Earth originally when the oil is pumped out - in other words, if one blames the lighter stuff used in fuel for the actual oil extraction and then just goes with “well, now that we have this stuff out, might as well use the heavy stuff for asphalt”.
Otherwise its adds up to a carbon source because even though the fraction of crude oil that ends up used for asphalt has it’s extraction from underground sources offset by that stuff ending up back on the ground as asphalt, the various processes between it coming out of the ground and it ending back on the ground do emit CO2 and some light hydrocarbons.
Sure, nowhere as bad as fuel and gas, but still a net negative.
I mean if you want to talk about sequestering carbon, there’s all sorts of natural lawn options that aren’t actively planting an invasive species that has proven to be really bad at doing any sort of water filtration or absorption. In fact, I’d wager that planting (and letting grow) prairie or whatever your native biome supports probably sequesters more carbon, assuming your native ecosystems aren’t straight up desert. Even if they are, you’re now using so much less water that it’s a huge net win there.
BUT ITS SPORT BRO AND MY DAD PLAY D IT ONCE
Las Vegas has something like 70 golf courses wasting inordinate amounts of water. Of course most houses also have outside private swimming pools too.
Vegas actually is a poor example, they have excellent water management policy even in spite of what is typically considered wasteful. Being so far down the Colorado River Basin kinda made being experts on the subject a necessity.
Of course it has excellent water management because otherwise they’d run out. Doesn’t mean that everyone having pools and so many golf courses is anyway defensible, or doesn’t put insane stress on the supply.
Right. Lake Mead is sure looking lovely these days.
Lake mead is being drained from the other direction into Utah and you’d have known that before commenting if you’d actually looked that shit up before going to say something that spectacularly unaware of what’s going on.
Vegas actually net zeros their allotment of the water share every year, as far as Mead is considered, Vegas almost doesn’t exist.
the whole “net-zero allotment of water shares” bit is about as accurate as “flint water is within regulation guidelines of lead”
Vegas got it’s “net zero” by appropriating the water shares of surrounding regions via the magic of lobbying
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every golf course could be a lovely botanical garden/park or arboretum, with little paths every which way and carefully crafted scenery to make you feel like you’re inside a disney movie
You see this?
I used to hike along the coast there quite regularly but someone decided it was much better to turn the whole thing into a gulf course and to illegally block access to locals.
Edit: Of course they also chose the driest part of the island.
Where is this? California has strict regulations about the actual beach access. So e.g. Pebble Beach is in one of the most beautiful locations in all of Northern California, ridiculously expensive and nearly impossible to play as a mortal, but you can still go drive around 17 mile drive through the course and walk along the coastal trails for free.
It’s in st Lucia in the Caribbean.
There is regulations for beach access too here where all the coastline need to be accessible to the public.
So far with this particular resort they are doing everything they can to discourage people from coming in and showed a strong disdain for the local community.
Maybe they should be on the lookout for people pouring cement into the golf holes.
AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING ON EACH SIDE. Seattle estimated they could solve the housing crisis by closing a handful of their muni courses (leaving multiple municipal and a dozen private courses in the area) and building medium density housing there. Solving a critical need by getting rid of a few locations for a dying sport:
https://www.theurbanist.org/2019/06/12/unlike-seattle-golf-really-is-dying/
It’s a waste of space otherwise.
Most of the golf courses near me are pretty much this - densely forested areas with meticulously landscaped little gardens, which happens to have some holes built in.
A lawn is not a garden.
Correct. I’m not talking about lawns.
Golf courses are lawns.
So you just didn’t read my first comment in this thread then
Please post a picture of this golf course with no lawns
Oh I get it now, your reading comprehension is just poor.
This.
Please. For the love of God don’t let this lazy comment cliché migrate to here.
I don’t care for golf and wish golf courses were better used spaces, but the thing about golf that makes it interesting is the meditative practice of being able to swing the club in just the right way to make the ball go where it needs to.
I like archery and you have the same sort of thing going on there. You have to have your positioning, movements, focus, and smoothness of action to hit the target. You can tell how you failed before the arrow hits the target. Working on fine tuning your actions is enjoyable.
archery
archery doesn’t carry a racist history and waste giant tracts of land. they can putt-putt or get fucked.
I shot in highschool and it was the same thing. I loved it. You get into this extreme zen state and.become hyper aware of your own body. It was a lot of fun.
They make driving ranges for that. They take up much less space.
It isn’t the same sort of thing though. Yes, you can pick a target and go for that, but having the topography and hazards makes for a different experience.
Driving ranges also don’t have the same sort of socialization and competition aspect.
I agree with the first thing you said, but there’s no reason why you can’t socialize or compete at a driving range. It would be the same sort of competition as an archery or shooting competition- how accurately can you hit your target? And driving ranges have all the people doing it parallel to each other, so there’s no reason why you can’t talk to the person next to you. Yes, it is not exactly the same as golf, but it’s more environmentally friendly and less of a barrier to people with lower income because you don’t have to pay country club fees.
Fwiw golfers talk while they walk/cart around and such, and specifically are mad if anyone talks during their swing, the swing which is “the only thing you do at a driving range,” so talking is a little less accepted there.
I just don’t understand the need for so many courses, I played golf as a kid on the same one for 10 years, the local environment allowed it to maintain itself for the most part.
I used to hang out with those types. It’s similar to country clubs, airline lounges, and first class travel. It’s not so much about the amenities of the luxuries as much as it’s about whom you meet. Or don’t meet. You become good at golf as part of an upper class social thing.
Golf is so bloody damn stupid.
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I hear nuclear armageddon is fun, too.
What kind of parties are you going to?
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I hear nuclear armageddon is fun, too.
What kind of parties are you going to?
They’ve been known to get pretty wild, I guess.
Well at least the radiation outfits come in very radiant party colors.
Louis Slotin’s place. Were you not invited?
…that’s probably for the best
Louis Slotin’s place.
Uh… is nuclear armageddon fun?
How about a nice game of chess?
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Depends on how much of you survives the bombs I guess
Eh, the OP is the one that made it a ratio of destruction to fun. Would have had the same impact if it said “Lunatics leveling miles of nature to thwhack a ball with a stick.” but they chose to make a value judgment on the fun quotient of golf.
Well, that would very much depend on whether is a Mad Max style future or something else with fewer muscle cars…
Golf is a dying sport. Courses where I live have been closing, some have been turned into parks
The one near me got turned into 500 houses. The water infra couldn’t cope and everywhere now floods when it rains.
Damn. If only we kept the golf course.
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The golf course absorbed a lot of rainfall in the soil, and I live downhill from it. Rainfall now goes into them stormwater system instead of into the soil.
Even though the new houses have drainage that is sufficient, it all runs into an existing pipeline that can’t handle it.
As bad as golf courses are for the environment, paving over it is 100x worse.
Well, yeah. Roads, houses and driveways don’t soak up rain. Probably whatever was there prior to the golf course did a better job at that. And the current key is “pipeline that can’t handle it”
Courses were over-built in the 90s.
Wall Street Journal: “Millennials Are Killing Golf Courses”
I wish they would at least let you walk on the cart paths before /after hours. I’ve seen one course that did that - allowed walkers once the sprinklers turned on in the evenings (signaling the end of play as well), but the majority don’t.
I live in Indiana, so there’s (generally) no shortage of rain. The golf courses in this town still water the entire grass of the course every day. Even if it rained the day before. Even if it’s raining right then and there. There aren’t water shortages here, but what a waste.
Most courses use man made ponds as both hazards and as retention ponds so they can use that rain water.
You know what uses three times the amount of water per acre? Corn. And almonds use about ten times more water than corn. And people have only just started caring about lawns, that use two orders of magnitude more water, fertilizer, and land than golf courses.
Golf courses really aren’t that bad from an ecological point of view when compared acre per acre to other large man made structures. They’re generally pretty small when compared to other large landscaping projects at 30-80 acres. The issue is when a city has like twenty courses just for the purpose of driving up housing prices.
Would that land be better as a park? Probably, but this is the US, someone would see an unprofitable “empty” plot of land and throw million dollar houses on it.
You know what uses three times the amount of water per acre? Corn. And almonds use about ten times more water than corn.
And we get food out of that input, unlike a golf course where you get nothing of value.
And people have only just started caring about lawns, that use two orders of magnitude more water, fertilizer, and land than golf courses.
Have you seen a golf course before? They’re literally lawns.
You get nothing of value from golf. I don’t play either so neither do I, but this very much comes off as “stop liking things I don’t like” rather than something that is actually important.
At least in the southwestern US most of them are a moot point. The vast majority of golf courses are being redeveloped because the course went bankrupt over the last decade or so. A few are managing to stick around, but I wouldn’t be surprised if over 90% of the historical courses are gone in the next few years.
Such is the way of the free market.
Most of the US corn crop goes to animal feed, so no you don’t get food from it. At least not directly. If you totaled up all of the land used by golf courses, you’d be at .1% of just the amount of land used for animal feed. And about 1% of the land used by home lawns.
They’re not that bad, there are much worse enemies than golf courses in general. Again, courses that are in the middle of a city that do nothing but increase property value are terrible, but most are perfectly fine and use way less water than you think.
Wtf do you think happens to those animals who eat the corn stalks?
Well I admit I haven’t seen the entirety of those courses, but based on what I’ve seen, and considering they’re surrounded by either businesses, houses or, in one case, a hospital, I don’t know where those retention ponds would be. The hazards they have absolutely wouldn’t be big enough to cover the amount of water I see sprayed on them.
I have never seen a golf course next to a hospital… Maybe it’s regional, but near me, most courses have many made ponds that hold rain water and you can smell the pond water when the sprinklers come on. The ponds can hold several Olympic swimming pools worth of water.
You’re really comparing growing food to some entirely useless recreation activity?
