Mary KennyIs golf a genuine sport? A veteran sports writer, Simon Barnes, has suggested that it is not, because "sport should involve some risk". Golf is way too comfortable to be a real sport, he suggests.
It's no more a sport than croquet – a mere pastime.
I've always had mixed feelings about golf, I must admit. It is incorrigibly class-ridden (except in Scotland, where it started and where it has always been open to all). In the 1960s, when I was fascinated by student revolutionary politics, it was the ultimate symbol of 'bourgeois complacency'.
Yet it does no harm, and I've known golfers to whom the game has brought much contentment, companionship and fitness.
Moreover, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy have transformed its image in recent times. If golf is not wholly a sport, it surely is, for many, a jolly fine game.