Why Golf Sucks

It’s a bright, humid Saturday morning in the summer of 2024 in Rochester, New York. While everyone else is asleep, one old man in a suburban neighborhood wakes up with a purpose. He lives in a rundown house, surrounded by many identical-looking houses. His daughters beg him to renovate, but he insists that his house is perfect as it is.

When his eyes open, the ceiling fan blows wind into them, causing him to squint. After some time of contemplating his life, he swiftly moves his feet from under the bed covers to the floor.

His clock says it’s 5:30 AM; just another normal day for him. After quickly brushing his teeth and getting dressed, he skips breakfast and, despite his old age, dashes to his car. After being on the road for 10 minutes, he finally comes upon the place where he can play what makes him most happy in the world.

What could make someone so happy that they’d want to get up so early in the morning? Well, here’s the answer: Golf.

Listen, I understand that golf can be fun and exciting at some points, but oh my goodness, it is unbelievable that any human being would voluntarily get up so early just to swing a club at a ball! I believe that it’s simply foolish to want to get up so early for such a sport, and that’s just the first of many reasons I think golf sucks.

Firstly, if you’ve ever seen anybody hitting a golf ball at a tournament with lots of people, you’d notice that everyone is quiet when they are swinging. Why would this be? Why can’t people trash talk while they’re swinging? The simple and most obvious answer is that all people who play golf are grown babies! They are! If someone coughs during their swings, golfers act like their dogs were just killed!

My second reason: it’s just not active enough to be fun or entertaining. Like, seriously, how in God’s green earth can people enjoy watching this sport? How can you sit in front of a screen, let alone watch someone in real life, and enjoy the act of them swinging their club into a ball? It’s just so slow. You might respond, “oh, well, it’s exciting to see who can hit a ball into a hole with the fewest swings.” And yeah, I get it. I like watching paint dry too. Good luck enjoying yourself while waiting to see the outcome of a tournament that lasts over ten hours.

For my third reason, think about how much equipment costs compared to other popular (and more fun) sports like basketball, football, or volleyball. All you need to buy for those sports is basically shoes and a ball. Golf, on the other hand, needs a golf bag with clubs, a course which you have to pay to play on, and a golf cart, unless you want to walk multiple kilometers with a bag on your shoulders (or with a push cart, but my point still stands).

My fourth reason is the fact that you have to have so much patience. If you do not have patience, the sport of golf will feel like waiting in line to go on a ride at an amusement park. In the summer, when people play golf the most, there will be dozens of people on a course at a time. So when a person is in front of you on a hole, it means that you’ll not only have to wait, but you’ll have to wait under the scorching sun. And it’s even worse when the roles are reversed! Just imagine when you’re the one holding everyone else up, and the pressure is on you to hurry up. Apparently, many people do not want to deal with this, which is evident by the amount of people that show up at 6 AM to play on courses.

My fifth and final reason why golf sucks is because of the dominant role luck plays in where the ball goes when you hit it. Sure, you can practice your swing so your aim is perfect, but then there’s weather that you have to account for as well. The direction and speed of wind is a humongous factor that often disrupts the path of a golf ball. This makes it super hard to stay motivated, especially when wind carries a ball farther in one direction that you’d hoped it would go.

Overall, don’t play golf, unless of course you want to make your life less enjoyable.