Zen 426: There is no excuse for golf

The Ryder Cup is about to begin, which means that bastard golf will be everywhere. I don't get golf. This may be because I have the hand-eye coordination of a toddler on roofies, but it's one of very few sports whose popularity leaves me utterly baffled.

I mean, just look at them. Golfers are the most miserable bastards on Earth. When was the last time you met a golfer who said they'd had a brilliant round and really enjoyed it? I'll bet never. The vast majority of golfers spend 95% of their time in a twisted fit about their swing and the other 5% of the time bitching about the monstrous twats they met out on the course. Walk into any golf clubhouse in the world and there's enough hate in the room to make you dizzy, which itself begs the question: what do golfers do for fun?

Then there's the ball. It's not moving. Who in god's name thinks up a sport where the ball isn't moving? Fat, slow, lame people that's who. Then they rig it even further by declaring that you have to hit the ball that isn't moving using a waggly stick, a process that is so arse-achingly difficult to master that only fat, slow, lame people with lots of time on their hands, i.e. rich folks, become any good at it.

But then, inevitably, the skinny, athletic crowd get in on the act and are, of course, better at it because they haven't spent their their entire adult lives scoffing fois gras in smoky boardrooms. So the fat, slow, lame people come up with a completely rigged scoring system - the handicap - that allows them to beat the skinny, athletic people, even though by any objective measure they are much, much worse at twanging a ball that doesn't move around a big field with a waggly stick.

More deranged yet, if the fat, slow, lame people find out they still aren't beating the skinny, athletic people, then they can pretend to be much worse than they actually are to achieve an even bigger handicap, thereby giving themselves an even greater advantage. Who in the suffering fuck invents a sport where you win by pretending to be much shitter than you actually are? It's just not natural.

Finally, there's the clothing. I'd hesitate to suggest that anyone wearing 'slacks' is participating in an activity that can reasonably be described as a sport, especially not when said slacks look like they've been robbed off Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch. Golf must surely be the only social context where it is acceptable for white men to dress as black pimps, which is frankly baffling in a sport that has historically been shot through with more snobbery and segregation than a Georgia Ku Klux Klan meeting.

And the one black guy who is actually super good at it? Well he doesn't have to pimp, because he's getting it all for free. Apparently.