Golf, Football and The Power of Sport

The Mizzou football team exercised one form of power when it threatened to strike – golf, poised to become the people’s sport of the 21st Century, is transforming athletic competition.

I watched with considerable awe as the Mizzou football team took an explicitly political stand against racism on the University of Missouri campus earlier this month, flexing their considerable bi-racial muscle to force a leadership change at the highest administrative level. The team didn’t march. They didn’t circulate a petition. They didn’t demonstrate. They simply invoked time-tested principles of non-violent protest: they sat down and threatened to withhold their services.

The mere threat of a cancelled football game was all it took to topple an entrenched and non-responsive university administration. Now that’s power!

I know ProGolfNow is a golf blog, not a football blog, but the Mizzou football team’s solidarity and the power of the sport to leverage social change is what captured my imagination.

Then Lydia Ko stepped into the spotlight of athletic competition last week and became the youngest ever winner of one of the LPGA’s most prestigious player awards, the Rolex Player of the Year. Lydia Ko also captured my imagination. Her youth, her diminutive status, her athletic skill all spoke to me about the power of golf to transform our ideas about athletic performance and competition.

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Golf is so much more serene and tranquil than football, and yet Lydia Ko’s very clear dominance of golf’s playing field tells a story about the power of sport just as clearly as does the Mizzou football team’s ability to force a dramatic and immediate change in the power structure of the University.

Golf is a sport as much dependent on mental durability as physical strength. Golf is a sport that invites and encourages a gender-neutral playing field. And golf is a sport that, despite a popular perception as the purview of rich white men, is remarkably diverse in its appeal, both globally and culturally. A quick glance at the field of competition in any professional event reveals a sport that’s not defined by racial and ethnic barriers.

To be sure, like baseball and football, golf has a disgraceful legacy of racial discrimination; and like other sports, golf has grown beyond that legacy. (In the case of golf, Tiger Woods’ decade-long domination of men’s professional golf eradicated any lingering residues of racial discrimination that had earlier tainted the sport.) But in a contemporary sense, no other sport enjoys the cultural and geographical breadth of golf.

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We’ll see more of that breadth come into play with the sport’s return to the Olympics next year, but even now on every pro tour there’s a cultural diversity in play that simply doesn’t exist in any other competitive sport. Lydia Ko, Inbee Park and Stacy Lewis tee it up on an equal basis, as do Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and Rory McIlroy. And that diversity is mirrored at the level of recreational play.

As I reflect on the power of sport to drive social and cultural change, as we work our way through the second decade of a new century I see golf leading the charge. When I watch young girls hanging over the ropes begging autographs from Lexi Thompson, when I see young boys dressed in orange and wearing flat-billed caps in imitation of Rickie Fowler, I see a sport with powerful youth appeal. When I watch Korean golf fans cheering wildly for Inbee Park and Chinese fans equally enthused for Shanshan Feng, I see a national pride that was once reserved for highly specialized athletic skills. And when I see Karrie Webb mentoring Minjee Lee I see a sport that is truly transforming the world around it.

Unlike football or soccer or weightlifting or tennis, golf is not dependent on physical strength. That’s one of the characteristics of the sport that makes it unique and lends it a universal appeal. For this reason, if for no other, golf is poised to become the people’s sport of the 21st century as surely as baseball was the people’s sport of the 20th century.

Yet there are other aspects of the sport that broaden its appeal. Golf can be played at the most relaxed level, by anyone who’s willing to swing a stick at a small white ball, and it can be pursued at an intense level of skill and competition. Golf welcomes both youth and age to the playing field. Golf doesn’t require a common language — or any language at all — doesn’t require a referee or an umpire, and can be played in the most gloriously solitary of moments as well as in the most intensely social settings.

Next: Winners and Losers of the PGA TOUR Fall Swing

Golf’s remarkable flexibility is as potent as force for change as is football, although like the sport itself, the social and cultural change golf fuels will be gentler and softer than the clashing cymbals we heard at the University of Missouri a few weeks ago.

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