Nick Daley | Managing Editor

The first tee is always the most difficult. Staring down 430 yards of fairway, aiming a ball slightly larger than a walnut at a four-inch wide hole in the ground, dodging trees, sand traps and water hazards along the way. There is no other sport like it on the planet. Golf is not only one of the most personally challenging sports there is, it remains one of the only pure sports the world has left.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Nick Daley and I am a sports-aholic. I love to watch, play and discuss pretty much all sports. But there are few I love as much as golf. I play as much as I can in the summer months - I've worked at a golf course - I've seen Happy Gilmore 200 times and can practically recite the entire movie. And here's the kicker...I'm really not that good. I shoot just under 100 at best. But even on days when I endure 17 horrendous holes on the links, lose more balls than a blind dog playing fetch, and spend enough time in the sand traps to wear sandals onto the course - a birdie or par on the 18th can always bring me back.

In a sports world clouded by contract negotiations, arrests and drug scandals, the game of golf has consistently set itself apart from everything that’s wrong with sports today. Golfers don’t have to worry about being traded from one team to another, or holding out for a better offer or more money. The game of golf was founded on manners and proper etiquette – a true, gentleman’s game.

Although it probably took longer than it should have for people to realize it, the sport of golf did experience a quiet growth in popularity throughout the 90s and early 2000s. I asked Burlington Country Club golf professional Bryce Chaffee what he thought about the popularity trends in golf. He regrettably informed me that recently, people’s interest has flat-lined due to the amount of time it takes to play a round and the expensive cost at most courses.

“Golf benefited greatly from the Tiger Woods boom,” Chaffee says. “But lately, people’s interest in golf has reached a plateau.”

Chaffee is exactly right. According to an article in last Thursday’s New York Times, the number of people playing golf has dropped from 30 million to 26 million since 2000. Jim Kass, research director of the National Golf Foundation was quoted as saying, “The man in the street will tell you that golf is booming because he sees Tiger Woods on TV…But we track the reality. The reality is, while we haven’t exactly tanked, the numbers have been disappointing for some time.”

However, there may be some brighter days ahead for golf fans. According to Nielson Media Research, for the week of Jan. 21-27, the PGA’s Buick Invitational had more viewers than any other program - beating out an NBA doubleheader on ABC, the Winter X Games and men’s college basketball. Approximately 6.2 million viewers tuned in on Sunday, Jan. 27, to see Tiger Woods claim his 62nd tour victory, and it wasn’t even a major championship. And on another positive note, the Golf Channel’s 70 million subscribers more than doubles the NFL Network’s 31 million.

The sport of golf deserves more credit and is ready for another popularity surge. What other sport is there, where an average Joe can go out and do what the professionals do? Can you dunk a basketball like Dwight
Howard? Can you throw a football like Tom Brady? My guess is probably not. But on any given day, any golfer can par or birdie the same hole as Tiger Woods. Or better yet, you could sink a hole-in-one, and head back to the clubhouse knowing that nobody on earth could have shot any better on that hole than you.

More people need to open their eyes to today's world of sports. We have Alex Rodriguez making $52 a minute for the next 10 years ($275 million over 10 years). And don't forget Roger Clemens (one of the greatest pitchers of all time) and Barry Bonds (the all-time home run king) battling with Congress over steroid accusations. It's players like these that are disgracing their sports.

I don’t know about you, but I see so much more when I look at golf. I see Phil Mickelson showing off his six-inch vertical-leap-o-joy after winning the 2004 Master’s at Augusta. I see Tiger Woods breaking down in tears after winning the 2006 British Open, his first major win after the passing of his father. I see Angel Cabrera winning the 2007 U.S. Open and draping his home country’s Argentinean flag over his shoulders.

I see a sport with no contracts or guaranteed money. Where aside from endorsements, players still have to work for their paychecks. I see a sport filled with handshakes, tips of the hat and respect. I see one of the purest sports left.

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