Golf is a target sport of controlled precision: a player strikes a small ball from a teeing ground into a distant hole using as few strokes as possible, navigating fairway, rough, sand and water across a course of eighteen holes. Unlike most games there is no opponent guarding the target and no clock; the adversary is the terrain, the wind, and the player's own nerve.
Golf grips people because it exposes the individual completely. Every shot is self-generated and self-inflicted; there is no teammate to hide behind and, famously, players call penalties on themselves. The margins are cruel, since a two-degree change in clubface angle can send a drive out of bounds, yet the same swing can produce a 320-yard carry or a holed wedge that seems to defy the ground.
Pick two names from this sport’s all-time list. The larger number in each shared stat is highlighted.
| Stat | Jack Nicklaus | Tiger Woods |
|---|
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Golf is a target sport of controlled precision: a player strikes a small ball from a teeing ground into a distant hole using as few strokes as possible, navigating fairway, rough, sand and water across a course of eighteen holes. Unlike most games there is no opponent guarding the target and no clock; the adversary is the terrain, the wind, and the player's own nerve.
Golf grips people because it exposes the individual completely. Every shot is self-generated and self-inflicted; there is no teammate to hide behind and, famously, players call penalties on themselves. The margins are cruel, since a two-degree change in clubface angle can send a drive out of bounds, yet the same swing can produce a 320-yard carry or a holed wedge that seems to defy the ground.
What makes golf singular is its scale and its handicap. No other sport lets an amateur play the exact venue where champions compete, on the same greens under the same rules, days apart; you can stand on the Old Course tee at St Andrews where golf has been played for six centuries.
The four men's major championships are the Masters, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open and the Open Championship, played in that order between April and July each year. The Masters, at Augusta National since 1934, is the only major staged at the same venue annually. The Open, first played in 1860, is the oldest and the only major held outside the United States, on British links courses.
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