While on vacation in Michigan, I played a round of golf, which I do a few times a year. I shot reasonably well, when you consider that it was my first round of the year, and it was pouring rain. I even birdied one hole, by chipping in from about thirty feet off the green, so go, me.
The course we were playing is a fancy club in a resort area, and so the rental clubs were nicer than the clubs I own. In particular, they had one of those oversize drivers, and now I understand how it is that people come to believe that there’s no problem in golf that can’t be solved by spending money.
I generally don’t even bother trying to hit my own driver, because it’s so erratic– sometimes, I hit the ball a mile, sometimes it goes way left, sometimes way right, sometimes it pops up in the air and goes basically nowhere. I can’t hit my three wood as far as I hit the driver on those occasions when I hit it well, but I hit it more consistently, so I mostly just leave the driver in the bag.
The rented oversize driver, though, was remarkably consistent. I didn’t hit it straight, but it had an entirely predictable slice, and I could compensate by just aiming left a bit. It was really amazing, and I found myself thinking, “You know, if I just spent $600 on a club with a head the size of a watermelon, I could be pretty good at this game…”
And this is why basketball is superior to golf. The implied claims of Nike commercials aside, expensive sneakers are pretty much just sneakers, and other than that, all the equipment is common. Everybody shoots the same ball at the same hoop. Differences in results reflect differences in skill, not differences in sporting technology.
In golf, on the other hand, the game play can be influenced to a distressing degree by the particular clubs and balls you use. Which means that you can just about buy yourself a win, and that’s just wrong.
Probably fifteen years ago, now, I remember a columnist for Sports Illustrated writing about this, and suggesting a Real Golf Championship. The players would all have to go to Wal-Mart and pick a set of clubs from the bargain bin, and play with used balls fished out of the water hazards. Then you’d see who could really play golf, and who was just taking advantage of technology.