On the ball

For a sport with such small balls, golf is an unusually large target.

People who don’t watch it or understand the nuances of the game are quick to dismiss it as boring.

My mother never understood why I watched golf on TV as a young child. But if she sat with me for even 30 minutes, she would soon be ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ over some of the precision shots the pros could pull off.

And in television golf tournaments, you see a lot of golf.  The cameras jump from tee to fairway to green, so you get to see sometimes 50+ different golfers swing the club or putt every 30 seconds or less.

So, contrary to what you might think, there is a lot of action in golf.

In contrast, televised baseball and football games — America’s sports — mostly involve standing around.  A Wall Street Journal study calculated that a baseball fan will see 17 minutes and 58 seconds of action over the course of a three-hour game. And the football audience?  A paltry 11 minutes per game.

So for pure entertainment value, swing for swing, I’d put the US Open Golf Championship up against a baseball game any day. I’ve watched both, and I feel pretty good about my chances.