What golf has over other sports can’t be seen on video

Like stabbing a dead guy is what we call sinking a meaningless birdie putt after your partner has already won the hole. In the same realm of superfluous satisfactions, we might count writing to convince Golf Digest readers that golf is a great game. Preaching to the choir. Carrying coals to Newcastle. Yet, if you’ll bear with me, I have fresh perspective for why it is so.

It has been a celestial year in sports. From the Winter Olympics in Milan to the New York Knicks NBA title run to the FIFA World Cup and more, we’ve been treated to athletic glories of all kinds and seen fan passion spill over. Although I didn’t personally partake in any dance parties on the street or set fire to buses, I watched a lot more TV than usual. The airtimes lined up well with the bedtimes of my elementary school-age children, who were fascinated with the geographical elements (“Is Cabo de Verde a country?” “Is there summer in Norway?” “Have I ever been to San Antonio?”) and picked sides as eagerly as if at a playground fight. With the fatigue of accumulating middle-age, the couch beckoned more strongly than it ever has, and in this sumptuous comfort I discovered a wellspring of patience for explaining the arcana of games: icing to the double dribble to the infield fly rule, and beyond.

Of course, no beings are more sharply attuned to fairness than young siblings. From desserts to dollars, they keep tighter ledgers than Ivy League accountants. If sporting contests are meant to answer who wins and why, it was to this skeptical audience that I presented the math behind judging in ice skating. Then with ski racing, the difference between a tenth and a hundredth of a second. In basketball, what touching constitutes a foul and what doesn’t, as well as the strategy of desperation that drives most games to end with a logjam of free throws. During the NFL playoffs, I found an analogue in The Hail Mary pass and why the closest, most thrilling games inevitably will hinge on the binary outcome of the pass-interference call.

For immediate up-and-running backyard participation, there is no beautifully simpler game to explain to a child than soccer (“Do whatever you must to put this ball in that net without using your hands”). However, to unpack how offsides annulled dozens of goals during the World Cup, well, I couldn’t have done it without the aid of Telemundo’s hi-def superimposed graphics. “See, son, the striker’s kneecap crossed a theoretical two-dimensional pane of existence before the pass was struck.”

Wimbledon wasn’t bad, but still, the electronic line calling contributed to the creeping sense that tennis was yet another spectacle determined by authoritarian spirits in the sky. That we humans were again the hapless pawns unable to see and decide for ourselves who wins. During somebody’s tantrum, my wife coolly observed that perhaps our household needed instant replay, too.

But then, the golf! Once past the anomaly that the lowest score wins, golf unfolds in a straightforward and satisfying way to newbies. A ball drops into the cup or it doesn’t, so any margin of victory is guaranteed to be at least one full stroke—or “point” as my daughter prefers. Yes, there have been regrettable rules episodes in the game’s history (see Roberto De Vicenzo at the 1968 Masters, Dustin Johnson at the 2016 U.S. Open and Bryson DeChambeau at this year’s Open Championship), but golf has continued to adjust the fine print to make these aberrations even rarer. In 2018, call-ins from TV viewers were banned, and stricter protocols for video review were put in place. Golf never stops to “go to the monitor,” and putts never get revoked. There’s no flopping in false agony. Drops from grandstands and hazards sometimes feel fluky, but never does it feel like the result rests entirely in the hands of the ref—or worse, a machine.

As we hurtle forward in an ever-techier future, more human endeavor will come under the microscope. May all the other great sports follow golf’s example of resisting it.