"Tiger Woods is one of the greatest athletes ever, right alongside Jordan"
When my couch-athlete roommate remarked this, something in the statement irked me. Golf, a leisurely sport of the rich, where they hit a small ball far, and drive in a vehicle to where it landed, and hit it again. Athlete, did you say? Apart from a few swings of arms in the day, what do these men with clubs do? Picture Johnson, Jordan, Armstrong, Navratilova, their sweat dripping, sinews bulging, as they smoothly conduct their business. And picture Michelle Wie fretting about that missed putt. By what standards are golf players athletes?
"They have to concentrate so hard." Point well taken. With raised brows and condescending glare, he adds "... under pressure!", okay, okay. But remember that the word athletics is reserved for jumpers, runners and likes. "Sportsperson, then?" More general a term, but still, calling golf a sport, and hence putting it in same category as tennis, seems like stretching the definition.
To think of it, tennis players run hard, hit hard, jump around everywhere, it sure takes someone physically sound to do that. Think Federer, think Jordan, how they use their athletic ability to reach that ball and put it in the right spot. It involves concentration, certainly, but surely much more.
Then again, what makes Federer a Federer? Jordan a Jordan? Is it physical superiority? Federer is certainly not physically the best of this generation. There is nothing in his joints, in his sight, in his muscles, that makes the motions so smooth, almost poetic, and shots so accurate.
Yes, a basic fitness, power, athleticism is a must. And most players in top-50 have that. But to hit those backhand crosscourts from outside the court, when no such angle seems feasible, or to find your way and score a three-pointer, when you are the person being targeted by the whole defense a couple of seconds from the whistle, and to do such stunning acts consistently, certainly, speaks of a mental suppleness. Of an ability to 'see' the possibility of making that shot, and the ability to execute it, knowing what it takes to adjust your racket to just the right level and the right angle. Its not mere practice, or physical ability, or a combination of both.
"So you see!" My room-mate exclaims on overhearing my loud-thinking.
But wait a minute, by that measure, chess too, is a sport. And so is mathematics! Music, too. Hardy, leave apart his cricket skills, was quite a sportsperson. Heady Lamarr was one, too. Vishy Anand, Kolmogrov, Kramnik, Shannon, Bach, you name it!
Considering this expansion of what 'sport' encompasses, what really is the definition of sport, then?
Running a hundred meters in less than ten seconds is more physical than mental, while getting that golf-ball to the green is quite the other way. Both qualify as sport. In some sense, physical and mental are two ways to express our abilities. To make them tangible, even quantifiable. To achieve a great deal on any of these requires one to stretch oneself to the maximum. This in turn, stretches the definition of what is human.
That's what 'Sports' is all about: stretching what we believe is humanly possible. It is about expanding the domain, element by element, by competing, eventually, with ourselves.
