"Whoever Said Golf Was Supposed to Be Fun?"

Thanks to reader Kevin for alerting me to Christian Chensvold's outstanding WSJ piece asking whoever thought golf should be easy. That the difficulty of the sport was part of its allure.

And Chensvold is an admitted newish golfer who writes with the wisdom of a longtime veteran.

Is learning the violin fun? Is becoming a competitive chess player fun? Minigolf, with its colored balls and Ferris wheels, is fun. But the satisfaction derived from real golf is much more profound than the word "fun" would suggest. Golf is something like rock climbing, except the risk is not a shattered back but a bruised ego.

It's for those who, however laid back they might otherwise be, have an alpha streak that keeps them impervious to the ritual humiliation the sport inflicts. Golf is beyond fun: It is the ultimate sporting test of physical coordination, mental focus, strategy and nerves. "It takes a special kind of person to play golf," an instructor at Golf Manhattan once told me, since for those who take it up later in life, "it's just too hard."