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As a bartender throughout college, I would have to say that this debate would actually come up at least five to ten times every summer. It usually ended with the older crowd voting golf, the middle-aged crowd choosing baseball, and the younger crowd picking anything but golf or baseball. Being a life-long baseball player and fan, it always saddened me that people could actually rather watch golf than my beloved passion. I would even get angry with the kids that would rather watch paintball or billiards; I mean at least golf is a sport. But, after much consideration and debate, along with much personal research done in taverns around the nation (watching both in company of a wide variety of beer), I am going to have to switch sides and vote baseball, not golf, as the slowest sport to watch. The reason that I have decided to choose golf is that in a majority of circumstances, at any given moment, there is more on the line, more interesting story lines, and a heck of a lot more drama going on in a golf tournament than in a baseball game.

If we were simply comparing a Cubs-Cards game with watching Phil Mickelson play one round of golf, baseball would win hands down, and by a huge margin. However, that is not how it works. When watching a golf tournament, you witness dozens of golfers battling a course and their own minds with their livelihood on the line. Could you imagine if MLB players only got paid based on their performance? That is something that all PGA players contend with their whole careers. Every bad shot made by a golfer leads to the kind of facial expressions you would only see if a baseball player got called strike three looking in game 7 of the World Series. This is exactly what I want to see when I am watching a sporting event, drama and intensity. In a regular season baseball game, there is usually little of either, not to mention a lack of urgency (like a team down 5 runs in the 9th and they are laughing and joking in the dugout).

That being said, there are definitely quite a few baseball games that I would watch throughout the year over golf and, from experience, when it comes to attending the live events, golf is hands down the slowest sport. Anyways, with all due respect, I love to watch and play both of these sports and I have a tremendous amount of respect for the players and if we are going to pick on sports that are slow to watch, how about halftime at NFL or NBA games? That is truly brutal.

Learn more about this author, Kevin Hellums.
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