They’re athletes who have chosen to play golf

[Peter Pallotta]

Though even in his youth Jack N didn't look to me like an "athlete" (especially a modern day version of one), he certainly must've had both the magnificent hand-eye coordination and the muscular grace & agility to qualify as a great one. How else could he have generated the swing speed and made the necessary perfect contact to be able to hit a butter-knife-sized 1 iron some 240 yards, uphill, into the wind and onto the green at Baltusrol?
As Richard Pryor once quipped about Jim Brown vs today's athletes: "He played 9 years, ran for 13,000 yards, and never missed a game --and that's when there were but 3 black guys in the whole league, so you know he didn't have anyone blocking for him. Now you got guys getting hurt in *practice*..."
     

[Thomas Dai]

If my OP was worded as to cause confusion then my apologies.
The thread is not about how good existing golfers would be at other sports.
Look at it this way -
Once-upon-a-time top golfers seemed to come in all shapes and sizes (eg Bobby Locke!). These days this doesn't seem to be the case. Whilst there are still exceptions, generally the majority of the younger generation of top players we see these days, the ones we see on TV, seem to be athletic/sporty type individuals who chose to specialise in golf at a young age and who now look (train?) like participants in other more dynamic and physically intensive sports.
atb
 

[archie_struthers]

 




What I'm suggesting is that he was a rotten basketball player ! 

[David_Elvins]

Jeff, I agree with just about everything you wrote, except including soccer. 

Jim,


There was a small study done recently that looked at elite English Amateur golfer that had turned pro.  It was a small sample size but over half of them had been members of elite junior academies at English Soccer clubs. 


It's correlation, not causation but balance, co-ordination, strength and competitiveness  tend to be relevant to most sports.

[David_Elvins]

If my OP was worded as to cause confusion then my apologies.
The thread is not about how good existing golfers would be at other sports.
Look at it this way -
Once-upon-a-time top golfers seemed to come in all shapes and sizes (eg Bobby Locke!). These days this doesn't seem to be the case. Whilst there are still exceptions, generally the majority of the younger generation of top players we see these days, the ones we see on TV, seem to be athletic/sporty type individuals who chose to specialise in golf at a young age and who now look (train?) like participants in other more dynamic and physically intensive sports.
atb

But this is the same across all sports.  The professionalisation of sport has led to a reduction of body fat and an increase in muscle mass across all sports. 


There were fat and skinny guys playing a heap of different professional sports in the 80s. 

[Erik J. Barzeski]

I would put today's best up against anyone from yesteryear not named Jack or Arnie.

They would eviscerate them on a regular basis...

Ha ha ha. No.

[Kalen Braley]

I find it amusing to read some of the extrapolations of how well one could have played at top collegiate levels based on what they did as a 12 year old against local hacks.  I played a lot of sports too at that age and did better than most, but that meant zero in predicting future success at the college level... 

[Dave McCollum]

I've read that Jack Nicklaus' OSU scholarship was for golf and basketball, not that has much to add to this discussion. 

[corey miller]

So true Kalen...12 years old?  What does it say about the guys that played and achieved in other sports and that DID NOT need to practice 12 hours a day? 


I kind of think an athlete should have at least a little respect for the guys who play other sports, but if not I will now make the claim (by virtue of playing top half D1 baseball)  that had I spent more time on the golf course I could have played D1 golf? Silly. 

[Ira Fishman]

During the past 10 years of my career, I have had the privilege of spending time with some of the best NFL players. Many of them were excellent at other sports in High School. They would tell you, I am quite confident, that performing at the professional level requires such specialized skills that they do not think that they could be elite at any other sport nor could athletes be elite at American Football. There is a reason that people still remember Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders. There is almost zero chance that a Professional Golfer could succeed at a Professional level or even Major College level at different sport unless he chose that path at a very young age.


Ira

[V_Halyard]

I would put today's best up against anyone from yesteryear not named Jack or Arnie.

They would eviscerate them on a regular basis...

Excuse me now while I go take cover!! 

I’m with Kalen. I’ll cover you while you reload. We’re gonna’ need a bigger boat soon though.

[Jeff Schley]

btw, maybe the biggest asset pro golfers have, that could let them go far in some other sports, is mental.  They've shown they have the drive, toughness and ambition to work so hard they succeed against nearly-impossible odds.  If they could carry that over to other sports, they'd have a huge leg up. 
 

Or don't have.  Many other sports are team oriented and I don't think it is a coincidence some of these golfers gravitated towards an individual sport.  It would be an adjustment for them to buy into the team concept and away from the me concept.

I would have LOVED to play football against Patrick Reed. If he was on my team he would have been a prick we couldn't wait to go against in the Oklahoma drill!  I think Speith would have been a trash talker and DB's would be putting Bar B Que sauce all over his ribcage when he went up for the ball.

[Jeff Schley]

BTW exhibit A......

[Jim Nugent]

Fair enough Jim I would agree with you, perhaps I was thinking of the goalie who would still have to be extremely quick and have great hands.

The best soccer players the US has turned out, by global standards, are its goalies.  The reason is that our top athletes already have many of the key assets a great goalkeeper needs, and don't have to grow up with a soccer ball on their feet to stand out at their position.  As you say, lightning reflexes is one of those assets.  Again, though, I don't see where golf requires that. 

[Duncan Cheslett]

A high proportion of very good golfers are also demons on the snooker table.


And vice versa.


There seems to be a close correlation between the two “sports” in terms of the skills and mental attitude required.


😉

[Garland Bayley]

Put another way, I'd venture a guess that a reasonable # of PGA Tour players could learn the skills in 6 months to sub in at cornerback in a college game without the entire defense crumbling,
Balderdash

 but there's no chance a 300 pound tackle could be taught in 6 months to successfully play one hole in a D-1 college golf event.

No, the tackles just skip college golf and join the PGA Tour

What's next? Federer's not a good athlete because he's not big enough to be a lineman?

[Garland Bayley]

Here's the deal Jeff. There are not a reasonable number PGA Tour players with the speed to cover speedy receivers.

However, Washington Redskins lineman George Bayer started golf at 29, and won on the PGA Tour. Including beating Arnie a time or two Kalen.

[Sean_A]

Had a golf mates conversation recently about the younger generation of men who we see playing pro-golf on TV. The main thread was that they aren’t just golfers any more, they are now athletes who have chosen to play golf instead of some other athletic or sporting activity.
Thoughts?
Atb

ATB

I am not sure I buy the premise. Sure, on a basic level many young kids can probably catch, throw, kick a ball with some skill and may have some foot speed etc. But that is a far cry from being an athlete of any consequence.


When I was young most folks that played sports played at least two to a decent local level. Some were good enough to play a few sports in high school, not many though. On our golf team I think we had a tennis player, hockey player and a baseball player, all of which weren't anywhere near good enough to consider college options in those sports. We did have two guys on the team eventually become club pros... neither played another high school sport.

Bottom line, very few people are good enough to even think of making a living playing a sport. To think that golfers may have the transferable skills that would have enabled them to pursue another professional sport is not something l see much in the way of supporting evidence.

Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

10,000 hrs was mentioned above. If some of the leading golfers of all time had spent their 10,000 hrs doing some other sport that was appropriate to their physique I suspect we’d have heard about them in another sport.
But what about the little wiry folks or others with not particularly athletic physiques who used to be top players? Where are they now? Where once they could compete within golf they don’t seem to be around much now, or maybe they are around but are not seen much on TV because they cannot consistently compete, and thus be seen on TV, at the top of the leaderboard because the top of the leaderboard these days generally comprises big athletic folks?
Atb

[Tom_Doak]

But what about the little wiry folks or others with not particularly athletic physiques who used to be top players? Where are they now? Where once they could compete within golf they don’t seem to be around much now,

Rickie Fowler and Rory McIlroy are both 5-foot-9, the same height as Corey Pavin.  They just exercise a lot differently.

[Bruce Katona]

Jeff Schley:

I'm willing to wager you $1 either Brooks or DJ in 6 months could be trained to be able to play DI football for either an Ivy or Patriot League Team; and we'll include both Army and Navy as part of the Patriot League teams. Getting them thru the Admissions Office may take the same effort and practice as the athletic training; however.

[corey miller]

IVY and Patriot are not really D1 in football and I would suggest if we are going to be intellectually honest perhaps we should differentiate between "playing" and "lettering" though I am not sure the latter concept exists anymore.


I would also reject the notion that we would judge an athlete in one sport (golf) on their ability to play specific positions (CB, QB, pitcher) in other sports. 


I would think in football on the high d1 level a cb would need a minimum 4.8 40?  5? That said, for most body types if you can't run a 5.0 you are far from "elite" no matter how you slice it. 

[Phil McDade]

The world record holder in the 200 yard short-course freestyle in swimming (admittedly, an American-centric event) currently attends Harvard; the defending national champion in men's lacrosse is Yale. A former Patriot League player is currently eviscerating the NBA playoffs. There are some serious athletes in those conferences.


I think Thomas' initial point is correct -- better athletes who otherwise might have chosen basketball or football a generation or so ago are now choosing golf. There are lot of reasons for that, one could suppose (there is a lot of money in the game, for one), but it's hard to argue the typical pro golfer isn't a better athlete than his peer from 25-40 years ago. Whether any of the current Tour players could translate their athletic prowess to another sport is debatable -- I don't really buy into the "give me 6 months" argument, but I suspect some (Koepka, DJ, Rahm) could've found success at a D1-collegiate level or higher if they had chosen another sport as their passion.


It's similar, I'd argue, to another sport with which I'm familiar -- swimming. I don't think there is any question that better athletes are choosing to swim as their primary sport, and I can easily see the likes of Nathan Adrian, Caleb Dressel, and Lilly King (all Olympic gold medalists/world-record holders) being highly successful in another sport had they been born 25-40 years ago.

[Jeff Schley]

Jeff Schley:

I'm willing to wager you $1 either Brooks or DJ in 6 months could be trained to be able to play DI football for either an Ivy or Patriot League Team; and we'll include both Army and Navy as part of the Patriot League teams. Getting them thru the Admissions Office may take the same effort and practice as the athletic training; however.

The Ivy league is FCS and the Patriot is as well.  The Ivy league doesn't even give scholarships so not the same as a DI school. 


I'll even say the MAC conference, let's say a Ball State which is a lower tier D1 school in probably the best Group of Five conference the MAC.  We have no idea if they can actually run and change direction with agility the biggest asset in paying a skill position for football.  Let's take a leap of faith and say they were starters for their high school teams and indulge a bit.
1. Project their position for Koepka who is 6 feet and 200 lbs.  His speed will determine his position.  Forget about Tailback or Cornerback to start as unless he runs 4.4 or better 40 AND have great agility, change of directions.
He could be fullback, which aren't used hardly at all anymore, maybe a slot WR for offense. On defense he could be a safety or undersized weak side linebacker. To play at Ball State in the MAC which do make their teams based on guys an inch too short or a tenth of second too slow, but with toughness and development his 6 feet, 200 lbs is  starting point.  From there we need to see a sub 4.5 or better for for safety and probably 4.65 or better for weakside LB.  If he is badass tough, he could get away as a weakside OLB in a 3-4 scheme.  Basically a weakside safety in that front at his size, but he has to be tough as nails and put some more lead in his pencil.

If he has Julian Edelman like hands and is tough, which are rare even for good receivers, he could be a slot receiver.   Again this is ONE guy who we are purely guessing based only on height / weight where he could play.  There are thousands of college students 6 foot, 200lbs. why would we say Brooks can run and catch better than them?  We can't.
2. Project the position of DJ.  Where could he play at 6'4 205?  Well the obvious is possibly QB with that stature or outside wide receiver, probably the split end because I doubt he is physical to block at the flanker spot. Now if he plays QB he doesn't have to be able to run that is the good news.  The bad news is that QB is the toughest position to play in football in a game.  7 on 7 or just throwing a football a long ways means BS! Get in a game when the bullets are flying and most QB's simply can't perform, which is why they are so rare.  The odds that DJ can throw the ball well enough to actually start for a Ball States are slim and none IMO so let's take QB off the table.  Rare skill set.
If DJ can run a 4.5 or better he has a chance as an outside WR, but does he have hands? There is a greater possiblty he has hands to catch then an accurate arm to throw as a QB. I believe he plays basketball and the hope here is that typically basketball players put their hands in the right place to catch a football. He doesn't have to be graceful like Calvin Johnson, but some agility is needed in addition to the hands or he would just be too stiff and CB's could lock him down.
In summation in your 2 examples.  Brooks probably has the best chance as a weak OLB in a 3-4 scheme provided he is badass tough and can run a 4.6 or better.  DJ could, could maybe be a split end if he can run a 4.5 with body control for route running as well as actually catch the ball with his hands.
We will never know, but of the two above maybe Brooks as an OLB.  But as we said above this only ONE guy on the entire tour, so Thomas's point about it being broad is certainly off the table as I have said repeatedly.  Respect the D1 athlete as they have a very high skill set, it isn't HS athletics anymore.

[Buck Wolter]

I think the more interesting thing will be what happens as parents stop letting their kids play football due to brain injury. It is already happening and those kids will go somewhere.


I would compare golfers to drop back QBs — it’s athletic ability combined with touch . Is Tom Brady an athlete?