I would like to Golf

I watched "Full Swing" on Netflix and decided right then and there golf is my sport. What got me interested is first off there's no real exercise involved. Then I noticed that a lot of "pro golfers" are 40 year old dad bod types. You can be one of the top golfers in the world and not win a "major" for a decade. Colorful outfits? Check. Tiny Cars? Check. If you want to break into pro golf you just cough up some cash and enter a tournament. I found out one of the rules is if you ask anybody what club they used you have to add a stroke to your score card.

A lot of people complain about how hard golf is, but not having any experience I feel qualified already to say that they're looking at it wrong. Golf is so hard, nobody ever gets really good at it. Step back and think about this for a second, the ball is tiny, the course is huge, the golfer cannot control the wind, how wet, dry, course, or thick the grass is. A golfer cannot control if the sun is in his eyes or if it's raining. All a golfer has is a bag of mallets with which to whack the tiny ball. Idk about you but aiming with any degree of accuracy is probably pretty tough, it is more like hoping it goes in a general direction and figuring out what to do next. I watched a 6 hour tournament, this guy hits it perfectly onto the green. Perfect shot, easy put, but the wind blew it over this hill and it rolled down the hill into the sand trap and everybody was like "Tough break, no do-overs" and that was it, he had to try again. There are sand traps, water hazards, and rough areas all over where you don't want the ball to go, and guess what? It goes there a lot. All regulation basketball courts are basically the same, the balls used by professionals are all the same, the hoops are the same height, the keys the same size, court materials are all regulation, so you can improve your game by consistently practicing. Golf is interesting because the courses are huge, the weather is different every time, clubs come in all shapes and sizes and styles, and there are all kinds of different balls, it's just not possible to replicate the same conditions every time you play to be able to measurably improve. Sure you can work on your puts and work on your drives and work on your chipping but ultimately the environment is going to be different even if you're on the same course every time you play.

I also found out the Golf as it is today appears in the 1500s, some Scottish king banned it because he thought it was a distraction from learning archery, an actual useful skill, which the nation depended on for its defense. Then this king got a set of clubs and unbanned it. That's just funny.

The world's longest drive was set in 1974 by a guy in his 60s. 515 yards. This was before computer aided design and modern manufacturing made it possible to analyze every aspect of a club to make sure it was optimized for maximum distance. Every year golfers spend billions getting the latest club designs which have the "latest technology" and nobody has ever beat the record set in the 70s. The guy was like 65 years old, and shaped like a bowling pin and was playing a round of senior golf when he did it. Definitely not your typical elite athlete / sports record holder.

So that's why I'm in, worst case you get to go on a walk, best case you have a good game of golf.