This is why some people don't think golf is a sport

At least once a week during the golf season, I walk 6 miles carrying a 40-pound bag on my shoulders. Sometimes the temperature is close to 100F, and the humidity is over 90%. When I’m playing well, I can drive the ball over 300 yards, and, if necessary, I can stretch my 9-iron to 170 yards.

And compared to golfers who are actually good – not to mention professional Tour players – I’m a total wuss.

Still, one hears and reads lots of sports commentators and regular folks who insist that golf is not a sport – that it requires no strength or endurance or power – and that the men and women who play it at the highest levels are not athletes. This point of view has puzzled me for many years.

Then, I received a product that plays directly into the hands of the golf-as-sport-deniers: The Scramble Scoop.

Essentially, the Scramble Scoop ($20) is a ball retriever for when your ball is not in water or a deep ravine, but rather right there in the middle of the fairway. It’s a slightly-asymmetrical mesh basket on the end of a telescopic aluminum handle, which allows golfers to retrieve their balls without having to get out of their golf carts.

Just picture that: A group of hefty duffers, playing a scramble – a format developed in order to minimize golfing time and maximize drinking time – careening around the course in their golf carts, drinks and cigars in hand. Practically the only exercise these guys are going to get is hopping out of their cart to pick up the lousy shots before proceeding down the fairway to where their A-player has hit it.

But now, the Scramble Scoop allows the rotund and wobbly-bottomed everywhere to stay planted on their keisters as long as absolutely possible. What a relief! The exertion of standing up really detracts from the fun of the sport, er, game, after all.

To be fair, the Scramble Scoop is also marketed toward disabled golfers who might have difficulty bending over to pick up a ball. But somehow, I suspect that the lazy, rather than the disabled, will stock their golf bags with the Scramble Scoop. And no self-respecting athlete would be caught dead using one.