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In a Hole, Golf Courses Experiment With 15-inch Holes
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "According to the National Golf Foundation, golf has lost five million players in the last decade with 20 percent of the existing 25 million golfers apt to quit in the next few years. Now Bill Pennington writes that golf courses across the country are experimenting with 15 inch golf holes the size of pizzas to stop people from quitting the game. "We've got to stop scaring people away from golf by telling them that there is only one way to play the game and it includes these specific guidelines," says Ted Bishop, president of the PGA of America. "We've got to offer more forms of golf for people to try. We have to do something to get them into the fold, and then maybe they'll have this idea it's supposed to be fun." A 15-inch-hole event was held at the Reynolds Plantation resort last week featuring top professional golfers Sergio García and Justin Rose, the defending United States Open champion. "A 15-inch hole could help junior golfers, beginning golfers and older golfers score better, play faster and like golf more," says García, who shot a six-under-par 30 for nine holes in the exhibition. Another alternative is foot golf, in which players kick a soccer ball from the tee to an oversize hole, counting their kicks. Still it is no surprise that not everyone agrees with the burgeoning alternative movement to make golf more user-friendly. "I don't want to rig the game and cheapen it," says Curtis Strange, a two-time United States Open champion and an analyst for ESPN. "I don't like any of that stuff. And it's not going to happen either. It's all talk.""
How did this get posted? Golf??!
My Dad used to take me to play pitch-and-putt (nine short holes, played with a 9-iron and a putter). One day when I was 9, we were both having an awful round, and I said "Dad, this is a bloody frustrating game". He replied "Yup, that's why I gave it up in 1932". I got the point, and have never been back since.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
Maybe it is less about the size of the hole and more to do with the absurd amount of money and time is cost to play the sport? I had a few games once, the money I could probably afford, but I simply don't have the time to spend hours on a golf course every week...
Golf is about getting your balls into the hole in as few strokes as possible. It's as simple as that.
I'm not a golf guy, but I can appreciate that the original game is fine the way it is. Seriously, 15-inch holes aren't going to magically enable you to get a hole-in-one. The challenge of hitting the traditional hole is something I respect; making it feel like I have training wheels on to pander to me is just going to alienate me further. I think most prefer things tight, not loose. You have to feel like you've succeeded.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
experimenting with 15 inch golf holes the size of pizzas to stop people from quitting the game.
Why not make the entire green the hole? People would never be able to quit.
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
Making an easy mode golf will surely bring people back to the expensive courses, like Reynolds Plantation resort! In fact, they should invent a throwing golf - Americans like throwing things - they could even use some sort of flattened plastic disc, to make it more aerodynamic. If only golf would be more innovative like that, people would flock to play golf!
Sarcasm aside, my friends and I never cared about how "hard" golf was. In fact, most of the charm of actually going out and playing was laughing about how bad we all were. We don't go back very often because most of us can think of 30 or 40 other things that we'd rather be doing for those 6 hour consecutive stretches on a weekend.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Because "dumbing down the game" have worked SO well for Blizzard and World of Warcraft..
I'm being sarcastic.
They lost me when they called golf a sport.
grep pizza article_content && if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo "News for nerds"; fi
Won't help much if the game is just boring to people and/or expensive. Now if you told everyone to wear protective body armor when going out on the green and start aiming at each other then maybe you'd get your numbers up.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
and in the future it won't be this big... but it will continue to exist just as it did for hundreds of years.
Golf is fine... but its peaked as a sport and will now decline.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Wonder why - the most expensive popular sport in existence is losing millions of players, right around the time that the income of the group most associated with playing golf is dipping dramatically...
Maybe if Sherlock were here he could figure out why?
is that it's played by republican douchebags in khakis. you know, the type of people who are against universal health care because f you they've got theirs.
I am not sure how President Obama fits into that description.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
We have to do something to get them into the fold, and then maybe they'll have this idea it's supposed to be fun."
That's the real money quote right there. Golf is fun? Minigolf while drunk is fun. Standing in the sun playing one of the slowest and least exciting games of precision is a challenge open to the dedicated, it's a problem to be solved, it's done to prove something to someone. I have never considered this "sport" fun.
Mind you I also find fishing incredibly boring. Maybe I don't have the patience for slow games like this, but really there's better things I could be doing, and I'm not the only one who has this belief.
I'm an avid sailor, and the same discussion is being had in the sport of sailing. The sport of sailing is in rapid decline, at least in the US. It's far less popular than it was 30 years ago. Most of the people who do it are baby boomers who will soon retire from it.
There is great consternation within the sport of sailing about what can be done to save it, but really, nothing can be done. The sport is not appropriate for the times.
It's not a matter of cost. Sports like golf, sailing, lawn bowling, and other sports which are in rapid decline can be done affordably. Sailing, for example, is cheaper than ever because more and more used sailboats are dumped on the market every year (fiberglass sailboats almost never wear out).
The pace of life has changed. That is the issue. Young people, who've been reared on dizzyingly fast-paced entertainment such as first-person shooter games, are not thrilled at the idea of racing at five miles per hour (or sometimes less) in a sailboat for four hours. Nor do they find it exciting to play shuffleboard or do golf. By the standards of today, those sports are boring.
Nothing should be done to make golf or sailing more interesting for younger people. It won't help to make golf holes bigger. The only way to make these sports more interesting is to make them drastically faster paced, which will ruin them for the people who enjoy them now. These sports should just accept unpopularity.
While I have little sympathy, given the expenses involved with the activity, and given that far too often a golf club seems really more like a get-together of the wealthy, frolicking in their wealth together, this is a terrible idea. Why do beginning golfers need to have it easier? They just don't score as well. Isn't that what that handicap system is about in the first place?
What's next? "Chess too difficult -- FIDE considering switching to a 6x6 board to encourage more beginners."
Though I agree with that Curtis fellow, who says that it's all just talk and nothing will come of it.
If you suck at a sport, pick another.
Or keep practicing until you get better.
I can't find a link, so I'll summarize:
Char 1: whatcha doin'?
Char 2: Playing golf.
Char 1: What's the object of the game?
Char 2: Get this little white ball in that hole over there.
Char 1: [picks up ball, walks over to hole, drops it in hole] Stupid game.
15" holes seem pretty ridiculous, considering you still have to get to the green. Accurate drives and knowing how to deal with situational shots comprise at least half the difficulty of golf. Nobody takes a mulligan on a missed putt, they take them when they slice a shot onto the next fairway over or into a water hazard or whiff it entirely and launch a clump of divot instead of the ball.
But no one derides amateur softball players for not hitting 85 mph pitches or being able to throw out a runner at first with a bullet from 130' away. What might make golf more accessible is building smaller 9-hole courses heavy on par-threes with more forgiving hazards and flatter greens. Less of a time commitment, cheaper due to faster turnover... Change the name somewhat (Golf-lite? Softgolf?) so as to defuse objections from people who want to maintain “pure golf’s” identity as is.
You are a fool, life in a modern society should not be a competition. So what if we lower the bar, ITS SO MORE PEOPLE CAN GET PAST IT. Big fucking deal. Why do you care if the world becomes more inclusive? We dont need extreme competition at every level of life.
Good-bye
Knowing the things that fail in the West make an aggressive move in the Asian markets, Cricket too announced pre emptive measures. It has already reduced 5-day matches to one day match and then to 60 over match then to 45 over match and now they are at 20 over matches. It announced reducing the boundary line from 80 yards to 40 and reducing the wicket to one stump.
Harvard economist Itso B Vious said, "All sports are in intense competition to win over people's mindspace. And they are all at a disadvantage because almost all of them require young people to get off their butt, out of the airconditioned homes and into hot sweaty fields. Video games are not only eating into the profits of Hollywood, but also into the profits of sports".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm not sure that amateur radio has been dumbed down as much it moved from proficiency in something annoying to young people (Morse code, inhaling solder) to something annoying to older people (digital modes, software stacks) while keeping the level of brainwork involved about the same. I've since left the hobby, but when I was active in my local club, the old boys who ran the show didn't really care for discussion of new technology, since computers baffled them. They much rather would have talked about CW on a QRP transmitter that they soldered themselves (without really understanding how it works) from a QST article.
A 15-inch-hole event was held at the Reynolds Plantation resort last week...
How about instead of screwing around with the size of the holes, you just stop naming your golf courses after something that's basically synonymous with the 200yr holocaust that was slavery? It doesn't help that if you're not white you have to call the course up ahead of time to make sure they'll let you in.
This is like trying to make people smarter by lowering the test standards.
I don't think I'd try golf, even watered down. I'm a hiker. I can have fun walking around and toting a heavy bag without a little white ball anywhere in the picture, and it's a lot cheaper. Besides, I go hiking to get away from the folks who are only out there to suck up to a client or boss. I'm with Sam Clemens, who observed that golf is a good walk spoilt.
Handicap.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Just go play disc golf! Lots of fun, just as much exercise, and free (in most locations) to play. Also, *WAY* cheaper to get into than buying or renting clubs!
Top Golf has a number of different computerized games you can play, all involving driving. Pricey, but I guess it could be fun if you're competent enough to drive a golf ball. (Turns out I'm not. Heh.)
They could replace the hole with a net. Then instead of a golf ball, golfers could throw a plastic disc. They could call it, oh, wait, nevermind.
[Insert pithy quote here]
The golf course owners want people's money, because there's too many of them for the demand. So naturally they're going to try and make it easier so more people want to play.
Welcome to the free market in action.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
...Americans with Really Fat Hands to play golf?
"Is the Chief Priest an Offlian? Do dragons explode in the wood?"
My grandfather asked me to go golfing with him when I was about 7. There was some conversation among the adults concluding that, based on my age only, I was a hazard to the green and therefore would have to just watch. So I followed around old guys for an hour on grass that I was not worthy to putt on. I realize this is an antecdote. Fuck golf.
-Dave
If Curtis Strange thinks change cheapens the game, why isn't he hitting feather balls with wooden longnoses?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"We choose to go to the moon, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
President Kennedy, announcing the goal of landing on the moon before the end of the 60's.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
But the usual golf player is already a gigantic ... oh, you mean in the ground.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Now if you can afford a Big Bertha, driving a couple hundred yards is not that big a deal. Today putting rules. A game where driving is more important could get young men to play it more.
There's a common phrase in golf: drive for show, putt for dough. Matches are won on the green, not on the tee.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
... it takes too long to play due to slow players,
Unless it's somewhere that mostly gets casual or first time golfers, most experienced golfers know to let faster pairs play through.
is expensive and is difficult to get a tee time unless your schedule is wide open.
$300-400 sunk cost for clubs (I've used the same clubs for the past 10+ years, only bought a new putter for $50), maybe $30 per person every time you play at a public course and you don't lose cases of balls every time you play (and most courses will sell used, recovered balls on the cheap).
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I consider games like golf and chess skills rather than sports. To me, sports rely more on athletic factors like speed and strength. Sports competitions are more likely to be divided by sexes (chess shouldn't be) and/or weight classes. Skills competitions shouldn't require divisions by sex or size.
It's a blurry line I have drawn for myself but, right or wrong, that is how I feel about it. I should probably duck now.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
You can practice teeíng, and /or putting. But it frustating if you play the bal clase to the hole, but still need 2-3 strokes just to put it in.
A game with 15 inch holes might be more fun, still get you in the sun, and kick some balls. Just no need to call it golf.
By the way, farmers golf (boerengolf) is becoming popular over here. You take a voleyball, and some buckets, and something resembling golf sticks, and just have a few hours of fun between the cows.
" Another alternative is foot golf, in which players kick a soccer ball from the tee to an oversize hole, counting their kicks" :-P
Hell no! You get a 6 ft beach ball and get in a high horsepower cart
Sure they're busy posting...about golf. The previous /. generation would've posted more about pizza, simultaneously perpetuating the pale basement dwelling, couch potating discerning Italian cuisine stereotype.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I think golf club memberships are actually traded in Japan because they are so hard to get
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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It's more likely the result of fees that are routinely over $100. And to really enjpy the game (be good enough not not get pissed all the time) you need to play at least three times a week.
Pretty pricey.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Here's a thought. Maybe the sport as a whole -- and the PGA in particular -- could take a look at the many many country clubs that are still whites-only, and think about whether tolerating overt racism in your sport is the best way to market it.
Curtis Strange's quote is spot on. It's all a bunch of talk. There's no way the USGA nor the R&A would approve such a thing. Not only is putting just one aspect of the game, making the hole bigger won't make you better. Anyone that's played the game long enough to want to get better knows you putt at smaller objects to improve your putting, not larger objects. As I said, putting is also one of many aspects of the game. Driving, approach, chipping and pitching are all equally important as they add strokes to your game the same way putting does. I would argue that getting to the green is not only more difficult than putting once you're there, but requires more physical ability and mental challenge than putting. To have the swing consistency to hit every fairway and every green in regulation is more difficult to develop than reading a green and striking a putt. I have been golfing since I was 17 and still struggle with swing issues 25 years later. I can putt like a fiend, though. Sure, I know the "putt for dough, drive for show" saying, but every stroke counts. You can one and two putt all day, but if you can't get it to the green in three or less, your putting can only save so much. So, no, I really hope nothing comes of this bigger hole thing. It's counterproductive to their advertised ends, helping improve the game. What's next, a field width goal twenty feet high so more people will be better at football/soccer so they will be attracted to the game? I really don't like rule changes to appease people who want to apply less skill and practice to a game so they can compete with more skilled and practiced players. I thought that's what the handicap system in golf was for? We already give people 20+ strokes per round based on their lesser skills, why would they need anything else in a game where the lowest score wins? Bigger hole = dumb idea
I've been riding a bike for more than 30 years...
Since before it was cool? No doubt on a bike brand that we probably wouldn't have heard of?
...and I can't tell how how different it looks at the parking lot today - middle-aged men, 20lbs or more overweight, showing up in $100,000 cars with $25,000 bikes...
Leaving aside for a moment the complaints about people spending more money on their toys than you've spent on your car/house/whatever, are you seriously complaining that the middle-aged men with beer bellies are actually getting out and doing something active? Even if they're not very good at it? (And if they aren't, how are they going to get better at it, except through practice?)
It's easy enough to flip this around: "After that last visit to the doctor, I decided I'd rather spend some money on a nice bike than on cardiologists and ICU bills. But whenever I try to go out on it, I get run off the trail by jerks who act like anyone doing less than 25mph on the flats deserves to be roadkill. At least on the weekly rides most of the folks are supportive, and willing to help out beginners. Sure, there's this one guy who shows up a few times a year and spends most of his time shaking his head at us and sighing theatrically, but I've found that the best thing to do is ignore him..."
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I hate golf and consider it a waste of space and/or "a good walk ruined" but this "everybody gets a trophy and deserves to feel good about themselves even if they can't accomplish the basics" attitude has started to infect the wealthy too?
Perhaps increasing wealth inequality means that people have less disposable income and choose to spend their money elsewhere than golf?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Soccer also needs bigger goals if it wants to thrive in the US. Scores like 2-to-1 are too boring for a US audience that prefers instant and constant gratification. Some also feel it's too random: small differences make too big a impact. Offense sells tickets. Get it up to 15 or so point averages if you want it popular in the US.
Or perhaps get rid of the goalie, or draw a line to push the goalie out of the scoring box so that fields don't have to install giant goal boxes.
Table-ized A.I.
Golf is a fun game. There's not much more satisfying than watching a well hit drive fly through the air in a graceful arc. Then there's that beautiful approach shot that goes 50 yards and bounces once on the green. It's as satisfying as a well caught football or a perfectly hit baseball. But then you've got to wait 10 minutes while the morons in front of you lay down on the green, pull out their levels and plumb bobs and walk around the hole six times, and finally putt 3 feet past the hole, and do it all again. There are two golf games -- The long game and the putting game and the putting game sucks. It's the putting game that makes golf tedious. It's the putting game that makes a round take 4 to 5 hours. One might say the solution is just to go to the driving range and blast a bucket of balls. Well, that's the same as a batting cage. It's fun, but there's no concept of "Game" involved. What we need is speed golf courses. Get rid of the greens and replace them with a 20 foot bowl. Drop par by one. Now drop your ball in the bowl. You should be able to start a foursome every 5 minutes this way, and everyone finishes a long course in 3 hours or less. Leaving me enough time to get home and spend an afternoon with my kids.
15 mm ought to do it. Then we can get 100% participation in the "existing 25 million golfers apt to quit in the next few years".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
My personal opinion here, so mod me down accordingly. Ignoring the concentration and aim aspect, I think golf is barely a "sport" at all. It requires basically one swing motion and some walking. Sure, that's a lot more than couch potatoes do, but if you want to play a "sport", why not choose something that is a little more involved and active? I get that some people aren't capable of active sports, and some people probably really like golf, but do we really need multiple golf courses in every city? I think people losing interest in golf is a good thing. Hopefully some of that land can be reclaimed for parks, homes, or productive businesses. Also, why we've made millionaires out of the best golf players is simply amazing. Nobody should complain about money problems when we pay people millions for knocking a little ball around.
Waste of a good walk and large bits of open space used by a few quite rich people. Use the courses for public parks and communal gardens [that's allotments to we Brits] instead.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
now that's funny...and soooooooo ridiculous at the same time. C'mon people....dumbing down the game just so people don't quit....I would say IF someone doesn't have the determination to make their game better through...wait for it.........drum roll here.......PRACTICE!! Then perhaps they should quit and leave the greens open for those who wish to play. I don't play golf not because it's difficult...but because it is boring and I'd rather kayak or hike or bike, etc....but let's not push the game over the cliff...tweaking existing rules CAN work as they do in other sports. Take hockey...I LOVE the no two-line pass anymore as that was a major momentum killer in any game...same for the goalie rules where they can only touch the puck in a specific area...these rules help make the game better but they don't change the nature of the sport...making a golf hole larger....dumb idea....
doesn't change the reasons why it's not appealing to many, but keep it up, golf. Nothing is more amusing than watching a dinosaur fight it's inevitable extinction.
If they really want to bring in the masses, the PGA should switch to much smaller courses with less walking (say, something that fits near a mall) and lots of obstacles like Windmills and Castles and little bridges and slopes and ... wait, there's something familiar about this...
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Handicap.
Well said!
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
I admire great golfers and the shots they can make. The courses look beautiful. But I can't really get into golf for the following reasons:
1) I still see it as a "snobs" game.
2) The fees are quite expensive, as well as the equipment.
3) It takes a lot of practice to get good at it. A lot.
4) The amount of space, and water, needed to create and maintain a golf course just seems wasteful to me.
Compare golf to tennis. To play tennis all you need is a racket, good shoes, and a couple of tennis balls. Most of the public courses are free. If you want to get really good you can take lessons but even the untrained can figure it out well enough to bat the ball around and have some fun at it. It's better exercise than golf.
As an aside, when I was a kid I worked briefly as a caddie at a local golf course. It was a private course and very exclusive. I left with the impression that those pricks were the cheapest SOB's on the face of a planet. The cars some of them were driving were worth more than my parent's house. Yet they were lousy tippers.
Casuals now infect Golf too.
There will need to be a purging.
Of casuals.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
"We've got to stop scaring people away from golf by telling them that there is only one way to play the game and it includes these specific guidelines"
Sounds like Blizzard is taking over golf.
I know around the metro D.C. area, you definitely have a decline in the popularity of golf courses. This area used to be loaded with them, and one by one, they're closing down.
Meanwhile, cycling is *huge*. The area has always had very good trails for cyclists, so that probably doesn't hurt either .... But I've seen an increasing number of people getting involved in various cycling races or just riding nice mountain bikes along the side of roads on the weekends.
The traditional country club catered to the "old rich", IMO. The "new rich" tend to be people who are more "showy" with their money (driving fancy luxury cars, wearing designer clothes in public, etc. etc.). I think for the traditional, old money types, the wealth was viewed more as something inappropriate to flaunt in the general public. Rather, it let you buy into an exclusive social group of people with similar wealth. The younger, affluent people would rather just go out in public with their nice things.
If you remove the exclusivity factor from golf, you're left with something that doesn't seem like it has a lot of value for the dollar. The skills required (mostly about skillful estimating of trajectories and the power needed to land a ball where you want it) are pretty similar to the skills needed to be a good billiards player .... a pastime which costs FAR less and likely draws a larger audience too (if you're good at it while playing on a table at a local bowling alley, bar, or pool hall).
The Golf Sports Industrial Complex is in a dither because without Tiger Woods, people realize that golf is boring and a waste of a great green-space for picnics, frisbee, and games of catch.
A 15 inch hole? Pulling the covers off of sewers and using the resulting pit for a target would be more interesting. (Those lids are HEAVY and ball recovery would be more challenging.)
I love golf, but I only play it this way, find a nice course where you can carry your clubs. Never keep score! This is very important! Finally course must have a beer cart! So it turns into a nice walk, a little exercise with beer! Perfect day!!
Are we sure this article didn't start back on April 1st? Or are we talking about electronic Golf Games? This is SLASHDOT not Golf Digest.
The only issues with golf are the outrageous prices and the elitist people behind it all. When I first moved to my dream house neighborhood, the local private club called (this was in 1997) and offered me a membership. A mere $35,000 and that was for a NON-voting membership. Understand, I played golf in high school and had the good fortune to have actually played this course a few times every season (two schools were able to use it as their home course). I loved it, but not "I can buy a car for that money" loved it. This was INSANE and that didn't include anything else like greens fees which would run another $100 a round. No flipping way. Then, in 2012 they called and offered me a membership for $5,000 which included a number of amenities but I still wasn't listening. I'm not paying anyone thousands of dollars for something I may or may not use. Think about golf. You walk around on a nice lawn and hit a ball. There's just no way this should cost more than $40 a round per person. Carts should be extra, of course and there are other chances for extras which I'd consider if I didn't feel raped by everything else. A foursome is on a hole for all of 20 minutes. Let's call it 30 to be safe. Even if no one could tee off until you cleared the hole entirely, that's 8 people an hour heading out. and about a 10 hour day or 80 people a day paying $40 or $2,400 a day assuming no other extras like carts which you know are a given. No one works the course itself during hours other than the pro shop and there you're lucky if it's one person. Let's pay them well at $20 an hour. That leaves $2,200 a day to pay for water bills, a greenskeeper, equipment, etc. Watering the course runs about $180 a day. That still leaves $2,020 a day. Ground crew can't make more than $400 a day. So now we're at $1,620 every day and we're running out of fixed costs. So that's nearly $600,000 a year still left over on a plan at bare-bottom pricing. $100,000 a year for fertilizer? I can't even begin to imagine that. Compared to most any other business you can think of, I'd can't imagine a golf course is all that stressful. So now add in the high profit golf carts, food, the pro shop profits. Come on.
...must be straight from the minds of the "Participation Ribbon" club.....*sigh*.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
I'd Play the soccer golf for sure
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better