Have email Major League Baseball news delivered to your mailbox. If golfer Tiger Woods is an athlete, then stock-car driver Bobby Labonte is an athlete. Anyone who knows me knows I'm no athlete - just as Woods is no athlete. Which is what makes his selection as the Associated Press male athlete of the year a joke. There are at least two dozen real athletes, who compete in real sports, who are more worthy than Woods of the honor he received for the third time - and who also should be embarrassed and upset that supposed sports experts would consider Woods the nation's top male athlete.
Golfers are no more athletes than stock-car drivers, or bowlers, or chess players.
Golfers' competition is much more mental than physical. It lacks a lot of elements of true sport. Golfers walk around for about four hours on a sunny afternoon hitting a ball with a stick. They don't even have to look for the ball, and they have someone carry their clubs for them. In golf, there's no contact.