Any sport played in pleated pants is no sport at all.

Dating all the way back to the creation of the game in Scotland (I think) more than a thousand years ago (I made that up entirely), men and women alike have debated the legitimacy of golf as anything more than a hobby.

“Can,” we’ve always wondered, “a game that was once played in kilts (again, made up. But it could be true) really join the ranks of baseball and curling in the arena of professional sport-dom?” The answer to this oft-asked question is clear.

Dictionary.com, trusty friend to those of us who like to use words larger than we understand, defines a sport as “an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature,” putting the almighty cabash on golfers’ attempts to classify a mere hobby as a sport.

The difference, my friends, is in the sweat. Aside from humiliating your opponent — clearly the primary reason to participate in any activity — sports are about salty liquid. The more manly the sport, the more sodium-heavy refuse your body excretes; anything guaranteed to help you end the day a man requires almost superhuman amounts of sweat. This is a fact. Ask a scientist.

Boxing. Now there’s a sport. Have you ever seen a boxer strolling to the second round of a fight? I think not. Any boxer worth his salt is either glaring menacingly at his bloodied opponent in the opposite corner or having q-tips stuffed up his nose by Clint Eastwood right around the time that Tiger Woods is kissing his supermodel wife and changing Nike hats on the way to the third hole.

This is where badass-ness, the second requirement for being an official sport, comes into play; you sure as hell better fear permanent injury or even death when you step onto that field/court/ring, etc., if you plan on calling yourself an athlete.

I am not by any means suggesting that every athlete should dye his hair, pierce his nose and scare as many children as Dennis Rodman does on a daily basis, but every real sport has to have at least one hardcore badass that makes his or her opponents shake in their sneakers. When I asked a golfer who their badass was, he answered John Daly, saying that he “drinks beer during tourneys and smokes a hella lot.” Oh please, did Mike Tyson have a minute to drink a brewsky before biting off Holyfield‘s ear? Try again.

Nothing more than a glorified game, golf needs to either man up — I suggest adding flaming balls and flammable clubs doused in lighter fluid — and join the big boys or stop pretending that it can hold a candle. The possibility of pleated pants, a total lack of sweat and not even one true badass in the golf world collude to damn this would-be athletic activity to “hobby” status along with the likes of knitting and beanie-baby collecting.