It’s rough job, but they stay in game

Is golf a great sport, or what? Or, upon further review, is it a sport at all?

Inquiring minds want to know. We have questions.

We have just witnessed a weekend where grown men were brought to their knees by high grass. Was this the U.S. Open or the Marquis de Sade Invitational?

Seldom has there been anything as painful as this in sports, outside of watching Olympic dressage or being locked in a room with a Brent Musburger telecast and no mute button. Were these guys playing with golf clubs or thumb screws?

From the sound and vision of it, this tournament had to rank right up there with pinkeye or the heartbreak of psoriasis.

All weekend, they called the nemesis the rough. Why not the impossible?

We heard their whines, felt their pain.

Does something qualify as a sport if the major issue of the major competition is long grass? How did Scott’s Turf Builder blow its chance to be the main sponsor? And why didn’t the caddies just put the bags on the back of riding mowers?

If one of the top stories of the weekend was about one of the top players wearing a bowler’s wrist brace (Phil Mickelson), can this be a sport? Should we be feeling some golf/bowling synergy?

If you can play it wearing purple pants (Ian Poulter), or can light up a cigarette with a two-shot lead (Angel Cabrera) and still win, can this be a sport? Matter of fact, what kind of sport lets a guy named Angel win in the first place?

If the place they play is the winner and the players playing are the losers, what does that mean? Isn’t that like a basketball result that reads: Staples Center 102, Lakers 86?

How about if one of the major obstacles is called “the Church Pews”? Did they pass the collection plate every time somebody went in? Will this start a trend? Will hockey’s penalty box become “the Confessional”?

Can something be a sport if nobody ever sweats? How about if the announcers keep saying, over and over, like a couple of guys at an execution, “Man, this is tough to watch”?

Is something a sport if your wife says she wants to learn how to play, and she actually can? Or if you are old and stiff and at the point in your life where the most athletic thing you do is tie your shoes and you can take this up and do it?

And what kind of sport these days can look you in the eye, like golf can, and assure you that none of its players are juiced, or ever will be? Isn’t that un-American? Isn’t cheating and doing whatever you can to get an edge intrinsic to our way of life and key to the way we raise our next generation of athletes?

But look at it. Brad Faxon on ‘roids? Corey Pavin? Holy Barry Bonds! No chance.

Is this not a game where you have one guy named Tiger who is cut like a linebacker and 400 other guys cut like a line coach or a goal line.

Shouldn’t a sport have some danger? Shouldn’t there be fastballs upside the batting helmet, blitzing linebackers, high-sticking defensemen, hip-checking Robert Horrys? Heck, even the guys riding polo ponies have a chance to fall off.

When Tiger Woods broke his four-iron against a tree, a moment shown over and over on TV as if somebody was trying to artificially inseminate the sport with testosterone, did that constitute a moment of danger for Woods, or just for his four-iron?

But here’s the real puzzler. Can something be a sport if you can pour while you putt, if Coors can be light and so can your score?

By way of illustration, a true story:

A golfer is preparing to embark on a round in the heat of the summer in Palm Desert. It is noon, it is 107 degrees and the golfer knows he is crazy to be doing this.

Less so one of his playing partners in the other cart, a tennis pro named Scott Booth who will not be identified. As the unidentified tennis pro is approached, he is carefully unloading a 12-pack of beer onto ice in a cooler in the back of his cart.

He looks up, sees he is being watched and his beer being coveted, and utters words that, in many ways, may symbolize the very fabric of the game he is about to play.

“Better get your own,” he says.

Four hours and 12 beers later, the unidentified tennis pro finishes with a round of 77.

So, what do we have here? A sport? A game? A torture chamber? Or just another excuse for a social hour?

Unfortunately, these are questions that will remain unanswered here.

We have a tee time.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.