Ask your average bloke in the pub what his favourite sport is and you’re likely to get the response ‘football’.

Dig a little deeper about why he prefers to watch twenty two men running around a field getting sweaty, muddy and flustered and he’ll say “There’s tons of stuff going on. The decisions the ref gets wrong, shots hitting the post or being saved and all the foreign people diving”.

That’s what we like to see. A group of blokes sitting round shoving piss-stained peanuts down their gullets and worshipping at the alter that is the 52 inch HDTV.

However, ask these fine fellows if they’d prefer to flick over to watch some golf and you’ll get a frosty reply. “Golf? That’s bollocks. Nothing happens, it’s the most boring sport going.” The common misconception is that golf is duller then watching paint dry. But fear not, because there is actually a sport a hundred times worse then golf to watch. And this is bowling.

Traditionally people think of golf as that game that only Tiger Woods is the king at. When he plays in any competition, every golfer should pretty much pack away their clubs and head straight to the nineteenth hole. It doesn’t matter is Tiger hits the ball the completely wrong direction. He’ll still get a hole in one, sneak in under par or do an amazing trick shot where the ball will ricochet off a couple of squirrels, a deer and a lost pensioner before setting in the hole.

However, on the subject of Tiger Woods, we are already one step up from bowling. When you come to think about it, how many professional bowlers do you know? Unless you spend your time watching Sky Sports late at night, you won’t know any. Compared to golfers such as Nick Faldo and Colin Montgomerie there really is no-one in the bowling world who has their presences felt in the sporting world.

After consulting the modern day bible of knowledge that is Google, we found a couple of big players in the professional bowling world. However the people we discovered – Earl Anthony and Dick Weber both have something in common. They are both dead, which makes us wonder what sort of people compete in the game. Is it just retired pensioners who are looking for something to do? Unlike basketball or football, we somehow don’t think that young promising future stars of bowling are snapped up on £1 million-a-year deals.

Another thing you won’t see in bowling compared to golf is the sponsorship agreements between companies and players. Referring back to our old friend Tiger Woods again, he takes home the biggest pay packet not only in golf, but in any sport. However, the big money comes through endorsements and sponsorship. As he is held by the balls by Nike, he earns $105,000,000 a year to wear the clothing made by people who earn something like $1 to make it. Bowlers, on the other hand, are typically sponsored by the local steakhouse or plumbing centre. Not as glamorous is it?

There are also two types of golfing! The typical televised one where someone hoofs a ball around in a carefully kept course and mini golf. That’s right, what’s more fun to do than navigate a ball through windmills, tunnels and a clowns mouth? Nothing. You can’t do that with bowling can you? All the fun is sucked out of it professionally. With a group of mates it can be fun to laugh at each other as you strike up another gutterball, but that is frowned upon in the pro game.

Quite literally, you need to get a strike on every shot to win a game in bowling when playing with the intense masters of the game. Simply missing two or three pins can screw you over. Compare this to golf where mistakes don’t necessarily matter. Even if you arse up a shot, you still have a chance of the same thing happening to your fellow competitor and consequently making sure you are still on course for a win.

Even a game of golf on the Nintendo Wii is more exciting then bowling. Taking the wind and angle of your ball in to account, it proves to be a lot more of a technical challenge then bowling. With bowling on the Wii, once you know how to get a strike, you can do so over and over again. Where is the excitement in that? At least with the golf game, you never know what slight changes will affect your play. What about the wind? The rain? Or even a wild wolf dry humping your leg?

Don your Pringles golf jumper with pride! No longer do you have to take abuse from lovers of other sports.

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