[Echognome]

Hmm. I was only making a tiny point about the fact that bridge doesn't have referees monitoring them at all times. However, if you want to bring the discussion to it, I can argue that both your points are actually wrong in comparing to golf.

(1) To protect players from their own ignorance of the laws. and that the laws of bridge are "necessarily more complex than golf."

Eh? What is the penalty (if there is one) if a player falls walking into a sand trap and his club touches the sand before he hits the ball?

What happens if a ball goes into the crowd and one of the fans stomps the ball deeper in the ground?

There are indeed some complicated rules in golf where they have to "summon" an official. It just happens less often in golf than bridge.

(2) To protect the field.

Hmm. Doesn't golf also have a field where the number of players that qualify for the weekend is determined by the scores of the other golfers? What about those that at the end of the year will be affected by the money list if someone makes an error in scoring? They may lose their PGA card.


Look, I'm not trying to say bridge and golf are similar sports. I'm only saying that if I were to draw a comparison to other sports it would be more like golf than say soccer!

[Al_U_Card]

1eyedjack, on Aug 26 2005, 12:44 PM, said:

I regularly see attempts to draw parallels between bridge and golf and I have yet to find any comparison convincing.

How about this one concerning admission to the Olympics: "Since you can drink and smoke while you perform the activity, neither is a sport."