Golf is the quintessential battle between humanity and nature. As a sport, it is unparalleled in its absence of concrete physical boundaries that define the playing area. The natural boundaries instead manifest themselves on every play, not to define a specific area, but to meddle, harass, and alter every aspect of play.

Just ask Phil Mickelson at the 2010 Masters. As if Augusta National Golf Club wasn't difficult enough already.

It is inadequate to say that bunkers, water hazards, trees, and awkward lies come in all shapes and sizes. Their very effectiveness reaches beyond their physical consistency to highlight the unique role golfers play. The course – a fitting term for the setting of a journey – plays defense against each individual golfer. It looms treacherously inviting. Unable to communicate with other defenders or adjust to its opponents strengths and weaknesses, the course bestows that entire responsibility on each golfer, a mental and physical test that humbles even the greatest to ever play.

Golfers must be artists: creative, unafraid, and daring. A quarterback works to defeat a defense; golfers work to conquer nature, and themselves.

Each golfer uniquely controls his/her own destiny. Unlike any other sport, each individual play bears an equal and palpable effect on the final score. A 300-yard drive, an approach shot to within a half inch of the hole and a duff that travels no farther than you can swing your arms each count one and the same, literally.

Baseball is plagued as “the sport where nothing happens." A three-hour game consists of roughly 17 minutes of play, i.e., the accumulated time of every pitch and ball put in play, until it is returned to the pitcher, or it enters the stands, and play is ruled dead. In the average NFL game, the number shrinks to 11 minutes.

To calculate such a statistic for golf would prove more than mildly comedic – roughly 72 strokes, each lasting a second or less. All control is lost after the ball is impacted and nature is left to dictate the outcome. In the accumulation of such minuscule periods of time lies golf's inherent beauty. Athletes endure the course of their emotions and ever-present outside adversity – opponent scoring, weather, course conditions – through fleetingly brilliant moments of finesse and precision.

A golfer is only prescribed a set of metal clubs, a ferociously unforgiving rubber-cored ball, and their own intellect and grit to navigate their journey. Like any good expedition, the leader is not alone. Just as Lewis had Clark, a golfer has a caddie. Fuzzy Zoeller became the first man to win The Masters in his rookie campaign, and gave his caddie Jerry Beard unfathomable credit.

“I figured my caddie knew the course a lot better than me," Zoeller said. “So I put out my hand and played whatever club he put in it. I'd say, 'How hard do I hit it?' He'd tell me and I'd swing."

Unlike any other spectator sport, golf deeply weaves fans into the fabric of the game. Fans are not separated from players by glass or sidelines; they are part of the course.

Love for the game is fueled from within the game itself. Team sports draw passion primarily through dedication to a team in a specific city, not for the players themselves. The phrase “cheering for the laundry" embodies the notion that we cheer for the logo on the jerseys, regardless of the players who wear them. Golf, however, inspires the opposite in its most beloved supporters. Golf spectators exist as one large mass to embrace the manifestation of the sport through its athletes. They cheer for competition, not for victory or bragging rights.

The sport exists divorced from the outside world, providing a unique escape for golfers and fans to self-sustainingly fuel the game through their own deeper appreciation of it.

The game's devastatingly difficult nature has earned it the title “a good walk spoiled." It teaches trust and meticulous focus as a golfer plots through the course, each shot as important as the next. Golf has no hail mary to bypass the defense and no trick plays to fool the opposition. It's a methodical game that reminds the golfer of his/her own physical limitations on each shot. But, can simultaneously allow even the biggest hacks to execute a given shot as well as any professional could. However illusive it may be, that one perfectly struck ball can ignite the burning desire to turn it into two the next round, and then three the round after.

Bobby Jones, founder and designer of Augusta – the course Zoeller and his caddie conquered in 1979 and the course guilty of raining debris on Mickelson's putting line – explained the journey each golfer takes, and the game's overall appeal to a tee.

“No man will ever have golf under his thumb," Jones said. “No round will every be so good that it could not have been better. Perhaps that is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you are playing a game. You are playing Old Man Par."