It’s been around for several hundred years, and for a while it was the Provence of the elite and rich. If you’ve seen many golf movies you know that women weren’t even allowed to caddy until the middle of the last century. And while it’s still a bit pricey to play a lot of golf, it’s not exactly prohibitive any longer. It’s no wonder that more and more people are picking up the sports as something more than a competitive jaunt. Golf is so enjoyable that it’s becoming one of the more popular hobbies as well.

When you think of the word hobby you might conjure up such indoor pastimes as stamp collecting or knitting. Others will paint or listen to music. But that doesn’t mean that hiking isn’t a hobby at all. In fact, there are quite a number of hobbies that involve using some serious muscle mass around. And while you probably don’t consider golf a strenuous activity, it will give a serious couch potato a decent challenge the first few rounds out.

One of the reasons golf can be a big draw is the setting. Lovely landscapes, the greenest grass perfectly trimmed, trees and water – it’s a nature walk with a little white ball thrown in. You don’t have to be young or in great shape, and you don’t have to be particularly competitive since you’re only really playing against the course and yourself, but if that’s what does it for you, more power to you.

Golf is great exercise as well. Strap on a big pack full of metal, lug it around for a few miles and you would have a great workout. The nice thing about golf is that the pack and the steel have some purpose while you walk it out with them on your back. If you can play a few rounds a week, you would be walking something like ten miles with the extra weight as well as flexing and stretching all of your other muscle groups along the way. Depending on how well you play – that might be a lot of extra flexing and twisting.

Golf requires bending over, twisting around, small muscle precision and large muscle group power. Outside of swimming it’s a little hard to get a more complete cycle of body functions as you can get in a round of golf. And the sights and sounds are certainly right up there with almost anything else that actually requires activity. It is a little tough to enjoy the way a mountain looks when you are hanging onto it for dear life.

All in all, golf is has the perfect balance of physical activity and aesthetic quality. You’ll search far and wide to find a single hobby that has more to offer in a single package. And while it does cost more to take the walk, you might have just blown the cash on hamburgers anyway. Make a little investment in your health and happiness and give the good old game a try.