Is snooker harder than golf?

[USER1999]

What is a ‘good’ golfer?

Single figure?
Cat 1?
Scratch?

And what would constitute a good snooker player?

Professional, in both cases.

 

[greenone]

And yet people still miss the golf ball completely on occasions, how often does that happen in snooker?

If you go down the local snooker club, you won't see them them miss the cue ball but you see them miss the object ball regularly.

 

[Crow]

You've got high standards! I'd say an exceptional round in club golf is par, for tour pros it's impossible as down to conditions. Even on a flat calm day if a tour pro shot 64 on the Old Course I'd say that's ridiculous.

I'd say my snooker handicap would be about 20 and if I played every day for six months I could get that to about 12 but making 50 breaks etc would be years away. If you can make a break of 80 at snooker I'd say that is the equivalent of scratch golf.

I don't have high standards, I'm just saying that the yardstick being used for golf is one that's relatively easy to achieve, whereas 48 gross isn't impossible as most of us will birdie every hole on our course at some time or another, better players will eagle numerous holes over the years. Individually no one birdie or eagle is amazing but all in a single round would be miraculous, that's how hard golf is.

|'m not comparing break sizes or handicaps, just the difficulty in achieving a gross 48 for instance, which can be used as an argument that golf is harder than snooker.

 

[Aussie Swinger]

100%. No handicap system to make up for lack of talent or people not putting in the reps to get better. Don’t get handicap snooker players saying I had a 147 but failing to state due to ‘Handicap’ they already started on a score of 139 and only had to pot 1 red followed by a single black to score ‘147’.

 

[howbow88]

It's exactly the same thing.

Of course it's not the same. They're different sports. Why would you think it's the same?

I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you really can be ever so dim.

 

[Orikoru]

I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you really can be ever so dim.

I said the point about leaving yourself in the correct position is the same for both sports. I didn't say both sports are the same in their entirety. But then you knew that, obviously, you just ran out of salient points to make.

 

[howbow88]

I said the point about leaving yourself in the correct position is the same for both sports. I didn't say both sports are the same in their entirety. But then you knew that, obviously, you just ran out of salient points to make.

'They're the same' 'They're not the same.' You are coming across as quite the fool on this thread. This in particular:

I never play snooker

Embarrassing

 

[Orikoru]

'They're the same' 'They're not the same.' You are coming across as quite the fool on this thread. This in particular:

Embarrassing

It's not my fault you can't understand context is it?

 

[chrisd]

I'd say that golf is by far and away the harder game to play at an amateur level. I tried snooker back years ago but struggled due to wearing glasses but even day one I could pot some balls. Golf however was totally different, even making contact with the ball was difficult and as i played more golf every aspect was hard, chipping, driving iron shots etc . I agree snooker also becomes harder when you factor in cue ball positioning but if someone played 4 hours of snooker or 4 hours of golf they would clearly learn much quicker as 4 hours of golf is probably 20 minutes of play and the rest just walking wheras 4 hours of snooker with someone of equal ability is probably at least 2 hours of actual play.

Without wishing to be controversial I found playing tennis at a reasonable club level harder than snooker ?

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

I'd say that golf is by far and away the harder game to play at an amateur level. I tried snooker back years ago but struggled due to wearing glasses but even day one I could pot some balls. Golf however was totally different, even making contact with the ball was difficult and as i played more golf every aspect was hard, chipping, driving iron shots etc . I agree snooker also becomes harder when you factor in cue ball positioning but if someone played 4 hours of snooker or 4 hours of golf they would clearly learn much quicker as 4 hours of golf is probably 20 minutes of play and the rest just walking wheras 4 hours of snooker with someone of equal ability is probably at least 2 hours of actual play.

Without wishing to be controversial I found playing tennis at a reasonable club level harder than snooker ?

...and likewise - I found squash playing against even a quarter-decent club player almost impossible. I might be able to hit the ball and might be able to play the occasional useful shot (hmmm...) - but I rarely, if ever, got the chance.

OK - a different sort of difficulty than individual sports such as golf and snooker.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

Surely it’s all done to each person’s relative skill levels

I have tried playing snooker for years and the most I have potted in a row is 3 I reckon

I was able to take up golf and go round in level par after a number of years , was able to get birdies early on

I find snooker far harder

Shaun Murphy is both a scratch golfer and a world champion snooker player

He is clearly skillful at both games but found snooker the harder sport to play - he is certainly coming from a level of experience in both sports

 

[sunshine]

No 2 tables or clothes are the same, the way the table plays can vary with temperature. You can be in perfect position in snooker and have a kick or a bad bounce off a cushion and find yourself completely out of position.

comedy gold

 

[LincolnShep]

Snooker is easier than golf but they are both way easier than almost everything else!

 

[KenL]

Snooker is easier than golf but they are both way easier than almost everything else!

That's the way this thread is going...

 

[garyinderry]

I used to play snooker a few times a week when I was younger.

Never found a game that you needed to play all the time otherwise you lost your touch.

Even one day to the next you just might not have it.

Golf isnt too dissimilar although I find snooker harder.

Pros in both sports make hard stuff seem almost routine.

 

[Jimaroid]

Interesting question, just thinking of the simplest way of getting to an equivalent comparison.

Imagine you had the same surface, a full size snooker table you could stand on to use as a putting green...

1. How many 12 foot putts do you think you could 'hole' versus 12 foot pots?
2. Do it again, same single ball for the putts, both a cue and object ball for the snooker shots. How many this time?

By taking every other factor of the game away and comparing them in that type of mental experiment, I think snooker is much harder.

 

[Canary_Yellow]

I'd say that golf is by far and away the harder game to play at an amateur level. I tried snooker back years ago but struggled due to wearing glasses but even day one I could pot some balls. Golf however was totally different, even making contact with the ball was difficult and as i played more golf every aspect was hard, chipping, driving iron shots etc . I agree snooker also becomes harder when you factor in cue ball positioning but if someone played 4 hours of snooker or 4 hours of golf they would clearly learn much quicker as 4 hours of golf is probably 20 minutes of play and the rest just walking wheras 4 hours of snooker with someone of equal ability is probably at least 2 hours of actual play.

Without wishing to be controversial I found playing tennis at a reasonable club level harder than snooker ?

I would wager that is because you were also playing against other snooker players that were similarly hopeless (or new to the game, should I say!). However, as golfers, we are only ever playing against the course which is more or less the same opponent regardless of your expertise at the sport. The course shows us all up from day 1.

I'd say the appropriate comparison would therefore be if you as a beginner snooker player were playing against an experienced club player, in that situation, I think snooker would feel very hard in the same way that golf does, you'd barely get a chance to make a pot and would spend most of your time watching balls being potted.

Going back to a point made earlier, snooker has lower barriers to entry than golf, probably easier to get to grips with some very basic skills compared to golf, but potting one ball in isolation is the very tip of the iceberg of required skills and it's hugely difficult to go from that basic level of skill to the next stage.

EDIT: Tennis is very hard because unless you have some basic competence, which isn't that easy to accumulate, takes a fair bit of practice, you pretty much can't play at all! Tennis has very high barriers to entry I'd say, higher than golf, but then possibly easier to learn to play to a very average casual standard (but I could be wrong about that, having never really got past trying to accumulate the basic skills!)

 

[chrisd]

Interesting question, just thinking of the simplest way of getting to an equivalent comparison.

Imagine you had the same surface, a full size snooker table you could stand on to use as a putting green...

1. How many 12 foot putts do you think you could 'hole' versus 12 foot pots?
2. Do it again, same single ball for the putts, both a cue and object ball for the snooker shots. How many this time?

By taking every other factor of the game away and comparing them in that type of mental experiment, I think snooker is much harder.

I dont see the equivalent comparison

Surely its more simple, would the average person play a more decent game of snooker than golf, given a similar time of learning. I know I would have learned snooker quicker than golf as golf has a higher number of variables to learn

 

[evemccc]

What has technology done in golf to help you?

Just in the last few years:

GPS/ Rangefinder
Launch Monitor
Ball and club tech development from OEMs

We now all have the means to know which clubs to hit based on our yardages...like having a sort of personal caddy for us at all times

Golf is a huge business and OEMs have a vested interest in using that tech (Trackman) to further develop equipment to help alleviate what the majority of golfers struggle with ( sell to them).


I don’t see snooker as anything like the big business that golf is. Tech change has not helped the average snooker player get better and won’t in the future, relative to the help that golfers will get

The courses that most of us play have not got considerably longer in the last few years - only the Champ courses from Champ tees have....Golf should be getting easier and easier for the average person

Come and play golf with persimmon drivers, mashies and pre-1980s golf balls with only your own judgement for distances, and golf is more similar to the difficulty of snooker..

But on US style heavily watered greens with GPS yardages, Trackman and GCQuad, with oversized drivers, cavity irons and Pro V1s —- nahh

Anyone who’s posted in this thread who’s played a decent amount of golf and snooker has attested to snooker being clearer harder (for most people)

Only ‘golf-only’ diehards just assume that golf is..

 

[rudebhoy]

I played snooker once or twice a week for a couple of years, but packed in last year when my pp moved away. Both of us were pretty hopeless, and although we both improved a bit over time, potting 5 or 6 balls in a row was a major achievement.

It wasn't just us, I'd see the same people playing all the time, and 95% were like us.

You can be a great potter, but unless you can master control of the cue ball, you are never going to be any good.

I'd say it's easier to be a mediocre golfer than it is to be a mediocre snooker player.