re: Hardest sport to master

Well in a way they are all equally impossible to master. If we assume enough people have attempted mastery, and we have seen the maximum effort applied, then we have seen it. And, IMO that should be the standard. Just because the rules of something make it unlikely or even impossible to perfect, doesn't mean it's impossible to master. Playing a perfect basketball game would mean you shot in a basketball off the tip, scored a 3. Forced a 5 second inbound violation, then scored an alley oop immediately on the inbounds pass you just received. According to the Trent Tucker Rule, that play must take a minimum of 0.3 seconds off the clock. A three would take too much longer to travel in the air to make up for the point difference. On top the oop, you would then have to draw the foul and complete your free throw. If the initial tipoff and three took a generous 3 seconds off the clock, then that would mean that the perfect basketball game would be won 28,770-0. See the difference between mastery and perfection? The most efficient points/minute play in basketball is harder than getting a hole in one. And then you'd have to do it almost 10,000 times in a row.

Now that we understand the difference between perfecting and mastering, we have to think which sport required the most and widest variety of things to master. Obviously mastering chess is harder than mastering checkers because there is more to learn.

IMO, that eliminates most Olympic sports like track and field and swimming because you can't play defense. Playing defense and having to adjust real time based on an opponent matters and it's something that those things lack, and absolutely matters. The variety of reactions and real time decisions relating to scenarios that would be almost impossible to replicate is part of the beauty of competition. For this reason, golf should be eliminated as well.

I would also move to eliminate sports that don't interchange between offense and defense simultaneously. Meaning baseball would be eliminated. Baseball, like golf, requires you to perform one of the hardest acts in all of sports, and it actually has to adapt based on the opponent, but it doesn't require you to then play defense. In football you do have offense vs defense, as either team can score on any play, but I would also say that this isn't the idealest form of playing offense and defense simultaneously, and it eliminates football as well.

As far as the ideal form of offense vs defense, that would be combat such as boxing or MMA. Boxing utilizes less than MMA, so let's knock boxing out of consideration. However, MMA doesn't utilize a foreign object that requires additional mastery, such as a ball.

Soccer is a good example of real time offense and defense as well as mastery of a ball, but the hands aren't used. Soccer might win if it wasn't for this.

The elements should matter as well. Playing football in the summer with short grass or on astroturf is different than playing in 40 below during a snow storm.

The best sport for this, as far as a variety of surfaces and elements is probably tennis. Clay, grass and hard court is a great blend and even the greatests of all time have had weaknesses and strengths across the three. Tennis is a great level of finite motor control with hands, real time defense, and blend of surfaces, but it completely lacks a physical contact element.

Basketball requires a physical element, real time offense, and although the surface is static, its biggest detractor is that it favors height.

Another great example of a physical element is hockey. It also has intense real time offense and defense and it requires mastery of a foreign object and foreign auxiliary equipment(skates). The surface isn't as varied as tennis, but that isn't that big of a deal, IMO.


In conclusion, hockey. Followed by basketball, tennis, soccer, MMA, soccer, football, baseball, golf, track and field.