Golf - the purest form of sport?

In recent days, this blog has addressed the primacy of machines over sports people; on a longer term basis, the blog has repeatedly examined the core product in sport (the uncertain outcome to a sporting contest) and ways of enhancing it through measures aimed at establishing competitive balance between contestants. So how should we read the final outcome yesterday's British Open golf tournament? Does this mean that golf is the purest form of sport, a sport where humans do indeed seem to have primacy over machines and technology, and where defeat is more likely to come as a result of, say, the weather, rather than from the use of outdated or inferior equipment? After all, in which other sports could a 59 year old man (who last won a golf Major 26 years ago) contest the winners trophy with a man 23 years younger than him? Is golf therefore the ultimate in uncertainty of outcome and a model of competitive balance that sports like F1 motor racing and top-level football stand little, if any, chance of ever approaching? Can other sports learn lessons from golf? Could other sports learn lessons from golf, especially when technological input is implicitly greater, and more necessary, in other sports? Or are Tom Watson's efforts something of a red herring? Is age an obstacle to similar levels of success in rugby, boxing or track and field athletics? Is it something specifically about golf that makes it so uncertain, which can't be replicated in other sports? Is golf still a sport in which technical investment brings reward, and was Watson's position due as much to Tiger Woods' problems as to any notion that the sport is competitively balanced? Perhaps the sport is competitively balanced?