What Got Me Into Golf in the First Place

Every golfer has their story of how they came to play the game.  When I was twelve or fourteen, or whatever age made me the youngest person in 99% of golf groups, older folks would always tell me, "I wish I took up the game when I was your age."  After a while, it turned into a cliche for me or any other young person to hear that from an elder.

"When I was your age, we golfed with shoddy wood and screws in our clubs!" 

Honestly, I didn't appreciate the cliche until I aged a bit.  As I began writing about golf in college and up through today (bordering on nine years now), I grew interested in golf participation.  Why in the world would people play golf?  Hittin' a goofy dimpled white ball through the woods, getting mad, and paying a lot of money to do it seems kind of ridiculous on the surface.  And that's just for older people. 

Imagine inviting (or forcing) your child to play golf.  They can't hit the ball far.  It's a long way for them to walk - like Disney World, but no Dumbo ride.  It just sounds like the whole thing is a drag compared to football where you get to hit people, baseball where you get to hit something, or soccer, whose appeal still is foreign to me because watching children play soccer is like watching ants chase picnic scraps.

That's where the Wall St. Journal's piece on the decline of participation in junior golf enters.  Matthew Futterman does a great job in summarizing the conflicting data from the golf industry that shows more kids are participating in formal programs, but not playing the actual game of golf.  The evidence seems to suggest that, like for adults, the game is too daunting, too expensive, and too time-consuming for juniors to drop their cell phones and stop texting.  When the world is moving so quickly, golf seems even slower to kids.

The resources also appear to be dwindling (or in some parts of the US, nonexistent) to encourage kids to play.  There are fewer par 3 courses than a decade ago.  Executive, or shorter, courses are closing at a rate outpacing their longer counterparts.  The places that kids and families can go to learn the sport - together or separate - are disappearing.

Just as in any sport or activity, infrastructure is required to be able to support its growth.  Golf is unlike other sports because it often commands fairly sprawling land needs.  Nevermind the cost of maintaining that land or the equipment, golf courses are like mini-parks.  Thanks to the housing boom and other land needs, kid-friendly golf courses are not exactly a priority.

For me, though, it was that type of environment that inspired me to play golf in the first place.

I started hitting golf balls at the driving range when I was 12 or so.  I did it because it was something else to do after going to the adjoining batting cages.  Golf balls went further, especially since I sucked at baseball, so I naturally became interested in learning more about golf.  I took four 30 minute lessons to learn the basic principles.  After that, I bought a starter set and learned how to hit each club.  Sure, I still split time at the batting cage, but I quickly realized that I was better at hitting golf balls than baseballs.  That in mind, I had never been on a golf course.  How would I pull off that transition?

Fortunately, my dad knew a guy by the name of Chuck Slater.  Chuck ran a golf program through the Optimist organization.  Each week, we could go to the driving range and rattle hundreds of golf balls with our tireless, youthful bodies for a handful of dollars.  A PGA pro was even there to help us out.  This wasn't a fancy-schmancy driving range.  It was right by BWI Airport, so the fun game was to try to hit a golf ball high enough to collide with a landing plane.  (Really, it was impossible.  And in a post-9/11 world, I may have been taken to a secret CIA prison camp for questioning had I been caught.)  Then, on alternating weeks, we could go to a local pitch-and-putt to hone in on playing a real course for nine holes.  It wasn't anything special, but the holes were 100 yards or so and taught the basics.  (Actually, I could use a couple of par 3 track rounds right now because my wedge game is in shambles.) 

As our group grew and many players improved, the Optimists worked out a deal to go play Carroll Park - a then twelve hole executive track just barely into Baltimore city.  Despite the fact that shady men tried to launch drives onto I-95 South from the practice green for money and children stole your golf ball on one hole and tried to resell it to you two holes later, Carroll Park was a great place to learn.  It was helpful to have an easy course to learn course management skills.  Over time, some of us Carroll Park-ers graduated to the courses at Ft. George G. Meade.  From start to end, the Optimists supplied an infrastructure for kids to learn golf at very reasonable prices.

Interspersed in there was also the support of my family.  They drove me to the range.  They drove me to Carroll Park, or junior tournaments elsewhere. When I arrived at these cheaply-priced tournaments on superb courses in our area, so many of the kids were from rich families with country club memberships.  My cousin used to play tournaments with me, and was once asked at an event which country club he belonged.  He said the name of his suburban housing development just to have an answer.

My dad would arrange for me to play with his friends and our family that was older but played.  That's where the cliches started.  After all, I had finally progressed to the point where I could beat some of them.  Had they started young like me, they could have been gambling for more money on the course.

The ultimate gift was an arrangement with a local course called Bay Hills.  (Not Bay Hill, though interestingly enough, Arnold Palmer's management company bought Bay Hills.)  The deal was that for a couple hundred bucks' initiation fee, I could play unlimited golf for like $10 per round.  It was unreal.  And back then, I could play 36 holes without thinking twice.  A bunch of us would go out in the morning, blitz the course twice, and eat a hot dog before going home.  What a bargain.  I wish I could do that today - be unemployed, play golf, and eat hot dogs all day.

The moral of the story is that I grew to love golf because there were opportunities made available by organizations and people that wanted to pass down golf through to the next generation.  I had (and have) loving parents who made sure that they could accommodate my fledgling interest that turned into a passion.  They never pushed, but merely propped up in a way that was encouraging of my goals.  The combination is what golf needs: infrastructure by which kids can gain access to modest but good facilities, and people - especially parents - that are willing to commit to helping children learn a game for a lifetime.