Learning Golf and Experiencing the Other Side of Sports

Introduction

All my life I played contact sports such as hockey, football, basketball, or anything else that required physical competition. It was always about out working the other person, that was until I started up golf. In golf you are still competing against another team or group of people, but you are really playing against yourself more than anything. It truly is a mental game and you are in control of everything, this was a great learning experience for me.

Covid strikes

In 2020 when everything first got shut down and I was no longer able to play hockey, me and my friends looked for other ways to stay active. In my neighborhood there is a golf course that I happened to live on. One day I asked my good friend Preston to go out and hit some golf balls to kill some time, even with no experience I expected to make light work of it. I immediately found out that it was not going to be that easy. Every ball that I hit went straight into a creek or just rolled forward on the ground, and that was if I even made contact with it. Preston had some prior experience with golfing and was hitting the ball a hundred yards farther than I could, I took this as a challenge and decided I was going to put in the time and effort to learn the game of golf. For the next two months I hit foam golf balls in my backyard and watched youtube videos to learn how to make a proper golf swing. Usually after trying out a new technique I would walk out onto the golf course and put them to the test. After lots of trial and error, I finally was able to start hitting the ball up in the air which was a big stepping stone for me. One of my biggest motives to become good at golf was being able to compete with my friends that were already good golfers. About two and half months after starting golf, me and five other friends went out and played a match against each other. I learned that practicing is a lot easier than actually competing. If I made a mistake I was not just able to hit another ball, I had to deal with that consequence and try and recover. After losing by an embarrassing margin I quickly went back to the drawing board.

Hard work pays off

Losing to my friends that bad after putting in lots of work was a big shot to heart and made me want to give up. But I found myself back on the course the next day working to get better once again. Another key lesson I learned throughout this experience was learning to live with failure, and furthermore, using it to help me improve my game. With this new mindset I started seeing quicker progress and everything started to click. Throughout the summer I continued to get better with the help of friends and family, by the time fall came around and hockey season was starting back up, my golf skills were in full stride and I was finally competing well against my friends. I thought that when winter came around and with all the golf courses closing for the year, that I was going to lose my progress. That was until my friend Noah had the idea to go to the heated driving range at Carl’s Golfland once a week. This helped push my game to the next level, but also left me wondering what I could do with this new skill in order to keep pushing myself.

Leap of faith

In the spring of 2021, which marked the one year mark of my golfing career, I decided I was going to try out for the highschool golf team. After finishing my hockey career just a few weeks earlier, I wanted to find a way to fill that gap. With a couple of my hockey teammates already trying out for the golf team, I figured I might as well join them and put my golf game to the real test. Golf tryouts were a lot tougher than I thought with the amount of pressure that I didn’t realise I was going to have. The first two days I shot terrible scores that were on the border of being cut from the team. Feeling mentally exhausted, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back for the final day of tryouts. My dad told me to go out and play for fun like I have been for the past year. I took his advice and showed up with no care in the world about what was to happen. I ended up shooting my personal best score, which led to me making the team. I had a blast showing up everyday and hanging out with friends, while also practicing and getting better. Around the end of the season I saw all the hard work pay off. I played in my first and only tournament which I held a lead in for about 5 out of 18 holes, granted that lead did not last to say the least. About a week after that I made my first hole in one while at practice, that was a feeling I’ll never forget especially since I was playing in a group with a lot of my friends. We ended the season with a four day tournament against one of our rivals Plymouth. At the end of the first day I was in second place and I held that position up until the final day where I dropped down to fourth place out of 16 players. This was a great place for me to finish my one and only season on the golf team as I was able to see all my progress starting back from the very beginning in March 2020.

To new beginnings

With me graduating high school and the golf season concluding, I began looking for my next step. I knew I needed a job but also wanted to stay involved in the golf scene. I decided I could accomplish both by getting a job at my local golf course where I first learned how to play. Learning the game of golf opened my eyes to new opportunities that I wasn’t expecting when I first picked up a golf club. I was able to start new business opportunities like selling some of the used golf balls that I find while working, and making new connections with some of the other staff at the course. Some of the biggest lessons I learned when picking up golf were learning patience and accepting failure. These lessons have helped me with moving on to campus here at Michigan State and adjusting to college life. Golf has also helped me fill my competitive drive now that I’m not playing hockey everyday, and is ultimately a good life skill to have in my opinion as it allows for new connections no matter what you end up doing. In the end, the biggest lesson I have learned was to go outside your bubble and try new things, for you have no idea where they will take you.