Let me paint you a picture. It's Saturday morning. You're standing on the first tee. The group behind you is already there, stretching with the quiet confidence of people who break 80. Your buddy just striped one down the middle. And you're standing over your ball thinking about seventeen different swing thoughts at once while your hands sweat through your glove.
You top it. Forty yards. The cart girl sees everything.
And now you're supposed to enjoy this?
Yeah. Actually. You are.
Because here's the thing nobody tells you when you pick up golf: you don't have to be good at it to love it. In fact, some of the best rounds of your life will be the ones where you played your worst. I know that sounds like something you'd read on a motivational poster in a dentist's office, but stay with me.
The Lie We All Bought
Somewhere along the way, we all absorbed this idea that golf is only fun when you're playing well. That the point is the score. That if you're not improving, you're wasting your time.
This is a lie. A well-marketed, tour-broadcast, YouTube-lesson-industrial-complex lie.
Think about it. When you go bowling, do you need to throw 200 to enjoy the nachos and the shoes and the trash talk? When you play pickup basketball, do you need to hit a certain shooting percentage before you're allowed to have a beer after? No. You show up, you do your best, you laugh at yourself, and you have a good time.
Golf has somehow convinced us that fun is conditional on performance. That you need to earn enjoyment through competence.
You don't. You never did.
Why Golf Isn't Fun Anymore (And What Changed)
If you started golf and loved it, but somewhere along the way it stopped being fun, I want you to think about when that shift happened. I bet it was around the time you started:
- Watching YouTube instruction videos
- Tracking your handicap
- Playing with people who were better than you
- Comparing your game to where you think it "should" be
None of those things are bad on their own. But together, they build this invisible pressure system that turns every round into a performance review. You're no longer playing golf. You're auditioning.
And auditions aren't fun. Auditions are stressful.
The moment you started thinking "I should be better by now" is the moment golf stopped being a game and became a job you don't get paid for.
How to Actually Enjoy Golf as a Beginner (Or a Bad Golfer, Or Both)
Here's my highly unqualified, bogey-or-worse guide to having fun out there:
1. Lower the Bar. Then Lower It Again.
Your goal for the round shouldn't be a number. It should be a feeling. Try these instead:
- "I want to hit one shot I'm proud of"
- "I want to enjoy being outside for four hours"
- "I want to spend time with my buddy without talking about work"
- "I want to find all my golf balls" (ambitious, I know)
One good shot per round. That's the bar. And honestly? One good shot per round is pretty much guaranteed, even if the other 99 are terrible. That one 7-iron that lands on the green and you hear the thwack and the ball does the thing? That's the drug. That's why you came back.
2. Stop Keeping Score (Seriously)
I know, I know. "But that's the whole point of golf." Is it, though?
Try playing a round where you don't keep score. Not a single stroke counted. Just play. Hit the ball. Walk to it. Hit it again. When it goes in the hole, walk to the next tee. No numbers. No app. No math.
It feels illegal at first. Like you're cheating on a test. But after a few holes, something loosens. You stop thinking about the triple bogey on 3 because there was no triple bogey on 3. There was just a hole where you hit a lot of shots and one of them was actually pretty nice.
Some of the best golfers I know — the ones who have been playing for decades and still love it — they stopped keeping score years ago. They know what they shot, roughly. They don't need an app to tell them.
3. Play the Right Tees
This is the single fastest way to enjoy golf more, and it's free.
If you're shooting over 100, you should not be playing the tips. I don't care if your buddy is. I don't care if the group behind you might judge you. Playing from tees that are too far back is like running a marathon in dress shoes — technically possible, definitely miserable.
Move up. Way up. Play the forward tees. Suddenly fairways are reachable. Par 4s are actually two-shot holes. You might even hit a green in regulation, and let me tell you, the first time that happens, you'll feel like Tiger on Sunday at Augusta.
There's no rule that says you have to suffer through 230-yard par 3s. That's not golf. That's punishment.
4. Find Your People
Golf with the wrong group is an anxiety factory. Golf with the right group is therapy with a beer cart.
The right group:
- Doesn't care what you shoot
- Celebrates your good shots
- Laughs at the bad ones (including their own)
- Keeps the pace without making you feel rushed
- Understands that a 6-hour round is only bad if the company is
If you're playing with people who make you feel bad about your game — even subtly, even unintentionally — find different people. Life is too short to spend four hours feeling judged.
5. Embrace the Chaos
Here's a secret: inconsistency is the most consistent thing about recreational golf.
You will have days where everything clicks and you shoot your best ever. The next week, same course, same clubs, you'll play 20 strokes worse and have no idea why. This isn't failure. This is golf. This is the game working as designed.
The sooner you accept that your performance will vary wildly and unpredictably, the sooner you can stop being angry about it and start finding it kind of funny.
Because it IS funny. You hit a 280-yard drive on 7 and then duffed a 30-yard chip on 8. The same hands. The same brain. The same body. What happened between those two shots? Nobody knows. Physics left the chat.
6. Invest in the Experience, Not the Score
Bring good snacks. Buy a comfortable pair of shoes. Get a Bluetooth speaker and play it at a reasonable volume (we'll talk about golf etiquette another time). Notice the trees. Watch the sunrise. Spot the hawk circling the back nine. Feel the grass under your feet if you're walking.
Golf courses are some of the most beautiful places you'll ever spend four hours. If you're so focused on your scorecard that you miss the actual experience of being there, you're doing it wrong.
I played a round last fall where I shot 107 and it was one of the best days of my year. The weather was perfect, my buddy and I talked about everything and nothing, I hit one drive that I'm still thinking about, and the hot dog at the turn was exactly what I needed. That's a good day. That's what golf can be.
The Part Nobody Wants to Hear
Some of you read this far thinking "that's nice, but I want to be better." And that's valid. Wanting to improve is natural and there's nothing wrong with it.
But if improvement is the only reason you play, you're going to have a bad time. Because improvement in golf isn't linear. It's not even a curve. It's a scatter plot drawn by a drunk person. You'll get better, then worse, then better in a different way, then worse in a way you didn't know existed.
The golfers who last — the ones still playing at 70, 80, 90 years old — are the ones who figured out that the game itself is the point. Not the score. Not the handicap. Not the Instagram swing video. The game. The walk. The company. The one good shot.
How to Enjoy Golf When You Suck: The Short Version
- Stop treating it like a performance review
- Play the right tees
- Don't keep score sometimes
- Find people who make it fun
- Set goals that have nothing to do with numbers
- Remember that you chose to be out here
Nobody's making you play golf. This isn't mandatory. You're voluntarily spending four hours in the sun hitting a small ball with expensive sticks, and that is objectively ridiculous, and that's exactly why it's wonderful.
You don't have to be good. You just have to show up.
The rest figures itself out.
One More Thing
The next time you're standing on the first tee and you feel that tightness in your chest, remember this: every single person on that course has topped a drive in front of strangers. Every. Single. One. The scratch golfer in the group behind you? He's shanked one into the parking lot. The assistant pro giving lessons on the range? He's had rounds where he wanted to quit.
You're not alone in being bad at this. You're in the vast, beautiful, deeply relatable majority.
Welcome to the club. We have snacks.