How old were you when you started playing and who influenced you to try?

[revkev]

For me I was around 10 so around 1966.  Like most boys my age growing up in New England I played Baseball in the Spring, Football in the Fall, basketball and hockey in the winter, rinse and repeat.  While I fancied myself a future pro in three of those four sports (I was never the greatest skater) High school would prove that the only one I was respectable at was baseball - alright I could kick a football well enough to be a high school place kicker and punter - big deal - 40 yard field goal was an absolute bomb and 35 yard punt without a bounce obtainable but not always.  

My best friend's dad was a biology on Yale who had gone to teach at a place called St. Andrews, in Scotland the year prior to that summer.  I knew next to nothing about golf at that time so the location had no meaning for me other than it meant that my friend would be gone and I'd need to make some new ones.

 

When he returned, it was with the golf bug.  Now I was better at every sport than Larry but he had a set of clubs that were made for him and was full of tales about playing golf every week on some old course.  At the time it cost him 2 lbs.  (Two lbs. of what I had no idea.)  We started going to the local school field to hit the clubs that he brought back.  My baseball coach saw us one day and went ballistic on me - "You can't play golf and baseball at the same time, he said."  (It's what people thought back then.)  

 

Larry was a much better player than I - he had played a lot in Scotland, taken lesson there while I was just learning.  Still when I got into one, I was much longer.  And I was hooked.  However the words of my baseball coach stuck and since I was destined for the major leagues there was no way I was putting that in jeopardy.  

 

Throughout the next several years and on into college I would only play golf in August - when baseball was over before school started.  Once I was in college I started to realize two things.  I was really good in baseball, good enough to have a strong throwing arm on a college team and hit college pitching and yet I was still nowhere near good enough to play it professionally, ever.  Still, I clung to the dream until at the start of my junior year I came down with mono.  My doctor determined that it had enlarged my spleen and banned me from contact sports for a year.  Since I was a catcher and that was the only position that I was fit to play (no leg speed) my baseball playing days were done.  Golf however beckoned - I took a young adult membership at the local 9 hole course - it cost $75.  Broke 80 for the first time that summer, par for the first time the next Spring and never looked back. 

 

What's your story?

[Josh Parker]

I didn't start playing until 2005ish and was living in a small little town with nothing to do.  I worked for the city and it was a city owned course where we got to play for basically nothing.  A few co workers asked if I wanted to play and luckily the club pro worker was a lefty and he gave me my first set.  After the first round, I was hooked.  

[TSauer]

I started playing when I was 25, I am 33 now. I was never really interested in golf growing up, I was strictly a basketball junkie. However, one of my close friends had played since he was young and talked to me about it a few times to try and convince me to buy a cheap set just to try it out. I remember looking through his bag, just chit-chatting about clubs and prices and what have you. I remember thinking, "you spent that much on clubs? ...oh, you spent that much on just one club?!" It was an easy nope from me. Flash forward a few months and there I was coming home to my first long brown box waiting for me on my porch. Little did I know it would be the first of many.

[cksurfdude]

53 ½. My Mom had been living out in CA and played on her community course there; she was always telling me to try but I had no interest .. thought golf was a silly waste of time...

After she passed away and I was cleaning out her place, I boxed up and shipped her clubs back to my house in NY .. thinking yeah if I have some clubs maybe someday I'll give it a try...

Well only a few months later a really close friend that I had often windsurfed and surfed with (and tested craft IPAs and dog walked and mountain biked with) was over and saw the clubs in my garage .. said, "I'll be right back" .. ran over to his house and came back with some foam practice balls and has me start hitting them into the side of my garage...

Then we started going to the range together and he got me out on an executive 9 holer, then other 9 hole munis in our area and eventually a championship 18...

.. and the rest, as they say, is...

Still A Work In Progress!!

[Cmra1]

10, I wanted to play with older brothers so Dad made me hit wiffle balls at specific targets until I could go to a par 3 course. 2 pars during that first round and I was hooked.  

[Richard Fahrney]

8 years old. Mt dad took me out, taught me golf etiquette and the rules of the game.  

[GG194]

61, 2007, was waiting for social security so maybe I could afford to play. Since it’s been a fixed income situation the whole time I’ve been playing I always look for cheap golf which is getting harder to find. Walked as much as possible for several years but knee issues and arthritis in my feet have me riding a cart, along with old age. Still trying to play twice a week but not two days straight. At 78 still enjoy playing as much as the first time I played. Biggest problem I have is the expense, Florida in the winter, expensive, NC coast most of the summer, expensive. Guess we can’t take it with us. 

[RickLit]

I was in my 20s when I was dared to come and play a round. I called it an "OLD MAN" sport as I played hockey, basketball and football. Well, it took one round for me to get the bug, and I have been playing for almost 30 years. (Few years off due to medical matters...cancer sucks!) I am happy that I took it up because I can still play at 58, unlike the other sports I loved. I may not hit as far or play 18 5 times a week...But I am still out there and play a decent game. (15 handicap....but it's Yoyo's..lol)

[revkev]

1 hour ago, GG194 said:

61, 2007, was waiting for social security so maybe I could afford to play. Since it’s been a fixed income situation the whole time I’ve been playing I always look for cheap golf which is getting harder to find. Walked as much as possible for several years but knee issues and arthritis in my feet have me riding a cart, along with old age. Still trying to play twice a week but not two days straight. At 78 still enjoy playing as much as the first time I played. Biggest problem I have is the expense, Florida in the winter, expensive, NC coast most of the summer, expensive. Guess we can’t take it with us. 

Where do you winter in Florida? It has gotten ridiculously expensive to play here in the winter. I’m at a club so it’s consistent for me - if you’re somewhere near Pinellas County maybe we could hook up next winter. 
 

Enjoting the stories. Interesting the differing ways and reasons why we started 

[TJ Hall]

I was 8, started with a persimmon 3 wood and a cheap 7 iron.  My dad started getting into the game which brought me in.  Would spend hours in the yard hitting plastic balls with those clubs.

Interestingly, a 3 wood and 7 iron are still my favorite clubs today.

[Willie T]

First official round (on an actual course, with fellow golfers) was at a corporate team event in 2009.  One guy told me I had learned more in nine holes than most do in a lifetime (it was second nine that was stroke play).  I told him I wanted to go out on a high note therefore I’m retiring from the game.  Fast forward to 2016, life changes with a motorcycle wreck that degloves the toes of my left foot and I decide on a new hobby.  Our church started a men’s group Texas scramble golf outing each month and my son asks if I would like to play.  I am thinking it may be the outlet I need.  That outlet turned into the joy and passion I get from everything to walking solo rounds to group play scrambles….through this game I’ve overcome a lot of “mental” barriers I perceived when I lost the toes on my foot, it has made for some new goals and I am I the best overall shape I have been in since right after college when I was in home construction….now I am watching my grand kids take up the game at different levels of desire, I am seeing other family members enjoy it as well and friends rehabbing old injuries by swinging the sticks….it truly is a game that bridges all gaps…

[sixcat]

I grew up in a remote section of southwest Virginia smack in the middle of the Jefferson National Forest. Almost every neighbor was a family member and much older than me. There weren't too many kids around other than my brother. We were 6 years apart in age so, we didn't do a lot together. I was a sports junkie and spent long hours playing basketball, baseball and football by myself. We didn't go to town often but when we did, my mom would always stop in at Goodwill. There, she stumbled across a used set of Tommy Armour 845 irons, an old McGregor persimmon driver, two Carbite wedges that had been beat to hell and back, and a Carbite putter that looked like something used to mash potatoes. 

I was 11 years old at the time and little did my mom know, she would be setting me on course for a lifelong addiction. I would buy "onion bags" of recycled golf balls from WalMart and set up my own golf course in and around the farmland surrounding my house. Funny enough, it wasn't until I was 19 years old that I got to play golf on an honest to god, real life, golf course.

How many people can say they had been playing the game for 8 years before they ever stepped foot on a golf course?

[russtopherb]

I was probably around 7-8 years old when I would go "caddy" for my dad and grandfather on the weekends when they played. I'd basically walk the tree line looking for balls while they played, and maybe once we were out of sight of the clubhouse and other golfers they'd let me putt a few times. That progressed to them letting me take shots on my own before my dad handed me down a set of his old clubs when I was around 12. I played with them up until I was around 17 then golf suddenly became "not cool" when I was playing in garage bands and gigging on the weekend.

Golf suddenly became "cool" again when I was in my 30's and the doc told me no more hockey or running due to my knee, and all those guys I used to play music with had picked up the game. So I started golfing with them, and the rest as they say is history.

[kcchiefs]

I had my own par 3 in my back yard owner and player . Invited neighbors to play matches probably when I was 10-13 . So much fun I learned the shot game and how to break windows and hit trucks! Golf was my passion besides all other sports.

[TENBUCK]

After college, military we moved in a neighborhood where everyone played golf. I didn't take up the sport because I always thought "how much fun is there hitting a ball and chasing it and hit it again"! Well, 50 years later...!!!!

[Usmcgyrene]

I was 9. In 1977, my dad had a work injury that put him out of work for that summer. He had never played golf before but used it as physical therapy. My Uncle Joe was an avid golfer. He loaned my dad a set of MacGregor clubs and gave him a few quick lessons. Dad wanted a golf buddy so he picked up a garage sale set of clubs that my Uncle cut to fit me. We basically learned the game together. I was gifted my first brand new set of clubs when I was around 12. They were Wilson blades and a 1, 3, 5 wood set that were actually made of wood. Dad also threw in a Bullseye flange putter that I still have. Dad never lost the bug and was an avid golfer until his passing in 2018.  I had a military career and brought clubs with me wherever I could. I've had the opportunity to play in some pretty cool places around the world.

[Rob Person]

2021 - my uncle had passed away and one of the things gifted to me was his clubs. They sat in my garage, and until a coworker asked me to go de-stress and whack some balls, I had not even thought about them at all.  In my late 20s I would ride with him and putt around the green, maybe chip shot here and there, but never really got into the game.

Everytime I see them now, some memory or another pops into my head, and it's nice to have that connection.

Now I am hooked, and the wife thinks I am obsessed.   

[MCMSR]

Came late to golf (skiing) — Starting in my early/mid-50s, about 20years ago, after divorce/remarriage. My experience started on a ‘target-golf’ course midway between the house/office, allowing me to get in late afternoon-9s, weekly league play & occasional weekends. Essentially self-taught with a few shot-specific lessons. Played various sports throughout the years (baseball, football, tennis, basketball, lacrosse, rugby, racquetball) BUT never expected to be ‘chasing a little, white ball around wide expanses of green grass.’ My 3-oldest sons (47-41-39) started playing in high school (working summers at local golf range, golf clubs) & are at/near single-digit handicaps; the youngest (31) recently took up the game … It’s now become the ‘dad/son bonding thing.’ As ‘a has-been jock’ with the litany of medical issues & replacement parts (cardiac, both knees, lead-hip/shoulder, trail elbow/shoulder), I’ve learned to compensate ….

[hack62tpi]

I began my golf addiction at the age of 30. My younger brother picked up golf while in college at Clemson and convinced me to join him. I thought golf was stupid at first and then it became my addiction for the next 30 years. Still golf crazy after all these years and can't wait to get on the course. Be careful what habits you may pick up.

[Fatshot]

Growing up I always played all the sports in season, but I was about 10 or 11 when I started getting interested in golf.    I started watching a show on TV called "All Star Golf."   The format was two pros played medal play, and the winner got to come back the next week and take on someone else.   Well, Sam Snead won something like 10-15 matches in a row, so he and that smooth swing of his became my model !     

So, I climbed up into the garage attic and brought down my dad's old set (Spalding Bobby Jones starter set, with a wooden shafted "Niblick" thrown in for good measure!), cleaned them up, and started batting wiffle balls around the yard.   About that time, we took a family vacation at my uncle's cottage at Devil's Lake, MI, and I bugged my dad to take my brother and me to play at the 9 hole golf course there.   On about the 3rd or 4th hole I hit a PERFECT drive.....high, straight, and long....right down the middle, and I was HOOKED!   When we got home, a few buddies and I would play the local 9 hole muni (for 50 cents...75 cents if we went around twice!....this was the 1950's, after all!), and I've been playing ever since!

One thing that bugged me was that the following Christmas my parents thought that since I had taken up golf, they would encourage my older brother to do the same, so they bought HIM a set of new clubs !!!!!!!   I was SOOooo jealous!!   Sooner or later though I worked out some kind of trade with him, so I eventually wound up with the shiny new sticks!

I'm 78, going on 79 now, walk 18 holes twice a week, still at it......

Edited May 17 by Fatshot

[tdroma98]

I was 13 yrs old.  My family moved from LI from NY to Massachusetts after my dad was laid off his job. They purchased a Package Store and property had 7 acres of land. We were in a sporting goods store (I loved baseball), for some reason I bought a 3i, PW & Putter, and some golf balls. I'd go out to the side of the house & hit balls.  One day a liquor salesman gave me a little book - gold Jack Nicklaus golf book, Old Grand Dad Whiskey was having a promotion giving the Gold Nicklaus book with each bottle you buy. The book was great! I learned the grip to the stance to even the yardages you could expect to hit your clubs. That started the Golf Addiction!

[RoyF]

16. I grew up playing basketball, football and baseball.  In junior high i started bowling. In high-school more options opened up and I did track,  golf and wrestling. A friend, who shot low 80s, got me started golfing when i was 16. Our school didn't have a golf team so we went to the principle and got permission to start one.  We found a teacher who agreed to be our sponsor (no coaching at all) and we were off and running.  I was a good athlete,  but had no lessons. I was probably about a 18 hdcp, but that was good enough to be the 5th person on a 6 person team. I was a 6 hdcp from age 20 to 42. I quit playing regular to raise my kids and then just quit entirely at age 59. I'm now 68, retired, and just started playing again after 9 years of zero golf. I'm currently a 9 hdcp and have dreams of getting back to 6 (if done,  it will be due to better golf tech). Golf has given me many great memories and I hope a few more to come.

[GG194]

1 hour ago, revkev said:

Where do you winter in Florida? It has gotten ridiculously expensive to play here in the winter. I’m at a club so it’s consistent for me - if you’re somewhere near Pinellas County maybe we could hook up next winter. 
 

Enjoting the stories. Interesting the differing ways and reasons why we started 

Bowling Green, about sixty miles inland from you. Orange groves and alligators but not a lot of traffic. 

[ce05krug]

I was probably 10-11 when I first started playing with my dad. I then took about 25 years off before picking it up about a year ago, at the encouragement of a friend. The big difference this time around was actually trying to learn some technique and improve rather than just smacking the ball. At this point, I’m encouraging my kids (3 and 6) to play so we can have a good group of 4 playing with my dad. 

[GolfSpy_KFT]

I started "playing" golf when I was 21. I use the term playing loosely, because it started with a one credit elective class in college that was glorified phys ed and was golf. I had no clubs, they had hardly any left handed clubs, and it consisted of hitting birdie balls inside the fieldhouse with an end of semester trip to the driving range . However, that is when my curiosity piqued, and it was my academic advisor who recommended I try it after my college baseball career ended with injuries. 

I got my first set that summer, a hand me down set from one of my uncle's older friends, which was a full set of Taylormade clubs. Burner superfast driver and 3 wood, a random hybrid, RAC OS irons with graphite shafts, and a Nike putter. Never took playing too seriously over the years until I found the forum and that has led me to where my current obsession is now and I couldn't be happier about it!

[Max Million]

So we started spending six months in Florida. It’s Florida, I am pretty sure you have to play golf, tennis or pickleball. So at 69 years old I go to a pro for lessons. I have several friends who are good golfers and they helped me. That was four years ago and I can’t get enough. 

[alexchung]

I first started 'playing' in 1987 when a friend introduced me to the game. At that time it was about finding any club that was affordable for a 10 year old and hitting whiffle balls off a door mat in the back yard. It then moved onto playing the local Council run 9 hole golf course and that was when I got my dad into the game. From those formative years we have moved onto playing at a semi private course and have been ever since. Dad is now 74 and I am 47 and we still head out together at times. He is having some health issues with his balance and movement and can't hit the ball like he used to but still enjoys getting out and for me it allows us some time together and also I can get him out of the house (Dad is retired and my parents are no longer together and he lives alone)

Had a hiatus of about 15 years (life, work, parents got in the way but also fell out of love of the game) but coming back into the game and am actually playing better than I did previously which is nice. 

Edited May 17 by alexchung

[RetiredBoomer]

15 hours ago, revkev said:

For me I was around 10 so around 1966.  Like most boys my age growing up in New England I played Baseball in the Spring, Football in the Fall, basketball and hockey in the winter, rinse and repeat.  While I fancied myself a future pro in three of those four sports (I was never the greatest skater) High school would prove that the only one I was respectable at was baseball - alright I could kick a football well enough to be a high school place kicker and punter - big deal - 40 yard field goal was an absolute bomb and 35 yard punt without a bounce obtainable but not always.  

My best friend's dad was a biology on Yale who had gone to teach at a place called St. Andrews, in Scotland the year prior to that summer.  I knew next to nothing about golf at that time so the location had no meaning for me other than it meant that my friend would be gone and I'd need to make some new ones.

 

When he returned, it was with the golf bug.  Now I was better at every sport than Larry but he had a set of clubs that were made for him and was full of tales about playing golf every week on some old course.  At the time it cost him 2 lbs.  (Two lbs. of what I had no idea.)  We started going to the local school field to hit the clubs that he brought back.  My baseball coach saw us one day and went ballistic on me - "You can't play golf and baseball at the same time, he said."  (It's what people thought back then.)  

 

Larry was a much better player than I - he had played a lot in Scotland, taken lesson there while I was just learning.  Still when I got into one, I was much longer.  And I was hooked.  However the words of my baseball coach stuck and since I was destined for the major leagues there was no way I was putting that in jeopardy.  

 

Throughout the next several years and on into college I would only play golf in August - when baseball was over before school started.  Once I was in college I started to realize two things.  I was really good in baseball, good enough to have a strong throwing arm on a college team and hit college pitching and yet I was still nowhere near good enough to play it professionally, ever.  Still, I clung to the dream until at the start of my junior year I came down with mono.  My doctor determined that it had enlarged my spleen and banned me from contact sports for a year.  Since I was a catcher and that was the only position that I was fit to play (no leg speed) my baseball playing days were done.  Golf however beckoned - I took a young adult membership at the local 9 hole course - it cost $75.  Broke 80 for the first time that summer, par for the first time the next Spring and never looked back. 

 

What's your story?

I loved your post, Rev.

My mother's older brother was a career Air Force (originally Army Air Corps) officer and a very cool guy.  When he was thirty-seven and I was seven, he married a girl exactly half-way between him and me in age.  She was his bedmate and my playmate at the same time.  She took me to the circus, plays, wrestling matches...you name it.  During the summer, I would spend weeks with them wherever he was stationed.  My baby aunt (not pronounced "ant" where we come from) and I ate enough ice cream to support the dairy economy.

Anyway, most of the cool stuff I learned, I learned from this uncle.
He taught me how to like his Cadillacs, cologne, the smell of good cigars, Chinese food, and how to read a racing form.  Yes, he took me to the track with him too.

He also got me into golf.  First I just pulled his trolley, but when I was twelve or thirteen, he got me onto the course as an aspiring player. 

Some days I thank him. Some days I blame him.
Either way, mom had a pretty cool brother.

 

 

Edited May 17 by RetiredBoomer

[funkyjudge]

I started playing golf at age 36 (almost 37) when I "retired" from playing baseball (I still played softball until age 64).  My baseball career was fairly serious, with two years of professional ball in Puerto Rico and one year playing "semi-pro" ball in the US, plus another 13 years playing high-level amateur baseball with college and former pro ballplayers until the end of my age 36 season.  There was a myth back then in the 1970s and early '80s that the golf swing would ruin your baseball swing and most of my baseball coaches/managers and team owners either strongly discouraged playing golf or forbid it entirely for their team members.

Edited May 17 by funkyjudge

[Bogeskis]

I first hit a golf club at the age of 17 which was 7 years ago when my friend invited me to the range with him. I however didn’t get my own set of clubs until I was 19 which were some hand me downs from my friend who first took me to the range. He also took me to my first little challenging 9-hole course which made me love the game even more.