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How did you get in to golf?

Deucemimo said:
Chi Chi Rodriguez

I used to watch golf on television when I was younger (9 or 10), Chi Chi doing his little routine after making putts was fascinating to me. Basketball, Baseball and Football were the sports of choice when I was younger so I didn't play golf.
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How great would it be if someone would come out on tour today with excitement and personality like Chi Chi had? I'd watch that.
 
In my late 20’s I always thought golf was old folks game. My friends started golf but I never did. One day we were in sports bar and they had practice net and they were hitting balls. They said I can never play golf cause I have no patient or skill to play golf.
I left the bar went home and went through yellow page and found a golf lesson. Made a appointment next day. Stop at K-Mart and bought a box of North Western golf set for $200 and headed to lesson. Join the indoor range where you can hit as much as ball you can at $100 a month. Practice 4-10pm every weekday and golf on weekends. Broke 90’s less than 6mts.
Still to this days I like spending time at range. I like practice as much as actual playing.


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KEV said:
You mentioning that you would get dropped off and picked up reminds me of one of my favorite golf memories. When I was 12 my parents got divorced and we moved to an apartment about 10 blocks from a par 3 course. When my mom would go to work almost every day my little brother and I would take our clubs over and play anywhere between 18-36 holes of golf and afterward get a fountain Pepsi. For some reason that course seemed to have the best Pepsi!

I would keep a pencil from every round and I think one summer I had over 300 pencils stashed. That's about all we had to do and we made the most of it.
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Lol. It's one of my favorite memories from that time in my life. We never took the game too seriously at the time. Spent a good deal of those days in the bushes and creek looking for lost golf balls.
 
I wish I could remember the circumstances of the first few times I played better, but I know if it weren't for my dad and father-in-law, I wouldn't have even given it a chance. My dad picked up the game in his 40s but my FIL has been playing for at least 35 years.
 
With my dad at the driving range and then gradually making it to the course. My first time on the course I actually played 36 holes and have been hooked ever since.

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Back in college, my friends and I would play golf during the off season from baseball. Jack Nicklaus Golden Bears were my first set. Man, those things were brutal! :bulgy-eyes:
 
I saw it on TV and thought, "that looks like fun". My neibor let me borrow his set of Ben Hogans for a while, I played a few times at a local par 3 course and was instantly hooked, although I dont recommend starting with persimmon woods and blades. LOL
 
My grandparents were always huge into golf. Wish I would have started playing younger, as my grandad used to be the president at a fairly higher end country club in Columbus and I probably could have went out and played with him growing up. Instead, I played at most a round a year until I was about 21, which bumped up to like 3 a year haha. Picked up the game to actually play and improve around 6 years ago now and haven’t looked back.
 
I always looked at golf as a retired persons pastime in my younger years. Was seriously addicted to running from age 30 to 60. Finally wore through the cartilage under one kneecap, and had it repaired with minor surgery, but the doc told me if i kept running I'd be looking at knee replacement. So I decided I'd take up this old man's game. Boy was I surprised how challenging the game could be. Now golf is my addiciton and i can't get enough of it. I have just as much fun banging away at the range as I do playing the game. Now I regret that I didn't play at a much younger age!
 
She's adorable..so cool that she's enjoying it.

My grandmother would watch me in the summer when I was in elementary school and junior high (early 90s era) and we would go out to the local par 3/executive course and play. I still have actual wooden woods from when we played and they'll always be in one of my display bags at home.
 
I was about 16-17 and wanted to learn but being left handed and living in the middle of no where it was purely by luck I found clubs. A lady my mom had just started working with was left handed and her husband had just got her new clubs so they still had her old set and let me use them. So I made the most of it and enjoyed what I could. Stopped playing for about 10 years and now I am back to it.
 
When I was 12, my best friend and his brother talked me into going to the local course and renting some clubs to try golf. We did that a couple of times a year until i was about 18, then I didn't touch a club again until I turned around 34. Which was about the time I gave up my first love...basketball. After rupturing a couple of vertebrae, I gave it up. When my back healed, I needed something else athletic to do and again a friend wanted to take up golf and I decided to join him. About 15 years later I am still playing. In those 15 years of playing, the longest I have ever gone without playing is about 3 weeks and that was only done once. I usually try and play once to twice a week. I always try to walk whenever possible. I do not enjoy it as much when I have to ride in a cart. I have seen tons of friends and acquaintances leave and give golf up. I really don't think I ever will. I am pretty sure I will die on a course somewhere.
 
I used to be in a band that basically lived on the road (17 days at home in 3 years). The guitar and bass player were really into golf. they took me to a range in Valdosta, GA and I used, quite possibly, the worst set of left hand rental clubs on the planet. They had to have been 30 year old butter knife blades. Needless to say, I couldn't hit a single one of them. I did enjoy hitting the crap woods but I didn't give the game much thought after that.

Fast forward to the first job I got after getting off the road. Installing insulation for a buddy's company. We were doing some kind of convention center of some sort in or around Spearfish, SD. After work one day the crew decided to go play golf. I figured "what the hell". The rentals were much better this time and I fell in love with the 6 iron from that set (to this day the 6i is one of my favorite clubs in the bag just because of that experience). I'm not sure we even kept score but I had a blast.

Less than a year later I would end up in Arizona. Once I got settled in and a decent place set up I moved my wife (then girlfriend) and her two daughters down here. She worked a couple of different places when she got here but ended up getting dining room manager's position at Show Low Golf Club (now Bison Golf Club and my "home course"). Through the course of her job she set up tons of luncheons for the different groups at the course and one happened to like to buy component pieces and build putters. He asked my wife if we played one day and she told hm that neither of us had clubs. The following week he brought her putters for both of us. We putted around the practice green for a couple of days and in less than a week I bought a horrible complete set of Northwestern clubs from the local Play it Again Sports. The Tiger effect was in full force and I wasn't immune.

Less than a year later I bought my first set of "real" irons (Callaway X-12s) off of a guy from a golf forum called Ham and Egg (thanks leftylen). I was working at that same course within a matter of months on the grounds crew and worked in golf for the next 12 years. Quit the game for about 5 years when I stopped working in the golf industry and picked it up again in 2017 when I found this place. I can't see myself ever leaving the game again.
 
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I enjoyed watching golf (Tiger’s shot on 18 at Glen Abbey stands out). But was dirt poor. And a good student. My math teacher was the golf coach and he asked me to join the golf club. Mainly for fun. I was always terrible. But he knew I was responsible enough to play with others while he played with the better players as a coach. Only played a few times per year in high school. Then in summers of university I got my own clubs and started playing about once a month with a lacrosse buddy. Then once graduated I moved to a place with nothing to do but golf so started playing 100+ rounds a year.
 
I had relatives that golfed when I was younger. I never really noticed much other than one of them had a badass rolls royce golf cart. Man I wish I started golfing so much earlier. I didn't pick up a club at all till after high school, and even then it was just some friends and I would go to a range and smack driver around. Years later, I got a box set of clubs so I could to to the range with some coworkers after work and have a beer or two. Then, when I moved to washington, a couple of my coworkers invited me out to golf. As it started it was an excuse to get out and drink and chase the little white ball around the course. I ended up falling in love with the game and it's been all down hill since then hahahahaha. Then I found THP and my love grew even more.

I'm so glad I found the game, and THP. I love both tremendously.
 
Two parts to my story.

Part 1 - Saw a beginner class listed my first summer in Ashland Oregon at age 13. Dragged my brother Dale out there with me. But since we lost 12 balls on the first hole we played after the lessons and no one else in the family played I didn't play for eight years after that.

Part 2 - A bunch of guys from work played nine after work on Mondays. They started dragging me out there and that was it!
 
How did I get into golf.... my own stupidity... that's how. No looking back now :angel:
 
Had to take a break from rugby and tennis when I was younger for shoulder surgery on my right side so my mum got me going to the driving range. Started going with a friend when I was a little more healed up and I was hooked.
 
My dad

First picked up a club when I was fairly young and my dad got me a cut-down iron and it just went from there really
 
My dad's sport mad so I played every sport available as a kid. Golf was the one I took to most alongside Rugby and football (soccer).
I stopped when I went to university and didn't pick up a club again until last year. I needed something to play after giving up american football and now I wish I'd never stopped in the first place.
 
A knee surgery took me off the tennis court about 6 years ago. About that same time I had a group of friends from church that invited me to play a round with them while on a retreat. I hadn't ever played a full 18 holes until then, and had a fun time. Had a set of old irons given to me, and shortly thereafter found THP and the rest is history.
 
My dad. He always played once or twice a week. One night was with his church league and the other round with his buddies.

Around the age of 6-7 years old he started taking me with him to church league night. (I wasn’t allowed to go with him and his buddies and now that I’m old I kinda understand why ). For the first year or so, I was allowed to ride along in the cart, hit some putts on the practice putting green and pretend to drive the cart. That manifested in to driving the cart and hitting a few drives and putts on the course the next year and then starting to go play a couple holes with just my dad on weekends. By the time I was 9-10 years old he was confident enough to let me play 9 holes with him on the weekends. I’d still go with him to league night and eventually by the time I turned 12-13 I was hi league partner. I had been around all the other guys long enough that they all knew me and welcomed me just as much as my dad himself did.

My dad. Ever forced the game on me. He never once “made me” practice. I loved that game because he loved the game and he wanted me around. It’s something we share to this day. He’s 87 now and physically unable to play anymore. But, there’s no better time on a golf course than when it’s just me and dad. He’s riding along now like I used to with him......it’s just a very special bond we have.


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My Grandma got me started golfing when I was a kid. This was taken last year, unfortunately no one was on the course that day to take a pic out there, she is 82 and still goes weekly.

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Going out to play with my dad and his friends. I liked it and kept trying to play more and more each year.
 
I began caddying in 1960 at a nice private club in NJ - I was 13 years old. Mondays were reserved as "caddies day," which allowed us to play the course all day for free. It was a "no brainer" for me to take up the game.
 
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