Are We Really Playing Golf?

Yesterday I was playing golf for the first time in a while as I have been recovering from an injury.

I was at the Balgove Course, a short 9-hole course that is part of St Andrews Links. As I walked up to the 7th green, having attempted a punchy 7 iron under the four-club wind that was blowing — Scotland in summer — I realized something.

I was really PLAYING golf.

We all say we’re going to play golf.

Not work golf.

Not endure golf.

Not survive golf.

Play.

It’s such a lovely word, and yet I wonder how many of us actually do it.

Somewhere between the first tee and the eighteenth green, the play seems to disappear and instead we start judging ourselves.

One bad drive and we’re frustrated. A missed putt and we’re questioning our ability. By the turn, we’ve convinced ourselves we’re having a terrible day, and by the time we get back to the clubhouse, we’re analysing everything we did wrong.

I’ve been there too. In fact, I think most golfers have.

The strange thing is that we would never dream of speaking to a friend the way we speak to ourselves on the golf course. Imagine walking alongside someone and saying, “That was hopeless. You’ll never get this right.” You wouldn’t. Yet many of us have that conversation with ourselves for four hours.

I often see it on the putting green.

A golfer stands over the ball carrying the weight of every putt they’ve missed that day. They’re thinking about technique, about keeping still, about not leaving it short, about not three-putting again.

There’s so much going on in their mind that there is hardly any room left simply to roll the ball.

And yet, the best putters I’ve ever watched don’t look as though they’re trying very hard at all.

They look curious.

They look free.

They look as though they’re enjoying solving the puzzle in front of them.

Perhaps that’s because, somewhere along the way, they remembered that golf is, at its heart, a game. Children understand this instinctively. They don’t play to be perfect. They play to discover.

As adults, we seem to lose that.

We become so focused on scorecards, handicaps, rules and outcomes that we forget the joy of simply seeing what we’re capable of today.

When I help golfers, either in my online sessions or in person, I talk about quiet confidence. Quiet confidence isn’t standing over every putt telling yourself you’ll hole it, it’s much gentler than that.

It’s walking onto the green believing you’ll find a way. It’s trusting your eyes to read the slope, your hands to feel the pace and your body to make the stroke it already knows how to make. That trust is difficult when we’re busy criticising ourselves, however it becomes much easier when we give ourselves permission to play.

So next time you walk onto the first tee, or step onto the putting green, ask yourself one simple question.

Am I about to play golf… or am I about to give myself a hard time?

Because one of those sounds like a game.

The other sounds like work.

And I have a feeling golf rewards the golfer who remembers the difference.