After playing golf one day a few years ago, Barney Adams, founder of Adams Golf, realized he hadn't had much fun during the round. He played in perfect conditions and on an excellent course. But he didn’t enjoy it. So he did some research. That's when he discovered that the number of golfers playing in the United States was the same as that in 1990. That sounded crazy. After all, the game was more popular than ever.
After thinking about this for a while, Adams concluded that the stewards of the game were taking the fun out of the game by creating longer courses with tee locations most weekend golfers have no business playing from. Adams did more research. That generated this insight: Tour players hit the ball on average 90 yards further per hole—70 yards off the tee and 20 yards with the irons—than the average amateur. And that was a conservative estimate.
That’s when he came up with the idea for Tee It Forward, our first golf tip on how to make the game more fun. Here’s what Tee It Forward is all about:
- Tee It forward—Tee It Forward gets golfers to have more fun by hitting from tees more appropriately aligned to their skill levels. By playing from the forward tees, amateur golfers can play courses at the same relative distance as Tour pros over an 18-hole course. Tee It Forward involves golf courses setting tees where they should be set for amateurs. Supported by both the PGA and USGA, Tee It Forward doesn't impact the integrity of the game.
Here are four other ideas on how to have more fun playing golf:
- Top Golf—if you’re looking for a fun way to practice golf tips from your golf lessons, try a Top Golf facility. Refined skills aren't needed to have fun at this facility. Anyone can play Top Golf, from aspiring pros to people who've never played. All you have to do is be able to swing a club. It involves hitting micro-chipped balls into dart- board-like targets, as Top Golf’s promotional materials say. They have locations in both the U.S. and the U.K.
- Hack Golf—if you haven't heard of Hack Golf, you need to go to its website now. It’s a pioneering idea designed to make golf more fun for everyone. The idea is to bring everyone who loves golf together at one website to contribute ideas on how to make golf more fun. Launched at the 2014 PGA Show, it’s generated nearly 1700 ideas on how to make golf more fun. After wrapping up a very successful Phase 1 of the program, Hack Golf is now into Phase 2. The more promising hacks receive support. Taylor Made and the PGA are founding members of the platform.
- GolfForHer.com —Recently, the World Golf Foundation, a non-profit organization, launched a new women’s website call GolfForHer.com. The site is designed to increase women’s participation in the game. The Hack Golf team identified this site because of its focus on not only growing the game of golf among women, but also providing relevant, engaging and informative content for the female golfer. The site includes golf instruction sessions for women, women’s networking opportunities, individual sections for different levels of women players, and live social media feeds with real-time updates as well as a newsletter. It’s a site Hack Golf supports.
- Play ready golf—Ready golf has been around for a while, but a lot of foursomes still don’t partake of it. It involves thinking ahead as you play and be ready to play when it’s your turn. This article on the Dande Farms Country Golf provides some essential tips on playing ready golf. This won't solve all the problems surrounding the slow pace of play in golf. But if more golfers played ready golf, it would certainly help speed things up and make the game more fun.
These five ideas will make playing golf more fun for you. After all, isn’t that what playing this game is all about in the end—not shooting low scores or cutting strokes from your golf handicap? So if you happen to have any ideas on how to make the game more fun, contribute them to Hack Golf. Further information available at:
http://www.no1golfresource.com/modern-golf-swing-fundamentals-for-beginners and
http://www.no1golfresource.com/golf-handicap-calculator
