Making golf fun again

My five year old showed interest in golf this year. Excitedly, I did exactly the wrong thing and took her to a local pitch and putt. After some reflection I came to the same conclusion my daughter did: golf is objectively boring, especially for a child. After a few swings she was more interested in naming the worms than playing golf. The good news was that I now had a problem to solve: how to make golf less boring for a kid. This blog post documents a few things I discovered that make golf less boring.

Sand My daughter loves hitting out of sand. I’m not entirely sure why, but there are worse game development paths than becoming a great bunker player. So why not?

Water balloons Hitting golf balls can get repetitive for even an adult. For a kid it can be torturously boring. Hitting water balloons on the other hand will literally never get old. It is also a cheap way to get her to take a hundred swings. I’m even able to sneak in drills with this method.

Mini golf is the only reason my daughter will go to the driving range with me. The pull of putt putt is strong and I shamelessly use it as a carrot on the weekends.

Accessories are another strong pull. I imagine this works less with boys but my daughter loves the accessories that go along with golf. The glove, balls, tees, hats, shoes, clothes, head covers, etc. So we have fun with those. I find however that accessories are only enough motivation to get to the course/driving range. I then need to employ one of the above methods once golfing.