I started taking up golf this year. The clubs were a gift; the pack of ten lessons I booked myself. By lesson ten, I expected, I would be the best golfer I’d ever been. Golf was around when I was young but I never got good at it, which was fair, since I never spent much time on it anyway. Halfway through the lessons now, I wanted to write down three things golf has taught me again in six weeks, because it surprised me how familiar they felt.
Progress is not linear
This one got me first. I expected to improve steadily after each lesson, not realising I’d have to put in the work on all the days in between. A range session will go perfectly and everything connects, then I turn up the next day and can’t hit it at all. Some days are good and some days are bad, even when they’re consecutive days. At the start that discouraged me. The graph moves sideways more than it moves up, and I’m learning the sideways is where the learning happens.
I already know this. My 2025 movement year proved it: 365 days of showing up where most days felt like nothing but quietly added up anyway. Somewhere since then, I forgot. Small things stack whether or not you’re watching.
Resting is part of practising
Last week I barely touched a club. I watched a lot of videos instead. Some were helpful. Some were twenty minutes of a man explaining grip pressure in a way that made me worse. Then one said the golf swing is like cracking a whip. You don’t muscle a whip. You start the handle, the energy travels down, and the head whips through on its own. Something clicked. Not at the range, not mid-swing, but during a quiet week off.
This is true off the course too. The best ideas in my work rarely arrive mid-spreadsheet. They show up on runs, mid-cycle to the driving range, in the shower after I’ve stopped grinding. Resting isn’t stepping away from the work. For me it’s usually where the work happens.
There is always something to fix
Golf humbles you. Fix the grip and the tempo drifts. Sort out the tempo and the stance betrays you. I used to think the goal was to get good and be done. Now I see that’s not how this game works, and it’s quietly become my favourite thing about it. Foundation matters here more than anywhere else I’ve tried, because everything else stacks on top of it.
Every single lesson so far, my coach has found something new to tweak. I walk in thinking I’ve got it sorted. I walk out with homework. You think you know it all, huh? Not even close.
Same as any system I run. You patch one thing and the weakness moves somewhere else. There is no “done”, only the next weakest link. Golf is just faster and less forgiving about telling me.
I don’t know how far I’ll take this yet. For now, I enjoy owning something that rewards patience, gives back exactly what you put in, and keeps teaching. Every day is a different day out there. I’m learning to love that.
So, golf: slow to reward, impossible to master, quietly addictive. See you at the range.