I really thought I had a decent idea of what sports would eventually show up in our lives.
Maybe soccer. Probably baseball. Definitely hockey, because apparently, once a kid touches a hockey stick, it becomes part of the family forever. Golf, though?
Golf never crossed my mind. Not once. And yet somehow, at 37 years old, I found myself standing in the sporting goods aisle while my 5-year-old seriously compared golf tees like he was preparing for The Masters. And honestly? I still don’t fully know how we got here.
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It started the way most things seem to start in our house now: completely by accident.
One afternoon, my son found a random golf ball in the yard. I still have no idea where it came from. We don’t golf. No one in our household golfs. There is no reason a golf ball should have been in our yard. But to a 5-year-old, finding a random sports object is basically fate.
Instead of asking questions like:
“Whose is this?”
or
“Why is this here?”
…he grabbed his hockey stick, dropped the ball into the grass, and confidently announced:
“I’m playing golf.”
Like this was something he had always known.
And before I could even process what was happening, he was fully committed.
Now, if you’ve never watched a child invent a sport in real time, it’s honestly kind of incredible.
There were no rules. No technique. No understanding whatsoever of how golf actually works. He just started whacking the golf ball around the yard with a hockey stick while narrating his own tournament.
At one point he whispered,
“This is a very important shot.”
Sir. You are standing next to a sprinkler head wearing Crocs on the wrong feet.
But the confidence? Unmatched.
And the weird part is… he looked genuinely happy. Not “screen time happy.” Not “sugary snack happy.” Just fully locked into figuring something out. As someone who didn’t grow up playing any sports, he has found himself interested in it. I think that’s the part that keeps surprising me most about this whole youth sports adventure. Kids don’t care if they’re doing it correctly yet. They just care that it’s fun. Adults could honestly learn a lot from that.
A few days later, golf came up again.
We were driving home from school when he casually said, “You know what I want for my reward?” I assumed this meant candy. Or Pokémon cards. Or one of those tiny mystery toys that somehow immediately ends up under the couch forever.
“No,” he said.
“Golf tees.”
That was the reward.
And because I’m trying very hard to be the kind of mom who encourages interests before overthinking them, off we went to buy golf tees for a child who technically did not own a golf club.
What nobody tells you is how aggressively complicated golf accessories are.
There are SO many golf tees.
Wood ones. Plastic ones. Tiny ones. Giant ones. Bright neon colors. Serious-looking neutral ones. Packs with approximately 700 tees for reasons I still don’t understand. And my son examined every single option like he was making a financial investment. I’m not exaggerating when I say this child spent twenty full minutes comparing golf tees.
Meanwhile, I’m standing there wondering how I somehow became a person who has opinions about golf tee durability. Eventually, he picked “the perfect ones.” I still don’t know what made them perfect. But he knew immediately.
The next issue became obvious pretty quickly: Real golf balls are terrifying when launched by a highly enthusiastic 5-year-old. Especially in a neighborhood. Especially when your child swings with the full confidence of someone who believes property damage is just part of the game.
So I started looking for softer practice golf balls we could safely use in the backyard without accidentally taking out a window or causing tension with the neighbors (and so you could find them easier in the yard). And honestly? Best decision ever. The softer golf balls completely changed things because suddenly I wasn’t hovering nervously every time he swung.
Instead of constantly saying:
“Careful!”
“Not toward the house!”
“Please don’t hit that!”
…I could actually relax and let him play. Which meant he stayed outside longer. And in sports mom world, “outside longer” is basically self-care.
Then one night, completely out of nowhere, he looked at me very seriously and said:
“I think I need a real golf club now.”
And this is where things truly spiraled. Apparently, buying kids’ golf clubs is not simple. At all.
Suddenly I was learning about:
- right-handed clubs
- left-handed clubs
- junior sizing
- graphite shafts
- complete beginner golf sets for kids
I genuinely found myself Googling:
“How do I know if my child is right or left handed in golf?”
Like this was information I should already have as an adult.
And somehow, despite the fact that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, we picked one: Kids Beginner Golf Set and the movable golf hole. And the second he started using an actual golf club instead of a hockey stick? That was it. Now we officially had a golf kid.
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