When to quit other sports for golf

We've run across a couple of instances, reading or hearing college golf coaches mention that they'd prefer to have players who play other sports, in addition to golf.

One evening not long ago, Sean was talking about the workouts his classmates were doing and announced that he was thinking about going to his high school's football team spring drills the next morning.

At 6 am.

He's pretty athletic looking, and at 6'1" and about 175 lbs, has the size and strength package his high school football coaches desperately want.

I asked, "Did you have a conversation today with one of the football coaches?"

"Not really."

"Do you want to play football next year?"

"I dunno."

Then I asked, "Well, do you like to play football."

"Not really."

"Is it because you think playing football will help get you recruited by college golf coaches?"

"Yessir."

The approach we've taken since Sean was a little kid was to let him play the sports that he wanted to play, and never force him to play a sport he didn't want to play. I learned that from my own Dad.

As his passion for golf grew, and with it his dream of playing at an elite level, I could see the time might come when Sean would like have to make a choice between golf and another sport. And that decision came this spring, when Sean made his final decision to try out for golf, and not to play baseball for the first time in maybe 10 years.

It has been a good call. In fact, a spectacularly good decision. His golf game has improved tremendously this spring. In just a few months he's gone from a 4 handicap to scratch. All but a few rounds, whether tournament or practice rounds, have been scored in the 70s.

For the first time, he won't start his summer golf season trying to catch up, or even have to fit tournament golf around a heavy baseball schedule. Focusing on the one sport has helped him really improve his golf game, and if things stay as they are now, he'll be rolling into his summer tournament schedule with a lot of confidence.

I can fully understand why college golf coaches like the idea multi-sport athletes. Playing other sports testifies to greater athleticism, to learning how to deal with a coach and a team environment. It makes a lot of sense for a golf coach. But not always for a player.

But in Sean's case it really wasn't a difficult decision for him, or hard for me to guide him. He knew the time had come, and that it was the right call. Golf is where his passion now lies. He's having as much fun working on his golf game as he did throwing a knuckle curve ball for a strike on a 3-2 count, or banging a hard grounder up the middle for a 2 run single!

And it sure as hell beats football drills.

Sean's golfing origins

Where does Sean's interest in competitive golf come from? How did it evolve into what it is today?

I hope to cover this in the next few posts by way of catching up.

I suppose it is fair to say that Sean began golf at a very young age. Perhaps even as a 4 year old? I don't really remember exactly when he first took a swipe at a golf ball, whether plastic or real. But even if that sounds real young, I can assure you this is hardly a story of a kid groomed for the game of golf from the earliest of ages. For Sean, golf was a sport that always was there for him, but mostly in the background, coming in fits and starts up to the age of 12 or 13.

From those earliest years, for the 5 or 6 years, golf was just one of the many sports that attracted Sean's fancy. Sean hit golf balls from a very young age, but not in any organized way. Before I joined our current golf club, I had a hitting mat and net in the back yard which I used for my own practice (or to vent frustration after work!). The yard was littered with both plastic and real golf balls, and golf clubs including pint-sized ones cut down for the kids. So the opportunities were there to hack away, whether taking a break from yard chores or waiting for something to cook on the bar-b-que, or during some after dinner R&R.

I joined a golf club around the time Sean was 5 or 6. In those days, Sean was mostly motivated to spend time with me and it didn't really matter whether I was going into work, putzing around the house or over at a hardware store, or out to the driving range. In fact, he was uncommonly jealous of my time, irrespective of what I was doing. And so it evolved that if I was going to get any work accomplished on my own golf game, whether at the driving range or out on the course, I had no choice but to involve Sean. He made certain of that.

On vacations at golf resorts, I'd have to get the earliest possible tee time and sneak out before he awoke, and hurry back to be with him for the rest of the day. I had some guilt about doing this, but also relief to have chances to get out and play without the distraction of having a young child with me out on the golf course, because your first concern is making sure the child doesn't disrupt the other golfers.

Eventually, perhaps at the age of 8 or 9, Sean seemed sufficiently well-behaved that I enrolled him in a couple of junior golf clinics given by our club's teaching pro. In those sessions, together with a handful of other kids, is when he was first concepts like grip and stance and balance.

His baseball interests are what largely held him back from golf at the early ages. He played baseball from late August to November, then from late February through June, leaving little time for golf except during the oppressive heat in July and August, which wasn't really conducive. The baseball limited his golf so much, for example, that if I had a couple of new, correctly-sized golf clubs prepared for him in the early spring, by the time July and August rolled around he might have only used them a few times before outgrowing the clubs. And as he grew older and developed a sense of self-responsibility for his baseball performance, he wasn't particularly interested in taking the risk that swinging a golf club might mess with his hitting and hurt his chances of making an all star team.

Other than the clinics, Sean never really got much in the way of formal golf instruction until he was almost 14. I was also his baseball coach during those years, and possessed of a gnawing sense that our relationship would suffer if I were also to serve as Sean's golf coach. Beyond the fact that I know almost nothing about how to teach golf, he just didn't need me coaching his golf, too.

So when Sean and I were out together on the course, or the driving range, I tried to just let him hit the ball as it came to him naturally, and doing my best to bite my tongue when I saw that he was doing things 'wrong'. For the most part, although imperfectly, I'd give him swing advice only if he asked for it. I focused instead on teaching him the myriad course etiquette issues, like pace of play and repairing divots and pitch marks, and staying quiet and still while others addressed their shots, knowing when it was his turn to play. And anger management. Lot's of anger management.

So Sean's golfing origins were mostly accidental and largely undirected. Of course I was delighted that he enjoyed playing a game that I could share with him, but the truth is that for up until the time he was 12 and 13, if I had any ambition for him in sports it was as a baseball player, not as a golfer.

But the accidental nature of this golf upbringing raises the question of whether I served him poorly. Sean begins his golf journey several giant steps behind his more successful peers in the junior golf tournaments. There are a lot of kids out there his age and younger who shoot some very low scores! Was I too late in getting him hooked up with a swing coach? Should I have guided him away from baseball towards golf sooner? For the latter, I don't think I had any choice because it first has to be something Sean wants. Now that he is there, how does he get to the next level and can he get there?

We'll see soon enough, but my theory and hope is that he will be able to make up the lost ground. From what I think I see, some of these junior golfers get to shooting low scores at a pretty young age, and others seem to be able to catch up to them. It strikes me as a neurodevelopmental analog...the good young players have the advantage of their brains literally maturing in some ways sooner than some of the others.