Nobody Tells You How Badly Everyone Plays Golf... And It’s Why Many Women Stay Away

By the end of IMG’s employee resource group WISE (Women Inspiring Success & Empowerment) Women's Golf Day in partnership with the Women’s Sport Collective I had possibly, tentatively, maybe sorted out my grip under instruction. But that wasn't the only thing I left thinking about.

Over the course of the afternoon, woman after woman told me the same two things: that she had never picked up a golf club, or that she had turned down a corporate golf invitation because she didn't feel confident enough to say yes.

If you live in the women's golf corner of the internet, or you're a member at a club, it's easy to believe the game has already changed. Beginner sessions, women's golf days, range mornings, women's communities, the whole post-Covid growth story.

Alison Root and Katie Dawkins discuss the latest women's golf fashion - layering, themes and budget comparisons

After three or four years of playing, I've started to see golf from the inside rather than remembering what it felt like to take it up. My algorithm, my social circle and my diary have made the barriers invisible to me.

Which is exactly why the day put on by Lizzie Cottrell, Rachel Mitchell, Emma Hawkins and Hania Fisher from IMG, with additional support from Samantha Hammonds from the Women's Sports Collective was so useful, and I was pleased to be asked to speak at it. Though, to be fair, I'm always pleased to do golf stuff on a work day.

I was on a panel with Georgina Lewis from The R&A and Sarah Blythe-Wood, a PGA Professional and Coach at Duke's Meadows where the event was hosted about access to the game. And the format was precisely the kind of introduction to golf I think more women should get.

After the panel and the Q&A there were five teaching stations for driving, irons, pitching, chipping, putting, so you experienced the whole of golf in an afternoon rather than being handed a driver and wished luck. Then we played a team scramble on the par-three course. Two people in my team had played a fair bit. Two had barely played at all. It was simply fun, working it out together.

But the conversations kept returning to the same place. I've never picked up a club. I've said no to the corporate day. I assumed I wouldn't be good enough to be there.

What struck me wasn't that these women were beginners. Everyone who plays golf was a beginner once, it was that they had decided being a beginner meant they couldn't belong and that's the bit I think we need to change.

Why I Keep Telling Senior Women To Learn

I've written before about why I encourage senior women to take up golf, and it has never been about becoming brilliant at it. It's about the access of several hours alongside people from your organisation, outside a meeting room, with the conversation unfolding at its own pace.

You get to know them and they get to know you, in a slightly more human way than a video call or ten plus people meeting allows. And everything downstream of that; the working relationship, the strategic conversation, the difficult work ask, it all gets smoother.

Mainly because golf occupies a peculiar space, because the game is a mirror. Spend four hours with someone on a course and you'll see how they handle pressure, frustration, risk and their own honesty. Whether they're generous when they're winning and what they do after a terrible shot.

A round also gives you an increasingly rare thing of uninterrupted time with someone, which is how the conversation drifts from your swing, to your score, to the actual business, the challenges, the ideas, the opportunities. I have done business on a golf course because you get to know people in a specific way.

Now, women shouldn't have to learn golf in order to get that access. But while those relationships continue to be built on golf courses, women should at least feel able to walk into that space. And golf, with handicaps, is one of the few games where it’s possible that a beginner and a good player can compete in the same fourball, on the same afternoon. So this isn't about adapting ourselves to the old boys' club. It's that out on the course, we can all play as equals.

Nobody Tells You How Badly Everyone Plays

Here's what I wish more women knew before they declined that invitation, a surprising number of people on a corporate golf day play very badly indeed. Any club member who has ever been stuck behind one of these groups can confirm this.

When you don't play, it's easy to imagine that everyone out there is competent, they are not. Some of them are simply better than you on that particular day. Corporate days are full of rusty golfers who haven't played in years, and of the man (sorry but it usually is a man) putting every tee shot into the bushes. Although I have been there too.

A PGA professional told me recently that men routinely book lessons with them because they've been invited to a corporate day and don't actually know how to play. I'd love women to borrow the permission to have a go before you feel competent.

Because readiness has never been a polished swing or a respectable score, it is about confidence, basic etiquette, and the ability to keep play moving. You don't have to be a good golfer, just don’t be a slow one.

Most of what a beginner actually needs is logistical rather than technical. Where do I stand while someone else is hitting? Where do I leave my bag? How do I get to the next tee? When should I pick up my ball? How long do we look for it? How do I be an enjoyable person to spend four hours with? Nobody is born knowing any of this, and almost nobody thinks to tell you.

Those Of Us Who Already Play Have A Job To Do

Every golfer is an ambassador for the sport, whether we volunteered or not and we can close the information gap for women.

That means inviting people and reassuring them. Being honest about what we shot in our last round, because we are not playing professionals, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.

It means taking a friend to the range one-to-one before she has to do anything in front of strangers, or simply telling her where the beginner sessions are. And it means not only posting the perfect swings and the beautiful golf days, because that quietly reinforces the very idea we're trying to dismantle, that competence is the price of entry.

Golf is presented as a game of excellence. For most of us it is fleeting moments of brilliance, considerable stretches of mediocrity, and the unshakeable belief that next time we will hit the perfect shot.

That's the message I think more women want to hear, and it's the one the team at IMG delivered brilliantly. You don't have to wait until you're good enough to walk into the room, or onto the course. You only have to be willing enough to give it a go and take the first shot and then, if it doesn't go well, pick up, recover, keep going, and have a great conversation anyway.