How I’m Trying to Lower My Golf Handicap as a New Dad

By Dave · Golf · showingupdad.com

Lowering your golf handicap as a new dad sounds like a punchline. I haven’t done it. That’s the honest answer. I’ve played a handful of rounds this year and they were worse than last year. That’s where we are. If you came here looking for a success story, check back in about six months.

But I do have a plan. And I think the plan is actually going to work. So here’s where things stand and what I’m doing about it.

The guilt is real.

Golf takes a while. Four and a half hours, plus the drive, plus the post-round wind-down you don’t fully account for when you’re planning it. That’s a long time to be gone when your wife has been home with the baby.
I wrote before about how protecting time for yourself only works if you’re pulling your weight everywhere else. That’s still true. But knowing it and feeling it are different things. Even when the round is planned, the timing works out, and nobody is upset about it, there’s a background hum of guilt that follows me to the first tee.

Some people say part of it is I don’t get there early anymore. No warmup, no range balls, straight to the first tee. My buddy Corey has a line for this: “Do you see a lion limber up before it takes down a gazelle?” He’s not wrong, this is amateur golf after all.

I‘ve been playing golf swing instead of golf.

This is the real problem. I get out there and I’m so aware of every mechanical thing I want to fix that I never actually play. I’m thinking about my takeaway on a 150-yard approach shot with water left. That’s not golf. That’s a practice session that counts against your score.

Golf is more mental than I remembered. When I was playing consistently, I trusted my swing because I’d been hitting it enough to trust it. Now I haven’t hit balls in two months and I’m standing over a tee shot trying to run through a checklist. It doesn’t work.

The fix isn’t more swing thoughts. It’s less. Pick a target, see the shot, let your body do what it already knows how to do. I’ve played this game for ten years. The athleticism is in there. The problem is I keep getting in front of it.

You have to see it and believe it before you hit it. That sounds like something on a motivational poster and I’m a little embarrassed to write it, but it’s true. When I’m playing well, I visualize the shot, step in, and go. When I’m playing badly, I think about my hips.

The plan.

Something shifted this week. The sun doesn’t set until almost 9pm now. Leo is in bed by 7:30. We’ve started eating dinner earlier. That gives me a window I didn’t have in January.

I have a hitting net and a chipping net sitting in the garage. Both collecting more dust than use. That’s changing.

The plan is straightforward. After Leo goes down, I’m getting out there. Thirty minutes with the hitting net working through the irons, some nights just the chipping net with a wedge. No drive anywhere, no guilt about being gone, just the backyard while it’s still light out. It’s not glamorous. It’s reps.

Once that’s a habit, I’ll start getting to the range in the evenings. It stays light late enough now that it’s usable well past 8. If I can get there once a week after bedtime, that’s enough to stay connected between rounds.

The irons are where I’m bleeding strokes right now. Not off the tee. The G425s are fine. It’s the 160-yard approach I pull left, the punch shot I mishit, the stuff that should be automatic. That’s what happens when you don’t hit balls for two months. The backyard sessions are specifically for that.

Where this is actually going.

I’m not shooting my best golf right now. I don’t expect to. My son is 11 months old and I’m running on six hours of sleep on a good night. There’s going to be a period where the game is worse before it gets better.

What I’m trying to do is not lose the thread entirely. Stay connected to it. Keep enough of a practice habit going that when I do get out, I’m not starting from zero every time.

Check back in the fall. I’ll either have a better handicap or a better excuse.

If you’re a dad trying to keep golf in your life without losing your mind or your marriage, that’s exactly what this blog is about. Subscribe below and follow along.