Opinion & Analysis
Growing Up Golf Part 3: “Golf Association”
Click here to read more stories from Kadin’s series, “Growing Up Golf.”
Cold weather has reached Northwest Indiana. Though I have no issues going out and playing in 40 degree weather, most of my children’s adventures in golf are now somewhat restricted to indoor activities. Our daughter still asks me every day if we can go “hit balls,” but with daylight becoming shorter and shorter it has become very hard to get out to the practice area before dark. With this challenge, we have been on the creative side of golf related activities.
Before I start listing some ideas for you to share with your children, I want to address a question. What happens when your child doesn’t want to putt or take swings with a club? After all, they are kids and their attention span is short for the most part. I have a list of 25 activities that will keep the interest of a child without having to always have a “Practice Routine.” Now, some of these activities utilize swinging and putting but some are just fun ways to keep an association to golf, even if the child doesn’t realize it. Others are fun new ways to work on their game without doing the same old trip to the range or putting green.
Here they are:
1. Hit balls into a pond or lake. Kids love to see the splash of the ball. Just pick up some old “hit away” balls and let the fun begin.
2. Dye your ball like an Easter Egg. Any over-the-counter clothing dye will work.
3. Hit balls through a Hoola-Hoop. This is a fun and challenging new way for them to practice the short game.
4. Hit balls into a kiddie pool. Not only will they enjoy the splash but you can incorporate distance control.
5. Draw on your ball with a stencil. Any stencil will work and can be found at most hobby stores.
6. Place candy/treats into a plastic cup and have them knock the cup over while putting to earn the treat. This is a great way to work on distance control with putting and accuracy.
7. Set up a putt-putt course. Be as creative as you want indoors or out.
8. Roll balls back and forth on a practice green underhand to each other. When they don’t feel like using the putter, roll the ball back and forth to one another. This is a great way for them to learn how to read greens.
9. Spell their name on the ground using tees. Sometimes, the easiest part of the game can be a challenge for little kids. Placing a tee in the ground can prove to be a difficult. This is a fun way for them to work on it, without pressure.
10. Draw on a ball. Kids love to color and draw. Let them draw on some shag bag balls.
11. Hit water balloons in the summer and snowballs in the winter. This is a fun way to work on their swing and stay cool at the same time.
12. Build a snowman using old golf gear. Snow on the ground can prove to be the end of a golf season. This is a fun way to keep golf on their minds.
13. Let them explore your golf bag. Younger kids are inquisitive by nature allow them to explore your bag. My son loves this.
14. Paint an old pair of golf shoes. This is another way to be artistic and keep a golf association.
15. Paint on a shirt using a golf ball as a roller. The dimples on the ball make for a cool looking pattern for children.
16. Roll balls over Play-Doh, clay or silly putty. Teachers will tell you that clay is one of the best toys for your child to play with. Like painting the shirt, a ball the dimples will have the same effect.
17. Decorate poster board and cut out holes to putt through. You can use this in your putt-putt course design or just use it for a putting station. Decorate it with what your child has an interest in.
18.Poke tees through some foam and space them out so they can place balls on the tees. This is another way for them to practice balancing the ball on top. Like I said, this seems very easy but may not be for little hands.
19. Draw faces on golf balls.
20.Hit balls into a laundry basket. This is a great way to work on chipping and the ball will rebound right back to your child.
21. Let them help when cleaning your clubs. Just like washing your car, kids will want to help when it comes to washing your clubs.
22. Paint old golf balls. Another fun artistic activity.
23. Let them color on old score cards. Why throw out your old score cards? This will give your child a chance to start learning how the card is used.
24. Use old score cards to practice adding and subtracting. What a great way for them to learn how to score and strengthen their math skills at the same time.
25. Use wiffle golf balls and yarn to make a long necklace or count down chain. This will improve hand eye coordination and the creative possibilities are endless.
This list could go on and on. Just let your creativity run wild. Some of the activities are new twists on old routines and others are a nice break from the “usual” routine. There are several activities that don’t improve skills but keep golf fun. As I stated in the previous article, as long as you can keep an association to golf, you’re doing ok. These are great ways to keep it fun and stress free for you as a parent. Your child also gets to be … well, a child.
When I was instructing baseball/softball what I found to be the best way to instruct younger athletes was by incorporating skill-building drills that didn’t feel like “practice.” I tried to create games and equipment that made grooving a swing or throwing/fielding a ball fun and interesting. I kept it challenging enough to motivate them to be better without having to “coach” them at the same time.
While searching for golf-related activities for my son and daughter I ran across a company called S.N.A.G. (Starting New At Golf). What attracted me to this their product was their approach to teaching. It was very similar to how I instructed baseball/softball.
SNAG is a first-touch development program designed for new learners of all ages. In 1995, two PGA TOUR professionals, Terry Anton and Wally Armstrong, joined forces to discover if there might be a simpler, less threatening way to learn the game. What they learned through interviews with golf’s pros is how they acquired their skills. The pros all had one thing in common — they learned to play with one club. The pros experienced the “simple” feel of the golf club and the ball versus students of complicated instruction that involved body positioning, correct postures, swing angles, weight transfer, grips and stances.
What S.N.A.G. has designed may be the easiest way to teach and introduce golf to children. They only have two clubs: the Launcher (a club with an over sized head) is used to launch, pitch, and chip the ball. The Roller, which is like a putter, is used to roll the ball toward the target. All shots other than rolling (putting) are played off of a mat and tee called the Launch Pad. This ensures that the player will have an optimal lie every time. The target, called a Flagsticky, also differs from anything else in golf, as it is not a hole with a cup inside but rather an above-ground weighted cylinder covered with a hook material. The SNAG Ball is slightly smaller than a tennis ball and is covered with a loop material. Striking the ball has the same feel and compression as hitting a real golf ball. Unlike golf, where you finish by putting your ball into the cup, in SNAG, you finish by sticking your ball to the Flagsticky. Because of the mobile Launch Pad and Flagsticky, SNAG is portable and playable just about anywhere.
Snag also has golf swing mechanic specific training aides. My favorite one is the SNAGazoo. It is designed to develop the proper swing positions for a pitch shot. When the child swings away to the 9 o’clock position, their target arm and the SNAGazoo form an “L”. If this is done correctly, the device will then produce a sound (like a kazoo) indicating correct position. If done incorrectly, it makes no sounds.
This allows your child to self-correct when practicing their swing. They also have one called the Snapper. It looks like a club with a streamer on it that shows swing path. The Snapper is designed to develop the proper movement of a full golf swing. The training aide accomplishes this through a series of four exercises that focus on hands, arms and weight distribution. The streamer follows the swing path giving a visual effect. Your child is instructed to “pop” the streamer, which if successful would indicate the correct use of the hands at the impact area. S.N.A.G. also has several “sticky” targets available. They have one that floats in water or stands up like a bulls eye. They even have a suit that you can wear that the ball will stick to when hit.
From swing mechanics, alignment to proper hand placement (the club has a color coded grip for your child to follow) S.N.A.G. has created teaching and introducing golf has fun and easy as you can make it. They even give you different verbiage to use with your child. They simply made it simple. I recommend this to anyone starting out or even as use as something to just shake it up a little and give your children a different look at how fun golf can be.
As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!
Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.
Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.
One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?
Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.
Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.
Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”
For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…
Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.
Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…
That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.
@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic
Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!
Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.
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“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”
Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.
That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.
As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.
I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.
One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.
The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.
If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.
Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.
As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.
It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.
David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.
In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:
“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Eventually, though, something shifts.
We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.
Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.
Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.
Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.
So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.
I see someone evolving.
He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.
It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.
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Kadin Mahmet
Dec 18, 2012 at 11:46 pm
You are welcome Golf Training. Sorry for the late reply.
golf training
Nov 16, 2012 at 11:03 pm
good tools for golf. thank you