Over the past couple of months, due to COVID-19, adhering to strict rules and social distancing have been important to stay safe. But during this time, as it is impossible to quarantine every day all the time, the amount of activities are limited. But, an activity that has been on the rise in popularity is golf as we can be socially distanced while still having fun. Back in early March, I decided that I wanted to learn how to play golf, as my parents regularly played with their friends during quarantine. Personally, I thought that learning to play golf would be easy. Hypothetically, I simply had to swing a club and hit a still ball on the floor. However, it turned out not to be the case.

The first couple of weeks were tough as I could not even hit the ball that was on the floor right in front of me. I assumed that hitting a ball would be easy, but it didn’t work as well as I envisioned. I got really frustrated to the point that I wondered, ‘why am I still doing this?’. But as time went on, I found that the sport usually played by older adults was slowly turning into a sport played by all ages. I was able to see a lot of youth following in on the trend, both on social media and in person. This made me want to improve my golf skills so that I could improve and soon go out to the field with my parents as currently, my parents are better than I am.What I found was that with consistent practice and concentration, I was soon able to successfully hit the ball. From then on, going to a practice range was one of the highlights of my week as on most other days, I was at home all day. Day after day, I slowly started improving. I started to use different clubs and got ready to go out onto the field to play an actual game of golf.

Finally, after about 2 months of practice, my family and I went to a field to play my first 18 holes of golf. Basically, the game was what I had been practicing but divided into four hours. Considering that it was my first time playing an 18-hole round, I think that I did well as I was able to successfully hit the ball. The biggest difference I learned from playing at a range and on the field was that on the range, my balls flew at a more consistent rate as I had been performing the same move for hours. On the field, however, due to being tired from the walking and swinging my arms, my form had changed. As a result, my balls flew at a less consistent rate.

In the beginning, I thought that the sport golf wasn’t a real sport as none of my friends played. But after playing, I quickly realized that golf can be extremely tiring, but also entertaining at the same time. From this experience, I want to improve more especially in my short game which are any shots that are less than around 70 yards and work on putting as I found that it was harder than I assumed. In conclusion, I no longer believe that golf is a boring sport: now, I am excited to practice and play more with my family and friends.

Clare Sohn
Grade 10
Seoul Foreign School