How Golf Changes as You Get Older

I have been around the block a few times. I took my first faltering steps on the golf course around the age of five. 

My grandfather was an amateur golfer of some note in Scotland and had me playing the nine-hole ladies course at Lundin Links at a very young age. I had very little say in the matter and my earliest memories are of feeling freezing cold and getting drenched to the skin on a regular basis.

I have recently returned to this wonderful sport of ours after a long injury break and it got me thinking about how the game has changed for me over the years. 

I hope you will indulge me as I take something of a trip down memory lane on a journey that I am sure many of you will be able to relate to.

Childhood Journey Into Golf

In truth, my first love was football. I am a lifelong Rangers supporter - a journey that has seen rather more downs than ups. As somebody who kicked a ball with my left foot I never had any problems being chosen for school teams. But the reality was that I wasn’t very good. In my teens, I would play football during the winter and golf during Scotland’s all-too-short summer.

Funnily enough, I am left-handed in everything I do other than when it comes to playing golf.

I quickly realised that I was a rather better golfer than I was a footballer and by the time I was 15 or 16 I decided to focus on the grand old game. 

I was incredibly lucky. We had a family holiday home in Lundin Links, which is also home to one of the best links courses in Scotland. We also had country membership at St Andrews, which meant we could play the Old Course more or less whenever we wanted - for peanuts.

In my home city of Glasgow I had a choice of several municipal golf courses - some excellent, some not quite so much. And I was a member at Kirkhill Golf Club.

Being a Teenage Golfer

As a teenager my handicap quickly tumbled. I had a number of lessons from a fine club pro named John Semple and was also lucky enough to have Bob Torrance point me in the right direction. 

But my teenage years were dominated by temper tantrums. I look back now with some embarrassment at some of my on-course antics. And the more I lost my temper the more difficult it was to score well.

At the age of 18 I left school and landed a job as a trainee journalist and quickly realised that if I was going to do the job properly then it was going to dominate my life. The result was that my golf clubs ended up spending most of their life in a cupboard. 

I still played the occasional game. After one such outing I left my clubs in the boot of my car. I came out the following day to discover that somebody had forced open the boot and stolen my clubs. If that happened to me today I would be utterly distraught. Back then, I shrugged my shoulders and put it down to experience. I was more annoyed about the damage to my car than the theft of my clubs.

Work & Life Getting in The Way

There were also cost considerations. I could no longer depend on my parents to pay my annual subscription. Initially, there was rent to pay and later a mortgage. Quite frankly, I could not afford to be a golf club member - back in those days there was no option to spread the cost. You had to pay up in one chunk. And I didn’t have the money.

I didn’t play again for about seven years. Having landed a job as editor of a weekly newspaper in Leicestershire I took on a trainee journalist and discovered that he was a five-handicapper. Over a beer he persuaded me to take up the game again. My then brother-in-law was selling his clubs so I took them off his hands and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I got back into the game.

I joined Humberstone Heights and in no time at all had acquired a handicap of nine. But I soon discovered that I was still struggling with my temperament. And the better I became, the worse it seemed to get. I am ashamed to admit that there were days when I would be going along really well and then disaster would strike - and I would play the rest of the round in silence. 

Eventually, one of my regular playing partners sat me down and reminded me that it was only a game and that we should be having fun playing it. 

Embracing The Challenges of Golf

Finally, the penny dropped. I somehow found a way to shrug off the inevitable bad shots. And do you know what? My handicap continued to fall and I would come off the 18th green with a warm, fuzzy feeling. By this time I was about 30 years of age.

In my mid-30s I played some of the best golf of my life. And then I started to suffer some health issues. It started with neck pain and then it spread to my back. Before long it was simply too painful to play golf and my clubs went into hibernation again.

Numerous visits to doctors, hospitals, specialists, physiotherapists and chiropractors failed to get to the bottom of the problem. Life was tough. And then I was finally diagnosed as suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. When I heard the words I thought that my life was over but I was prescribed a course of tablets and after around two months I woke up one morning and the pain was gone.

Getting Into Senior Golf

By this stage I was in my early fifties. So I decided to get the clubs out once again. I joined a golf club, Waldringfield Heath, near Woodbridge in Suffolk. It was flat and fairly short but there was a LOT of gorse. If you missed the fairways you were digging into your bag for another ball. 

So I learnt to swing within myself and focus on hitting the ball straight. No longer did I automatically reach for the driver. I discovered the joys of finding the short and prepared with a three wood. 

When I turned 55 I joined the senior section and quickly started winning competitions - lots of them. I found myself in demand for pairs competitions and team events. And eventually I was asked to become seniors captain.

My days at Waldringfield were some of the happiest of my entire golfing life. Or at least they were until new owners came along and announced that they were closing the course with the intention of replacing it with an exclusive housing development. This came right in the middle of my captaincy!

I then moved to Norwich and started suffering with severe shoulder pain, brought on by years of sitting in front of a computer. And once again my clubs found their way into a cupboard. 

The Joys of Retirement

I retired in January 2024 and soon realised that my shoulder pain had eased sufficiently for me to begin yet another golf journey. 

I am now a member of Dunston Hall Golf Club in Norwich and am senior vice-captain. When I first picked up my clubs again I struggled horribly. It would have been all too easy to walk away from the game for good but I had got myself some custom-fitted clubs so I persevered, had some lessons and spent hours on the driving range. I always knew that my game was still in there somewhere and eventually it all began to click again.

So, what has changed? Well, I can no longer hit the ball 270 yards from the tee. And that’s just for starters. I reckon I have lost around 50 yards but I have never in my life hit the ball as straight as I am doing now. 

And, to my utter astonishment, I discovered that I can still putt pretty well. I still hit poor shots but even my misses are not too bad. Dunston Hall is a course that demands accuracy. 

Your Game Changes With Age

At my advanced age I have realised that I need to swing within myself, take one club more than I think I need and accept that there are going to be days when it is all a bit of a struggle. If I have to use a utility club from 150 yards now instead of a seven iron, so what?

A Motocaddy electric trolley has helped to ease the load - back in my 20s and 30s I would never have dreamed of doing anything other than carrying my clubs. And a Garmin watch has also been a game changer.

Perhaps the most important thing of all is that I am enjoying my golf more now than I have at any stage in my life. And because I am retired, I can play whenever and wherever I want. If I look out the window and the rain is tipping down I can go back to bed and try again tomorrow.

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