Am I ready to play?

I have been going to a driving range every other day for a few weeks.  I've also been working on trying to build up my physical conditioning through light weightlifting and physical stretching and foam rolling/lacrosse balls.    I feel I am ready to play on a real golf course next week, but my dad has encouraged me to spend more time on a driving range because he's worried my play won't be good enough to keep up a reasonable pace and I'll annoy other golfers.  I'm concerned about holding up other golfers but on the other hand, I feel like there's no reason to put off something I've wanted to try for a long time.

My swing speed is about 65 mph and I can hit a 7 wood at least 150 yards and I usually pitch about 40-50 yards with a pitching wedge.  I am still whiffing balls occasionally but when I do hit, the ball flight is relatively straight, usually drawing to some extent.  My backswing is not particularly long.

What do you think?

Go for it!!!  Take your swing, if you get a good hit on it great move on.. If you whiff or get a bad hit take a drop where your dad is or where the best ball is in your group and move along... What ever you do don't put it off any longer!

Go enjoy your self!

Just be ready to laugh at yourself and go play. As long as you keep pace and pick your ball up when you've hit too many shots on a hole, you'll be perfectly fine. We've all been there. During my first round, all I tried to really do was learn about etiquette so my random playing partners wouldn't dislike me.

Go to s short course when the play is lighter. It's just a game. It's meant to be fun. You can score high and still play a t a decent pace. My daughter's fiancé wants to take up the game. He's going to the driving range right now. He sucks pretty bad. I'll take him to the local exec course when it's not crowded. We'll have a few beers and have fun. He's going to med school right now, so he doesn't have a lot of spare time.

Go for it ! It's all good - I'd rather play with a beginner that's trying to learn the game than some hacker just beating balls around .:. No time like the present

I'd say go for it. Of course I think any person who can hit a stationary ball, just sitting on the ground, with a golf club, most of the time, and be able to find said ball, should go play. The more the merrier.

Golf, for most amateurs, should be all about just having fun. I might play in 4-5 tournaments for different causes over the next 12 months, but the rest of the time I am out there playing with no cares what so ever. I just hit the ball, go find it, and hit it again.

The good thing for an amateur is that it only takes one, or two, some what decent golf shots to make them want to come back. Maybe draining a 20 footer for bogey will trip a trigger or two. The one thing to remember is that not one player in the world, regardless of how good they became, played really great golf the first time they actually played 18 holes.

The percentage of whiffs will dictate pace of play. The variation in distance of your 7 wood will also affect the answer.

If you are willing to simply pick up your ball after the second attempt with getting on the fairway, then place it up for an approach, I don't see why pace of play would be an issue. Just be willing to pick up after 8 shots, unless the other golfers are still playing towards the green.

Should be fun. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks. (BTW, I have been in a situation where I was tossed off a golf course after the first hole, not really a big deal in retrospect).

Go for it but do it in a smart way.  Go to a short course (par 3 or executive) at a time when it isn't crowded.  Be prepared to pick up if you get in too much trouble on a hole or are holding up your group.

Yes! Just do it! I think you have got good advices in this thread...have fun!

Yeah. Definitely get out there. Like @turtleback said, pick a nice short Par 3. If you can knock a ball 150 yards, you should be good to go.

If you've got people behind you, give yourself a kind of rule of thumb. Say 3 or 4 pops to get to the green, then pick it up and drop it on the green and putt out.

Also, don't sweat the score what-so-ever.

Interested to hear why, could you share that story please?

10+ strokes to get to the green, it was my first time on a course. :-D

The first time I played, my tee shot sliced over a chain link fence into the courtyard of a high school. If you do worse than that, come back and tell me about it. Good luck!

If you can hit 150 yards straight, you can play.

If you are too slow, you wave the guys behind you through. My experience with really slow players are that they don't even think about little things to keep moving. If you are thinking about pace of play, you will likely not be slow.  There is a guy here who goes off every Friday afternoon at 5:00 sharp all summer.  He has a blue handicap flag on his cart and plays in a group of five. He loves golf and enjoys playing.  Nobody really minds and the group always waves you though. You shouldn't let stuff stop you either.

Golf is great and you should enjoy it.

Wow! They made you leave?

I probably would have never played again. LOL

What's funny is I hit the cart, tree, fence and the ball landed right next to my daughter. :-\ I was hitting right handed with a persimmon wood left by the previous owners of the house. Still have them too. I might need to learn right handed golf at some point to really use them. Well, since my kids were really into golf at the time, I still went to the golf course and eventually started playing with my left hand when someone asked me if I was a lefty and let me use his clubs. That was just a year or so before I joined this site, so it's fresh in my memory. :-D

How do they go about kicking you off of the course?

I can see maybe telling somebody to speed up or skip a hole or tell them they might want to go halfway up the fairway and start. I can't imagine tapping somebody on the shoulder and saying "You are really not good enough to be out here so take a hike." LOL

Funny story. Glad it was you and not me.

The Marshall came out and asked if we would like a refund on everything including the cart and range balls. He pointed back to two very frustrated looking golfers. I took him up on it almost immediately. My wife's girlfriend who took us out on this endeavor was a little embarrassed to say the least. My drive was pretty decent as I recall, but the same persimmon club didn't work that well on the fairway and in the trees. At that point, I had no idea why I had 13 other clubs in my bag. :-D Needlessly said, I continued to "play" on other courses. We even went on to play on some pretty nice courses, which had more separation between groups. Even took lots of lessons in between going to the courses. BTW, the lefty who let me borrow his clubs started me on the track to improvement. I think he saw that my backswing was so much faster than my downswing, then asked me how I swing a baseball bat. After seeing me swing, he handed me his SW. The results were much better than any right handed shot I had made in the previous year. I had just spent a lot of money and time learning to kind of play right handed, and was in a quandary about which hand to use. So, I looked up something about the subject and the search eventually led me to this site. When I first joined this site I was not that happy about this incident, but I can look at my first posts and laugh. I have a completely different perspective at this point. About a year ago, I might have been one of those frustrated golfers on the same course. I've even passed that stage, and just hop onto an empty slot in front of beginners. I know there's going to be plenty of space there. ;-)