Golfing with people who don't care about golfing

[David in FL]

46 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

You're not missing anything other than not everyone we golf with shares the same passion and viewpoint.  

In some cases, the "social" players aren't good golfers and may be a bit embarrassed or intimidated to play the round properly.   When I was first learning to play, I was very self conscious and would often just drop a ball near my playing partner when I hit my ball OB rather than risk the embarrassment of hitting another one OB.  

In other cases people don't play enough golf to care what their score is.  My cousin plays 3 rounds a year, doesn't maintain a handicap and mostly goes on the course to hang out with family and friends.  

I guess my point is, for people like that, and I socialize with many of them, we find an area of common interest/passion where we socialize.  Maybe dinner out, a concert, a ball game, whatever.  While there may be rare exceptions, I generally reserve my time on the golf course for those who have a similar interest (not necessarily skill level) to my own. 

[WUTiger]

19 hours ago, bweiss711 said:

... On the car ride over, he was (or so I thought) joking about playing "best ball" as he called it, and that we'd always be hitting from my spot.  Turns out he wasn't joking. ...  

... I was getting annoyed because I was stuck on a golf course with two of the nicest people in the world on an absolutely stunning morning here in Chicago. ...

You have realized that there are two kinds of golf: golf the sport, and golf the social event.

In golf the sport, you are trying to play your best - it's you against the course. Your playing companions/opponents are in the same frame of mind. The group knows the rules and follows them.

Then there's golf the social event - people who are out to have a good time, whose pre-round warmup consisted of washing balls still dirty from their last round, and five minutes of putting. They will hit an occasional good shot... have one flat-out miss each hole... make creative interpretations of the USGA rules. And, they'll hit you up for golf tees on the back nine.

(Couples golf is somewhat blended. My wife knows the rules and abides by them, but constantly gets on me for trying too hard. She says I should just have fun and not worry about my score.)

Just realize that some situations you end up in, it's not really golf the sport for anyone but you. It's called life, and you don't always get to choose the person you're working with on a given day. If you're into applied theology, the Christian epistle of James talks all about this (er, handling odd people you get matched up with, not golf).

[70sSanO]

I used to be very competitive in every sport I did.  If it took me hours to beat someone at tennis or basketball I would just play until they couldn't move.  I could also be a bad sport.  And I've had my episodes of getting upset on the course.

Fast forward 40/50 years and I approach sports differently.  It is not that I don't care or try, and I'll get internally peeved with a bad shot, it is just more fun to not be that competitive and just take more of an "Oh well" approach and get it on the next one.

John

[CarlSpackler]

Having played a lot of corporate outings, I'm used to playing "socially" while talking business, but I'm also quite used to playing solo or with whomever I get paired with. I've met all sorts of people on the course from the scratch guy to Mr. Flub. I could care less. Plying with better players does seem to help up my game though. 

[Golfingdad]

On 9/4/2016 at 0:44 PM, bweiss711 said:

Have any of you had this happen?  Where you had to completely shift your mentality mid-round?  Or the opposite, where you expected to have a casual round and it turned into something more competitive?  Or do you normally play in a certain mindset regardless of how the rest of your group is going along?

Yes.  The first couple of times I took my son on the course (he's 7) I thought I'd be able to play "normally" while also helping him along.  But similarly to your situation, I quickly found myself way out of focus because I'm thinking of all kinds of different things than I'm normally thinking of.  It was easy enough for me to just write the whole experience off as fun and teaching him while practicing some shots for myself as well, and nothing really more than that.

Part of me is envious of those who have jobs that require golf course "meetings" but then another part of me realizes that those would be social and not so much a regular round of focused golf, so then I become less envious. :)

[arturo28mx]

Some of the above posts seem to see golf as a binary thing: it's either competitive golf or social golf. Black or white. I think there are some shades of gray in there.

I see myself as 50/50: I  want to enjoy the company of other people but I also want to play "decent" golf. By decent golf I mean  keep it in the fairway and make a bit of an effort to play well. A bit of an effort from other people is all I ask. It bothers me when I see zero effort to play well. I know it's wrong but that's the way I am.

Edited September 6, 2016 by arturo28mx

[Kalnoky]

On 9/5/2016 at 8:04 AM, Yukari said:

Golf for me is a way to forget about everything and concentrate on just one thing. I don't play to socialize. I do that after the round is over. 

Yes ^^^ 100%. I have 11 employees, wife + two teenage daughters, huge family and more social outlets than I can handle. 

Golf is my time to be single-minded and focused. Golf is my quiet time.

Afterwards in the clubhouse, I will have a beer with anyone.

[Strandly]

I try to be relatively serious when I play and it's definitely easier to do when playing a solo round.  But even then I can't get too angry about poor play since I'm not aspiring to play professionally.

Anyway, if I was the OP I'd simply chalk it up to a learning experience and expect future rounds with the neighbor to be more social than serious.

[Buckeyebowman]

Sounds like you thought things were going to be a certain way, and when they weren't it took you a while to adjust. OK, now you know.

The way I put it is this. There are people who "play golf", and there are people who are "golfers", or at least see themselves that way. There are folks who view a round of golf no more seriously than volleyball or badminton before a holiday cookout!

I, too, used to wonder why they were out there spending the money. But, if they're having fun and enjoying themselves who am I to gripe? Well, unless they hold up play too much. So, dropping a ball up by the better player may serve a purpose in keeping play moving.

And, it cuts both ways. You have the guys whose level of "seriousness" is way out of balance with their level of skill! The guys who, to quote Shivas Irons, "think too much and try too hard." I have a friend like this, and there are times he can be not much fun to play with. He'll stand over a shot and you can almost hear the gears whirring in his mind!

But the guy I really can't stand is the self deceiving liar! The guy who tells about all the great scores he's shot, as though you won't see what kind of golf he really plays after a couple of swings! My friend's Son has a buddy like this. He's strong as an ox and can hit the ball a country mile, but most of his shots are duck hooks off the planet or dead left smothers! After yet another "blue darter" this Saturday the guys says, "I can't remember the last time I played this bad!" As my friend and I rode toward our drives (both in the fairway), I said, "Hell, I can remember the last time he played this bad. It was the last time we played with him!"

There's all kinds out there, and you have to learn to play your own game while allowing for theirs.

[ZappyAd]

I try to keep the same mindset whoever I am playing with.  If someone is hyper competitive then I just see it as a good opportunity to practice staying in my zone and playing my own game.  If someone doesn't take it too seriously then it is the same opportunity but from a different way round!  

I do have limits though and there are a couple of people who I have played with in the past that I just don't play with anymore because their view of how to play is so wildly different to mine.  At least with your neighbour you now know what to expect - if you can find a way to deal with it then the upside is probably going to be more golf!

 

 

[SG11118]

I have never blamed the people I am golfing with for being too serious or too casual or too angry, and having any correlation between them and my golf game.  It is up to me to focus and hit good golf shots when it is my turn.  Between shots, I'm willing to be as social as the people I'm playing with want to be.

[JxQx]

I haven't really ran into that, for the most part I walk into rounds with a fairly open mind if I could be paired up with other people. I typically will just match whatever the flow is of the round whether it be competitive, fun, social or quiet. The only thing that really throws me off mentally is running into a wall of slow people mid round, which I am trying to work on.

[mcanadiens]

44 minutes ago, SG11118 said:

I have never blamed the people I am golfing with for being too serious or too casual or too angry, and having any correlation between them and my golf game.  It is up to me to focus and hit good golf shots when it is my turn.  Between shots, I'm willing to be as social as the people I'm playing with want to be.

Sounds like the right way to go about it.

[bweiss711]

45 minutes ago, SG11118 said:

I have never blamed the people I am golfing with for being too serious or too casual or too angry, and having any correlation between them and my golf game.  It is up to me to focus and hit good golf shots when it is my turn.  Between shots, I'm willing to be as social as the people I'm playing with want to be.

Its not so much I was blaming anyone for my lack of ability to focus on my game.  It had just found myself in an unfamiliar situation.  

The thing is, I have never played a truly competitive round of golf.  I don't keep an official handicap, and I've never played in a tournament.  I play golf because I enjoy attempting to be good at it.  Its fun for me.  And a vast majority of the times I have played, its been with other people who also are trying to actually play the game.  Even at work scrambles, and you get the lady from accounting who has never picked up a club in her life, the collective goal of the group is still to hit as many good golf shots as we can to get our lowest possible score.  We have fun and don't take it so seriously, but we are still playing golf.

Most of my rounds are played with my buddies or my dad.  When I'm out with my friends, and we have a few more beers than our wives probably realize, we are still playing golf.  The social experience is being out there with each other, watching each other succeed or fail at hitting good shots.  Playing the game still comes first.  Some of my favorite rounds are getting to play with my dad.  I love that he got me to fall in love with this game, and we get to spend that time together on the golf course.  But again, the shared experience is playing golf together, thinking through each shot, and trying our best to score well.

I guess I had just never played with someone who's objective on the golf course was to socialize first and not even care at all about playing the game of golf.  I'd still sign up to play with him again.  It just caught me off guard.

 

[SG11118]

46 minutes ago, bweiss711 said:

Its not so much I was blaming anyone for my lack of ability to focus on my game.  It had just found myself in an unfamiliar situation.  

OK - makes sense.  My comment wasn't necessarily toward you, but toward the subject in general.  I've run into a couple people like you describe.  Several of the "businessmen" in our club could care less about golf.  They are just out there to have a good time and meet people, and hopefully drum up some business in the process.  I guess that is the closest I can correlate.  The one of these guys that I occasionally golf with is pretty good about dropping a ball to keep up the pace of play.

Two of the better players in our club have recently had a falling out over not being able to play together.  They have played in the same league night group for a couple years, and last year had a great time playing together.  The one guy was essentially blaming the other ones negative attitude for his crappy golf.  It made it miserable for the other guys in the group, and they even had to pick sides as to who they were going to play with the next week.  I just don't get that sort of thing. 

[Kalnoky]

Somebody in this thread correctly observed there are golfers (or aspiring golfers) and there are people who play golf once in a while. 

It's like when you have a favorite team, there are the fanatics, and there is the bandwagon. The bandwagon just wants to be at the watch party.  

[Zekez]

I have absolutely no desire to golf with anyone who is pretty bad at golf.   In my job I socialize constantly and while I am an outgoing person who does enjoy socializing, I have zero desire to socialize around a golf course with someone who sucks at golf.  

[Feeling it]

I guess you have never sucked at golf. You seem to be all about you. Good luck with that.