23 and have been playing for...about 9 or 10 months now.
I've always had sort of a fascination with golf; as a kid I loved playing baseball with my brothers (and crushing opposite field homers; there was actually a short fence in the RF of my backyard) I liked playing it in high school gym (basically cheap, cheap clubs and hula hoops as holes over baseball and soccer fields) and of course, knew about Tiger.
Hit the driving range a couple times in college but picked up a cheap set of Golden Bear GX-2's for about $140 and picked it up last summer. Hit the range a lot and about five or six courses. Loved it.
Edit: Oh yeah, also Tiger Woods in the U.S. Open, Sunday on the 18th. I remember watching, it was Father's Day and that entire 18th hole and going to commercial and seeing that Tiger Woods "Never" commercial with his dad saying "I said, Tiger, I promise you you'll never meet another person as mentally tough as you in your entire life. And he hasn't and he never will," and then witnessing Tiger sink that putt. Kind of surreal.
That kind of spurred my interest.