Walking While You Play Golf

One of the things that I have really come to enjoy over the years is playing a round of golf while walking.  Sure it is much more convenient and easier to use a golf cart, but if you have never walked a round of golf, I encourage you to give it a try.

I have lived and played most of my golf in the deep South.  This makes it a bit of a challenge to walk a round of golf due to the heat and humidity.  During July and August the heat and humidity can make playing at all a challenge. Sometimes the best you can do is to tee off early in the morning and finish you round before it just becomes unbearably hot.

For this reason, I played golf for several years as an adult before I walked my first round.  I have always stayed in good shape and didn’t feel guilty using a cart since I knew I was getting my exercise elsewhere.  Then one summer evening a friend asked me to play nine holes after work and he almost always walked when he played.  I had an old pull cart in my garage storage closet, so I decided “What the heck, it can’t hurt me”.  And I gave it a try.

Since it was evening, even though it was summer, the heat wasn’t too bad.  It was hot, but not totally miserable.  Once I adjusted to that and put it out of my mind, I really began to enjoy this particular round of golf.  And several of the things had nothing to do with golf.

One of the things that was very enjoyable was the conversation.  When you are walking between shots instead of riding a cart, you have a little more time to relax and talk.  Talk about anything, golf, life, family etc.  It really wasn’t a huge amount of time, but it felt so more relaxing than rushing up to your golf ball in a cart and jumping out to take your next shot.

Another thing that I enjoyed was that I really seemed to pay more attention to the beauty around me on the golf course and surrounding the course.  Again, there really wasn’t necessarily a logical reason why I should have seen and enjoyed the surrounding landscape more, but walking seemed to relax me and I just seemed, for some reason, more in tune with my surroundings.

Now besides just enjoying the non golf setting more, there were some definite benefits to my golf game from walking.  I actually seemed to play better overall golf, both physically and mentally.  One thing that I noticed was that I was definitely more relaxed when I approached each shot.  I can’t attribute it to any one thing; I just noticed that as I came up to look at my lie and to think about what my next shot should be, I just felt more relaxed.  And definitely I have found that better golf shots come from being relaxed.

I have walked many times since that first round of golf and I always enjoy it.  I play better golf and I always seem to ask myself the same question,  “Why don’t I walk on every round of golf?”