GAJTKA: 2025, The Year I Fall In Love With Golf Again (Hopefully!)

Golf was still a significant part of my life in 2024.

But I can’t say I loved golf in 2024.

And as we begin 2025, I’m trying to figure out a) why I fell out of love with the game, and b) how I can change that in the new year.

I believe my life is better with golf in it, no doubt, but at some point the relationship became slightly toxic. I think part of it is that, since I earned a golf fitness certification a couple of years back, the sport became an aspect of my career.

To put it a different way, golf went from a pastime to (at least somewhat) a job. We’ve all heard the clichés about if we enjoy our work, we never truly work … but I think any logical adult realizes that’s not truly the case.

Work is still work, no matter how much we relish it, and respites from work are still necessary for a healthy life.

Without getting too much into amateur psychology, I think golf simply crossed the line from leisure to labor in 2024, to the point that what used to feel like an indulgence — for instance, working on my swing speed or hitting a bucket of balls — began to carry the feeling of obligation to stay active in a career field.

Perhaps golf is best left as purely recreation for me? At a time in my life as a parent when I have less time to myself than ever before, it could be the case that I need my leisure time to solely be that and nothing else. It’s worth considering that it’s simply not the season of life in which to try to cross the streams.

Also, I think I fell victim to the expectations paradox. Following a 2023 golf season that saw me shoot a career-low round, take a trophy home from our family’s annual golf trip and generally experience a sufficient amount of joy whenever I teed it up, perhaps I thought my golf trajectory would keep pointing upward.

As we know about golf — or any human endeavor! — continual improvement can be elusive. I knew that intellectually, but I still felt the disappointment when I didn’t play as well, or as much, in 2024 compared to the previous couple of years.

But as much as I love to analyze the ‘why,’ the more important question is ‘how.’ As in: How will I maximize my golf enjoyment in 2025?

This is supposed to be fun, right? I think us ‘serious’ recreational golfers can frequently forget that.

My first tactic this winter has been going back to basics. A few times a week, I finish off a workout with some simple air swings in the garage. Just feeling the club in my hands and enjoying the sensation of cracking the whip at the bottom, picturing a shot soaring off toward the horizon.

If I’m boiling it all down, that is what I love most about golf. It’s not the scorecard or the competition or the fellowship with other players, although all of that can be quite additive.

No, the reason golf continues to ride shotgun in my recreational life as I approach my (gulp) fifth decade on Earth is that I relish the sensation of making a nice hard pass at the ball and watching it fly.

As the kids say, if you know, you know.

Keeping that essence of the sport firmly in mind, I will also work on managing expectations in ’25.

I have two children under 10. I have many other fitness aspirations beyond carrying my golf bag, things like playing hockey, running road races and generally being a better athlete. Also, I don’t have a job (yet!) that pays enough to justify blowing a chunk of money on a golf membership, considering the amount I’d be able to use it.

Knowing all this, if I can get in a couple of bona fide practice sessions in a week, and a real green-grass round of golf (nine or 18) in every 10 days or so, I’m going to consider the upcoming golf year a success. That might sound extraordinarily humble to some fellow golf nuts, but I’ve got to stay in my lane at this point or else I’ll be setting myself up to fall short of unreasonable standards.

In the end, I’m going to want to play well and I’m going to want to hit the ball farther than most. Those are the obvious dopamine drips that make the whole endeavor appealing to me, even if neither is the reason I call myself a golfer.

But overall I’ve got to maintain a certain lightness. There’s enough heavy in the world and golf isn’t meant to be part of that. If I had to pinpoint one thing that changed about my game in 2024, it’s that it felt like I was maintaining my skills out of duty, not out of joy.

That’s where I’ll leave it on this dreary winter’s day. Actually, just last week we were given a gorgeous pre-New Year afternoon and I took full advantage with a trip to the local driving range, which was blessedly open.

It was one of those affirming moments that reminds why we picked up the game in the first place. May I carry that bonus end-of-year medium bucket of balls into 2025.

Whenever I see the sun again, that is.