Graham Averill will turn 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He’s a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. Welcome to his midlife crisis.
I’m playing an alarming amount of golf right now. I’ll walk at least nine holes four to five days a week and buffer that with dedicated range and practice green sessions. Occasionally, I’ll pencil in a rest day but by the time lunch rolls around on that sabbath, I’m usually itching to hit the links. Putting for an hour still counts as rest, doesn’t it?
It’s the kind of dedication to the sport that produces awkward tan lines and uncomfortable dinner conversations with my wife when she asks about my day. A cynic might call this sort of cadence an “addiction” but I like to frame it as an example of my puritan work ethic. Don’t blame me, blame society for equating hard work with self value. And, honestly, with a goal like reaching scratch by the time I turn 50, I can’t really afford to take many days off. Time is ticking.
I knew the project was going to require an unhealthy amount of golf and it made me wonder at the onset: Do I have to join a country club to make massive strides in my golf game? Or can I reach scratch while snagging tee times at the local public courses?
It’s an uncomfortable question. The country club/public golf conversation carries undertones of class and money. I’m a staunch advocate for public golf. Other than a brief stint working at a country club during high school where I mostly focused on testing the laws of physics with gas-powered golf carts, most of what I know about country clubs comes from watching Caddyshack. Judge Smails, scrappy caddies vying for scholarships and all that.
Since picking up the game again in my late 40s, I’ve played 90 percent of my rounds at my local municipal course. It’s a beautiful layout, designed by Donald Ross, with tight fairways and lots of slope. But a natural disaster took out the front nine in 2024 so it only has nine holes. My town actually lost a couple of courses in that disaster along with a couple of driving ranges so there’s been a squeeze on public golf in this area. Tee times are at a premium and pace of play can be painful if the sun’s out.
At the beginning of this project, my coach, Sam Hahn, suggested I find a club to join during our first conversation. “You need a place where you can walk a round and drop five balls from different locations on every hole.”
In other words, I need a place that offers the space and time to get better at the game. I dropped several strokes off of my handicap over the last year by playing public golf but I don’t think I can reach the next level with the public facilities I have at my disposal. Most of the courses don’t even have driving ranges because flat land in the mountains is hard to find.
So I bit the bullet and joined a country club, signing the papers the same week that I filed my first story for this series. I like to say it’s a blue-collar country club with more pickups in the parking lot than Cybertrucks. And considering the monetary and emotional cost that come from many mid-life crises (divorce, therapy …), I suggested to my wife that we’re actually saving money by joining a club. She does math differently than I do math and politely disagreed.
Now that I’m a couple of months into this goal, I don’t think it would be possible to do the kind of work I’m doing without being a member of a club. I spend at least half of each work day at my course, working on my computer in the clubhouse and taking breaks to practice on the putting green or driving range. During the week, I can walk the front or back nine when there’s a gap in play. Mostly, I can play alone and can take my time, practicing different shots from different spots.
It’s not a perfect situation. I honestly thought I would have the course to myself most days and would be able to play whenever I wanted but that’s not the case. Weekends are busy so I have to make a tee time in advance and the club hosts high-school events and regular club events that block off chunks of time midweek.
But I have access to good facilities, unlimited range balls and nobody gives me a hard time for camping out on the practice green for two hours. It’s exactly what I need to achieve this goal. I’m not saying everyone needs to join a country club to get better at golf but with my situation, I can’t imagine making progress without this move.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 about taking your range swing to the course.
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