Affordable Golf is Easy

Golf has a reputation for being an expensive sport, and this isn’t entirely unwarranted. Between clubs, balls, bags, clothes, food, beverage, and travel, you can end up spending quite a pretty penny on a sport that is supposed to be your recreation, your form of unwinding and forgetting about your worries. It is hard to forget about your worries when you are paying $500 to tee off at many courses, though.

Fortunately, as easy as it is to spend far too much on golf, you can still play golf on a very affordable budget and do so with skill, style, and enjoyment. The tips you need to follow to enjoy golf affordably are quick, easy, and mostly common sense, but sometimes that same common sense can elude us when it comes to our favorite obsession.

The Essentials

First, you need to consider your clubs. It’s easy to look at what some pro golfer is carrying in his bag and try to replicate what is there, but that won’t necessarily make you a better golfer. The fact is that those professionals are paid to endorse and carry those clubs around, and the quality of their game is much more about their skill and knowledge of the game than about whatever club they’re using.

To that end, you can find affordable, quality clubs used on eBay, Craigslist, or other websites where a golfer may be putting his year-old clubs up for sale. Many golfers think they need a new set of clubs every season or so, which is blatantly untrue, but some people are a bit on the obsessive side when it comes to the game!

With your clubs taken care of, you need to consider your golf balls. Buying new golf balls is, frankly, unreasonably expensive. They will become lost in the rough, in water hazards, or in other treacherous elements of the course, and then you’re stuck shelling out more money for the same balls. Instead, when you go into the rough to retrieve one of your balls, keep an eye out for balls other golfers may have hit into the same rough in the past. You’d be surprised at how many high quality, practically new golf balls you’ll find, and you may never have to buy another golf ball again.

The Lifestyle

Many golfers seem to think they need to wear expensive “golf attire” on the golf course, but that is certainly not the case. For most golf clubs across America, the only real rule is that you wear a collared shirt, and perhaps no jeans either. Beyond that, the sky is the limit, which means you needn’t invest in expensive clothing just for the green. Whatever is in your closet will certainly do just fine. When it gets cold out check out a video from Huffington Post on how to layer golf clothing.

Now that you’ve got your clubs, balls, and clothes together, you need to consider when and where you’re going to play. Obviously, you’d like to play when there are few other golfers on the course; fortunately, this goes well with a desire to play affordably. Most golfers play on weekend mornings, which also happen to be the most expensive tee-off times.

Speaking of tee-off, it is important to keep an eye out for more affordable green fees as well. Many golf courses charge exorbitant fees to play, but there are almost certainly courses – many of them public – that are just as high-quality as those expensive country club courses, and which charge a far lower green fee. If that doesn’t appeal to you, consider contacting a course you’d like to play at and haggling with them; you’d be surprised at how many clubs will allow you to play at lower fees than are listed on the fee-comparison websites. (Which you should also be checking!)

These are just some of the ways you can transform golf into a game for the wealthy into an affordably relaxing past-time. There is more advice all over the web – you just have to look. Don’t be afraid to apply lessons from other elements of your life to golf as well, though. How do you save money on a car? How do you save money on your bills? Look to your philosophies there, and you’d be surprised how many are applicable to golf!

Author Bio: Michael Juba is a writer and marketer from Lititz, Pennsylvania, which was recently voted the coolest small town in America. He enjoys writing about sports, technology, health, home improvement, travel and just about any topic in between.