Golfing solo is quickly becoming a new way to enjoy the game—less about competition, more about clarity, quiet, and connection.
Dan Camilli shares why solo rounds are rising in popularity and how they can improve both your mindset and your game.
Golfing Solo: The Benefits of Golfing Alone
Golf is widely viewed as a social activity. For many, it’s all about camaraderie on the course and commiseration at the nineteenth hole.
These days that fervent urge to socialize can often translate into something of a party in a cart, complete with blaring music and incessantly ringing cell phones.
However, if one manages to not be “distracted from distraction by distraction” as poet T. S. Eliot put it, there’s also an entirely different side to this ancient game that, sadly, too few ever experience, golfing alone.
For being alone should not be confused with being lonely.
Loneliness is a condition in which one desires the company of others while being alone is relishing the incomparable delight of oneself.
“I’ve not found anyone less disagreeable than myself,” as Thoreau succinctly put it.
Unfortunately, many courses today frown upon or outright prohibit the practice of golfing solo and instead, forcibly pair up playing partners. However, the future does not bode well for such involuntary socialization practices.
The Younger Generation
It appears that the golf business may be on the cusp of a major demographic shift. 76% of Gen Z and 84% of Millennial golfers express interest in playing solo rounds according to Lightspeed Golf, a golf industry hospitality firm.
Survey responders consistently refer to “self-care” as the primary reason that they wish to golf alone.
Younger generations appear to be redefining how they engage with the game.
This generational shift suggests that there will likely be a major transformation of the practices at traditional golf courses in the not-too-distant future, focusing more on the games’ self-care qualities and its natural setting.
In the future, playing golf alone will be no more unusual than the double bogey. Golf courses will, likely, evolve into something more resembling a meditation center or a yoga retreat.
What many of these younger players are seeking, it seems, is actually, a return to some timeless ancient practices.
Forest Bathing
For example, in Japan, Shinrin Yoku or “Forest Bathing,” is a process of consciously engaging with nature’s sights, sounds, and smells and immersing oneself in the profound healing elements of the natural environment.
As solo golfers, this kind of multi-sensory engagement with nature is further enhanced by walking the course. For golf is originally a walking game and, as anyone who’s ever set out on the course on foot can attest, is experienced quite differently than when riding in a cart.
Conscious Walking
Conscious walking is a form of moving meditation and a process by which we may reconnect with ourselves and, perhaps, sort out some of life’s many issues. This is what Saint Augustine referred to as “Solvitur Ambulando,” meaning, “It is solved by walking.”
Golfing alone is especially impactful in early morning or, best yet, at Twilight- what the Yaqui Shaman of Mexico refer to as “the crack between the worlds, the door to the unknown.”
Twilight is the best time to go out alone and feel the silence.
There’s great power in silence…
And perhaps if the golf gods are in a benevolent mood, you might just enter the sacred space which athletes refer to as “The Zone” – that realm of pure concentration and focus in which athletes perform extraordinary feats.
Former PGA Tour Pro, Larry Miller best describes the experience:
“I would be playing alone, usually late in the day, and I could do whatever I wanted with the ball. I had total control of it and could play any type of shot I wished. I did not have to think of swing mechanics, only of the result I wanted.” –Larry Miller
How Golfing Alone Benefits Your Game
Golfing solo also holds additional material benefits for your game since, if no one is playing behind you, you can play several balls and try multiple clubs for hitting similar shots.
As with chess, computers, crocheting and pretty much anything else, your understanding deepens from the process of hacking around and experimentation.
Indeed, much of what I have come to understand about my very modest golf game comes from countless such solo hacking sessions.
Just trust your intuitive self to determine what best serves you at any moment in the process. If you haven’t experienced this, you might want to give it a try.
When I first began playing the game, in my early fifties, I quickly recognized the value of golfing alone and was fortunate to play at a course which indulged me.
One day, as I set out golfing solo, with pen and notebook in my bag, the club teaching pro noticed and with a knowing smile said, “Ah! I see that you’ve discovered paradise.”
In addition to its many other gifts, golf, this ancient game with a history spanning more than five hundred years, can be a remarkable means by which we can also follow the venerable counsel of Socrates who urged us to “Know Thyself.”
Final Thoughts
The potential rewards from golfing alone are both material and metaphysical. You might improve your game and, if truly fortunate, may even experience a moment of transcendence.
I encourage you to try it when you can. It’s difficult to understand yourself if you’re never by yourself.
Author Bio
Dan Camilli, an All-Star Contributor to Seniors Who Golf, is a retired Teacher and Professor of History, Philosophy and Humanities and the author of Tee Ceremony, A Cosmic Duffer’s Companion to the Ancient Game of Golf (2015).
