How to Actually Have Fun Playing Golf

A junior golfer shouldn't respond with "to shoot 78" when asked why they started playing.

It should be some version of "it's fun." But a season or two in, the fun often fades, right around the time they become obsessed with the scorecard.

That's not a coincidence. It's their brain prioritizing winning over enjoyment.

Expectations create pressure. Pressure kills fun.

The fix isn't complicated, but it does mean doing something that feels counterintuitive: taking the score off the table before it becomes a killjoy.

Where the Pressure Comes From

Pressure in junior golf almost never comes from the game itself.

It stems from expectations attached to the game — a number they're supposed to shoot, a tournament they're supposed to win, or a reaction they're supposed to manage from mom or dad.

David MacKenzie, a mental golf coach and founder of Golf State of Mind, has spent 15 years working with junior golfers on this exact problem.

His research-backed finding: a junior's concentration suffers most, and their physical anxiety runs highest, when a parent visibly expects them to play well or is overly invested in the outcome — even when that expectation is meant as encouragement.

Dona Lerner, a U.S. Kids Master Kids Coach, makes the same point about the money spent on lessons and equipment: "You can't measure the success of your investment every time your kid touches a golf club."

Letting go of that instinct — to check whether today's round justified this season's cost — removes one more expectation a junior didn't ask to carry.

What Parents Can Say Instead

If removing pressure starts with removing expectations, the easiest place to start is what gets said before and after the round.

MacKenzie's suggested script before a round: "Just stick to your process goals and hit each shot as best you can, and we'll see what happens. Most of all, enjoy it!"

No prediction, no stakes attached.

First Tee — the national youth golf organization — makes a similar case for the ride home.

Rather than critiquing the round while emotions are still raw, First Tee suggests leading with curiosity:

• How did you feel?
• How were the conditions?
• What was the best moment of your round?
• What did you learn today?

None of those questions mention the score. They keep the conversation on the experience.

This aligns almost exactly with what we've written about cart coaching — the quieter a parent is with predictions and critiques, the more room a junior has to enjoy playing.

Reward the Process, Not the Score

Pressure can also come from comparing themselves to other kids or from wanting to win for their own sake.

MacKenzie's pressure fix is to swap the goal itself.

Instead of a score-based target, a junior sets a process goal for the round — something 100% within their control, such as sticking to their pre-shot routine or staying even-keeled after a bad hole.

After the round, the process goal is what gets the praise, not the number on the card.

Jon Adler, a performance coach based in Bournemouth, England, and founder of Golf is a Mind Game, teaches a version of this idea before the round even starts: set an intention that has nothing to do with score.

Doing that, he notes, keeps a junior's focus off the outcome entirely because "over emphasis on the outcome leads to poor performance."

This is the same instinct behind our PAR's Aim step — one small, specific decision, not a scoreboard-sized one.

Make Practice Feel Like Play

A mindset shift isn't the only way to remove expectations. How a junior spends time on the range and on the green can also help.

Jordan Lashoones, a longtime Little Linksters coach, says: "Games are a great way to encourage the kids to practice and enjoy golf. When they're having fun, they don't even realize they are practicing specific skills — to them, they're just having fun."

Tic-tac-pitch, school putting, and cow pasture pool are popular across Little Linksters programs.

JrCaddie also brings that element of fun onto the course. Every yardage book hole combines word searches, trivia, and mini-stories with the actual course strategy — so a junior absorbs distances and hole layout the same way they'd absorb a game, not a worksheet.

Fun Isn't the Opposite of Competitive

None of this argues against competing hard. Juniors can care about winning and still enjoy the process — the two aren't opposites.

What kills fun isn't ambition; it's attachment to a result you can't fully control.

Take the expectation off the shot, and it can just be a shot again. That's when golf stops feeling like a test and starts feeling like the game it actually is.

And it's measurable, too — a junior's Emotional and Resilience scores on their JrCaddie Mindset Score tend to climb exactly when this shift happens, often well before the scorecard catches up.

The Bottom Line

Your junior won't fall in love with golf over a good scorecard. They'll fall in love with it — or not — based on how it feels to play.

Remove the expectations, and the fun has room to return.