The holiday season means it’s time to take stock of what’s really important:
Playing golf with your best friends.
So I want us to do something before the end of the year to better define the priorities for 2026.
I saw people posting USGA GHIN Rewinds (if you download GHIN application presented by Sentry Insurance, log in and press “More” and you should see “2025 GHIN Rewind” listed) and so I called mine—only to be devastated by what I found: Only seven rounds of golf recorded.
Here’s the thing – me love playing golf. And I think it’s good for me too. Good for my body. Good for my sanity. Good for my friendships. Good for my life balance. It’s good to get away from the screen for a few hours. And throwing down only seven rounds are especially awkward because I work in golf and barely have a real job.
I have excuses, like we all do. A new kid I like hanging out with. A significant amount of business travel. A full day’s golfing commitment may seem like a lot. I should also point out that I He did play more than seven rounds; I live in Washington State, where if you are determined, the actual playing season is longer than the handicap season. I didn’t play enough though. Golf is one of my favorite things in the whole world, it’s one of my favorite ways to spend time with friends, young and old, and I want to do it more.
So for 2026 I am declaring my intentions. And here’s where I’ll start: Making a list of non-negotiables, people who bring my joy to golf. I will message those people. “Let’s find at least one time to play golf next year.” And then I will think a lot where I want to play too when works best. I’ll ask you the same thing I’m asking myself: Where can golf comfortably fit into the rest of your life? Do you have flexible hours? Are the days of the week moving? Early in the morning? Twilight rounds? Would joining a league give you a reliable nine-hole weeknight that would cause joy? For me, I think leaning further into the weekday morning rounds might be an unlock, but I’ll use the breaks for further brainstorming.
Then there is the question of the friend’s trip. Do you live far from your best golf buddies? Need a weekend getaway to join? It doesn’t have to be Bandon. It could be Biloxi. (Seriously – Biloxi It intrigues me.) One particularly obvious idea is to simply pick a walking weekend each year—think the second week of October, the first weekend of February, something like that—and then you and everyone around you will just know you’ve got a golf trip in the books.
So send your friends a message. Get the ball rolling. Then be specific.
Here are some more goals for my new year of golf.
1. Make sure I get credit for I rounds I DO play
One of my biggest Rewind regrets is that I didn’t get to post from my most frequent stop: the glorious par-28 paradise that is Interbay Golf Center. Interbay has been rated and accepted for several years, and the GHIN has new rules around nine-hole rounds. Take advantage.
2. Keep my clubs within easy reach.
Unless you have an airtight garage, I’m not sure my bosses would want me to officially recommend keeping clubs in your car (proceed at your own risk!), but you should make it as easy as possible to get straight to the course if the opportunity presents itself. If you have your clubs plus a change of clothes stashed away in the corner of your office, for example, it’s a lot easier to hit the nines when you get home from work.
3. Remember: Golf can be fast.
The recent golf boom has blocked courses at certain times of the day; Saturday morning in your local municipality is inevitably stop-and-go traffic. But what happens on Tuesday? What about 5pm in the summer? What if the weather is marginal? What if you travel an hour to a smaller town, a lower-demand option? You can have a glorious eight-hour day of golf, fully warmed up by a meeting in the grill room after the round. But you can also get a lot of golf in two- or three-hour increments, willingly open.
4. Seriously – make some plans.
If it wasn’t already clear, this whole piece is just a conversation with myself, an extremely terrible planner.
5. And text your friend who plans better.
Each group has someone which is logistically inclined. You may be an ideas guy; let them take the baton from there.
See you on the course.
“>
