Why Golf Is Good for Your Mind, Body, and Spirit

Let's address the elephant in the clubhouse. Golf has spent roughly 500 years as a sport where men in pastel polos disappear for five hours, come home smelling like sunscreen and light beer, and describe their day as "networking." Women have been side-eyeing this arrangement for a long time. Here's my hot take: They were onto something, and it's time more of us got in on it.

I want to start with the numbers, because they're genuinely striking. Women and girls now make up 28% of on-course golfers in the US, the highest proportion ever recorded, up from just 20% in 2012. Female participation has jumped 46% since before the pandemic, adding 2.5 million women to the game, and women accounted for over half of all net new golfers industry-wide in the past five years. Women are also disproportionately the ones showing up as beginners right now, meaning if you've been intimidated to pick up a club, you are, statistically, right on trend.

The Physical Case

Golf isn't just a stroll with occasional violence toward a small white ball. An 18-hole round without a cart covers roughly five to six miles of walking, often over uneven terrain, which is genuinely solid cardiovascular and low-impact, weight-bearing exercise, the kind that's particularly valuable for bone density as we age. The golf swing itself is a full-body rotational movement, engaging your core, hips, and shoulders through exactly the kind of multi-plane motion that's otherwise rare in most women's fitness routines. It's not going to replace your strength training, but as a "moving your body for multiple hours in the sunshine" activity, it's doing more work than people give it credit for.

The Mental Element

Golf is one of the only sports where you're rewarded for staying calm. It’s really a true Zen-like activity. After all, never before has anyone paid so much to hit a ball so little! Also, staying focused on what’s ahead rather than what just happened is essential. Panic, and your slice ends up in a water hazard. There's real psychological research on "flow state," the fully absorbed, present-moment focus that golf reliably produces, precisely because you can’t be worrying about your inbox while lining up a putt. It's also one of the more humbling games in existence, which I'd argue is a feature rather than a bug. Learning to laugh at your own bad shot is a transferable life skill. For me, this results in a LOT of laughter!

The Social Side (and Comedic Relief)

This is where golf quietly becomes one of the best social investments in wellness available to women over 50. Four hours, uninterrupted, with friends, outdoors, no faces buried in phones. It's also worth noting that golf's social side doesn't have to mean the boozy country club stereotype at all. Take the community behind @sobagolfco, whose entire mission is built around "supporting your journey, one swing at a time," pairing golf with sobriety and wellness rather than the light beer cart. It's a small but telling sign of where this sport is headed: The connection and the calm are the actual draw, not what's in the cooler or at the comfort station.

If you want proof that women have fully arrived in this space, and that we can be delightfully ridiculous about it, look no further than comedian Becky Robinson's viral alter ego—the Entitled Housewife, visor, oversized sunglasses, imaginary husband Scott, and all. Personally, I am obsessed with her. She's built a touring comedy act and a real golf event series entirely around how funny and freeing it is to not take the country club version of femininity too seriously. That's the tone I want for this whole sport: welcoming, a little irreverent, not precious about it.

And if you want proof of how far women's golf has come at the top level, just look at Nelly Korda. She’s currently the number-one-ranked women's golfer in the world, a three-time major champion who's spent over 100 weeks at the top of the rankings. She hits the ball roughly as far as most recreational male golfers dream of hitting it. The idea that golf is a "men's game" hasn't been true at the professional level for a long time, and it's becoming less true at the recreational level every single year.

If You've Been Curious but Intimidated, This Is Your Sign

Book the beginner clinic, borrow a set of clubs, and go be delightfully bad at it with your friends. Oh, and remember, women can play this sport with men. Honestly, people are just concerned with their own game, so as long as the pace of play is compatible, dogs and cats can play together! Even the Entitled Housewife would approve.

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