Since my mission professionally is to bring more business people into the world of golf I get asked frequently what is the fastest way to get up to speed with playing golf.  It is a great question but one that is hard to answer.  Like most difficult problems there are a large number of variables that have to be considered before an estimate can be made on how long it will take to become a proficient golfer.  This means playing golf at a higher level than a beginner but not yet an advanced player.

A few years ago I posed the questions to my teaching professional on how long he felt it would take for be to become a Par golfer, meaning a golfer who is capable of shooting par on a regular basis.  He is the only professional that broke it down into a mathematical equation that made some sense.

He said that if I hit 100 balls a day for five years I have a 98% better chance of being a scratch golfer by the end of five years.

Like I said, this seemed to make sense and being a project manager I set forth using that basic information to calculate how many balls I would have to hit with the time I have available to hit balls to determined how long it would take me to become a Par Golfer.

Now I won’t bore you with the math but my calculations told me that it would take me seven years before I could expect to be close to being a par golfer.

Now being a par golfer is a very high ambition for anyone, but the point is you need to have some goal set in order to make a purpose for doing what you are doing.  Many people would want to set a much lower goal so the goal could be achieved in a shorter period time.  I applaud take a short term goal as long as it leads to another goal after the short term is met.  I took on a longer term goal since I did not want to have to keep setting a goal.

The same goes for business.  You have to set some sort of goal in business are you lose purpose of doing the business.  Many businesses just set forth on a goal to make money but never realize how long that will take to start making money.  That leads to disappointment and frustrations.  The dissatisfaction was caused because there was no goal or time line.

With me knowing it would take me seven years to become a par golfer I was able to calm down and realizing that no matter how hard I was going to try I had to get the experience of hitting a lot balls to get to where I was going.  Unless I wanted to stay up 24 hours a day everyday for a year, I was not going to accelerate the learning curve to getting to be a par golfer.

The same goes with business.  No business is successful overnight and if you set a goal based on some logic you can calm down and be patient.

Golf and business are alike; both have to have a goal set to establish purpose and both are very much rewarding when you achieve the goal.

I suggestion to business people who want to get started on learning to play golf to use this formula to determine how long it will take to get to a level they want to be and then sit back with that pace knowing there is no need in hurrying it any faster.

There are some ways to accelerate the golf learning curve, but no way around in hitting a lot of golf balls.  I will be back to talk about things that will accelerating the learning curve in golf.

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