The Marriage Saving Guide to Golf as a Couple
By Dave at Back Nine Living
Here is the short version. You can play golf with the person you married and still enjoy the drive home. The trick is to stop running it like a lesson or a grudge match and start treating it like a good walk together that happens to involve clubs and the occasional bad word. Get that part right and a round with your spouse becomes some of the best time you spend together all week.
I say that as someone who has watched plenty of couples come apart somewhere around the third green. It does not have to end up this way and what follows is what actually works, backed by a little real research and a lot of hard won common sense.
Why bother golfing together at all?
Because the odds are better than you think, and because you finally have the time. If your spouse is new to the game, they are in very good company right now.
The National Golf Foundation reported that 28.1 million Americans played on a course in 2024, the most since 2008. Women now make up about 28 percent of those players, close to 7.9 million and an all time high, and they have driven roughly 60 percent of the growth in golfers since 2019. In plain terms, your partner walking up to the first tee for the first time is part of a very large crowd doing exactly the same thing. For more up to date statistics on women golfers, here’s a link to the most recent article I published (Women's Golf Is Booming, and the Over 50 Player Is the Real Story).
The relationship science is on your side too. A well known study led by psychologist Arthur Aron, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2000, found that couples who took on novel and slightly exciting activities together reported better relationship quality than couples stuck in the same old routine. Later research in the Journal of Leisure Research found that the shared activities most strongly linked to a happy marriage are the ones both people actually enjoy.
That last point is the whole ballgame. Golf only counts as quality time if your spouse is genuinely having fun. If they are miserable while you grind over a scorecard, you are not building anything except resentment.
The first time my spouse and I played a full 18, it didn’t really go well. We’d been to the range a few times, and she generally hit the ball nicely, but my expectations of her etiquette knowledge far exceeded reality and - unfortunately - my teaching methods were not exactly evidence based. You can imagine that this made for a less than ideal day and we stopped playing together for some time after that.
What should you agree on before the first tee?
Settle three things in the driveway before you even load the clubs: no keeping score, no coaching, and either one of you can wave the white flag and head in early. Those three rules prevent about ninety percent of arguments before they start.
Leave the scorecard in the cart
When one of you has played for decades and the other picked up a club last month, a scorecard is just a running list of reasons to feel bad. The team at The Left Rough put it plainly in their guide to getting a partner into the game: do not keep score for a long time, if ever, especially when there is a big gap in experience. Let the newer player tee it up in the fairway, skip a brutal hole, and pick up when they have had enough.
Give either person a way to call it early
Agree that anyone can end the round early with no guilt and no sulking. Some days nine holes is plenty. Oddly, knowing you are free to bail at the turn takes the pressure off and makes people want to keep playing.
Why should you never be your spouse’s swing coach?
Because teaching your spouse is the quickest way to turn a nice afternoon into a silent car ride. I know this from first hand experience. Hand the lessons to a golf professional and keep swing advice to yourself.
A Golf Digest article written by a women who helped her own husband improve made the point well: even when you mean well, trying to be the swing coach is an easy way to create tension and drain the fun out of the day. A pro can say the exact same thing you would, and somehow it lands as instruction instead of criticism.
Here is the move. When your spouse asks for help, offer one small thing, not five. When they do not ask, the only correct words are some version of “nice swing.” If you can hold your tongue on the tee box, you have already won.
These days, I say “great shot” a lot, even if the ball doesn’t make it to the fairway. If it gets airborne and flies in the general direction of the hole I automatically compliment the effort. This has led to an overall improvement in my spouse’s game and a much improved atmosphere on the patio after the round is over.
What format keeps you both smiling?
Play some version of a scramble. You both hit, you pick the better of the two shots, and you both play from there. It hides the ugly ones, keeps the pace up, and makes you a team instead of two rivals. And you can mix it up, too. Use the better of the two tee shots and then have both players complete the hole with their own ball.
A scramble means a beginner’s shank never wrecks a hole, because your good drive is already sitting in the fairway waiting. Best ball works in the same friendly way. Add a couple of house rules and you are set: play nine holes rather than eighteen for the first while, and both of you tee it forward so the course plays its real size instead of twice its size.
If you want the whole thing on one screen, here is the couples golf peace treaty:
• No score for the first several rounds, and maybe a good while after that.
• No swing tips unless your partner asks for one first.
• Play a scramble or best ball so you win and lose as a team.
• Tee it forward and start with nine holes.
• Snacks in the bag, and either person can call it early.
How do you make it a date instead of a duel?
Bring snacks, keep it short, and use the quiet minutes between shots to actually talk. That is the part people forget golf is good for.
Out on the course, conversations come up that never seem to happen at home, without the phone, the television, or the laundry pile getting in the way. Toss a couple of drinks and something to eat in the bag and the whole outing starts to feel like a small date rather than a chore. Walk if your knees allow it, ride if they do not, but either way the point is the same: a few unhurried hours with your favorite person, phones out of sight.
What if golf is the thing you fight about?
If the recurring argument is “you golf too much,” the fight is almost never really about golf. It is about time and fairness. The fix is an honest trade, not a cleverer excuse.
Golf Digest once highlighted a Reddit thread on exactly this problem, and the most sensible answer came from a golfer who simply made a fair deal at home. He kept his golf from eating into family time, grabbed nine holes on a quiet weekday, took one weekend round and a handful of trips a year, and in return covered the kids and the chores when his spouse wanted time for her own pursuits. Nobody kept a resentment scorecard, which is the whole point.
Inviting your spouse into the game, which is what this article is about, is one good answer. Protecting their right to their own hobbies is another. Both come down to the same thing: treating their time as every bit as valuable as yours.
One honest note before you take any of this too far. I am a golfer not a counselor. If the strain runs deeper than tee times, that is a conversation for the two of you, and a professional who does it for a living.
Common questions
My spouse has never held a club. Where do we start?
Start off the course. A driving range, a Topgolf bay, or even a round of mini golf takes the fear out of it and lets them swing without a foursome waiting behind. When the real course finally happens, nine holes is plenty. If they need their own set, keep it simple to begin with, and see.
Should we take lessons together?
Yes, from a golf professional, not from each other. A group or couples lesson gives you a shared starting point and, better yet, puts the coaching on someone who is not sleeping in your bed.
Is it rude to let my beginner spouse tee it forward or pick up?
Not at all. It is smart, and it speeds up play for everyone behind you. Moving up the tees is one of the best things any golfer can do for their own enjoyment, new or not. More on that in a recent article on this site (Moving Up a Tee Is Not Surrender. It Is Smarter Golf).
We are both too competitive. What do we do?
Play as a team against the course instead of against each other. A scramble with no score turns two competitors into partners chasing one number together, and that is a lot harder to argue about.
How soon can we play a full eighteen?
When nine holes still feels good at the end and you both want more. Until then, half a round is not a lesser day. See [link: Nine Hole Golf: Why Half a Round Is Often Enough].
See you on the back nine.
Stay in the Fairway
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Dave is the founder of Back Nine Living, a golf and lifestyle site for players over 50. A lifelong golfer, he writes about golf, fitness, gear, travel, and the second half of life from his home base in Ontario, Canada.