How to Get Your Kid Into Golf — A Weekend Dad's Honest Guide

The number one mistake golf parents make: teaching their kid like an adult. No 6-year-old needs to know about grip pressure, spine angle, or weight transfer. They need to hit the ball, watch it fly, and feel proud. If the first 10 sessions are fun, you have a golfer for life. If the first session is a lesson, you might have a kid who hates golf forever. Rule of thumb: for every piece of instruction you give, give 5 pieces of praise.

At this age, golf is just hitting a ball with a stick. Buy a 3-4 club junior set ($80-$120) and let them whack wiffle balls in the backyard. No range, no course, no rules. Let them swing however they want. Take them to a putting green — most courses let kids putt for free. The only goal: make it fun enough that they ask to do it again.

Now they can handle 3-6 holes of a real course. Play from the forward tees. Let them drive the cart. Buy them their own tees and ball markers. This is when a real junior set ($150-$400) makes sense because they are swinging with enough speed to need properly fitted clubs. PGA Junior League starts at age 7 — team-based formats make it social and reduce pressure. Search PGA.com for programs near you.

By now they either love it or they do not. If they love it, invest in a quality junior set ($350-$400), get them a few lessons from a PGA junior coach, and start playing 9-hole rounds together. This is the age where the parent-child golf bond becomes real — you are playing together as partners, not teacher-student. If they do not love it, that is OK too. Golf will be there when they come back at 25.

Total cost to get started: $80-$120 for a basic junior set (Precise or Wilson starter), $0 for putting green access at most courses, and $5/round through Youth on Course at participating clubs. If they stick with it past 6 months, upgrade to a Callaway XJ ($350) or TaylorMade Team TM ($400) — both are covered in our junior golf club guide. Sell the starter set on Facebook Marketplace for 50-60% of what you paid. Total investment for the first year: $150-$300.

U.S. Kids size their sets by the child’s height rather than their age, which is the only sensible way to do it — two seven-year-olds can be five inches apart. The UL7 42 is the set for a child 42 to 45 inches tall, roughly ages five to seven, and it is six clubs plus a stand bag for $249.99. We have not put a child through a season with one, so it carries no rating here. What we can tell you is why this beats the obvious alternative. Cutting down an old adult set is the cheap route and it is a bad one: adult shafts stay heavy and stiff after you shorten them, so the child swings something they cannot load. Junior-specific clubs are built light the whole way through. That is the difference between a kid who keeps going and one who quietly stops asking. Buy for the height they are now, not the height you hope they reach. They will outgrow it, and that is fine — that is what the resale market is for.