“ The biggest difference between golf and other sports is that it ’ s not the same thing over and over ,” Horst says . “ In golf , you almost never have the same shot twice , and I like that I can do it for fun .” It ’ s not as serious as football , where you practice intensely for three hours . “ I definitely plan to stay with it .”
As does Melissa Richards , an El Dorado Hills veterinarian and mother of two young children . She had dipped her toes in the water many years earlier , but it wasn ’ t until COVID struck that she started playing seriously . Very seriously , according to Butts , her instructor . “ One of the biggest golf nuts I ’ ve ever seen ,” he says .
“ To find something that we could all get into as a family is really great ,” Richards says . “ If it hadn ’ t been for COVID , I might have gotten into it eventually , but I don ’ t know if I ’ d have gotten all my friends and my husband to play . There ’ s not a lot we can do outside , and we ’ re not sitting around drinking . We ’ re playing golf .”
Richards ’ family joined Serrano Country Club , and her handicap has dropped from 36 to 23 . Richards plays four times a week and finds that she actually plays better when she ’ s accompanied by her 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter . “ When you play with kids , you have no expectations that you ’ ll play well , so you can relax and just hit your shot ,” she says .
Bob Burns covered golf for The Sacramento Bee and freelanced for several national magazines , including Golf Digest and Golf World . He was inducted into the Sacramento Golf Hall of Fame in 2019 and is the author of “ The Track in the Forest ,” a book about the 1968 U . S . Olympic men ’ s track and field trials at Echo Summit .
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