My kids rejected golf. Would this backyard game have helped? | I tried it

As a father who tried — and failed — to get his son and daughter into golf, I sometimes wander down What If Lane.

What if we’d lived closer to a municipal course with a robust junior program? What if I’d joined a fancy country club that offered golf camps for kids? What if, instead of mobiles, I’d installed range finders in their cribs?

In short, was there anything I could have done differently to inspire my progeny to take up the game?

The list of hypotheticals is long, and to it I will now add another: what if I’d introduced them to BucketGolf?

Not to be confused with a bucket list, BucketGolf is a portable game that’s part golf-y kit, part outdoor diversion. It consists of clubs with oversized plastic heads, whiffle balls, tee markers, flags and, yes, buckets that double as targets.

Together, these items allow you to create a short course of your own in a matter of minutes, on the beach, in a park or in your backyard if it’s big enough. Pick your favorite outdoor space, and off you go. The people behind BucketGolf recommend holes of 10-30 yards in length. The directions encourage you to include hazards in your routing — trees, benches, trash bins, a swimming pool, you name it. The more interesting the features, the more interesting the round. The kits are sold in 3, 6 and 9-hole bundles.

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BucketGolf Adult Golf Club

The perfect add on to make BucketGolf more fun. The oversize club head (3.5″ height by 5″ width) makes good shots easier with a larger hitting area. Adult club player height should be 5″3 and above

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Starter clubs are nothing new in golf. When my kids were young, I bought a plastic set advertised as a low-barrier entry point to the game and a pathway to proficiency. We tried them several times but for whatever reason — maybe the whole enterprise seemed too serious, too freighted with expectations — they didn’t stick. The clubs went in the closet, where they gathered dust.

To its credit, BucketGolf doesn’t pretend to be something that it isn’t. It’s not pitched as a gateway drug to golf addiction. It doesn’t promise to help you groom the next Tiger Woods. Its mission, according to the company’s website, is to “bring families and friends together through competitive fun, turning ordinary occasions into lasting memories.”

My kids are grown and gone, so I couldn’t use them as guinea pigs. Instead, I begged my wife to join me for a game of BucketGolf. My wife is not a golfer. Her objections to the game run deep. Too difficult. Too costly and time-consuming. Too many ugly outfits.

BucketGolf sounded manageable (and tolerable) to her, and it was. All the components pack easily into a carry bag. We put ours in the car and drove five minutes to a local park, where we laid out a three-hole course on a flat expanse of grass.

With her first swing, my wife got the ball airborne, something that probably wouldn’t have happened on the links. On the second hole, she knocked one close to the bucket for a tap-in birdie. (In BucketGolf, all the holes are meant to be par 3s, and the kit comes with scorecards if you want to keep count.) With her third, the seemingly impossible happened: she made a hole-in-one.

“I like this game!” she said, sounding a bit surprised.

On its website, BucketGolf boasts of making “golf a game that anyone can play.” It’s certainly approachable. My wife was proof of that.

It’s fun, too. But is it golf? That’s a stretch. The clubs are toy-like. The “cups” aren’t holes. The balls flutter as much as they do fly. Calling BucketGolf “golf” is akin to calling a round of putt-putt like a trip to Pinehurst No. 2 — same basic idea, wildly different execution, and no one should confuse the two.

Which brings me back to What If Lane. What if I’d introduced my kids to BucketGolf instead of those dusty plastic clubs? In retrospect, there’s no way to know. And I’ve come to realize that it’s the wrong question. They wouldn’t have learned golf — not exactly, not from this. But I’d be willing to wager (and in that regard, BucketGolf is similar to golf: you can wager on it, whether it’s for a beer or bragging rights) that they would have had a good time with it, which is a more important bar to clear.