When Did You Last Hit a Golf Ball? (And Why That Question Matters More Than You Think)

Most physicians can answer this question immediately. The answer says something important about what's been taken from them — and what's possible to get back.

Go ahead and answer it. When did you last actually play — not a quick range session between shifts, not nine holes squeezed into a Saturday morning before charts, but a full round with friends, phone off, nowhere to be?

For a lot of physicians reading this, the honest answer involves a month count. Sometimes longer. There was a time when it was part of the regular rhythm of life. Then residency happened. Then the practice ramped up. Then the documentation load hit. Then golf became the thing you used to do.

Why it matters that you stopped

Golf specifically — and hobbies generally — serve a psychological function that medicine doesn't replicate. They're domains where you're not responsible for anyone's health. Where failure has no stakes. Where the four hours on the course are purely, completely yours. The brain processes this as genuine recovery in a way that watching TV with one eye on the EHR doesn't.

Research on cognitive recovery from high-demand professions consistently shows that active engagement in unrelated pursuits — golf, music, cooking, sport — produces deeper recovery than passive rest. The mechanism is something like cognitive distance: you can't ruminate about a patient when you're standing over a four-foot putt.

Physicians who maintain hobbies have measurably lower burnout rates. Not because the hobby fixes anything about the job. Because it signals to the brain — and to the people in your life — that you exist outside of it.

Why it stopped

The same reason everything stopped: time. A four-hour round requires a four-hour block of discretionary time. Physicians accumulating 1–2 hours of after-hours charting per day have very few four-hour blocks available. The math doesn't work. The golf bag sits in the garage. Months pass.

This is not a character failing. It's a direct consequence of documentation overflow consuming the time that used to go to living.

What changes when charting is gone

Physicians who have eliminated after-hours documentation describe rediscovering time they'd forgotten existed. Not dramatic lifestyle overhauls. Just... Saturday mornings that are free. Sunday afternoons without a laptop. The four-hour block that was previously impossible, now possible.

One physician in an early beta cohort mentioned — almost as an aside — that he'd played golf three times in his first month after starting AI scribing. He hadn't played at all in the previous eight months. Nothing else in his life had changed. The charting had been the variable.

Book the tee time

Not after you figure out the documentation. Not when things slow down. Book it now — for three weeks from now, when you'll have had time to change the workflow. Then change the workflow. The beta study is free, takes a day to start, and the first Saturday with nothing in the queue will tell you exactly what you've been missing.

Book the tee time. Then fix the charting.

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