Two weeks ago, I asked you all to participate in a survey about “Why We Really Play Golf”, and almost a thousand of you took those few minutes to share your thoughts and feelings about what gives you joy in this game we all love.

As promised, today’s post is to share those results with you. Let’s start by getting the basic demographics out of the way.

In age, this audience is divided about equally between the age groups of 56-70 and 41-55 getting slightly squeaked by those 25-40. Only 9% are over the age of 70, and 1% under 25. You are pretty equally scattered over the United States, but nearly a fourth of the respondents live outside the U.S.–a truly global following that flatters me.

Well over half of you have been playing golf all or most of your life, and less than 20% have been playing less than ten years. With regard to scores, most of you fall between 76 and 90, with the 76-81 and 82-90 groups being about equal. I am impressed that 12.5% of you report that you usually shoot 75 or better, and only 10% of you average over 90. That skill level is likely due to the fact that only 14% of you play less than 20 rounds per year, with well over half playing over 40 rounds, and the fact that 90% of you practice on a regular or frequent basis.

No, the fun begins, as I asked you to share the parts of the game that give you the most enjoyment, and you shared openly and honestly. What this part of the survey revealed is that you are about equally divided between those who are results-oriented, and those who are process-oriented.

In my question about your driver game, the highest scores were given to “Not hit all that well, but got away with it” or “not in trouble”, but a large percentage of you said the quality of a nice ball flight or shaping the shot just like you envisioned was the real payoff.

With fairway woods, I sense many of you have trouble, because “wasn’t a disaster” received the highest ranking. I’ll try to offer some guidance and tips on fairway wood play in future articles for those. The balance of you were divided pretty equally between the quality of the shot and the end result.

After digesting these answers about driving and fairway woods, it surprised me that the highest-ranking answer about mid-iron play (4-7) was “working the ball right or left as the shot required” – a process answer for sure. Fewer of you expressed joy at just getting it on the green somehow or a look at birdie, regardless of how.

In short iron play, you were equally divided between “getting it close, regardless of how” and “hitting a high quality shot, even if it doesn’t end up all that close”. A clean divide of orientation between process and results.

But I see a shift again as the survey asked about your wedge play, with the most common response being “avoiding disaster”, followed closely by “making solid contact”. I’ve long believed that wedges are, by nature, the hardest clubs in the bag to master, and this bears out that you all believe so as well. That motivates me to continue to write the column for you every week, and to continue to challenge the industry status quo of “tour design” wedges, which I have seen proven by robotic testing time and again, to be the most finicky and unforgiving clubs in your bags.

This is getting kind of long, so I’m going to save the rest of the report on this survey until next week, because it really gets good and I think you all will find this to be interesting

The staff at GolfWRX and I want to thank you for your overwhelming participation in this survey and for sharing your innermost thoughts and attitudes about what aspects of your golf give you the most joy. I look forward to wrapping this up next week and sending us all into the Christmas season with thoughts of thanks and gratitude that we get to enjoy this great game together.