Golf, Fitness and Finding My Balance
- Kathryn Brice
- 13 hours ago
- 10 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
Golf has been part of my life for almost as long as I can remember.
Long before becoming European Champion, attending the World Long Drive Championships, the national, international titles, sponsorships and television appearances, there was a little girl watching golf on television during the summer holidays.
A blue golf hat and a battered 3-wood
I think I was about eight or nine when I first became fascinated by golf.
During the school summer holidays, I discovered Peter Alliss on television presenting Around with Alliss. I was hooked. Around the same time, I found a bright blue golf hat at our local church jumble sale. It had three golf tees embroidered on it one red, one yellow and one blue with a white cord running around the brim. I loved that hat and wore it all the time. Looking back, I must have been quite a sight a young girl in a bright blue golf hat, fascinated by a sport I hadn't even properly learned to play yet. But to me, that hat meant golf. And I wanted to be part of it. My brother and I started going to our local golf club and offering to caddie for the members. We were only young, but I just wanted to be around golf. I remember one of the members giving me a golf ball and an old Lee Trevino 3-wood. It was battered, made of wood and had certainly seen better days. To me, it was wonderful.
I took it home, varnished it and made it good again. We lived opposite a cow field, so that became my first driving range. I would stand in the field hitting my golf ball backwards and forwards, teaching myself and imagining I was really playing golf. I didn't have a set of clubs. I didn't have lessons. I had one golf ball, an old wooden 3-wood and a field, but I loved it.
100 balls before work
It wasn't until I was 16 that golf really started to become part of my life. I had a work-experience placement at Worcester Golf Range, where the golf professional, Mr Ron Mosses, properly showed me how to hit a golf ball. He taught me using what he called his push-and-pull method, and every morning when I arrived there was an instruction:
“100 balls before starting work.” For me, this was heaven. Imagine being 16 years old, loving golf and being told that your first job every morning was to hit 100 golf balls. That was where my real golf journey began.
My first golf bag and one club
My first proper job was at Sainsbury's. When I received my first wage, I bought myself a beautiful white Wilson golf bag. There was only one slight problem, I still only had one golf club to put in it! So my battered 3-wood went proudly into my new Wilson bag.
It would be another two years before I was given my first full set of clubs a set of Jean Donald Slazenger clubs. I was over the moon. By then I was working at a local leisure centre that opened its own golf course, and I played constantly. If I could get on the course, I played.
Most of the people I played with were men, so I simply played from the men's tees with them. I didn't think anything of it. I just wanted to play golf.
Golf followed me to London
When I later moved to London and started working in the Prison Service, golf came with me.
I started golf societies at the prisons where I worked, finding other golfers and creating opportunities for us to get out and play. My clubs weren't particularly good. They were old.
(For a short time, I actually owned some new clubs, but life took an unexpected turn and I found myself without them due to a change in circumstances. A company called Feel the Fear later gave me a set of their clubs, and in 2005 I did some promotional work for them.
And this has been a theme throughout my golf life: I've never particularly needed the latest equipment to enjoy the game or apparently to hit the ball a long way).
Then came 2001...
In 2001, I heard about something I'd never come across before. The British Long Drive Championship. Hit a golf ball as far as you possibly can? Now that sounded like a competition for me. So I entered. And I won. That moment changed the direction of my golfing life. The little girl who had once stood in a cow field hitting a golf ball with a battered wooden 3-wood was suddenly the British Long Drive Champion. And that was just the beginning.
From the cow field to European Champion
Between 2001 and 2004, I won British, Scottish, Dutch and Italian National Long Drive titles, including winning the British title twice. Then came 2004. I became European Long Drive Champion, hitting a drive of 312 yards. Winning the European title earned me flights and accommodation to travel to America and compete in the World Long Drive final in Mesquite, Nevada. I sometimes think about the distance between those two moments. An eight-year-old girl hitting a battered wooden 3-wood around a cow field in Worcester. And years later, standing on a tee in Nevada competing against some of the longest hitters in the world. European Champion and competing with the worlds best. Golf had taken me somewhere I could never have imagined.
When things became a little surreal
At different stages of my competitive career, I received sponsorship and support from major golf brands including Callaway, PING and Cobra. Callaway provided clothing for me to wear at competitions. I visited golf suppliers and had opportunities to be custom fitted for drivers.
I appeared in golf magazines and on Sky Sports. People asked me for autographs and wanted photographs taken with me. For someone whose golf journey had started with a jumble-sale hat and one old golf club, it was quite surreal. But behind the photographs, sponsorship and competitions was another reality. For much of my competitive journey, I paid my own travel and expenses. Long drive never really took off in the UK in the way many of us hoped it might. There were some fantastic competitions and opportunities, but it didn't develop into the mainstream sport or viable career it perhaps could have become. I don't look back on that with disappointment. I got to experience something extraordinary.
More than just hitting it a long way
I also became fascinated by golf equipment. At one point I decided to build my own long-drive driver. I imported a Harrison stiff shaft and a Bang-O-Matic 9-degree head from the USA and custom built the driver myself. I still have this club. I loved understanding what could make a difference the head, the shaft, the fitting and how the equipment worked with my swing. It was never simply about standing on a tee and swinging as hard as possible.
There was technique, preparation, equipment and a lot of practice behind those drives.
Golf technology was changing too. In 2005, I attended VPAR golf events around the time their app was being launched, giving me another glimpse into how the game was evolving.
Golf wasn't only about long drive
Although long drive brought me the most attention, I loved playing the game itself.
In 2003, I won the British South Region Mixed Match Play competition, which took me to Jamaica for the national final. In 2005, I was involved in a Guinness World Record attempt at London City Airport as part of the London Golf Show. That same year, I represented Great Britain at the World Police & Fire Games as part of HM Prison Service. Looking back, those experiences gave me far more than titles and trophies. They taught me about confidence, preparation, pressure, disappointment and the ability to reset when something doesn't go according to plan. Lessons that have proved useful far beyond a golf course.
When life became more important than golf
By the start fo 2005, life was changing. I became a single mum with a four-year-old daughter, and suddenly my priorities were very different. I didn't have the time or the money to continue competing at the level I had been. My daughter and building our life together had to come first. So I stopped competing but I never really stopped playing golf. Golf simply became something different. For years, rather than being a member of a club, I became the person who would say: “I'm up for a game.” If somebody invited me to play, I'd find my clubs and off I'd go. There were no championships to prepare for and no pressure to perform. Golf was simply something I enjoyed whenever life gave me the opportunity and perhaps that's one of the reasons it has remained part of my life for so long. It started with curiosity as a child, became a passion as a teenager, took me around the world as a competitor and then quietly sat alongside me while I concentrated on being a mum, working and navigating everything else life brought with it.
Golf kept finding its way back
Even after I stepped away from competitive golf, the sport kept finding its way back into my life. When I left the Prison Service, I worked part-time at American Golf in 2012, selling golf equipment and carrying out club fittings. In many ways it was a natural fit. I'd spent years playing, competing, experimenting with equipment, building my own driver and being custom fitted myself. Now I was helping other golfers find equipment that suited them. Golf had gone from something I watched on television, to something I competed in at world level, to something I could help other people enjoy. In my corporate career i played in the golf society and came second one year in the annual golf competition.
And now my daughter is starting to out-driving me!
Now, all these years later, I'm a member of a local golf club again. I'm currently playing off a handicap of 16.9, having previously been as low as 12 and yes, I'm still competitive enough to want to get it down! But perhaps one of the nicest parts of my golf story is that my daughter, now 26, plays with me. The little girl who became my priority when I stepped away from competitive golf in 2005 is now standing alongside me on the golf course and here's the best bit. She's playing with the Feel the Fear clubs I was given in 2005 and the Cobra driver that was given to me during my competitive days. Those Feel the Fear clubs are now 21 years old and she's starting to out-drive me with them! I'm not entirely sure whether to be annoyed or incredibly proud. Probably both. To watch my daughter hit past me with clubs that were once part of my own golfing journey is heartwarming, things have somehow come full circle. Perhaps there's a lesson in there too. Sometimes it really isn't about having the newest equipment.
The long drive gets the attention but the short game matters
There is one thing golf continues to teach me. You can hit the ball as far as you like, but it's often the short game that makes the difference. There's probably a life lesson in there somewhere. The big achievements and dramatic moments get noticed, but often it's the smaller things we do consistently that determine where we end up. Golf is also very good at keeping you humble. One day everything works. The next day you wonder whether you've ever held a golf club before. You learn to accept it, reset and play the next shot.
Golf and fitness today
My relationship with fitness has changed as I've got older too. I've always been active. Sport and the outdoors have been constants throughout my life but I'm learning that fitness doesn't always have to mean going harder, faster or further. Today golf gives me several hours outside. It gives me walking, movement, concentration, conversation and friendship.
It takes me away from work and everything else going on in life. I'm also doing yoga and Pilates, and I'm noticing the gains. Strength. Flexibility. Balance. Mobility. But there's another benefit that is perhaps even more important. Slowing down. Yoga, Pilates, walking and golf all give me something slightly different, but together they're helping me find a healthier balance between work, building Brice & Beyond and actually enjoying my life.
Finding positive peace
There's a phrase I keep coming back to:
Positive peace.
For me, that doesn't mean doing nothing or losing my ambition.
It means creating enough space in life to enjoy what I've worked so hard to build.
Golf gives me some of that space. So does putting on my walking boots and heading outside.
I've spent much of my life setting goals, pushing myself and looking towards the next challenge. I'm beginning to understand that rest, movement, friendship and simply doing something because I enjoy it are important too. These things aren't time away from the important parts of life. They are part of the important parts of life. Work-life balance doesn't necessarily mean creating a perfect 50/50 split. Sometimes it's simply recognising when one part of your life is taking too much and deliberately putting something back in that restores you. For me, sport and movement have always done that. The activities might have changed over the years, and the reasons I do them have certainly changed, but their importance hasn't.
From performance to perspective
I'll always be proud of becoming European Long Drive Champion. I'm proud of the national and international titles, representing Great Britain and having opportunities through golf that the eight-year-old me wearing that bright blue golf hat could never have imagined but perhaps one of the things I appreciate most today is simply that golf is still there. My own clubs aren't particularly glamorous either. A couple of years ago I bought myself some second-hand Callaway irons. My driver is second-hand and around 15 years old. I occasionally look at all the latest golf technology and wonder:
Would a shiny new set of clubs actually improve my game? Maybe one day I'll find out. Although, after all these years, I suspect the answer might still come back to that short game! For now, I'm happy to be playing. And if my daughter keeps knocking the ball past me with 21-year-old clubs, perhaps I finally have an excuse for a new driver.
From the golf course to the stage
Many of the lessons golf taught me have stayed with me throughout my career and life — particularly around confidence, resilience, focus and performing under pressure.
Today I bring those experiences into my public speaking through Brice & Beyond.
My story isn't simply about becoming European Long Drive Champion or competing at world level. It's about the journey before the achievement, what happens when life changes the plan, and how we continue to adapt, rebuild and find the confidence to take our next step.
My talks include Pressure to Performance, drawing on my experiences in competitive golf, alongside talks about resilience, confidence, change and the power of the outdoors.
If you're looking for a speaker for your organisation, conference, team or event, I'd love to hear from you.
Find out more about my talks and booking me through Brice & Beyond:
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