• I learned to play golf as a young girl and was often frustrated with the game.
• Dealing with a lot of ups and downs on the golf course has taught me to regulate my emotions.
• Thanks partly to golf, I am confident in my ability to stay calm as an adult.

I still remember one of the first times I lost it on the golf course.

I was around 10 years old, using the set of kid's clubs I'd gotten for Christmas. First, my ball squirted off into the woods. My next swing missed the ball entirely, and the one after that sent it into a tree trunk and back at my feet.

I can still feel the way the frustration surged through me, an emotion I didn't yet know how to deal with. "I hate golf, I want to go home!" I whined, throwing my club on the ground before a full-on meltdown ensued.

That wasn't the first time I'd flipped out on the golf course, nor the last. Although I continued playing as I grew up, I struggled to manage the waves of emotion that came with the sport. When my round was going well, I was on top of the world — but when the ball wasn't going where I wanted it to, I was exasperated.

In time, though, I learned how to regulate my emotions while playing — a valuable skill that eventually carried over to other aspects of my life.

Golf can be a frustrating sport, but I started to work on managing my emotions as I played

When you're swinging a club in an arc around your body to hit a tiny golf ball toward a hole with a 4.25-inch diameter, there's no room for error.

It can feel like much of your performance is out of your hands, and that lack of control can be stressful.

But swing by swing, I learned how to regulate my emotions even when the game wasn't going as I'd hoped. When a bad shot set off a fire in my belly, I would take a deep breath and let it go. I had no choice — I couldn't indulge my moods in the middle of a round, especially in a competitive setting.

As a tween, I began to recognize patterns, noting how my mind would jump to the worst-case scenario for my score as soon as I messed up one shot.

Identifying those patterns was the first step toward changing them. Now, it takes more than just a bad shot or two to rattle me.

That ability to regulate my emotions has helped me off the course, too

When I dealt with a terrible illness at 14, I relied on the emotion-regulating tools I'd learned on the golf course to steady myself even when in pain.

As I experienced dramatic mood swings in high school, I knew to ground myself in the knowledge that these emotions were fleeting.

Just as a dark cloud of emotion would evaporate on the golf course as soon as I hit a good shot or parred a hole, the same would happen in these everyday situations.

Now as an adult in my mid-20s, I give golf a lot of the credit for getting me where I am — and the valuable skills I've developed so far are just one of many reasons I keep stepping back onto the course.

• I've played golf since I was old enough to hold a club, and I love the sport.
• When teaching my husband to golf, I felt undermined by strangers assuming he was the skilled one.
• These days, golf feels like a "boys' club" to me and I no longer like playing around strangers.

I've been golfing for about as long as I can remember. As a young girl, I'd accompany my father (an author and golf writer) onto the course, where he'd let me tee up from the 100-yard marker.

During the summer, my family didn't go to Disney World or buy the latest gadgets and trendy clothing — we joined a nine-hole course and played golf a couple of times a week.

Soon enough I was entering local golf tournaments, and by my senior year, I was captain of my high school's golf team. I was never even close to good enough to play professionally, but I did win a tournament here and there.

For much of my life, golf was an activity that brought me a lot of joy and a sense of accomplishment. This started to change as I got older.

I felt like an outsider on the course once I started showing my husband how to golf

In my mid-20s, I began teaching my husband how to golf.

We were often matched up with strangers on the first tee, and I discovered pretty quickly that the other people we played with (mostly men — they make up the vast majority of golfers) seemed to assume that my husband was teaching me the game and not the other way around … until they saw us hit.

One time, I approached the white (middle) tees on the first hole. Before I could put my tee in the ground, one of the men we were playing with pointed to the red tees meant for beginners and called: "Wait! The ladies' tees are up there."

Rather than respond directly (a few choice words came to mind), I teed up my ball and smashed it straight down the fairway.

There were a few times during my early years in golf when I felt looked down upon for being a woman in the sport — like when guys complained about being "beaten by a girl" in high-school matches — but I generally felt like I belonged.

That changed when I started playing golf as part of a couple. Often, I feel relegated to the role of "wife," as if I only exist in relation to the man by my side.

It's common to see men teaching their significant others the game, so I understand the assumption, but that doesn't mean it feels good.

Sometimes I feel like strangers are expecting me to fail

Some men single me out when I'm practicing and offer unsolicited advice or respond with calls of "good shot!" whenever I make contact with the ball or act surprised once they see I know the game.

Even though they often mean well, it feels condescending.

I wish I could let these interactions roll off my back, but they make me self-conscious, a feeling that then seeps into my game and messes up my swing. It's gotten so bad that I now go to great lengths to avoid playing with strangers.

Some of the kindest, most respectful people I've played with have been men — but I do believe golf is still very much a "boys' club."

Until that changes, I won't feel completely comfortable playing the sport I used to love.

Still, I'm hopeful change could be on the horizon. Since the pandemic, the number of female golfers has increased far more rapidly than the number of male golfers — and the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) had its best-ever TV ratings last year.

Maybe now's the time for golf to tap into the growing momentum of women's sports, in the hopes that the next generation of female golfers will feel more respected on the course than I ever did.