Golf has long been a mainstay for bachelor parties, but now it’s popular for bachelorette parties, too. Any successful bachelorette party starts with a slogan, a catchy little play on words that drives the weekend. Luckily, golf is rich in this department: Last Swing Before the Ring, Perfect Match, Let’s Par-Tee, [Insert bride’s name]’s Golf Club, Fore the Bride To Be. A good slogan gives the party focus and provides a rallying point for the group. Lest anyone forget, it’ll be printed on decorations, banners, sweatshirts, hats, all sorts of little mementos.
Andrea Hunt never played golf. One of seven kids growing up in Kentucky, she was the only sibling who didn’t play a sport. She focused on school, but she never forgot watching Tiger on television every Sunday with her mom. “My mom is white, and my sisters and I are mixed, so it was really cool for us to see Tiger, somebody who looks like us, being the No. 1 athlete in his sport,” Hunt says. Sometime after she started dating her now husband, Kyle, she realized she had to play. “If the sky is blue and the sun is shining, he is on the golf course, so I said, ‘Well, I can either complain about him being gone or I can learn his hobby.’”
Hunt started taking lessons. “It turns out I like golf. Who would have thought?” she says. Now two years into her golf journey, she and her husband’s preferred date night is on the course. “It had become such a big part of our lives that I was like, ‘Why not make it my bachelorette theme?’”
None of the women invited to Hunt’s bachelorette party played golf, but the crew was game to take some swings at Topgolf. “It was really cool because they knew how important it was to me,” Hunt says. “I helped them pick their outfits, and they were great students. They were crushing it.”
INSTA-WORTHY: The aesthetics of golf match well with a new generation’s desire to share a photographic record for all.
Aileen Michele is a Pilates instructor and an avid golfer in Miami. Her now-husband David got her into the game in 2022. “I was like, OK, wait, I’m obsessed,” she recalls of her first experiences hitting the ball. She quickly bought a set of clubs and, self-taught, broke 100 within eight months of taking that first swing. Despite her passion for the game, none of her friends play. She wasn’t deterred. When the members of her party arrived at the Airbnb in the Hamptons, they were greeted with golf-themed sweatshirts, and the women were happy to go along with “Aileen’s Last Swing.”
“I liked that we were able to tie in all the decor, all the planning around that title,” Michele says. “I also feel like it helped bring awareness to the other girls in the group who don’t necessarily like golf or have never tried it. One of the days we went to a winery all dressed up in country club golf attire looking like we had just left a round of golf.”
At the other end of the spectrum, some women are going on destination golf bachelorette parties. Maiya Tanaka Puterbaugh played college golf and is now a golf instructor. All her friends in her bachelorette party played competitive golf at different times in their lives. They went to a resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for several 18-hole rounds mixed with time on the beach.
Then there’s everything in between. A bachelorette group can play a par-3 course, rent a house with a putting green, spend an afternoon at PopStroke or whatever it takes to infuse the celebration with just the right amount of golf.
When Cassie Sosa was in college, she had a job as a beverage-cart girl and since she was able to play for free, picked up the game. It served her well after graduation when she spent nearly a decade as a banker and was one of few women at many work-related golf outings. At one of those outings she met her now husband, Tanner. Of the eight girls in Sosa’s bachelorette party, a few had never played before but were happy to dress the part and give it a try. Worst case, they’d just ride along in the cart and enjoy the views. Sosa made two tee times and organized a scramble. After they let a few groups play through and there was no one behind them, they joined together to play as an eightsome.
“All the girls ended up loving it because they were like, I’ve never done this on a bachelorette,” Sosa says. “Even the girls who didn’t golf had a good time, which was exciting. One of the girls was surprised at how much fun she had, so she’s played a little bit more with her husband since the trip.”
GREEN WITH ENVY: Golf is rich with clever puns that can serve as themes stitched on bridesmaid swag.
Bailey Reed, owner of the planning company, The Bach Plan, which organizes about 30 bachelorette parties per month, says golf fits a modern trend. “Bachelorettes are moving away from kind of the typical, Vegas-style parties and moving towards a more wellness-based party with unique experiences and a lot of daytime-friendly activities, and I think golf fits right in there.”
One reason women have shifted away from drinking and toward activity-based weekends is they are getting married older. In the 2000s, the average age of women getting married was just over 25. In the 2020s, that age has increased to 28.6. Just those few years can make rounds of tequila shots that much harder to stomach. Also, the younger Gen-Zbrides don’t party quite like the Millennials used to. The oldest members of Gen Z are now 28 years old, and recent data from a study by Attest found that about 21 percent of Gen Zers who are of drinking age do not drink at all, and 39 percent only drink occasionally. Of all Gen-Z drinkers, 92 percent said that they prefer to drink at their home or a friend’s house instead of at a bar. According to research by Rabobank, Millennials make up 25 percent of overall alcohol sales whereas Gen Z is responsible for just 3.6 percent.
If the brides on the younger end of the spectrum come from a generation that isn’t as interested in drinking, and the older brides aren’t as interested in or capable of partying like they did in their 20s, bachelorette parties are going to be less wild, a truth evidenced by the popular hashtag #girlsgonemild where women post photos and videos from their low-key bachelorette parties with a focus on gathering and connecting. You’ll see photos from yoga classes and Pilates studios, boats and pools.
“That’s not to say that people still don’t want to party, but that’s just one aspect versus that being the whole weekend,” says Carra Jolly, co-founder of bachelorette party planning company, Behind the Bash.
“Women are getting married older,” Reed says. “The hangovers last a little bit longer. I think it’s more about a kind of sisterhood and really cherishing the time that you do have with your friends. When you come together for a bachelorette party, it’s about spending quality time with the people that matter the most to you. I think there’s just been that huge shift in the daytime activities versus the nighttime clubbing where you can’t really talk to one another, you can’t really interact with each other and really form new relationships with individuals that are on the trip that you may not know.”
“BACHELORETTES ARE MOVING AWAY FROM THE TYPICAL, VEGAS-STYLE PARTIES.”
Wanting more connection is likely a byproduct of a society having endured the COVID-19 lockdown. After being secluded for so long, postponing and canceling parties and weddings, many came out of the pandemic revitalized to spend quality time with the people they love. Suddenly, a bachelorette party wasn’t just another blowout, alcohol-fueled weekend with friends—it was an opportunity to be with the people the bride-to-be cares about. Fewer women want to spend those precious few days drinking in loud bars where they can barely hear each other.
Experiences also lend themselves well to social media. Part of the fun of the bachelorette party is posting on Instagram, not only for friends to see, but to keep a record of the highlights. If you’re going to post something, the aesthetic matters.
“We live in a day and age where social media is everything, and I think people want that experience of a photo-op and being able to post it. The theme makes the space super fun, when you walk into that and you’re like, Oh, my God, this is like what I was envisioning,” Jolly says. “Also, right now, there is a focus on being able to post wellness-related things, like ‘We went to this Pilates class, and then we went to the golf course.’”
When Hunt started playing golf in 2023, she was part of a colossal surge of women. Social yet socially distanced, golf was the type of experience people craved during the pandemic. From 2020 to 2022, more than 800,000 women played for the first time. Then more women kept coming to the golf course. The National Golf Foundation found that in 2024 women made up 28 percent of the golf population, and the total number of women playing reached nearly 8 million.
Therein lies the simplest reason golf bachelorette parties are gaining in popularity: More women love golf now.
TO THE HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST: To boost conversation and connection, Gen-Zers are more likely to prefer drinking at a home than going to a bar.
Another part of what made this love affair possible is that when more women started to play, many didn’t find what they had expected. “Nobody’s really that good at this sport,” Hunt says. “You don’t have to be amazing at it to play.”
If you’re a woman who is not a golfer, you see pros on television hitting the ball with distance and accuracy that you simply cannot imagine being able to replicate. Then if you see the men in your life spending thousands of dollars on clubs, going to the course for five or more hours at a time and always talking pretty darn seriously about it, you imagine they must be quite good at this sport, too. That notion makes it even harder to get up the courage to play.
However, many of these women new to the game have learned a critical truth: Their boyfriends, fiancés and friends are nowhere near the level seen on television. More than likely, they’re hitting terrible shots all day long. Do you know what that means? It’s perfectly fine for women to go out there and hit a bunch of terrible shots, too.
“It was shocking when I was getting into golf, how bad guys are at it,” says Bonny Riddle, co-founder of golf clothing company Sierra Madre. “You get out there, and you realize that everybody kind of sucks. There are good people, of course, but you don’t have to be good.”
Women, including Hunt, have had another important realization. “From the outside, it had felt like a boys’ club, so I thought I would be more in the minority than it actually ended up being,” Hunt says. “It was really nice to see other women out there, and then many of those women were really encouraging.”
Hunt started taking lessons with a female instructor, Myra Blackwelder, at Keene Run Golf Course.
“She just made it feel like I belonged,” Hunt says. “She understood. I was able to tell her, ‘I am a fish out of water out here, but I really want to learn, and I really want to do this,’ and she helped me to the point where I do go to the range and will hit balls for an hour by myself. I feel no awkwardness, nobody looks at me weird, and it’s very comfortable to be out there.”
When talking about golf’s current popularity, don’t underestimate the appeal of the outfits. “Absolutely, the cute attire that you can put together and wear on these trips is contributing to the big rise in popularity,” Reed says.
“RIGHT NOW, THERE IS A FOCUS ON BEING ABLE TO POST WELLNESS-RELATED THINGS.”
Golf apparel company Sierra Madre’s Instagram inbox has received numerous requests from bachelorette parties asking for discounted golf clothes for their golf-themed bachelorette parties. It inspired the company to stage a photoshoot where the bride wore a white golf dress and her friends were all in the same style dress but in black.
“We wanted to show an outfit where you could go to the range or play golf and then go out,” Riddle says. “Our clothes are technically built for golf, so all the pockets are specifically for golf, but it doesn’t look super golfy, so you can totally wear our stuff Hot Girl Walking, like elevated athleisure.”
Don’t know what Hot Girl Walks are? In 2020, #hotgirlwalks went viral on TikTok. Mia Lind is credited with starting the trend. She went on four-mile walks during the pandemic to combat negative thinking. During her walks, she focused on gratitude, goals and confidence. People, predominantly young women, gravitated to the mode of exercise. Public meetups in major cities saw hundreds of people gather to walk together. One Hot Girl Walk challenge on Strava had more than 200,000 participants. While many went on Hot Girl Walks alone, others met up with friends, grabbed a coffee and talked about life as they walked.
A four-mile walk outside with friends, in a cute, sporty outfit sounds a lot like a certain game. Social media influencer Halley McGookin caught on the first time she walked a course instead of taking a cart, posting: “It’s like Hot Girl Walking, and stopping in between to hit the ball.”
When so many women started playing golf in 2020, the natural question arose: Are these women going to keep playing? The existence of golf-themed bachelorette parties is about the strongest answer yet. Women have fallen in love with golf and shared that passion with more women.
“They were all really excited,” Hunt remembers of her friends’ reactions to taking swings at her party, “and they were like, Should we get into golf?”
This proposal gets an emphatic yes.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
