From tee to green, top to bottom and soup to nuts, golf is a family game, with near limitless potential based on one’s dedication to their craft.
Payton Hammill of Pasco, Wash. certainly knows that, having spent considerable time over the previous two years on the links with her parents and brother. She credits fun outings like those as the catalyst to her becoming a regular player, with a Handicap Index that plummeted from 25.3 to 13.1 throughout the 2025 golf season.
(Click here to register for the 2026 Lower Your Handicap Challenge.)
Sporting an improvement factor of 1.49, Payton’s hard work won her Women’s Flight 1 of the 2025 WA Golf Lower Your Handicap Challenge, besting 349 other players while representing WA Golf Youth on Course.
The moment was a triumphant point in 18-year-old Payton’s recent burst onto the golf scene, which began some two years ago. Growing up in the Tri-Cities, she had only occasionally played golf, to a recreational extent.
But while enjoying a vacation at her family’s cabin near Packwood just south of Mount Rainier, the Hammills went out onto High Valley Country Club and had more fun than any modern screen could provide.
“We were all off our phones and just having a really good time,” Payton said. “I was like, ‘Dang, this is actually a lot of fun, I want to keep doing this.’”
Soon, Payton and her family turned Saturdays into golf days, taking advantage of bundled tee time deals. She would share one cart with her brother, while their parents shared another.
Payton eventually became involved with WA Golf Youth on Course, which helped her get on the course for just five dollars per round. Shaving strokes off her Handicap, she gained enough experience to join the girls' golf team at Chiawana High School in Pasco and, at the urging of her dad who saw it advertised, took on the Lower Your Handicap Challenge.
“At first I was like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s just some silly little thing,’” she recalled. “But the more I lowered my Handicap, I was thinking I’m actually doing pretty well with this.”
She sure was. Even better was what came with it all, such as the great friendships made with her Chiawana teammates.
With her brother having moved to Oregon, Payton maintained a steady stream of friendly rounds while visiting him, mostly at Crooked River Ranch, a particularly scenic venue.
“You actually hit over a canyon on one of the holes,” she said of that course's fifth. “It was so much fun.”
As the season went on, and her Handicap lowered, Payton became aware and invested in where she stood in the Challenge. When she found out she had secured the win, she was in near disbelief and excitedly shared the news with her dad.
When she looked back on her scores, she understood the scale of her remarkable progress.
“At the beginning of the season, I was shooting in the 110s,” Payton said. “And now I'm consistently shooting in the 80s, if not high 70s. Even if I don't feel like I'm really good every time, I can look back at that progress and feel like I've gotten so much better.”
It’s full speed ahead for Payton’s continued golf journey. She began to compete in golf tournaments across Washington and Oregon, and started an Instagram page to document her progress.
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