Gareth Bale has told Sky Sports he used golf as a tool to help his football career, saying it took him away from the pressures and scrutiny.
Speaking exclusively to the Sky Sports Golf Podcast, Bale reveals how his love of golf began, and the role it played through his high-profile football career.
"It [love of golf] actually started quite late for me to be honest," Bale said. "We were at Tottenham at the time, and there was quite a few of the boys playing golf. It's kind of a tradition in British football, a lot of the boys play.
"They invited me one day, I got a set of clubs and kind of just got addicted from there on in.
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"We had a group of seven or eight of us that used to go out every couple of weeks, whenever we had time, and yeah I got addicted straight away.
"I had the big banana slice like you do at the start, and I've been working on it ever since to be honest."
Bale, who played 111 times for Wales between 2006 and 2022, representing his country at Euro 2016 and the 2022 FIFA World Cup, revealed the impact golf had on enabling him to perform at the highest level.
The 34-year-old has shown his talent at golf too, scoring a remarkable one-under-par at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship Pro Am, possessing an 'athletic swing'.
Bale said: "Obviously golf is one of the most frustrating sports mentally, but for me, because there's so much pressure in football and people are constantly on top of you, there's scrutiny and media and stuff...
"I always used it as: You have four and a half hours, whether you're with friends or on your own, just to get away from life and all the pressures of football and just have this battle with the golf course and golf ball.
"It was that sort of freedom that I guess really kept me mentally sane during my career, and it helped me a lot to overcome those pressures. I used golf as a tool to help my career to be honest.
"It definitely gave me that calmness and time I needed on my own to reset every time after big games or training or a lot of stuff happening at once."
The Welshman has also become an ambassador for Steph Curry's 'Underrated Golf', and believes the initiative is huge for the future of the sport.
Four-time NBA champion Curry has been passionate about golf since being introduced to the game at the age of 10 and Underrated aims to open up the game to young people from diverse communities.
Curry launched the initiative in the USA two years ago and it is now heading for Europe, starting in Surrey between May 29-31.
"It's an amazing project in itself. What they are trying to do is unbelievable," Bale said.
"Golf, obviously, is a very difficult sport to access. It's very expensive in terms of membership, golf clubs, the amount of times you lose golf balls and have to buy them again!
"It's very difficult to get into, so if we're able to give more opportunities to more people from different types of backgrounds to be able to play, that's only going to help golf in the future, grow it as a game and you'll see better players come out of all sorts of countries in the future because of it."
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