When I go to the driving range to hit golf balls, I often see parents with their young kids. Some of the kids are as young as two or three years old. I imagine they’ve seen the clips on Youtube of two-year-old Tiger Woods showing his top-notch putting skills on national television.

I have a friend named Allison. Starting when she was three-years-old, her father took her to the golf course and worked with her on putting and chipping and hitting irons and woods. Her father was a relentless coach, pushing her to excel, never letting her take a day off, rain or shine.

Her father’s discipline and her hard work paid off. In high school, she was a captain of the golf team. She won local golf tournaments and earned an athletic scholarship at a major university.

But it’s been years since she has picked up a golf club. Her whole life, she told me, she hated that her father worked her so hard. She hated that she could never take even one day off. Her father’s domineering attitude created distance between them. Even today, she feels alienated by him and has a hard time accepting how tough he was on her for so many years. She is happy she got a great college education for free, but she hates that it came at such a huge personal cost to her. She wishes she’d been able to lead a normal life, go out with friends on weekends, and not always have to be hitting golf balls, chipping and putting, working on her swing. She wishes she had a better relationship with her father, too.

So what do you think? The benefits of Allison’s hard work were quite exceptional. Full athletic scholarships to a top school are hard to get. But Allison’s scholarship came with lifelong regrets and resentment.

She doesn’t think it was worth it. What do you think?