Golf is actually a pretty good corollary to martial arts skill development. In golf, you will probably always suck. But, one thing is guaranteed, the more you play golf, the better at it you become. If you apply yourself, you may get to a point where you suck less and may actually become mediocre. If you have three things, you may even get to be pretty good: aptitude, sound instruction and a lot of opportunity to apply what you've learned. Without all three of those (and even with all three of them), you will be somewhere on the mediocre spectrum.
Problem I see with many martial arts styles (the ones that are too deadly for competition) is that there is no application, and so as a student, you never really know where on the mediocre spectrum you are. And worse, you may actually come to believe you've moved beyond it.
Even further, golf is like a competitive martial art in that the reward loop that keeps you motivated is similar. In golf, when you start, you are looking for some kind of incremental improvement. If you are at the range and hit one ball out of a bucket well, you feel like it was a real success. On the links, you get one good shot out of 125 and it feels great. You remember it. It's remarkable and it keeps you motivated. Over time, you're looking to break 100, and then one par. You'll always remember that first birdy. And then you start thinking about handicap.
In BJJ, it's very similar.
You don't get that feedback in a non-competitive art, because there is no application. And so you have to find it in other things. You look for it in kata or in 2 and 3 step drills, board breaking or some other ancillary demonstration of skill. It's all related. But it's not application.
