Background Recovery and outcomes after surgery cover physical and mental dimensions. Grit, or perseverance and passion for long-term goals, is an important psychological trait, for which association with surgical recovery has been infrequently studied. Accordingly, this study aimed to evaluate the potential association between patient grit, and quality of recovery after surgery. Methods This prospective study included surgical inpatients, recruited at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in South Australia, over a two-week period in July 2023. Linear regression analyses evaluated associations between the total scores, and individual components, of the validated Short Grit Scale (SGS) and the short-form of the Quality of Recovery Score (QoR-15). Results A total of 31 surgical patients were included. The mean total SGS across the cohort was 3.613 out of 5 (SD: 0.5759), and the mean total QoR-15 was 104.1 out of 150 (SD: 27.75). There was a statistically significant, and positive, association between total SGS score and total QoR-15 score (estimate: 0.01434, SE: 0.002787, 95%CI: 0.008640 to 0.02004, |t|: 5.146, p<0.0001). Similarly, several statistically significant associations were found in the linear regression analyses of the SGS, QoR-15, and the individual components of the other questionnaire. Conclusions This is the first prospective study to use validated tools to demonstrate that higher levels of surgical patient grit may be associated with better quality of postoperative recovery. Future research and clinical practice should seek to investigate consideration of the grit levels of surgical patients within perioperative care.