To all parents with little golfers…
Make golf more fun!
Most of us have been around golf long enough to have heard “bend your knees”, “keep your head down”, “keep your eye on the ball”… I have even heard “don’t forget to breathe”. These tips won’t help fast track your child’s passion or learning for the game of golf, so skip them. Instead, do your best to create a fun non intimidating environment for them to play the game and sure enough they will improve fast just by DOING. Here are a few ideas to help create a fun non intimidating environment:
- Play a course that is the right length! You are only doing your child a dis- service by playing a full length golf course. The object of the game is to put the ball in the hole, if the hole is physically far away and might take them 15 shots to get it in, they will feel intimidated and not have much fun. Start them close to the hole. They will want to put the ball in the hole right away and the sense of achievement will make them enjoy the game!
- If they can hit their driver 40 yards don’t start them from longer than 80 yards from the hole. LET THEM TEE IT UP EVERYWHERE. The rules of golf are for competition play, alter them as much as possible to let your child have more fun. Let them take two whiffs and then allow them to throw the ball. Let them keep advancing along the golf hole so they get to their goal FASTER.
Golf should be fun for adults too!
How do we make golf more fun for adults too? This is a great question which needs to be addressed by the golf industry as a whole. With so many rules and so much etiquette the game can appear as NOT FUN to youngsters in the beginning. Make it fun for them, create new games on the fly. For this hole we are only going to use 1 club or the least amount of putts on this hole wins… GET CREATIVE, HAVE FUN and they will love the game just like you!
- James Presnail is a PGA of Canada Teaching Professional with the Golf Institute at Fraserview. He is also the Head Golf Professional at Gleneagles Golf Course in West Vancouver. You can contact James at 604-921-7353 (golf shop), 604-318-0306 (cell) or golf@westvancouver.ca.
