As many of you may know, being a Sport Changes Life Golf Scholar means that myself and Phillip venture up to Holywood Golf Club most weekends.
Sundays are our main day of coaching, where we run three fun hour long sessions from 9-12. These sessions are for beginners where we play relaxed games and start to develop relationships, gain confidence and begin basic technique work. On Sunday afternoons, we will send most of the “Development Squad” out onto the course where they play various matches against one another. The development squad are juniors who are slightly older and who know the do’s and don’ts of a golf course and are at a certain ability. Over the 8 months of watching and guiding these juniors, this section has become my favourite part of the weekend. It has been a pleasure to have seen the juniors go from strength to strength, not only with their golfing abilities, but also their personalities, confidence, etiquette for the sport.
It is wonderful to see so many competitive boys and girls that are so enthusiastic for the game of golf, come rain or shine. What is exciting for HGC’s programme is that there are a couple of young individuals that are exceptionally talented and are comfortably in the top 5 juniors in the country for their age group. Watching these youngsters battle it out on a weekly basis has been fantastic as it reminds me of when I was a young and extremely competitive. I will miss not being able to walk alongside them on their golfing journeys as they are so talented and a pleasure to work with. Golfing ability aside, it makes it so much more pleasant when the 40 + young golfers we come and guide every weekend are polite, positive and cheerful young people. Holywood Golf Club should be seriously proud of their junior section for producing such respecful, passionate and hardworking juniors who continue to represent club and country.
Holywood Golf Club (with a huge thanks to Michael Alexander the head junior coach) has been such a great club to have spent coaching in my year with Sport Changes Life. I will certainly be making trips back to Holywood in the future.
