Lovely conversation with a teacher during a play day. She asked “do I need to show them how to hold it correctly?” A question we are often asked.  The answer I often give is “if you want to, but you don’t really need to”  Our play day experiences are about the children experiencing golf and exploring the idea of moving the ball from point A (the tee) to point B…

End of the half term holidays and how often have you heard this said??? And how often do children talk about “being bored” and “this is boring”? I read this article this week with interest https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/opinion/sunday/children-bored.html A few questions that came out of this article for me… Why do children say it? What do they actually mean? What do they want? What do they REALLY want? How do we, adults,…

Fascinating to go on the golf course yesterday with one of the children that attends our weekend sessions. He is old enough and mature enough to play unassisted on the course, but it was interesting to notice how many things he did not know and was unaware of. Just a few that I noticed; Where to put the tee peg when playing from a winter mat? Where are we aiming?…

This happened a little while ago now but its impact carries with me today. While coaching on a driving range I overheard a conversation between a child and parent while the child hit balls. I asked the person who I was coaching to excuse me for a short time so I could note down the conversation, it fascinated me; DAD Take your time… Head down… Knees bent… Don’t try and…

A fascinating experience today in one of our JOLF PE sessions. A child took over 2 minutes to complete one of our challenges (we often ask children to have one turn and then swap over with their partner) it was a tricky challenge that asked her to chip a ball through a small hoop into a hoop. She would not give and was totally determined to complete the task (in…

A child’s* first golf club should be a driver and they should use 1 club for as long as possible. Why a driver??? We have a number of thoughts why… …it is the lightest club, so therefore will be easiest to move, control and swing fast. …it has the biggest face. …it is multi use. Use it from the ground, off a tee, you can putt with it. …hitting the…

If you are going to take your child onto the golf course it is less about what they SHOULD do and more about what we LET THEM do, here are a few of our thoughts/ideas… Let them… …make up the rules, break the rules, make up different scoring formats and challenges. …cheat! – we often impose adult rules/values on children too soon, so what might be cheating for an adult…

The many ways children (especially those aged 3-7) will hold the club and move the ball from A to B… …one handed …dribble (hockey style) …ball in front (croquet style) …back handed …split handed …drag …tap, tap, tap, tap And so on… We have seen LOTS of different ways (sure there are new ones we will see this year) The main point is all of these unique ways of attempting…

A JOLF coach will do LOTS of different things and will wear MANY different hats, our job is so much more than making sure children hold the club correctly and point their feet in the correct direction (if that is actually true anyway, to be explored in further blogs!!!) A JOLF coach will… …connect with children, parents/guardians and will continue to learn to be a better coach …provide children and…

Our JOLFer to GOLFer programme offers children (and parents/guardians, coaches, teachers) a framework of learning to guide and support them to play more golf, learn and compete. Ultimately with the aim of children being able to play on a BIG golf course unassisted. To what standard and skill level will very much depend on how much they play and develop. And in some ways we are less concerned with how…