[Jeff_Brauer]

On my compromises thread, the current discussion mentions the influence of getting your kids to play on the decisions as to where you play, and to a lesser extent, how much influence parents should have in getting kids involved in golf.

So, what was your experience in getting kids to play golf?

I tried to start all of them early. My oldest daughter had no interest.  My youngest daughter didn't seem too interested at first, but like the social aspects and eventually played two years without distinction on the high school golf team.

My son started at about 6 and dropped it for a while.  He had a few lessons, but the best motivator seemed to be the promise of driving the cart if he hit three good shots in a row.   In junior high, he HAD to go out for football (this is Texas) and when he refused to play his second year, they gave him a slate of classes like home ec to punish him.  Luckily, one of his teachers was a friend and she let us know of a little used, much discouraged independent PE course that would restore his standing.  It required the same number of hours a week that the football team practiced and some adult supervision.  Luckily again, our club pro was willing to give a few short free lessons, teach him the rules and give him tests, etc. to qualify for the program.  So, he played everday of his 8th grade year, made varsity golf team as a freshman in HS, and went on to be a district champion. Later, he got two free years of school at a Texas Jr College, which saved some dough.  After his two years were up, he was a little burnt out and had a girlfriend, so I didn't push it and he still plays for fun.


I am happy with his attitude and love of golfing!   I feel a little guilty that I didn't push my daughters, but then I really didn't push Andrew either, and I don't think you can.  BTW, Alice Dye has a book out which deals as much with getting kids to love golf as it does gca.  I don't think my drive the golf cart idea is in there but she does have a lot of good ideas on getting kids into golf without pushing them.

So how interested in golf are your kids (and grandkids if applicable)?

[Scott Sander]

I'll be eager to read responses to this.
My son is 5 and has been swinging clubs with since the day he first sat up. 
He started by mimicking me pitching shots in the back yard and quickly moved to a tiny set of real clubs. 
He and I now play 18 on a local par 3 course every couple of weeks.  He's also played a regulation 9 with me several times.
He walks and pulls his own cart without zeal and always begs to stick around to hit some putts, etc. 

I have a feeling he has some real natural ability, but danged if I have any idea how to best nurture it. 
Earlier this year I caught myself correcting his swing and barking at him for truly tiny breaches of etiquette.  Again, he's 5 - so it was absurd for me to pick nits like that.  Inexcusable, really.

I think I was just sooo excited to have a son who would play with me that I forgot he's a little, little boy.

So I've backed way off, letting him swing any way he wants and only playing when and where it doesn't matter if he gets so excited that he shouts questions across the fairway.

I love it when we go out -almost to the point of getting emotional about it- so I will eagerly feast on any insight others have about how to raise a son or daughter to love the game.

[Tim Bert]

Jeff -

My 6-yr old has been swinging a club since he was probably 3 1/2 or 4.  We hit balls in the backyard whenever he had interest for the first year or so.  Late last year, just before he turned 5, we went and played 9 holes at the local kids par 3.  He liked it enough that he asked to go back.  This summer, I asked him every weekend if he wanted to play.  If he says no, then we find something else to do.  If he says yes, then we go.  It has probably worked out that he plays once a month, sometimes with a second round mixed in, which feels about right for his age and interest.  The local course has a 6-yr old clinic that meets for 75 minutes on three consecutive weekdays.  When he found out he got an Icee at the end of each day, he said "sign me up!"  He will probably do it later this fall or early next spring.

My 2 1/2 year old has been walking the course with my oldest son since he was 1 1/2.  He just likes to run and follow along and roll down the hills.  This summer we took a putter along and started having him take a whack at the ball on the tee boxes while we are waiting to play the next hole.  Can't tell if he's a righty or lefty yet - he doesn't have a defined swinging motion yet.  He seems to be adaptable as opposed to my oldest who is definitely righty all the way.  I'm just taking the left-handed putter and keeping my fingers crossed.

At this age it is all about fun and making sure they want to go back.  In the last two months I've walked more rounds of golf where my son played and I just watched than I have played myself, which is kind of a cool transition.  I haven't missed my weekly game nearly as much as I thought I would.  It makes the times I do get out even more enjoyable.

[Bill_McBride]

One good thing about joining a private club, or having ready access to one, is that it's easier to get your kids involved in golf.  By the time my eldest, son David, was 9 or so, he was interested enough to want to get out with me and learn how to hit some shots and play the two of us.  By 13 he was playing all the time in the summer.  We would drop him off at the club at 7:30 in the morning and pick him up at 5.  Sometimes I would meet him out there in the late afternoon and get in a quick nine.  He made the high school golf team all four years.  He's turned into a competent if erratic player, partly because he has not had the opportunity to join a club and also has the usual problem of young parents, no time.

Some of my most fun rounds of golf are still with David.  I know he will get Jake involved (now 10 months) once he learns to walk.  One of my daydreams is that some day the three of us plus my wife can play together.  How much fun would that be?

By contrast, my girls who were younger than David never showed the slightest interest in playing and never did.  They both played high school tennis.  I think they liked the idea of playing tennis at the club for a couple of hours and then laying around poolside, looking cute.

I admire parents who are able to get kids brought up in the golfing tradition when playing at public courses.  It's gotta be a lot of work.

[Brad Swanson]

Jeff,
   My 3 year old is already hooked.  I'm about to go for our 3rd range/putting green session of the weekend (at his choosing, not mine).  The club I joined here in Madison is the antithesis of what most GCAers would consider ideal, but its largely kid friendly, and pretty short, and near my house.  We generally have the place to ourselves in the late afternoon on weekends.  If he continues with the game he will be constantly reminded of my upbringing with the game at a very no frills public course, which you describe nicely (I was self taught and grew up shagging my own range balls all the way through high school on a cow pasture of a course).  I'd prefer to raise him on publinx golf, but free-time constraints make a modest club membership the best option.   Here's a recent clip of him playing just yesterday.

www.heavygen.com/LarsGolf/MVI_0827.avi

Not a bad move for a kid that just turned 3!

Cheers,
Brad

[Bruce Wellmon]

My oldest daughter, now 14, started playing the day J. Van De Velde pissed away the British. She watched probably the last 90 minutes of the broadcast with me. We then went out to the yard with her Snoopy kids clubs. She had to hit it over the driveway to hit it over the "burn." (We played today. I had to birdie the last to tie her.) This summer, we went to the Open at Turnberry. Played Castle Stuart, Nairn, Dornoch, Kingsbarns, Gleneagles Kings, and TOC. Doesn't get any better. 

[Bill_McBride]

Jeff,
   My 3 year old is already hooked.  I'm about to go for our 3rd range/putting green session of the weekend (at his choosing, not mine).  The club I joined here in Madison is the antithesis of what most GCAers would consider ideal, but its largely kid friendly, and pretty short, and near my house.  we generally have the place to ourselves in the late afternoon on weekends,  If he continues with the game he will be constantly reminded of my upbringing with the game at a very no frills public course, which you describe nicely (I was self taught and grew up shagging my own range balls all the way through high school on a cow pasture of a course).  I'd prefer to raise him on publinx golf, but free-time constraints make a modest club membership the best option.   Here's a recent clip of him playing just yesterday.

www.heavygen.com/LarsGolf/MVI_0827.avi

Not a bad move for a kid that just turned 3!

Cheers,
Brad

Great swing - he's hooked. 

I envy that shoulder turn and release!   

[Mark Pearce]

My three boys all play.  Cameron, the eldest at 13, plays to 25 (possibly 26 after last weekend's stableford) and has a very odd season.  He's a fanatical rugby player and, being a hooker, spends the winter months being trodden on by much bigger boys and their styuds.  When summer arrives, so does cricket and whilst he'll play a bit of golf at our home club.  Then, at the start of August, we go to Elie, where he's also a member, and golf becomes his overriding passion until he goes back to school (about now) and rugby starts again.  He's good enough now that he can play senior club comps (he's a 25 going on 15, when he learns to think his way round the course) and I really enjoy the fact that we can play club comps together.

We also have twins, who'll be 11 in a couple of weeks.  Gregor's going to be a fine golfer, he already has a solid, repeatable swing and strikes the ball really well.  He's also got a great mentality, he'll be a grinder but a good one.  Finlay plays all his sport the same way.  Occasional brilliance tempered by a refusal to play in an orthodox manner. Both will get CONGU handicaps next year and I'll then be able to disappear on a Saturday wih all three for a day on the course.

[Chris Moore]

Both my kids play (girl, 7, and boy, 5), and have attended a golf camp in the summers at our club.  I agree with Bill that one great thing about a private club is the access it gives juniors.  Last week, my son made me promise to take him to play golf on Saturday afternoon.  He hit balls for about 1.5 hours, putted for another 15 minutes, and then we played a hole from about 100 yards.  He get on the green in three shots, and then had at least 10 putts to get it in the hole.  He loved every second.  So did I.  The only thing I told him while he was practicing was to tee it up so he could see the letters on the back of the ball, and then hit the letters as hard as he can.  As far as the swing, he has some work to do since he has at least a 5 second pause at the top while adjusting his hands and feet, then takes a mighty whack.  As for my daughter, she loves to go hit balls, and is far more technically sound than the boy, but just doesn't have the strength to move it very far.  I struggle with balancing the urge to give them the gift the game has given me with letting them make their own choices.   

[Doug Sobieski]

My daughter is now 12. She started playing at the end of the last school year, so around June 1. Despite the fact that she was born into the golf business, I wasn't going to push her until she asked me to play. I think it was a good decision. I think she has absorbed A LOT just by watching me and being around good players, and seeing golf periodically on TV in our house.

She's now been playing for essentially three months. A week ago she shot 43 in a middle school match (with a four putt on the last hole). She already has the ability to shoot in the 40's from the front tees at reasonably easy courses. It has exceeded my wildest imagination that she would develop such an interest so quickly. She is already saying that it is now her favorite sport (she's also a softball pitcher), and she loves to practice.

She swings at it better than I did when I was 16. And she is already hitting bunker shots with the "thump" that good players possess. I shake my head in disbelief with some of the things she's already accomplished. We've had to re-write her goals twice already since the start of middle school golf a month ago!!!

She surprised me again today. We were going to play nine, and she said that she HOPED that we got paired with other people (she said old people are funny!). She isn't afraid to play in front of strangers, which is somewhat unusual for young girls.

[Bill_McBride]

My three boys all play.  Cameron, the eldest at 13, plays to 25 (possibly 26 after last weekend's stableford) and has a very odd season.  He's a fanatical rugby player and, being a hooker, spends the winter months being trodden on by much bigger boys and their styuds.  When summer arrives, so does cricket and whilst he'll play a bit of golf at our home club.  Then, at the start of August, we go to Elie, where he's also a member, and golf becomes his overriding passion until he goes back to school (about now) and rugby starts again.  He's good enough now that he can play senior club comps (he's a 25 going on 15, when he learns to think his way round the course) and I really enjoy the fact that we can play club comps together.

We also have twins, who'll be 11 in a couple of weeks.  Gregor's going to be a fine golfer, he already has a solid, repeatable swing and strikes the ball really well.  He's also got a great mentality, he'll be a grinder but a good one.  Finlay plays all his sport the same way.  Occasional brilliance tempered by a refusal to play in an orthodox manner. Both will get CONGU handicaps next year and I'll then be able to disappear on a Saturday wih all three for a day on the course.

And what a wonderful place Elie is to take them for a game!  Probably the most fun new course I've played in a decade!

[Norbert P]

 Not that I know of !





(Sorry, old and tired jokes never die . . . they just get more annoying.)

[Garland Bayley]

My son plays a little golf. However, he is more interested in cars and racing. There is a good chance he would be more interested in playing golf with dad if dad would pop for the expense of a golf cart. However, since dad isn't going to do that, the driving (car) nut won't be doing much driving (golf) anytime soon.

PS For a while he was known as Dances with Putter in Hand after the exhibition he put on when he beat dad for the first time.

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

I'm embarrassed to say so [especially considering the book I'm working on], but none of my kids play golf.  They've all tried it, but none of them have become hooked.

Four of the five are adopted, and ironically, the oldest of them has played the most.  I was very wary of making my own son hate golf, so I did not push him to play when we'd go out to a golf course together, and since he is not athletic by nature, he never caught the bug, although he likes being out on a golf course.

Actually, yesterday we took the dog out to High Pointe (now closed) to let her run around, and Michael noted how weird it was to be out there when it's not a golf course anymore.  So maybe he was right after all.

[Richard Choi]

I just came back from at the range hitting with my daughter who is 7. She started swinging plastic toy clubs when she was 4 and I must say she has a very good looking swing right now. She can hit her driver about 100 yards. She needs more time on par 3 or regular courses to learn about the short game.

I try to keep my input to minimum. She got this far mostly by mimicing me, and I don't want to  be one of THOSE parents. She went to her first golf weekly summer camp and had a blast (she was the youngest one there). I really do hope she keeps up with it as I think she has a good chance of being a decent player.

It is definitely something that makes me wish I was a member at a private club as it is difficult to go out on a course with her.

[Mark Pearce]

My three boys all play.  Cameron, the eldest at 13, plays to 25 (possibly 26 after last weekend's stableford) and has a very odd season.  He's a fanatical rugby player and, being a hooker, spends the winter months being trodden on by much bigger boys and their styuds.  When summer arrives, so does cricket and whilst he'll play a bit of golf at our home club.  Then, at the start of August, we go to Elie, where he's also a member, and golf becomes his overriding passion until he goes back to school (about now) and rugby starts again.  He's good enough now that he can play senior club comps (he's a 25 going on 15, when he learns to think his way round the course) and I really enjoy the fact that we can play club comps together.

We also have twins, who'll be 11 in a couple of weeks.  Gregor's going to be a fine golfer, he already has a solid, repeatable swing and strikes the ball really well.  He's also got a great mentality, he'll be a grinder but a good one.  Finlay plays all his sport the same way.  Occasional brilliance tempered by a refusal to play in an orthodox manner. Both will get CONGU handicaps next year and I'll then be able to disappear on a Saturday wih all three for a day on the course.

And what a wonderful place Elie is to take them for a game!  Probably the most fun new course I've played in a decade!

All the more so for having a proper childrens' 9 hole course (on the other side of the wall that runs up the side of the first fairway), with holes from 100 yards to 340 yards, which the twins and their friends virtually live on whilst we're up there.

[Dónal Ó Ceallaigh]

My son is 7 and started this year at Bro-Bĺlsta golf club just outside Stockholm. It's Annika Sorenstam's home club and they have 217 juniors that train every week. There is a set curriculum, but the emphasis is on having fun. They meet in groups of 7-8 and spend about 50 minutes every week. The kids are taught by ordinary members of the club so it's not very formal. When they get a little older, the club pro will teach them. One week they play bunkers shots, the next week they chip and they next they do some putting. Other times, they play softball, but with golf balls and clubs. Most of the training drills involve games of some sort. It's not all about golf. During one of the sessions, the kids visited the equipment shed and sat on tractors, mowers, etc. They head greenkeeper fielded questions and the kids had great fun. After a few sessions, the kids were taken out onto the smaller 9 hole course and played 4 holes. It was great to see how they coped with playing on a course for the first time.

I was sure my son would get tired of it, but he's been going once a week and looks forward to it.

Having seen how the junior golf is organised here, it's no surprise to see so many Swedes (boys & girls) playing professionally in Europe and the US.

[Jim Nugent]

Brad Swanson -- nice swing there!

My kids don't play.  But then I haven't played either since 1998. 

Tom Doak made a grammatical mistake in that last post.  A first on GCA.com?

[ed_getka]

My youngest does, he is 10. My oldest does not, he is 14. The youngest seemed inclined to want to golf even before he knew what it was. Whatever stick-like object he would find he would use to swing at anything resembling a ball. By the time he was 2 he had a little wooden putter that he would whack plastic balls with. He came home from trick or treating that year and was looking at his nylon "pumpkin" when he got home. Then he dumped out the candy, went a got his wooden club and balls and put them in the bag and slung it over his shoulder like a golfer. Up to this point I am pretty sure he had never even seen golf. All along I had a sense he might like golf by the way he swung at things, but my wife would just laugh. Then she saw what happened with the bag and she knew.
   David loves to golf, always begs to get a cart(which I will grant as a reward occasionally for something he has done), and asked when we traveled back to California this summer if he could golf with Grandpa. That was our first time having 3 generations on the golf course at once.
   I let David work on whatever he is interested in, with two exceptions. I remind him that golf is a swing and not a hit. Fortunately he generally hits the ball much more solidly when he swings. The other thing that we always do before I turn him loose is to chip 7-irons back and forth to each other from about 20 yards to work on making good impact with a shorter swing that he has more control over. He has no idea why we do this, to him it is just our warm-up drill.

[Jim Franklin]

I had my 8 & 9 year old girls playing this weekend. My 9 year old could be very good. She asked me to get her a lesson. My 8 year old is more interested in how she looks and wants me to teach her. While I have a low single digit handicap, I have no idea what I am doing. She needs professional help. I fix my game by feel. My 4 year old son swings the club and better continue playing since his initials are G.O.L.F..

[Kevin Pallier]

I have two kids aged 3 and 5 who love having a hit "at the big green course" as my youngest puts it (my home club).

We have a knock around the backyard with the plastic balls most weekends but a couple of times a month I take them down to my home club late in the afternoon to have a practice putt and a few hits on the driving range. Nothing too serious  - alll fun at their ages.

[Jason Topp]

My kids have always played a couple of times per year but never been enamored with the game.  Finally, this year, my 14 year old son really has gotten excited about the game. 

I believe three things got him excited: (1) caddying:  taught him etiquette and made him realize that playing can be fun (2) boredom: he had a three week period between the end of camp and the start of school with literally nothing to do; and (3) a lesson:  He improved approximately 10 shots per nine holes within a week.  He needed to get real frustrated before he was willing to take one and having a pro give him instruction is vastly superior to me making suggestions that may or may not be helpful. 

[Doug Wright]

Jeff,

So far not much interest from my 4 daughters. My 24 year old took golf class in HS and has played a little but only got "interested" when she had a boyfriend who played golf a couple years back. It was a strange but pleasant surprise when I visited her in ATL at that time and she said "let's go play golf!"  Now she plays tennis.

In the "hope springs eternal..." department, my 10 year old came out with my wife and me both Sunday and yesterday. The golf cart is an attraction for sure, but she also enjoyed hitting the ball and got a lot of encouragement from us. Too bad it's late in the summer/season (I'd tried several other times during the year without much success), but it was really great to have her out there. I'm planning to see if this recent priming the pump can pique her interest some more.

[Richard Choi]

Question for the clubhouse:

Which path would you take? Teach your son/daughter to hit as long as they can and not worry about straightening it out later. OR should you teach them to hit straight and add the distance later.

I am going with the former approach. I tell my daughter to swing as hard as she can and encourage her to hit it as far as she can. I don't worry about the direction or shape too much. I figure I can always tone it down later.

At a recent golf camp, they were teaching her the exact opposite. They wanted her to shorten her swing and tried to get her to swing straighter.

What do you think?

[Kalen Braley]

Richard,

My daughter is taking up the game.  I'm teaching her how to make a good swing and make good contact.  I figure distance and accuracy will come...

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