Junior golf set up and rules

[Jim_Bick]

Shivas:

You're making a bit of a mountain out of "tour" and "traveling". It's common in my experience for series of local events to call themselves a tour. Where I live (Chapel Hill, NC) for a kid to play one small time (20 kids in his age group) event a month will require a geographic circle of a 2 hour drive. That's "traveling". If it's at the outside of the range and a multiday event, you might have to stay in a hotel rather than drive.

If we were talking about soccer or basketball, the kid could get twice as much play with a half hour drive. "Traveling team" would be a whole different thing.

Obviously anything can be overdone, but focusing on the exceptions may not be productive.

[Tim Gavrich]

I'm talking about little Johnny Longball traveling 250 miles (not 30) -- a couple of states over --  to play in the AJGA GoofySponsor Classic, with a 2 night stay for practice rounds and 36 holes (and more sometimes).  All because his Type-A dad cant accept that little Johnny can't make a 10 footer as good as the other kids...

All due respect, Shivas, but that's just not an accurate depiction of reality.  Sure, there are parents at these events living vicariously through their children. However, the reason that kids travel such distances--many times a lot further than 250 miles--to play in tournaments is not that Johny and Daddy Longball are insecure, but rather that Johnny wants to be noticed by college coaches if he plays well, whereas if he plays well at home in Smalltown, Ilinois, he won't be noticed quite so much.

The important fact that seems to be getting overlooked here is that tours like the AJGA exist specifically to A) create an elite level of competition for very skilled junior players (which, by the way, is a prerequisite for getting into an AJGA event), and B) give college coaches access to a greater number of players.  If Johnny Longball wins  the Smalltown Shootout in IL, Coach Whatshisname from Warm State University is probably not going to notice, nor will he be sure of the level of competition.  However, if Johnny wins an AJGA event (or even finishes in the top 10), Coach W can be fairly sure that the kid is pretty darn good.  And if Johnny gets offered a $10,000 per year golf scholarship to Warm State U, then the $1,000 spent by Daddy Longball the week of that AJGA tournament turns into a pretty good investment.

I'm playing college golf at a D-III (no athletic scholarship) school right now.  I traveled a bit of distance sometimes to play in high-level tournaments, and while my participation did not cause college coaches to throw themselves at me (I can't blame them, since my record wasn't terribly good), I am certain that the experience I gained from those tournaments has made me a tougher player.  If I had played exclusively in local tournaments, I would have certainly finished higher (probably would've won once or twice), but I would have been lulled into thinking that I was better than I really am.

[Paul Stephenson]

Paul-

"Most can count"

The kids or the coaches?

How many coaches do you have to score all the groups?

How many groups do you regularly have?

Both.  Up here, just because you're a golf coach doesn't mean you know anything about golf.  I've had coaches ask if misses are counted.  They are, in genereal, better than the kids.

This has only been done for our regional and provincial finals before.  Normally for the regionals we have 16 teams qualify and another 8 individuals.  This means that 24 coaches are available for the 22 groups (5 players per team).

This year we've reduced the number of players from 5 per team to 4 so we can score the regional qualifiers as well.  This is where most of the "creativity" rests.  The tournament is Oct. 1 so I can update how it went afterwards.

[Andy Troeger]

I avoided this thread as long as I could, but seeing as I coached boys and girls high school golf for five years I should likely add something.

First, unfortunately my experience is that someone does have to be out there as an official. Many of the kids just do not have enough experience to understand the nuances of the rules (granted that can be said for many of us). Rulings of some sort or another are pretty frequent.

Most high school coaches are pretty clueless themselves as to the rules of golf. A fair amount of them don't care about the whole proceedings unfortunately. The kids also have issues with counting and some of them with other rules issues. In our conference about half the teams had kids that weren't even close with counting. We started my girls team from scratch and were inexperienced to say the least to begin with (average about 60 per nine holes). One girl from a competing school continued to shoot 60 against us for nine without being able to get the ball off the ground. To make a point, I did the tally marks myself and she shot 94 the first time we played them and 85 the second time. I hated to do it, but it was so blatant that a point had to be made.

In my opinion there's a fine line for the parents between being involved and supportive and over-involved and a nuisance. I've been fortunate to have generally had great parent support that was there in presence but that followed my general rules of spectating...stay 30 yards away, say only positive encouragement, and help look for balls when appropriate. Some of the kids preferred their parents not attend and those parents generally stayed away (although a few hid in the trees at times and watched from afar). I think the kids appreciated the support in most of those cases.

My first two years of coaching my teams went 7-37. A group of freshmen came in my third year and the last four years went 14-9, 18-3, 18-0, and 17-0 and will be playing in the state finals for the second straight year. None of them played golf before entering high school. We admittedly the last two years had one of the top high schoolers in the country join the team, elevating a very good team to the best in the South Bend area. My Dad was my assistant coach and then took over the team this past year after I moved. We taught them the fundamentals, they took lessons from real teachers, we worked hard, had fun and developed something pretty special. That said, we would not have developed to that level without strong parental support IMO.